Bookends
By Shotzette and Missy

1966
By Shotzette

Lenny patted the filthy tortoiseshell cat as it ate hungrily from the bowl of tuna fish.

"There, are you happy now? Maybe now that you have a full belly, you'll shut up and let people sleep," he said as he stood up, stretching and looking towards the pink glow in the east that preceded the dawn.

He was debating on whether or not to go back to bed and catch another forty winks, when a movement in the side alley caught his eyes. Instinctively, he grabbed the remnants of a broken broom handle and a trash can lid. If there was a burglar around, he'd learn not to prowl Lenny Kosnowski's neighborhood. Lenny skulked down the narrow alley and peered around he corner of the building slowly. Then he immediately relaxed and set down his weaponry.

It was only Laverne. Laverne DeFazio, wearing the black and white checkered dress she'd been wearing at Cowboy Bill's the night before, jiggling the doorknob to her apartment door.

"Hey, Laverne," Lenny called out loudly, "what are you doing up and about at four in the morning?"

She whirled around in surprise and loudly stage whispered, "Shut up! Do you want to wake up the whole neighborhood?" Muttering angrily, she returned her attention to the doorknob.

"What's up?"

Taking a deep breath, she turned to him and said icily, "Nothing is up. I'm just trying to get into my apartment. Do you have to make a federal case about it?"

"Why don't you just unlock the door?"

"Well," she said in a tone of faux patience, "that would work beautifully if I had my key, which I don't right now. Having a key would make it very easy. Thank you for pointing that out, Genius-Boy."

Lenny was momentarily taken aback by her sarcasm. Smiling, he recovered quickly and said as he walked up to her, "So, just knock on the door and wake up Shirl. She won't be too happy to hear banging at four in the morning, but..."

"I don't want to talk to Shirley right now!"

Lenny pulled back from the loud knock he was about to give the door and really looked at Laverne for the first time that morning. She looked pale, he noted. Her eyes were bloodshot and she seemed to be ready to jump out of her skin at any moment.

"Hey, Vernie," he said soothingly as he put an arm around her protectively, "did you and Shirl have a fight? Is that why you're upset?"

"Not with her," she replied as her eyes focused somewhere above and beyond his left shoulder. "Me and Shirl didn't have a fight, Len. I just don't want to deal with her right now."

Lenny turned to his left and followed her unblinking gaze down the side of the building to the corner apartment. Sonny's apartment.

Swallowing a minute amount of jealously, Lenny turned back to Laverne. "You know, Shirley will be coming out to get the paper in a couple of hours. We could just hang out here on the stoop until then." At her look of dismay, he continued, "Or, we could go get some coffee at the all-night place on the corner."

She took another deep breath and managed a tiny smile. "Coffee'd be good, Len." Her hint of a smile faded as her gaze travelled down his lanky form. "Uh, Len? You know you're in your bathrobe and slippers, right?"

"Laverne," he said as he rolled his eyes in exasperation, "don't you think people at a diner at four o'clock on a Wednesday morning have more important things on their minds than my wardrobe?"


*****

Lenny was right. Not one of the disturbing denizens of Lou's Diner even looked up when he strolled in wearing nothing but a bathrobe and slippers with a distracted Laverne on his arm.

As they slipped into a corner booth, Lenny couldn't help but notice the dullness in Laverne's red rimmed eyes and the tightness of her mouth. The harsh flourescent lights weren't helping either.

"Hey, Lou," Lenny called over to the stocky man behind the counter, "two coffees."

Lenny waited until Lou had poured their coffee, once again marvelling at Lou's skill at manuevering the coffee pot despite all those missing fingers, before speaking again.

"So," he began as he looked at her expectantly, "rough night?"

She looked up at him sharply, her eyes narrowing. "You could say that."

Lenny was about to reply when her realized Lou was still standing by the table with an expectant look on his ugly face.

"Yes," Lenny prodded.

"Fifty cents. The coffee is fifty cents."

Lenny sighed as he reached down to his pocket, but his hand only encountered flannel.

