SERIES: Babylon

PART: 5 of 5

RATING: NC-17 (Adult thematic material, drug content, violence, adult language)

PAIRING(s): LK/LDF; Past LDF/CR; SF/WM

DISTRIBUTION: To LW, Kai, Myself and FG so far; any other archives are welcome to ask, but disclaimers must be included, my email left intact. send a URL, and provide full disclaimers as well as credit me fully. Please inform me if you are going to submit my work to any sort of search engine.  Please do not submit my work to a search engine that picks out random sets of words and uses them as key words, such as "Google"

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CATEGORY: Romance/Drama

FEEDBACK: PLEASE?!

SETTING IN TIMELINE: Alternate post-show canon.

SPOILLER/SUMMARY: Lenny moves to Boston after Squiggy marries.

NOTES: A spin-off of a drabble started for Bethy’s Fingertips challenge.  Conclusion!

***

Lenny wakes the next morning to filtered sunshine and empty arms.  The shock of the emptiness inside of him at this discovery is indescribable - Lenny forces himself to sit up and nearly falls out of his small bed on the way to the closet.  He changes shirts and heads to the dining room, dreading what he might find. 

But she hasn't disappeared!   Laverne sits behind the kitchenette counter, eating ravenously from a Styrofoam container.  The most delicious aroma wafts through the air - cinnamon, Lenny recognizes.  They regard each other with shyness not reflective of the chastity of their evening prior.

He walks toward her, into kitchen.  "You got any left for me?"

Laverne pushes the container of cinnamon rolls in his direction.  "I went down to the bakery and got some stuff while you were asleep.  Been up for an hour now - I couldn't go back to sleep." She split her final roll in half and savors each bite, and then watches him as he begins to eat his own.  "You think he'll really go into treatment?"

"I think so." Lenny tries caginess - his reality being that he's unsure of Carmine's reaction.  "If you think you got through to him."

Laverne nods.  "For the first time ever he listened to me about the drugs," she picks up a handful of pamphlets she's been keeping on the counter.  "I got a bunch of these at the free clinic downtown, and I still got the number for the rehab place in my pocket.  And I don't even gotta worry about the money - Shirl said she'd be willing to foot the bill."

"Doctor Walter know about that?"

"Doctor Walter never had a problem with Carmine because he knows what Carmine means to Shirley."

Lenny nods thoughtfully.  "I dunno if I'd be so nice if it was my wife."

"You would," Laverne insists.  "Just like you're being nice with me.

"Ain't nothing that any other good guy wouldn't do."

"You're more than good, Len.  You're really sweet, and a swell friend.  No one else would put up with me the way you do."

He finishes his roll and searches for his coat, not wanting to think about why Laverne was being so nice to him.  "It's almost twelve.  We gotta start walking now, if we wanna be on time."

Laverne puts her hand on his wrist.  "You gotta know how great of a guy you are.  I know I treated you real bad for a very long time.  I was stupid to do that."

"Nah, you didn't, Laverne.  'sides, I wasn't so great to you a lot of the time..."

"I wish I'd been nicer - maybe you wouldn'ta left.  I just...always thought you'd be around, y'know?  I never thought you'd go."

His smile fades.  "We all got our limits.  I always knew I was gonna leave California.  Wanna know a secret?  I hated it there!  I missed the snow all winter, and Moby Dominick’s, and Vinny's Pool Hall - all the places I used to hang out.  After Squig was gone I stopped thinking that Burbank was home."

"With California I reached that point a long time ago."

"Yeah?  When?"

"Right after Sonny left me."

"What?"  He snorts.  "Nah!  You were happy for a long time after that.  All that stuff was your dream, living where it's hot, meetin' movie stars.  You wanted to marry a big rich lifeguard.  And you kept saying you did after Sonny left."

