lenz's lenses

The air was tense and acrid. After the Gately fiasco, Lenz had fled but before he did he remembered the only thing that mattered to him, the infamous King James of Sir William’s PoP. The book, in fact, other ‘inmates’ were afraid to touch because of their own ridiculous superstitions and their mostly depraved, weak and paranoid states of mind. Given that they are on an almost constant quest for external sources of happiness, most addicts abhorred looking inside themselves for answers to their suffering. Given their propensity to consume, consume, consume, they were, in a sense, model citizens. The staff, however, had nothing but innocuous feelings of charity toward The Word and saw Lenz’s near obsession with the book a good thing. They would never get all up in one’s personal map over such things. In their minds, having to surrender oneself to a higher power to get better was already a tacit conclusion and the ever present PoP was an indication that Lenz was already a half step toward the good. Self reflection usually led to positive, constructive and goal oriented results in those that needed help and truly sought it out.

As far as Lenz was concerned, they were all flippin’ idiots, each and everyone of them. Gately, that huge, hulking army of one was but the latest example. If he had taken two seconds to inquire why Lenz’s pursuers were in such a rambled haste, Gately may very well have thrown Lenz to the dogs himself. If just one of them had taken the time to get Lenz’s real dossier, they would’ve been highly suspicious of his real motivations for being in rehab in the first place and would have found his close relationship to the Good book very odd indeed. Of course, the commotion caused by those filthy, cold-hearted, Canadian rats who were chasing him caused everybody to run outside to look or, at the very least, stand mesmerized and gawking out the nearest window with access to the view. ‘Somtine crazy goin on out dere, ennet?,” Lenz heard a voice say as he ran past them in a blur and tore up the stairs. Busting into his room, he saw the King James and a serene calm came over him. Time slowed somehow as he sat at the desk and placed the book on it. Carefully, he opened it. The raucous outside and the high-pitched yelps of empathetic and well meaning, but helpless to do anything about it folks on the inside, receded giving him just enough time to read an ample portion from the back of his Bible before the reality of what was happening put him back on track. He realized that anything but extreme haste in this present situation would not end good for him. Snapping the book shut, he got up and ran to the closet. The recently acquired fedora and weather-beaten blazer hung just where he had left them. He put the hat on, grabbed the coat and ran toward the the window that faced the back portion of the House’s property. Scanning quickly, all seemed dark. Silently sliding the window up, he slipped out onto the eave that was five feet below and ran the whole circumference of the house. He had scoped this escape route out in his head hundreds of times and until this very moment hadn’t been quite sure why. 

Jumping the ten feet or so to the ground, he rolled without a sound and was up and running across the lawn without a break. He ran fast and looked back to see if anyone had noticed him fleeing. As he was fumbling to get the blazer on and looking behind him all while still holding tight to Sir James he ran head on into one of the catatonic residents from the infamous Bldg 5, spilling them both onto the ground in a jumbled heap. Lenz extricated himself, PoP still in hand. He got to his knees and rolled the catatonic patient on his back, then rolled him. While Lenz searched for much needed treasure he hunkered down close to the splayed form and whispered between ragged, short breaths, ‘Are you ok?’ Bright, brilliant eyes looked up at him and huge smile broke across his face. ‘I’m tired,’ all the guy said. Lenz found something that felt like paper in the right front pocket of the man’s jeans and pulled it out. Looking down, he saw $500. Jackpot. ‘Listen buddy, I don’t have time for this. Are you ok,’ closer this time, right in the guy’s face. ‘I’m tired.’

‘Ok,’ Lenz said as he backed away and got to his feet. Just as he was ready to spring into an interminable sprint, he remembered. He had something in a little box in a pocket he had secretly had sewn into his coat that was perfect for this situation. At this moment, Lenz felt so alive and so sure of himself that he would never be in the position to even think about using much less actually doing it. He was way too narcissistic for that. Given the circumstances under which the little pill was acquired, Lenz viewed it rather more as jesting gesture than anything else. A humorous backup plan to use when, and only if all his other backup plans failed and he had myriads of them. And probably not even then. But maybe, if the prospect of bodily harm was imminent and he found himself in an utterly desperate and dire situation, he might. He ripped the whole pocket right out to get at the little box. He opened it and said, ‘this’ll help.’ Lenz grabbed under his chin and pushed, ‘ok Bancini, all you gotta do is bite down.” There was no resistance on the ‘cats’ part. 

Unfortunately, with no time to savor his handiwork as was his wont, Lenz was off and running again a moment after that. a receding ‘I’M TIaaaaacccchh,’ was all he heard from the quickly widening distance. Then silence.

