Genre: Drama/Dark Comedy
LUCKY
LENNY
By
Daniel Skye
My
father once told me it’s a give and take world we live in.
It
just tends to take a hell of a lot more than it ever gives. He shared these
words of wisdom with me from his deathbed. When that monitor flat lined, so did
my purpose in life.
That was when my endless streak of bad
luck commenced. Realistically, it’s the only form of luck I’ve ever truly been associated
with. Actual, genuine luck has avoided me like some baneful plague my entire
life.
Most
guys don’t get fired for starting a contained fire at the company Christmas
party. Then again, most guys don’t come home early to find their fiancé in bed
with a Filipino dwarf named Rubin. And most guys don’t subsequently lose their
spacious two-bedroom apartment to said fiancé and her new half-man.
Then
again, most guys aren’t Leonard Howard.
I’ve heard the best revenge is living
well. Well, whoever said that can frankly go to hell. If you call being
relegated to a windowless studio apartment living well, then I guess I’m doing
pretty damn well for myself. My apartment is so small there’s not even enough
room to pace back and forth. I have to go outside just to get away from myself
for a few minutes.
My
next-door neighbor thinks her apartment was converted into a night club and so
she blasts techno music nonstop. With a strand of hope, she’ll be deaf within a
year. She’s the one who lives on the left.
On
the right is a Lithuanian immigrant with an affinity for action movies. Did I
mention he loves watching them full blast? With the volume so loud, I can
actually make out all the dialogue between rounds of gunfire and explosions.
Today he’s watching True Lies with Arnold Schwarzenegger.
And
the girl who lives above me is a fitness buff and uses her apartment as a
personal gym to do her workout. Sometimes it sounds like her and her treadmill
is going to crash through my ceiling and squash me like a bug. And at this
point, it would be the best thing that could happen.
I
went upstairs to complain once. But she mistook my frustration for flirtation
and left the door, came back a few seconds later brandishing a can of mace. I
never bothered to knock again.
The
other girl, the one who thinks she’s at an all-night rave, is beyond
communication. I’m not sure what planet she came from, but I wish she’d go
back. I asked her nicely to turn her music down. She responded by thanking me
for a compliment about her blond hair. A compliment I never made to begin with.
That’s when I knew she was a few beers short of a six-pack.
And
I barely see the Lithuanian dude. If he wasn’t constantly swapping movies in
his DVD player, I wouldn’t even know he was alive.
Javed, my landlord, is always busting
my hump about the rent. I make it my mission to avoid him like you would try to
avoid a case of the clap. He can’t call me because my cell phone got turned off
months ago. Apparently that can happen if you don’t pay your bill two months
straight.
Some days I think about leaving it all
behind, packing up and starting fresh somewhere new. Then I remember I have
less than five thousand dollars in my bank account and starting fresh clearly
isn’t an option.
*
* *
Javed, my landlord shows up five.
There are no windows to sneak out of, so it looks like he’s got me cornered.
I
open the door after letting him knock for five minutes straight and he looks
pissed off. I make up a lie about being in the shower even though my hair is
dry as a bone. “No more excuses,” he yells with his thick accent that always
makes me crack a smirk. “You pay rent now, motherfucker.”
I dust off my checkbook and write him
a postdated check for the rent. It’s dated three years from now. He pockets the
check without noticing the date and scolds me some more with his peculiar,
possibly Middle Eastern accent. “You nothing but bum. You can’t pay rent, can’t
work. What good you for?”
I wait until Javed is gone before
laughing it up good at our brief encounter. Then I realize I don’t have much to laugh
about. Eventually he’s going to discover that check is worthless and he’s probably
going to evict me.
Oh well, things can’t get much worse.
If I wind up moving, I won’t have much to move. Most of my things were
destroyed in storage when the place caught fire. The whole incident reeked of insurance
fraud. But I did get compensated for the loss. Unfortunately all that money was
spent on a lawyer and finding a new apartment when Fran gave me the boot.
All
I have is a bed, a small wardrobe, and an old television that even the most
desperate robber wouldn’t dare steal. I don’t even have a car anymore.