"That was a dream, Len.  In the real world, I got a crummy job at a department store and a boyfriend who wouldn't stop cheating on me.  After we broke up, me and Shirl had our fun, but when she was left I didn't have nothing.  Just an even crummier job, a junkie boyfriend, and a bunch of sharks who thought I was an easy mark." Her smile holds its usual winsome mystery.  "California was just like Milwaukee, only it was warm.  At least in Milwaukee I had family.  Oh, I could lie to myself  I was better off,  'til Shirl married Walter.  After they were gone all I had was you and Squig and Carmine and Rhonda and Edna and Pop, and that was enough for me.  Then Squiggy married Rhonda, and my Pop and Edna split up and she went away, and when he went into politics I never saw him anymore.  Then you left.  So all I had was Carmine," she laughs self-depreciatingly.  "You know I woulda settled for that?  He was good to me.  Then he started doing heroin.  By the time I got laid off by Ajax, Pop was dead.  Now I don't even got a car to live in anymore."  Her hand had a strange, fevered grasp.  "But now I got you back."

Lenny's heart leaps, but he knows in the back of his mind that her affection comes from desperation to feel loved.  "But you don't need me, Vernie.  You never needed me."

"You're wrong.  I always need you near.  I just never knew I did til you were gone. But now we're together, and we can start new again."  Her smile is affectionate.  "And you're right," she says, pulling her hand away from his.  "We gotta leave."

***

Lenny knows something bad's happened when they pass Huntington Avenue and he's nearly blinded by a red light flashing in the chilly sunshine.  The alarming clue belongs to an ambulance parked on the curb outside of the flop house. 

"What's going on?" She stretches to see over the teeming crowd.  "Did someone start a fight?"

"I don't know.  Someone's gotta be hurt bad, though." A door opens.  Lenny's hand clenches around hers.  "Oh no..."

Laverne goes into an instant panic and begins to run toward the tenement’s front stoop.  Two paramedics - one thick-shouldered and dark-skinned, the other skinny with milky and freckle-dotted skin - are rolling a blanket-covered gurney out of the building - a body lies visible beneath the covering and two thick, buckled straps.  Laverne nearly knocks Lenny over to get to the ambulance before the white-shrouded body can be placed in the vehicle.

"Ma'am, you can't -" but Laverne is already trying to pull back the tightly-strapped sheet.  She finally finds the corner of the blanket and pulls it down.  When the face is revealed, her body went white.  Lenny doesn't have the bravery to look down at what's displayed his fear of death nearly as overwhelming as his fear of a loss of a friend.  The drain of the past few days visible in all of her form, Laverne turns toward Lenny and clasps him tight in her arms.

"I'm sorry," says a blue-uniformed medical attendant - the freckled one.  "Were you a friend of Mister Cowsington?"

Mister Cowsington.  Lenny's hands involuntarily flex against Laverne's back.  He enjoys the briefness of her contact with guilty pleasure.   "No, Sir.  We're here to take a friend to rehab." 

"Rehab?" The other attendant laughs as he covers Mister Cowsington's face once more.  "Buddy, people here don't go to rehab.  They're lifelong addicts and they always come here to die.  I pull ore bodies out of here every week than I ever did from the Coconut Grove."  Lenny's face has gone ashen, and the attendant hastens to provide comfort.  "But hey, if you're telling the truth, your friend's a rare case.  The trouble is, even if someone really wants to get clean, they don't always end up clean.  This is a hell of a big city and it's easy to find what you need, get it?"

Lenny looks the plump-cheeked intern in the face.  "Let's just say we're owed some luck."

The paramedic extends the gurney, rolling it up into the ambulance.  His expression tells Lenny that he doesn't believe, but perhaps he hopes. 

Laverne pulls herself out of his embrace.  "That could have been Carmine."

"I know, Vernie," he pushes her toward the sidewalk.  "Let's go get him."

***

"You sunnuvabitch!"

The hope Laverne had held in her soul, all of the faith she had carried with her to Boston, dies as she tears into Apartment 5 and saw Carmine nodding off on the sofa, a needle buried in his left thigh. 

