Lazlo’s Eyes

           Lazlo threw a right hook into the punching bag. The gloved hand snapped into the vinyl, a crisp sound, hard and real like cracking bone. It was six in the morning in Irvine, California, in a gym off the 405, and Lazlo wanted to hurt something.

           He went at the bag for two minutes. The blows were tight and quick. His right hand snapped back under his right eye, the eye that didn’t move, that stared from his head like a broken piece from an ancient statue he’d seen once at a museum in LA years ago. At the museum, with his classmates looking on, Lazlo had slipped the acrylic green painted oval out of his eye socket and held it up to the Mesopotamian bust, his own eye sneering back at him from a twisted face. A girl in his history class had been standing nearby and said, “the fuck?” She’d screwed up her face in disgust, and he’d jammed his fake eye back, then hurried away. The memory groaned in Lazlo, and he stopped his assault on the bag.

           “Christ,” he said, then glanced around, embarrassed in the empty room. He could hear the steady thump of treadmills behind him. To his left, large windows looked out on the gray slash of highway. Not far away he could see the seemingly purposeless white wall where he’d parked his own car. Traffic was a stretching sound across the queasy sky. The wall behind the heavy bag was a mirror, and Lazlo regarded himself, craning his neck to compensate for the black that wasn’t really black, which divided his vision.

           He liked what he saw—he hadn’t always—a muscular man with olive skin in a white tank top. He was shorter than he would have liked, but he thought he was handsome—Roman nose and bushy eyebrows. If only he didn’t have the eye.

           The eye. It sat on his face like a toad, like it had its own mind, its own fantasies of ocular perception, horrible visions that might have been a feast. A prosthetic arm doesn’t have personality, Lazlo thought. It doesn’t seem like it wants to reach and grab, but a prosthetic eye has desire in it, like it wants to drink the world. Lazlo hadn’t lost the eye in an accident; he’d been born without it, a smooth cavity where an eye should have been. There were no muscles to which the doctors could have attached the prosthetic, which might have allowed the eye to move in tandem with the other. Instead, they carved out a hole and pressed in the piece, where it sat, a little aberration, something always slightly off.

           Lazlo felt a presence in the black that wasn’t really black. It was a flexing in the visionless space of his right side, like a disturbance in dark water. Someone had entered the room. He threw a swift left-right into the bag and pivoted so he could see who had entered without craning.

           It was a young guy, Mexican, taller than Lazlo, but thinner, lanky, with long hair and an early mustache. The newcomer wore a baggy tank printed with Marilyn Monroe’s face, but with two jagged Xs over her eyes. Maybe, Lazlo thought.

           He kept the newcomer in his line of sight and threw a few combos. When the kid started on a bag at the other side of the room, Lazlo slowed his own volley to watch. Quick. Controlled. Serious. Tight. He wasn't an amateur, which was good, but Lazlo was looking for something else as well. He was looking for something angry. Lazlo decided to give it a shot. The kid took out an earbud when he saw Lazlo approach.

           “Hey dude, you want to spar?”

           The kid raised his eyebrows. “Oh shit. I don’t know man. I’m not trying to get into anything, ya know?”

           Lazlo searched for the lie. “We’ll just keep it light. We can call it any time.”

           “Alright, I’m down.”

           They moved to the center of the room, each of them bouncing.

           “What’s your name?”

           “David.”

           “Lazlo.”

           They squared and touched gloves. They started cautiously, exchanging jabs. Lazlo kept his guard low, hoping to encourage a neat connection, something to get the kid going a bit, but David was skittish. Lazlo ventured a left, right, then the hook. The hook connected. David’s head jerked with the blow, and he shuffled away, retreating. Come on, Lazlo thought. Then Lazlo saw David notice the eye.

           This early in the unlit room, the uncanny tweak on Lazlo’s face wasn’t immediately apparent, and Lazlo was hyper-attuned to this moment, the narrowing of David’s own brown eyes up and to the right on Lazlo’s face. It was the realization that half of Lazlo was blind. Lazlo wasn’t supposed to exercise while wearing the eye. He had a patch that let the socket breathe, which avoided the fleshy buildup of oil from the tender cavity—buildup he would have to scrape off, yellow skin-matter on the back of the prosthetic, but in some unconscious place, Lazlo may have worn the eye for precisely this moment. When he wore the patch, announced his infirmity, then his opponents, with that irritating automatic consideration, would take purposeful care to not take advantage, always keeping in his line of sight, but realizing it during the fight made them feel as if they’d caught a poker player’s tell, and they never failed to act on their own cleverness. It was precisely that supposed cleverness that gave Lazlo his advantage, because the black that David would believe consumed half of Lazlo’s senses wasn’t really black at all.