I got nailed for DWI two weeks after
the little incident at the company Christmas party. My office refused to press
charges against me. But the incident, combined with the DWI, forced the judge
to suspend my license. The judge also made attending AA meetings on a weekly
basis a mandatory requirement. I wish they had given me ten thousand hours of
community service instead. The people you meet at those kinds of meetings are
the reasons judges exist in the first place.
I check the mini fridge; find that
it’s empty again. I have another meeting in two hours and I don’t feel like
going grocery shopping. I don’t even know if I have the money to spare. I have
another session with Kazarian tomorrow and he’s going to want the money upfront
this time, seeing as how the last check bounced.
My friends used to call me Lucky
Lenny. I don’t know if they were being ironic, but if they saw me now, they’d
probably cry. Or laugh. Lenny’s luck ran out like his fiancé, and it’s not
coming back.
*
* *
There’s an old joke my father used to
tell me. “Doctor gives a guy six months to live. He can’t pay his bills, so the
doctor gives him another six months.” In my father’s case, the doctor gave him two
years at best.
My old man refused treatment at first,
until the cancer spread through his lungs and restricted his breathing. Out of
fear of it spreading to the rest of his body, he reluctantly signed on for
chemo and radiation.
He went through a range of side
effects caused by the treatments. His hair gradually fell out. He lost a
considerable amount of weight. His appetite diminished. Some days he was
sluggish and dead to the world. Other days he was energetic and still full of
zest.
We spent the last six months crossing
off every notch on his bucket list. Visit the champagne room of a strip club.
Free the animals from a local zoo. Go streaking. Build a fort. Visit Niagara
Falls. Eat an entire crave case at White Castle. Take a ride in a hot air
balloon. Go to a bar just to start a fight. Yes, these were all things on my dad’s
bucket list.
Though,
we did get arrested for our stunt at the zoo. Thankfully the zookeeper and the
owners refused to press charges since nobody was hurt and no real damage was
done to the property. I can’t say the same for the guy who had monkey shit
smeared all over his windshield.
Eventually the chemo and radiation
took its toll and dad was reduced to a virtual zombie. He didn’t eat. Some
days, he rarely even spoke. Just sat there and stared off into space. That’s
when I knew his time was dwindling.
The
day he finally let go, a wave of relief washed over me. I took solace in the
fact he wasn’t suffering anymore.
I
wish I could say the same for myself.
My
meeting starts around seven o’clock. In the real world, my name is Leonard
Howard, or Lenny to those who know me best.
But
in the AA world, I’m Rico. Horrible choice, I know. As a flabby thirty year old
Caucasian, I look about the furthest thing from a Rico. But I did it as a joke
the first night I was here, and then I realized I was stuck with it.
Everyone
helps themselves to a cup of coffee and munches on stale doughnuts brought by
Frank, the alcoholic who ran down his neighbor when he crashed through his
fence and blew a 0.10 on the Breathalyzer.
Frank’s
been sober for eight years. Five of those years were spent behind bars for
vehicular manslaughter.
As
everybody pulls up a chair and we sit in a semi-circle, the first timers all
take turns standing up to introduce themselves.
A
man in a red baseball cap stands up.
His
name is Jimmy, and he’s an alcoholic.
Hi Jimmy.
Another
man stands up, pale and emaciated. His name is Gary, and he’s an alcoholic.
Hi Gary.
Among
this group of degenerates and lowlifes, I spot a new face. Since it’s her first
time around, she gets up and introduces herself as Anna. Like me, she is here
by order of the court.
I’ve
just laid eyes on her and she already drives me wild. It might be the
shoulder-length red hair. There’s something about red hair that always lights
my fire.
Or
it could be that she slightly resembles Fran, my ex-fiancé.
Like
Fran, Anna has fair skin, a slim hourglass figure. But her hair is a much
darker shade of red. The glitter of her mascara makes her eyes appear to
twinkle every time she blinks. It’s almost hypnotizing.
I
scan both hands for a wedding ring.
She’s
single. I mean, at least she’s not married. If she has a boyfriend, he’s not
here to support her. And that’s how it sort of goes for people in the program.
Aside from our sponsors, we’re truly alone in this struggle.
As
the meeting eventually comes to a close, I time my exit so that Anna and I
reach the door at exactly the same time. My lips part and I try to speak, but
no words escape.
My
throat is dry and I can fell the air leaving my lungs rapidly. Not again, I think. Not another panic attack.
