Lens Dawson

Lens Dawson decided it was time to get down to business. He put on his imitation Persols and strolled out of Whitman’s Dream, the bookshop where he'd worked like a dog for nearly seven years. He said nothing to his fellow sales associates; in fact, not one of them saw Lens leave. When information about his disappearance was tallied later that day, there was precious little to speak of. Janet Daly had seen him arrive at 8:30 wearing his moth-eaten wool cardigan. Tim Cabluie remembered that Lens had arrived with coffee and a muffin in a bag from Leo's Pastries up the street. Mark Ruby, owner of Dream, thought he'd heard Lens mumble something about John Irving's cat, but as far as he knew it might have been more like where's that new book of John Irving's at? Dick Dicklin, a customer who browsed for hours and never bought a thing, thought he’d seen Lens in Banana Republic around lunch time, but all who knew Lens thought that unlikely. Lens was a notorious habitué of thrift shops and yard sales; he wouldn’t be seen dead in Gavin straight fit chinos, and besides, he didn’t make enough money at Dream to shop at Republica Bananal.  

Appropriately, the disappearance of Lens Dawson was a much discussed mystery all afternoon, but by closing time salesfolk and customers who knew Lens Dawson by name agreed that the young man had always been a bit eccentric, that he'd often demonstrated mildly queer behavior (like the time he hid Maurice Modicum's aluminum walking stick on a low shelf between Religion and Anthropology), and that he'd no doubt return the following morning offering a less than plausible excuse at which all would momentarily roll their eyes and then get dutifully back to bidness. Lens worked hard, but there was nothing special about him as a sales associate, nothing really memorable about his personality. And, in fact, no one mentioned Lens again that day, or ever, although Mark made a note on Lens' time card that he'd left work around 11:00 without asking permission. Then he wrote: "AWOL. No pay for the day." with a bright red grease stick. So much for Lens Dawson. 

(To be continued...)