He ran for what seemed like an eternity; lungs burning, adrenaline surging and then ran some more. He dare not look back again, just run blindly forward with his Bible. Holding it close and guarding it tight in both hands like some NFL running back protecting the ever precious football. Eventually, he could run no more. He was almost certain that if someone had been following he had finally lost them so he stopped. He looked back. He saw nothing but black ink darkness and far off tiny red and blue lights.  A quick moment to read a sentence or two from the King James of Sir William Bible. Sweat broke out over his entire body as the endorphins did an overflowing dump over his cortex and started dancing with his nuerotransmitters. Lenz stood up and everything went gray for a moment. He could feel and almost hear rhythmic thuds, as if the repository for all the flown in garbage was right around the corner. Detritus smashing and exploding in regular intervals. It was the rush of blood pounding through his body. After closing his eyes and rubbing them for a minute, he opened them. Such detail now from the inky black, like reading from James had been like putting on the latest military-grade, night vision goggles.

With this clarity he still wasn’t quite sure where he was but he knew he desperately needed his bearings. He raised up his head and spun his body in a full 360 degree circle but no familiar glow of the comforting clock was anywhere in his sight line. He remembered the window he had so recently leapt from but not the compass direction it was facing. When he tried to hone in on it, his mind become fuzzy somehow. His inside map was on overload. Even though Lenz could see the minute detail of every blade grass, if he cared to look, nothing around him was in the least bit familiar or comforting; the blades couldn’t tell him where he was or what direction he was going. He was getting frantic; a ship lost at sea with every possible direction of flight both foreboding and inviting at the same time; and just like in life nothing concrete; only subjective suggestions on what the better and or correct path might be. There was only one certainty; being immobile for this long was not good and he had to get moving. He ran until he found pavement. The solidity of the street was comforting both for its familiarity and its perpendicular pattern that appealed to his chaotic sense of distorted logic and his overzealous and unyielding belief in it. 

Lenz spent the next very paranoid couple hours ducking under the cover of the nearest available shadow at even the slightest noise. Crisscrossing back streets and alleyways, Lenz saw many cats but they didn’t hold any interest for him now. After tonight’s events, he felt he had graduated to a new, somehow far more intriguing level. Even though he was a dishonest and unscrupulous man, he knew that once he found North and started traveling that way, everything would pop into place.

The last couple words of Sir William were almost gone, where the fuck was that freak, Poor Tony, when a brother needed him?

After much roaming and back tracking, Lenz happened upon an empty street with a conveniently vacant, lone taxicab. He had no idea where to go; he just knew he had to get as far away from here as possible and the direction had to be North. It was the only way to go. The miasma of directionlessness was still on him as he entered the cab so when the driver asked him where he wanted to go he simply said, ‘The library in North Boston, and step on it.’

It all started to unravel a few minutes later when the taxi came to rest at a stoplight and signaled left to get on the southbound part of the Boston Turnpike. 

The ‘Rosinbloomer’ was in Lenz’ trembling hands before he even realized it was there. 

‘Hey! Hey! I said North man! Just where the fuck are you going?’

‘Please, Sir. Calm down! With this crazy spaghetti bowl the quickest way North from here is the South turnpike.’

‘What? I don’t care about quick, man. I said fucking North. And you wanna go south? South shouldn’t even be part of your vocabulary right now, Pal.’ Lenz starts squirting lighter fluid all over the taxicab driver’s head. He rolled the wheel of the zippo and the spark was all it took to set off a huge conflagration that engulfed the whole top half of the inside of the car. The man somehow stayed silent as his face and head started to melt and the hideous stench of burning flesh began to waft in all directions at once. Lenz ducked and scrambled for the door latch. Rolling out onto the street, Lenz was up on his feet and looking at the cab; always fascinated, rarely giving up the chance to see the end results of his handiwork. To his amazement the cab driver got out of the car and took two flaming steps toward him and reached one arm out toward him in some sort of final act of defiance before falling in a smoldering heap of hot and bubbling tallow.

Lenz looked to the sky again and there it was in all its neon glory. The familiar clock stood out against the landscape that he had no idea how he missed it earlier. 

He triangulated quickly, got his bearings and ran. Soon, to his dismay, the streets started looking familiar again. The tennis academy was lit up bright. A shining sign of salvation on a moonless night. He ran past it and soon was at the Ennet House front steps again. All was silent and serene, no signs of the chaos that erupted earlier, of which he played no small part in causing. He made it to the stairs, sat down utterly exhausted and didn’t even think about Sir William before he passed out with it cradled protectively in his lap. Hours later the thick, baritone voice of Gately, urging him to live life through trite cliches woke him but when he opened his eyes Gately was no where to be found.