Outside,
I lean against the wall to catch my breath and she steps ahead of me without
even noticing and disappears into the night.
Five
minutes later, I catch my breath and regain my composure. By then, Anna is long
gone with everybody else.
This was just her first meeting,
I remind myself. She’ll be here tomorrow
again. You’ll have another chance. You just need to get control.
*
* *
The next morning, I go to see Doctor
Kazarian for my latest session. The lobby receptionist asks for two hundred
dollars upfront as I anticipated. I had stopped at the bank on my walk over and
withdrew three hundred – two for the session, one for the medication and
groceries.
Kazarian knows I don’t have an
insurance plan, so he writes me generic scripts for Xanax. They cost around
thirty dollars a bottle for ninety pills.
Breathe. He repeats the word over and
over, droning on like some insipid song playing on a continuous loop. Breathe,
relax. Breathe, open your lungs. Breathe, take in the air. Breathe in deep, and
breathe out all the negative energy.
These breathing exercises are supposed
to help with my anxiety attacks. But they’re even worse than the dope he
prescribes to me.
I loathe the concept the chemical
dependency. It seems like half the population is dependent on some form of
medication to carry them through the day. But I still take them because A. He
tests me to see if I am, and B. I hate to admit it, but they do help.
The anxiety attacks were something I
experienced shortly after high school graduation. It was the middle of summer,
and a buddy and I were stuck in a traffic jam at the core of a hundred degree
heat wave. The heat wave had started on a Monday and reached its peak that
Thursday, as we were caught in the center lane of Sunrise Highway.
As traffic moved forward and we drove
under a narrow overpass, I suddenly froze and my foot barely managed to find
the brake. I couldn’t breathe. I felt trapped inside a tiny box. All the air
had been sucked from my lungs in seconds. My chest was tighter than a snare
drum and it felt like someone had their boot pressed on the back of my throat.
I managed to pull over and passed the
wheel on to my buddy. He drove the rest of the way. I saw a shrink, took some
pills, and after a while it went away. Or so I thought.
The attacks started again, not too
long after I got shit canned at my office.
Kazarian’s face is pale and stiff as
an ironing board. His green mackerel eyes are cold and lifeless. He speaks his
words slowly and with such apathy it makes my stomach churn. He has the
exuberance of a life-size cardboard cutout. Put a twist-tie in his hair and he
could be a loaf of white bread.
There’s a brown stain on the lapel of
his tweed blazer. He keeps telling me to breathe, relax, and take in all the
air. And all I keep thinking about is how unprofessional it is for him to be
walking around in this soiled jacket. I’m tempted to say something about it,
but I let it slide as Kazarian shifts into the therapy portion of our session.
“How are you feeling today?” he asks.
“Better,” I nod.
“And you’ve been sleeping okay?”
“Yes,” I say, trying to keep my
answers vague and short.
“Because you look exhausted.”
“Amorous neighbors,” I chuckle
nervously. “They’re newlyweds. They keep me up a lot at night with all the
noise they make.”
“I had that problem once,” Kazarian
shares casually, as if I cared to know. “Had to move eventually.”
“Well, I’m not in the position to move
right now.”
“How is the medication helping?”
“It helps a lot,” I say through
gritted teeth. Another lie. But my lies are more than transparent to a man like
Kazarian. He’s trained to see through the bullshit, and that’s about all I ever
feed him. Lies and bullshit.
“I hate it when you lie,” he says
concisely.
“Why, because it’s your job?” I fire
back.
“I don’t lie,” Kazarian defends
himself. “I ask people questions, I make observations, and I try to help them.”
“Some job you’re doing with me. I’m
wondering why I sought help in the first place.”
“It doesn’t matter why you sought
help. What matters is you realized that you needed it. Now if the medication
isn’t helping, we can try an alternative.”
“No, it’s fine,” I say, trying to sound
sincere. “I’d rather stick with Xanax then something I’ve never tried before.”
“Very well. Lenny, would you like to
talk about the fire?”
“What’s there to talk about? I was
drunk, I had just lost my fiancé.”
“You still started a fire in your
office.”
“It was a contained fire. Just a few
shredded papers inside a garbage pail. Nobody got hurt.”
“And the papers just happened to be
important documents your boss was expecting on his desk that week?”