Lenny had hoped not to be involved, to be a passive party to the drama between them, but Laverne's wild shriek caused him to enter the apartment at her heels.  Just in time - she's  just flung herself across Carmine and is pounding on his chest with all of her strength, letting out the incredible frustration held back for years.  Every effort Lenny makes to separate them proves futile - as emaciated as Laverne is she still proves stronger than him as she pounds her fists into Carmine's atrophied muscles and shrieks invective.  Carmine's sole response to this is a grunt.  He eventually lists over and leans belly-down on the couch, the thigh with the needle dangling over the side of the couch. Lenny redoubles his efforts to separate the two of them as fear and adrenalin courses through him.  Laverne kicks and screams with the frustrated, useless love inside of her, unable to staunch the rage flowing through her as she rains blows on Carmine's inert body.

Lenny sends up a prayer to Saint Jude - somehow, it seems to work and he finally gains leverage, pulling Laverne up and depositing her on the floor.  Carmine is frighteningly still - Lenny gropes down the side of the couch for his thin wrist.  When he tries to feel for Carmine's pulse his fingers nearly sink through a rotting, blackened patch flesh on his arm - souvenirs of unclean needles and untreated needle marks.  Lenny is nauseated by the smell of the infected flesh but bravely moves his finger down until he finds an atrophied vein.  Nothing.   He grabs Carmine by the neck, finds an unmarked pulse point, and feels a thready beat.  He goes weak in the knees from relief.

"He's okay!" Lenny calls to Laverne, who has curled up in a ball among the refuse and is sobbing, pounding her raw knuckles into the floor.  "Get a hold of yourself," he hisses.  The harshness of his voice and the humor of being told to get hold of herself by Lenny Kosnowski brings Laverne around.  As she starts to force herself to calm, Lenny gets up off of Carmine, pulling him up by the shoulders into a sitting position.  In exhaustion, Lenny at last sits down beside him on the filthy and hard couch, and scares up the courage to look into his old friend's face.  What he sees is not familiar.  Carmine grins straight through him, clearly not seeing anything but his drug - fueled delusions.  He isn't dead, but he's definitely high.

"You bastard," Laverne snarls.  She seems exhausted herself.

The tone of her voice breaks through Carmine's high.  "What the fuck is your problem?"  His tone is sweetness and love.

Her eyes are wild.  "My problem is that you're using again, you stupid sunuvabitch!  You promised you'd be clean for me!" 

Carmine shrugs.  "It's just a goodbye hit.  A coke speedball, not heroin, see?"

"You said you were gonna stay sober!  You motherfucker!  You stupid sunuvabitch!"  Lenny has never seen Laverne so angry - he's frightened of her at this point.

"It's just one last ride," Carmine grins, the manic sheen of the cocaine obvious to Lenny.  "Come one,  let's go - I could walk to Mexico, man!"  He tries to get up, but his muscles are so atrophied that he crashes onto the couch.  "Whoopsie!" he giggles.

Laverne shakes her head at his pathetic efforts.  "No!  I ain't going anywhere with you but rehab!"

"Who invited you?  I can go alone to Mexico.  I need a vacation," he rolls off of the couch, crawling on his hands and knees to a pile in the corner of the room.  He plops onto his rear end gracelessly, gathering up his possessions from the medley of unidentifiable refuse.  "I need this, and this, and this and this..." he dumps everything he could get his hands on, from pizza crusts to used hypodermics, into the suitcase.  He and his roommate had evidently been piling all of the garbage in this one corner of the room, leaving the rest of the apartment immaculate to the passing eye.  "Gotta pack light.  Shirl says to always pack light!" he laughs.  "Hey Laverne, remember that song we used to sing?" His voice is a horrifying croak, a shadow of itself.  "You know I'd go from rags to riches..."

"Jesus, Carmine," Lenny whispers.  The dark eyes are trained on his face.

"Kosnowski!" He brays.  "Where the fuck have you been?" 