           The adults hadn’t believed. How could they? They had only ever heard of the night of the blind. How could Lazlo ever have communicated that the empty space beside his field of vision was not in fact empty, but churned with color. As a child he had learned to keep it secret to avoid the doubt and condescension of the adults. A part of him had even believed that if he spoke of it too often, and let adult doubt creep in, then it would somehow evaporate. Color was the mighty sign that informed Lazlo’s senses. People, places, situations, music, and emotion, all had their own colors. His father was chestnut red, like a weathered brick wall that leaned into his consciousness, and stood, indomitable, in the swimming blackness behind his sighted vision. Home was sage, a breathy sleeping green that sighed out of the darkness. Blue was a rare color, but could be stirred out of the dark pond by music, Eleanor Rigby and Yesterday. And Nyla was the red of blood, deep, penetrating, layered, and raw. Sight and the color of blindness existed simultaneously. They overlapped each other in the same way that a brain turns the separate sight of two eyes into a single vision. Lazlo’s brain intertwined the intangible color that rose out of the shimmering blackness with the paltry shades of his sighted eye. They were one, existing with and responding to one another. The images of his vision gave rise to the color that soaked within and beyond what he could see, and the colors gave warnings. They seemed to sense tenderness, promise, passion, and danger.

           Lazlo saw it a mile away. David faked right and stepped into a left hook, stepping into the place he supposed was empty and vulnerable. A red like the color of a flashlight shone through closed fingers throbbed out of the blackness. He ducked, stepped, and threw an uppercut into the space where he knew David would be. Lazlo turned his head just in time to see his gloved fist connect with David’s chin. David’s head jerked with a dull thump.

           “Hold up, hold up.” David pulled the velcro off his gloves and let them fall to the floor. He grabbed his forehead.

           “Come on man,” Lazlo said, bouncing a little.

           “Naw dude, I’m good. Shit.”

           “That wasn’t even full. You gotta get me back one.”

           “I’m straight. I’m just tryna work out. I’m not like a boxer. I gotta go lift anyway.” David gathered his gloves and tucked them under an arm. “You’re intense bro,” he said and left.

           A pink color bubbled somewhere on the edge of Lazlo’s vision, an exposed-flesh pink, an orifice pink. Lazlo was embarrassed. He’d taken it too far, gone too hard too fast, maybe even freaked the kid out a bit. Worst of all it hadn’t been enough. It wasn’t what Lazlo really needed.

           The pink embarrassment faded and Lazlo was left alone, colorless save for the cold overcast light slouching in through the windows. The colors weren’t always with him, and at times like this his vision was just a dead receiver. Everything rose out of the black that wasn’t black. He had stopped trying to assign meaning to the colors long ago, why the same pine green of his mother sometimes swayed into him before he fell asleep, or why the ocean wasn’t blue, but a powerful silver. It was the dark place out of which the colors were born that he needed to investigate, and it was only right here that he could do it.

           Something had happened the night before. He’d been coming off his bouncing shift when some little bastards had tried to start a fight with him—skinny kids, but there had been four of them, and Lazlo had even considered pulling the two inch flip knife from his back pocket when Charlie and Mitsu had appeared, their combined five hundred pounds the ultimate discouragement.

           When he got to Nyla’s place he was still buzzing. Lazlo had felt overextended. He’d felt raw and exposed, upset and somehow embarrassed. He had felt a sneaking need to cry.

           The entire room, the dim lights, the bed with its dark purple sheets, the half finished canvases—projects Nyla had abandoned half smeared with purples and sea-creature greens, even the broad wooden desk covered in sketches, some of Lazlo himself, eye both in and out, everything had pulsed with the deep blood color that was Nyla herself, that bathed Lazlo when he entered her room. Nyla laid on the bed, her computer playing some music video that she watched, transfixed, smoking weed wrapped in thick brown paper. Nyla had a sharp dissecting face with dark brown skin and hair pulled into a dreaded bun.

           Lazlo tried not to look at the pictures on her wall. He couldn’t reconcile the feelings they stirred in him with a name like Bacon.

           “Come here,” Nyla had said, computer reflecting in her eyes.

           Lazlo collapsed into the bed. She handed him the joint, and he smoked while he told her what had happened on his way out of work.

           “What color did you see?” Nyla asked.

           “Red. It’s always some kind of red in a fight.”

           “Or a fuck.”

           “Or a fuck,” Lazlo agreed.

           “That scares me a little.”

           Lazlo rolled over and pressed his face into her stomach, a deep smell, something beneath the pot and her alcoholic perfume, something that smelled like incense and musk, filled his vision with the layered shades of Nyla’s red. “I’m sorry,” he spoke into her stomach, his voice muffled.