“What can I say,” I shrug. “It was
there.”
“Lenny, why did you really start the
fire?”
I sigh. “You know…I thought I had lost
control that day. But I realize I lost control way before that. I think that
day was the first time I was actually in control. I think in a way, the fire
helped me free a part of myself. It helped me get some of that control back.”
“So you’re saying the fire was
cathartic?”
“I don’t know what I’m saying. But I
was a slave to that job for so many years. It just felt time to move on.”
“And that was your way of moving on?”
“If you want to think of it that way.”
“Where are you working now?”
“I help out a few days at my friend
Jeff’s comic store.”
“And how’s that? Better than the
office?”
“The job is great. The pay, not so
much.”
This bland conversation progresses for
another thirty or so minutes, until Kazarian looks down at his watch and says,
“Time’s up.”
“Same time next month?” I ask, and he
nods as he writes me out a new prescription slip. I accept the slip and he
dismisses me, telling me that his receptionist will pencil me in for an appointment
next month.
I walk to Morton’s Pharmacy after the
session, hand in my script. It takes twenty minutes to fill. I still have an
hour to spare before my next AA meeting.
As I walk down Merrick Road, I twist
the cap off the prescription bottle and swallow one Xanax dry as if I’m
swallowing my own pride.
At the grocery store, I stock up on
bread, eggs, milk, cheese, peanut butter and jelly, spaghetti. Whatever I can
afford.
It’s
not much, but it will suffice. Between the medication and constant self-loathing,
I don’t eat nearly as much as I used to.
My shit-box apartment is five blocks away
from the grocery store. I peek around the corner to make sure Javed isn’t
waiting for me. He isn’t.
Inside, I pack all my groceries away
and listen to my neighbor blast Justin Bieber while the other watches
Apocalypse Now at full volume. I reach for my script and twist the cap, then
have second thoughts.
What am I doing here? This is no way
to live. Dodging landlords. Downing pills to deal with the pressure. Attending
meetings packed with recovering degenerates.
This isn’t me. This isn’t what I used
to be. And shit, I think I have another meeting tonight. And I think it’s my
turn to bring the doughnuts.
But right now, I’m thinking fuck the
doughnuts. And fuck these pills.
I walk to the bathroom, tilt the
bottle, and drop the remaining eighty-nine pills into the toilet. I breathe in
deeply, and with one quick flush, I exhale and watch all my dependency swirl
away and flow down the drain.
I’ll call Kazarian in the morning and
tell him I won’t be back.
*
* *
I show up at the meeting empty-handed
and find out it wasn’t my turn to bring the doughnuts after all.
I also see that Anna has returned.
This time she doesn’t say anything. Just watches quietly as everyone else goes
around introducing themselves, sharing sob stories.
As the meeting comes to an end, I feel
the anxiety stirring inside me. But I stand up, take a deep breath, and exhale.
I brush it aside with ease and pull myself back to reality.
I approach her with an attempt at
confidence. I look at this opportunity as a last ditch effort at turning my
luck around. And I have literally nothing to lose at this point.
“The name’s Lenny,” I introduce
myself. For this occasion, it sounds better than Leonard. Or Rico.
“Anna,” she says back.
“You’re new here. I saw you the other
night. Got a sponsor?”
“Not yet,” she shook her head, her
dark red hair waving from side to side.
“Maybe I could be your sponsor. We
could grab a cup of coffee sometime and talk if you’d like.”
“I honestly hate coffee,” she admits.
“I just drink it here because that’s all they serve. It tastes like liquid
chalk to me.”
“I hate coffee too,” I say, relieved
that I won’t have to down more of that disgusting crap. “You know, you’re not
the only one the courts made come here.”
“Oh yeah?” she smirks. “What’d you
do?”
I hesitate for a second before I
confess, “I started a fire at my office.”
“Awesome,” she laughs and gives me a
swift pat on the back. “I stole my boss’s car. Guy was a total perv. He always
used to hit on me and say the most inappropriate things. Tried to grab my
behind a couple of times. I smacked him good for that once.”
“If I’m not being too straightforward,
how’d you like to go out to dinner with me sometime?”
“I could go for a drink instead,” she
smiles and takes my hand.
Gripping
her hand loosely, I smile back and I think to myself, maybe starting fresh is an option after all.