Lenny knows that Carmine truly hasn't seen him before this instant.  The power of cocaine is that strong.  Beyond his fear of the drug, it's the sight of Carmine that revolts Lenny - the once-athletic and enthusiastic young Golden Gloves champ now has translucent skin, unwashed hair grown into a thinning afro, dull eyes and red-rimmed lids.  He is whisper thin, visibly skeletal beneath his stained white teeshirt and hole-pocked jeans.  This husk did not match up with the hard-muscled, health-conscious ex-boxer that Lenny had admired for years. 

He finds his voice. "Here."

"Boston?  No shit!  They should put it in the brochures - Boston: City of Perverts and Dopers.  That'll pack 'em in."  He laughs, that eerily chipper giggle.

"That ain't funny," Lenny blurts.  "This ain't funny at all!"

Carmine's glazed eyes roll about in their socket like a Kewpie Doll's.  "You wanna know a secret, Len?" he snorts, lurching in Lenny's direction like a Hammer Films zombie.  "My girlfriend, my beautiful, talented girlfriend - always had the hots for you."

It makes no sense to Lenny, but he decides to tolerate Carmine's fantasy.  "Shirl?"

"No -" He tosses his head in Laverne's direction.  "Well, why don't you tell him?  How you yelled his name the last time we fucked," He brushes a hand through his thinning natural.  "You see why I'm a smack junkie?"

"Carmine..."

"She acts like I ain't good enough for her - like I gotta be the Prince of Araby to be her guy - and the whole time she wants to fuck you!" He howls a gale of laughter. 

"Why'd you stop packing?" Lenny asks, getting off of the sofa and bending down to the bags.  "We gotta hurry up if you wanna get to the bus on time."

"Yeah, I was thinking about doing that - I'm not going to rehab.  Now I wanna go see Shirley."

"Are you crazy?" Laverne cries out.  "She's a mother!   She don't have time to take care of an addict!"

"Fuck you!  You kept me from Shirley for years!  She's gonna take me back.  She'll forgive me.  She always forgave me!  I gotta beg her to take me back, before it's too late.." he stops.  His body becomes stiff and unresponsive.  The glazed eyes fix straight ahead and into nothing.

"CARMINE!" Laverne screams.  Everything after that cry happens in slow-motion as, like a melting piece of wax, Carmine sinks onto the floor.

"Go get help!" Lenny orders, commanding under pressure, and Laverne is out of the apartment before he can move.  Lenny mows through the trash, incautious of the discarded needles, crawling over to Carmine's side and taking the prone man's hand.  "Stay with me!"

"Why?  Don't got Shirl.  Wrecked things with Laverne.  Career's gone." He squeezes Lenny's hand with strength that belies his cadaverous form.  "You got Laverne now.  You gotta make sure she's okay, and you got to make her happy..."

Lenny doesn't even care about his prospective relationship with Laverne anymore.  He had to deal with  the present, with being alone at a deathbed.  "I don't got to do that!  That's your job!"

"Her Pop woulda wanted her to have a nice guy like you.   Not a bum like me."  He coughs.  "You know what I always wanted?  All I ever wanted?  To take care of her.  To make sure she'd be all right.  But all she wanted was you.  And she wouldn't let herself realize that until you were gone."  Carmine turns his head with great effort toward the door and stares at the vacancy Laverne had left.  Lenny swears he sees a fly crawl into the man's cracked and dry mouth.

"STAY WITH ME!  Carmine!  If you die, you ain't gonna get a chance to take care of Laverne!"

"Not Laverne - Shirl.  I oughta take care of Laverne, too.  She's been so damn good to me during this.  Sorry, Len - bright lights - a lot of bright lights..."

The paramedics burst in, followed quickly by Laverne.  Lenny's feels his hand yanked out of Carmine's weak grasp as the paramedics clustered around.  He recognizes the team - the ones who had just left with Mister Cowsington's body. 

