He supposed no one would blame him after the day he'd had.
Seeing Betty after all these years had really thrown him for a loop. He couldn't believe he'd asked her to come up. Thank God she'd had the sense to suggest going across the street to talk. He wearily took off his badge and gun and put them in his lock box.
He sat in his recliner and unlaced his shoes, slipping out of them. Out of habit more than anything, he reached for his trio of book friends Alcoholics Anonymous, The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions and his Journal. But he really didn't want to look at any of them nor did he want to call his sponsor, what he really wanted, God help him, was a scotch. He laid the books down unopened, got up and walked over to his bedroom, took off his suit coat and hung it over the chair that sat at his desk. He lay down on his bed, laced his hands behind his head and stared up at the ceiling, his memory reached back 5 years to the afternoon Betty told him it was over between them.
Initially, he'd taken things calmly, told her he understood, she had her sons and her career to consider. She'd stayed and made love to him one last time, after she left he'd tied on a hell of a bender. Drunken and caught somewhere between anger and self-pity Lennie became self-destructive. He decided to play some pool; he sought out one of the halls in one of the seedier parts of town.
Now even drunk, Lennie was a hell of a pool player, so he was winning quite a bit of money. Trouble was, when he was drunk Lennie had absolutely no censor on his mouth; whatever he thought came straight out of it. He was still pretty funny, however, he was also brutally honest and it didn't take too long before he'd made a couple of guys with more muscles than brains pretty angry. He got himself badly beaten up. Somehow he ended up in some flea beaten flophouse in the land of no-tell hotels, probably courtesy of some tenderhearted hooker. The only thing he could be grateful for was that no one had thought to roll him for his handgun. Then again, maybe he shouldn't be grateful for that, maybe they'd left it for him hoping he'd use it.
Lennie eventually found himself rocking back and forth on the edge of the bed, cradling his .38, staring down the barrel, crying like a baby. He couldn't do it. He couldn't kill himself. Maybe he was too much of a coward, but all he could think of was his Mom and his daughters, he just couldn't do this to them. He loved them, and even for all the pain in his life, he just couldn't end it all. Somehow he'd have to find a way to deal with the pain living everyday caused him. And damn it, maybe there was even some little corner of him that was afraid that Mom and Father Kelly were right, maybe he did have a soul and maybe there was a heaven and a hell, who was he to say?
Lennie got up from his bed and found that he had swipe at tears that dampened his face brought on from his thinking back. He wondered if he could ever find it in him to tell Betty that by rejecting him 5 years ago she'd saved his life. If he'd stayed on the road he'd been on, he'd have been dead in a few years. She'd given him the last little push he'd needed towards hitting bottom and making his way back to sobriety. It was a tough road, he wouldn't kid anyone about that and he still had rough days like today, but he'd reclaimed his life and was able to look in the mirror each day and be, well not proud, but at least not ashamed, of the man who looked back at him.
He thought about what he should do, and what he wanted to do. He should do some readings, or write in his journal, neither of which appealed to him, he knew that probably meant he really needed to force himself to do them. He should call his AA sponsor or go to an AA meeting neither of those options appealed to him either. Maybe he could put off his decision by getting something to eat. Yeah, that did appeal to him. He decided to change his clothes, opting for a pair of jeans and a polo shirt. He slipped into an old comfy pair of penny loafers and grabbed his bomber jacket; though it wasn't that cold he turned the collar up. He put his mirrored sunglasses on; he really didn't want to be recognized this evening, if he could help it, at least not by strangers.
He headed out of his apartment taking the stairs rather than the elevator down to the lobby of his building. He turned right walking towards the intersection that would take him to his local diner. When Lennie got to the intersection, he had a choice to make, if he went left the dinner was about two blocks down, if he went to the right about three blocks down was a liquor store and if he just went straight ahead about two blocks there was a bar. Unbeknownst to Lennie his old friend and former boss Don Cragen was behind him watching, wondering what Lennie would do? Which direction would he go? Don was worried about Lennie, it hadn't been that long ago since Lennie last slipped and he knew Lennie carried a lot of guilt around about what had happened that night, the night Claire Kincaid had died. Lennie actually stood at the street corner through two cycles of the light, finally just as Don decided that maybe he better help him decide, Lennie strode off to the left and the shorter Cragen had to hustle to catch up with him.
"Hey Lennie, could you use some company?" Cragen asked.
"If it were anyone else but you Don, I'd say no. Come on, let's go see if we can't find some sandwiches and coffee worth having," Lennie said with a smile neither he nor Cragen believed.