"Uh," he started as he felt his face flush, "Laverne, do you have any change?"

Laverne blinked as her mind seemed to click back into gear. "Yeah. In my--" she broke off as she looked down to her left and only saw the turquoise vinyl seat. "I left my purse in Sonny's--" her voice broke off into a ragged sob.

"Fifty cents," Lou repeated.

Lenny spared him a harsh glare before replying, "Put it on my tab."

"You don't have a tab here, buddy."

"Considering Squig and me are two of your only regulars, maybe I should!"

"That little creep that comes in here with his moth collection? I don't know why I let you two imbeciles in here at all! Last week he was in here playing with his freaking moths, and I found a bunch of them stuck to the the underside of the counter after he left."

"Yeah? If you don't start a lousy fifty cent tab for me, I'll guarantee you he'll leave them someplace worse next time! And," Lenny added, "I'll phone the Health Department myself! You know what they say, Lou, the third time's the charm!"

The two men stared daggers at each other. Lou broke eye contact first and walked away grumbling, possibly making a few obscene gestures, but it was hard for Lenny to tell due to Lou's lack of digits.

Lou properly vanquished, Lenny turned his attention to his lady fair as she blew her nose loudly into her paper napkin. "Laverne," he said as he took her hands in his reassuringly. "It's not a big deal that you left your purse at Sonny's. He probably won't steal anything out of it, or do anything disgusting with it like Squig would."

"No," she replied, "I just can't face him after..." and promptly broke up sobbing again.

"After what, Laverne?"

"After last night, Lenny! After last night!

Lenny's eyes bugged out and he felt like he had just been sucker punched in the gut. "Laverne, did Sonny hurt you? Did he--"

"No, Lenny! It wasn't anything like that. Me and Sonny have been going out for a while. He's sweet, has a great job, treats me better than any guy's treated me since Ran-- since I don't know when. Last night was sort of, well, planned. I thought," she paused, shuddering, "well, what I thought was apparently very wrong."

The sucker punch to the gut he had been feeling was replaced with a worse sensation. The sensation of digesting live wasps. Lenny stared at the floor, wishing with all his might that he was somewhere else and not hearing these words from her mouth.

Oblivious to Lenny's pain, Laverne continued, "It was all planned. Dinner, then going to hear Carmine sing at Cowboy Bill's, then we went back to Sonny's apartment for a drink. It was supposed to be the most romantic night of my life, and at first it was. Sonny bought me roses, he got a bottle of pink champagne, it was beautiful."

Lenny's eyes remained on the grimy diner floor and he wished for another earthquake. Flood, forest fire, cyclone, anything to stop the sound of her voice.

"He was so gentle. It made all the 'don'ts' in my life go away. For the first time, I didn't hear my Pop, Shirley, or even the Church, telling me how bad I was to be enjoying those feelings. But afterwards," Laverne said, her voice beginning to quaver again.

"Afterwards he just handed you your shoes and pointed you towards the door?" Lenny interrupted.

"Lenny..."

"Jeez, Laverne," aren't you used to it by now?"

"Used to what?" she asked with growing anger in her voice.

"Used to being used," he replied meanly. "Come on, last night wasn't the first time some guy you threw yourself at dumped you five seconds after he got what he wanted. Wise up, Laverne," he sneered as he felt the poisonous residue of a decade of rejection overwhelm him.

Laverne sat across from him in silence, looking like she had been slapped.

"Or, better still, did he give you the Let's be friends, 'cuz friends are forever speech? That speech always makes getting dumped so much easier," he said bitterly.

"I don't have to take this now," Laverne said as she slid out of the booth and headed shakily towards the exit of the diner.

The cold ball of anger in the pit of his stomach galvanized Lenny into action. He caught up to her and grabbed her upper arm roughly to swing her around to face him before she had travelled two feet down the sidewalk.

"Let go of me!"

"Welcome to rejection, Laverne! This is how I've felt for years!"

"So quit feeling," she screamed back at him, not caring at this point how many people her pain-filled voice woke up. "I made the mistake of thinking I was talking to a friend when I needed one. I'll never make that mistake again, Lenny Kosnowski! We are through!"