"Pulse 50/50 - stabilize him - 50ccs..." the jargon goes over his head as  Lenny kneels on the floor and watches helplessly as they attended to Carmine's emaciated buddy.  Maybe an hour passes, maybe a minute - thankfully, Carmine's heartbeat strengthens and his breathing regulate.  At last, he’s carried out of the room on a stretcher. 

Lenny finds Laverne in the doorway, trying to not to interfere with the struggle for Carmine's life.  He holds her as Carmine is wheeled by.  "Damn you!" Laverne blurts as his dark eyes meet hers. When the stretcher is out of sight her eyes well with tears.  "You're a manipulative sunuvabitch!"  She whispers. 

Lenny's arms are around her.  "You did everything you could do for him."

"What'm I gonna tell Shirl?"

"You'll tell her he OD'd, but he's alive.  She needs to know the truth," he rubs her arms.  "They'll make him go to rehab this way."

"So it's all for the best?" she replies hollowly.

"No.  But he's seen how easy it is to die now.  Maybe he'll get better."

"I gotta follow him..." She breaks free of Lenny's arms and rushes outside to follow the gurney, but they have already reached the street and loaded him inside.  The ambulance wails away from the scene, leaving Laverne in the middle of traffic, numb-faced and helpless as Lenny felt.

"Hey, lady!  Move your ass!" A motorist bellows.  Laverne jumps to life, getting out of the way of an expensive-looking sports car.  "Junkie!" he adds, revving past. 

Lenny pulls her up onto the sidewalk.  "I'll call us a cab to the hospital - my treat."

"Thank you so much," she whispers..  Her clinginess is alarming and so unlike her that he feels sickened.  "I don't wanna ever let you go."

"It's going to be okay, Laverne."  His hand drifts down her back, and she is unable even to muster a cry of outrage.  "You remember when you and Shirl saved that immigrant’s life?  And you wouldn't let any of us give him charity?"

She wordlessly nods. 

"Carmine's like him.  He don't need our help to make it.  He's the clown choosing to wreck his life.  I think we should let him do it, or let the doctors figure out what to do."  Silence passes between them.  "Laverne - what Carmine said - he didn't mean it, did he?"

Her green eyes regard him with deep affection.  What she would have said is cut off by the appearance of a car. 

"Darlings!  I'm here to rescue you!" Cinnamon honks the horn of her Hyundai to punctuate each word.

Lenny doesn't release Laverne - and he isn't shocked that Cinnamon's there to pick them up in full drag composed of the loveliest aqua sweater and green miniskirt, platinum wig and green eye shadow.  "I really didn't need rescuing right now, Cin."

"You're in the Combat Zone in the middle of the afternoon.  You should need a whole fleet of sailors, but you'll have to settle for me." she swings open the passenger side door.  "Let's get out of here.  I'll take you down to Godiva's for a treat."

Laverne wipes her nose against the back of her hand.  "We need to go to Mass General."

"Are you sick, honey?" Cinnamon asks, as Lenny climbs into the backseat.

"It's an emergency.  Carmine's sick..."

Without words, Cinnamon's features turn sharp.  "I'll get you there before you can scream."

"Scream?" Laverne wonders, climbing in.  "Why would I wanna scream?"

"You ain't seen Cinnamon drive yet," Lenny laughs. 

The gunning motor quickly punctuates his words.  Laverne retains her breakfast, but none of her nails.

***

Four Months Later:

A plumper and infinitely healthier Laverne DeFazio sat perched on Lenny Kosnowski's sofa watching him intently.  "You don't think I should go?"

"Nope."

She regarded the invitation she'd received.  "You don't think Carmine'll miss me?"

"With Shirl there?  Nah."  He placed a plate of grilled cheese between them. 

"Don't put that there, Len - the grease'll go down into the sofa." 

Lenny grinned.  The old, assertive Laverne had returned weeks ago, with her opinions and her common sense intact.  Unfortunately, so had returned her old fear of commitment - which was why they had agreed to date, but take it slowly.  They both knew of the transitory nature of life but didn't want to rush on heedlessly.