           Nyla pushed her nails through Lazlo’s thick hair, scratching. “You know red is the color of magic? If you wear a red hat it means you’re a wizard.”

           Lazlo grunted, his face still pressed into the black fabric of her shirt.

           “Red is a symbol of sex and violence too, so it makes sense you see red. But that’s my color too.”

           “It’s different though,” Lazlo said. “Every color is different. They aren’t these like, solid things. They have layers and shades and all that.”

           “But it's still red. You don’t need to apologize, sometimes I just wonder what I am.”

           Lazlo lifted his face and looked at Nyla. “You are the person I love. Why can’t it just be that?”

           “That’s not really what I mean,” Nyla said.

           Lazlo’s arms felt weak. He didn’t want to talk about all this. He felt like the tiff at the club had ripped something inside him, which now felt sharp in the air. He wanted tenderness. He let his head fall into Nyla’s lap. “It isn’t logic,” Lazlo said. “It isn’t some philosophical shit. It’s just a hint. I don’t know where it comes from, but it doesn’t mean anything. It’s just like a suggestion. It’s instinct. Sometimes I think that maybe it’s how animals live. Like maybe animals see color like this. They live on total instinct. Maybe a hawk sees red when he goes in for a mouse.”

           They were quiet for a while. Lazlo reached over the side of the bed and dropped the joint into a tiny Tibetan singing bowl. “You want a massage?” Lazlo said.

           “Yes please,” Nyla said and nuzzled his neck.

           She pulled off her shirt and laid on her stomach. Lazlo repositioned himself, leaning on an elbow.

           “Hair, hair,” Nyla said.

           Lazlo jerked his arm away. He straddled her and started working at the knots near her neck. Something clicked under his thumbs.

           “Is that normal?” Nyla said.

           “Why you asking me what normal is?”

           He moved down her back slowly, pushing hard, clearing a knot, then running his fingers lightly over her spine, tickling out a shiver. There was a place at the base of her spine he knew was always tight, and he pressed with his fingers as his thumb traveled down. The room was hot and the redness was throbbing at the edges of his vision. He let his hand travel a few more inches down.

           “I didn’t think you wanted to,” she said.

           “Mmmmm.” He leaned down and bit the skin on her back. His hand crept further and disappeared in the hot space where her legs pressed together. He started to take off his pants.

           Twenty minutes later his vision was all blood. He had her laying on her stomach, her face pressed into a pillow. They were both sweating, beads of moisture decorating their bodies as they rocked violently. He held her gently by the throat and he could feel her gasp. He felt the dampness where his belly pressed against her lower back. Out of the blackness of his right side pounded a clutching throb, a pulse like a heartbeat in a cherry. He caught the scent of incense in her hair when he leaned forward to bite her earlobe. His jeans were on the bed next to them. The two inch flip knife had fallen out of his back pocket and was sitting on the purple sheet. It almost looked comfortable, like a crown on a velvet cushion.

           A vision rose up out of the black that wasn’t black. It came with Nyla’s red and something like a deep swallowing. His unconscious disgorged. He saw himself take up the knife, flick open the blade, and sink it into Nyla’s exposed neck.

           With the vision the redness that was Nyla spouted. It had been like an artery opening in his mind. Gorges of red spilled into violet and blue, unbound. He felt heat in his jowls and his stomach spasmed. He came. Then he retched. He pushed her away and collapsed onto the bed, his world spinning, the colors betraying him, suddenly confused, twisted, without sense. Nyla was yelling, “Laz? Laz! Oh shit did you fucking come in me? Laz are you okay?” But he couldn’t stay in that hot spinning room. A terrible face in a purple robe moaned down at him from the wall.

           He’d fled the room and that night he’d slept in his car. In the morning he’d been the first person through the gym doors.

           Lazlo hit the bag again—hard. Left hook, right hook, left, right, left, right, faster and faster, until he couldn’t keep it up. He fell against the bag, pressed his face against the sweat-smelling fabric.

           Lazlo saw blue. Like frost at the edge of a window, the ice-color crept at the edges of the black that wasn’t black. It had been accompanied by the sound of metal doors clicking open and closed again. Someone had entered the room. He turned to see the newcomer, craning his neck, not bothering to adjust himself cleverly. For a man who brought the color blue, the newcomer was surprisingly red. He was massive, a whole foot taller than Lazlo, with a potbelly, rosy cheeks, a nest of red hair, and a red beard that covered the top of his chest. Blue was the rare color. It hardly ever stirred the blackness, and when it did it was never a person who shook those waters. Mostly, people were little more than a dark rippling of refracted light until Lazlo had known them long enough for their suggestion of color to shine through, but when this man entered the room arctic waters flowed.