"How can we be through when you've never given me the green light to start?" Lenny continued as his voice shook with yet unshed tears. "You feed me that 'friends' line just so you'll have old reliable Lenny at your beck and call when things get rough. As much as you are tired of being used, I'm ten times more tired of you using me! You decided a long time ago that I wasn't good enough for you, or probably Shirley made the decision for you since you can't do anything without her holding your hand! Do you have any idea how much it's hurt me to see you throw yourself at guy after guy over the years? It hurts even more when I realize that even though most of them have been total creeps, you think they're OK because they're not named Leonard Kosnowski?"

At that point, Lou's porcine frame filled the entrance to the diner. "Both of you get out of here, or I'm calling the cops!"

"Shut up!" they snapped in unison.

Lou jingled the coins in his apron pocket menacingly, and headed to the pay phone inside.

Lenny forced himself to look back into Laverne's angry green eyes. "You are right about one thing, Laverne. We are through. This joke of a friendship is over." That said he turned momentarily, then turned back to her. As he grabbed her upper arms again, he muttered, "Add me to the list of creeps," before pulling her close and kissing her roughly. Unlike the handful of kisses she'd allowed him in the past decade, he poured out every iota of pain and passion he had suppressed into that one last instant of contact, before releasing her goose bump covered flesh abruptly and briskly striding away. Good, he thought maliciously, I'm glad she's cold to boot!

*****

As Lenny stormed through the alley, the tortoiseshell cat he had fed earlier hissed at him from atop the dumpster. Screw you, he thought savagely. Lenny Kosnowski is done with strays. The four legged and the two legged kind.

He stopped suddenly as he saw a familiar figure dumping trash. Sonny.

Lenny once again felt anger surge though his body, but the sensation was more akin to an upsurge of bile. He stepped towards Sonny, intending to tell him exactly what he thought of him.

The look in Sonny's eyes stopped him cold. It was like looking at a corpse.

"Oh. Hey, Lenny," he said dully.

"You were maybe expecting someone else to be out here with the trash?"

"Not expecting, but hoping." Sonny turned away and continued to toss trash bags into the dumpster.

Eyeing the rose thorns tearing through the plastic bags, Lenny quipped," Roses? You must have had a special time last night."

Sonny spared him a quick glance before replying. "Yeah. I thought I did."

"Yeah well, see you around," Lenny said as he turned away.

"Lenny. Wait up." Sonny lobbed the last of his trash bags before handing Lenny a small black handbag. "Could you give this to Laverne the next time you see her?"

"Give it to her yourself."

"I can't. I'm leaving for a new job in Hawaii tomorrow and I've got a million things I need to do before then." Sonny gave him a ghost of a smile before continuing. "I got a new job as a stunt coordinator for this detective show their shooting in Honolulu. It's the closest thing a stunt man can get as regular work goes. It's a great opportunity, and I'd be an idiot to pass it up even though it means relocating."

"So," Lenny accused, "you're just running off to Hawaii," he said as he bounced on the balls of his feet, with his arms crossed in front of him. "What about Laverne?"

Sonny's handsome face darkened. "I tried to convince her it would be the perfect place for our wedding," he said quietly. "She didn't even give me a chance to show her the ring."

A cold feeling of dread crept up Lenny's spine as Sonny continued.

"I'm in love with her, and until last night I thought she loved me." Sonny let out a harsh excuse for a laugh. "You think you know a woman, know how to make her happy, realize that her being with you is all you need to be happy for the rest of your life. Then, out of the blue, she tells you you're not the right guy because you don't give her goose bumps when you kiss her. Ain't that a kick in the head." With that, he turned and walked back towards the stairs to his apartment.

Lenny turned the tiny black handbag over and over in his hands, as he tried to reconcile his cruel words in the diner to what he just heard. As he stepped out of the alley into the warm Burbank sunshine, he shivered as if he were in Milwaukee in January.

FIN



To 1956

To 1967











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