Shockingly, heedless described Shirley Meeney very well lately.  Neither of them completely approved of Shirley's leaving Walter for Carmine, but now that their friend was three months clean he seemed to be overjoyed by their relationship.  He also acted as a decent father figure to Shirley's young son, Walter Junior.  All of this had been learned from frequent letters and calls from Rhonda Lee Squiggman, as Laverne hadn’t' spoken to her best friend since she'd moved in with Carmine a week after he left the halfway house.  Laverne's own break-up with Carmine had been a relief, but it didn't change the way she felt about him.  Now the soon-to-be Ragusas were living back in California, and had invited Laverne to their wedding.  All of this had sent Laverne to wondering if she should move back to the Sunshine State and straighten up her affairs.

"So you think I should look for a place here?"  It was a try at flirting.  She was desperately trying to learn how to be young and carefree again, and he didn't mind being the receptor of her affection.

"Well, we gotta think..."

A minxish look.  "You think?"

He sighed elaborately.  "Laveerne..."

"Okay - I admit nothing's waiting for me in California.  My dough's about to run out.   I just had a really great interview and I might get the best job I've been offered in my whole life.  On the other hand, I ain't going to live on your couch for the rest of my life."

He and Cinnamon hadn't minded - especially Cinnamon, who finally had someone else willing to lip-synch to Lesley Gore records.  "I didn't think you would.  I'm just saying you can stay as long as you need." 

"What about Cinnamon?"

"She won't mind.  If she don't mind me, she won't mind anything."

She smiled, but it wavered.  "It feels like I'm dropping my problems on Shirl.  Like I'm abandoning Carmine."  She couldn't admit to him that some small part of her still loved him.  It was a part getting quieter and quieter.  Laverne DeFazio was no glutton for punishment, no hopelessly devoted woman, and she knew she never again wanted to risk her heart on another round with Carmine Ragusa.

He hugged her.  "Hey, no waterworks.  You got a right to be happy after all the shit he put you through."

"You sure Cinnamon don't mind?"

Lenny shook his head.

"Okay - I guess you still got another roommate.  Mind if I call Shirl and decline?  It'll be short."

"Nah."

She picked up the phone and he made himself absent, going to his room, finding his guitar.  He had another ream of sheet music to practice, and Laverne was his best ear.  They would go out to the courtyard and be together for the evening.  Darnell wouldn't know what hit him Saturday night. 

But he found himself looking at the picture again.  It was the same as it ever was - a source of comfort to someone who had always felt lonely.  And yet when he looked into the even-then distant eyes of Carmine Ragusa he felt his betrayal of Laverne again.  He picked up the picture, deciding to spread the comfort to Laverne. 

"I'm sorry Shirl - no, don't cry.  No, I'm not mad at you.  This is all for the best.  Sure, I'll see you if you come up, alone - no, I'm not mad at Carmine.  It's just not a good place for me to be right now..." When he held the picture underneath her eyes, a magic began there, glowing, the sort he had never seen before.  His heart seemed to stop beating.  He gestured that he was going outside, and she nodded.  She turned back to the phone.  "No, Shirl, I'll send you something nice - a piece for your silver service..."  Seeing the past seemed to remind her that the present was worth experiencing, even in all of its tumult.   It was the same for him.  Maybe he had never been as lonely as he had imagined himself to be.

Lenny left the picture in her hand, watching her stare, listening in on the conversation as he made for the door.  "Yeah, Shirl - I know.  It's a real shame, but it couldn't be helped.  Oh, Squig isn't coming?  He mixed up the date?  Well, he was always so irresponsible..."

In the doorway, Lenny found an envelope, dingy but readable, wedged between the door and its jam.  He opened the flap addressed from Burbank, California.

Inside were over a thousand dollars, and a note.  It read:

For Laverne and Lenny, who brought me home again.  I'll never forget you.  Carmine.