            The newcomer boxed with joy. He wore no headphones, but seemed to revel in the heavy thuds his hands shook out of the bag. He flowed around his target, his bulk seemed weightless, his pleasure evident in the dancing footwork. Lazlo felt less like he was watching someone box and more like he was watching someone play, the only hint of violence in how the bag shuddered under the newcomer’s blows. Something in Lazlo told him to leave the man alone, a fracture in the blue of his unsighted vision, a feeling of something almost like sacrilege, but he ignored it; he had to explore what had happened the night before, that sudden vision of violence. Lazlo approached.

            “Hey man, I’ve been kinda looking for a sparring partner. Was wondering if you might be down.”

            The man smiled, and Lazlo noticed the melting ice of his eyes.

            “What’s your name?” the man asked.

            “I’m Lazlo.”

            “Well Lazlo, I might be interested, but that depends. You trying to prove something?”

            “I don’t think so,” Lazlo said. He didn’t think it was a lie. He didn’t need to prove himself. What he needed was to exercise something in him that he didn’t understand, needed to look at it, needed to confront in a way that the softness of the world refused.

            “You training for a fight or something?”

            “No, nothing like that.”

            “So what’s your game then? Why you trying to hit me?”     

           “Honestly dude, I guess I just kinda need to get something out.”

            The man nodded. “Alright. Cool. Cool cool. Let’s go for it then, and we’ll take it serious, but if one of us calls it then we stop, deal?”

            “Cool.”

            “I’m Atticus.”

            “Lazlo.”

            “You said that already.”

            “Alright.”

            Atticus and Lazlo moved into the center of the room. When they turned to face each other a glacial blue seethed into Lazlo. Atticus was waves and ice—slow power. When the first blow landed, a sharp right that popped into Lazlo’s cheek, a redness rose in response to Atticus’ blue. It was blood red, Nyla red, and Lazlo saw it as a spouting up of his own self. The colors moved with their swings and jabs, sometimes the ice encroached, mute and powerful, and other times the red spewed forward. Neither held back. Atticus was strong, and when his blows landed Lazlo felt his insides tremble, but Lazlo was faster, and Lazlo was winning. And then the moment came.

           Lazlo saw it without a doubt—Atticus had finally noticed the eye. Lazlo readied himself for the opportunity, the fake left, or the wide step into Lazlo’s blind right side, but it didn’t come. Atticus didn’t pull back. His heavy swings kept coming, a blue pounding at the just now receding red, but he stayed squared with Lazlo and didn’t move to exploit the blind side.

           They were both starting to get tired, their arms moved more sluggishly, and a fear gripped Lazlo, a sense that an opportunity was about to pass. Lazlo jabbed left, stepped, and jabbed again. For a split second Lazlo lowered his right guard, preparing for a hook that wouldn’t hold back—it was a mistake. Like a crack snaking up a sheet of ice, Atticus shot forward. The hook connected and Lazlo heard a popping sound. His skull vibrated. Pain and force blurred his vision. He felt a coolness in the cavity of his eye socket, and then, from the floor, Lazlo saw his own green iris staring up at him.

           Lazlo barely heard Atticus stutter, “oh shit, dude, I’m sorry, I–” Lazlo thought—finally. The arterial red spouted, and Lazlo put everything he had into his right shoulder and arm. It connected with the side of Atticus’ head.

           The large man went limp. Lazlo saw the blue eyes roll up into whiteness, before all of Atticus’ bulk came crashing to the floor. For a moment Lazlo froze. Then Atticus’ body seized. His back arched violently and his chest heaved upward. Atticus’ mouth opened, his eyes still closed, and his Adam's apple plummeted up and down with a deep gulping noise. All color fled. The ice of Atticus, the Nyla blood, the shimmering pond itself, all dried up, snuffed, and the black was just black beside Atticus seizing on the floor.

           Lazlo fell to the ground “Oh fuck, oh shit.” He put his hands beneath Atticus’ head and pulled his legs beneath him so that the nest of red hair lay in Lazlo’s lap. With one hand Lazlo fumbled for his phone, then he began to call out instead. “Someone! Someone! Help! I didn’t want–”

           As suddenly as it began, Atticus’ seizing stopped. Lazlo felt a coldness unaccompanied by any comfort of color. A few feet away, near Atticus’ feet, Lazlo could see the prosthetic eye that Atticus had knocked out watching him. Lazlo felt the man’s neck for a pulse. Before he could find it Atticus inhaled, then with a shudder his eyes flickered open. He moaned.

           “Ooooly fuck.”

           “Jesus, man, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to.”

           Atticus mumbled something that Lazlo couldn’t understand.

           “I’m sorry. I can’t hear you.”

           “Problem. No problem. Not your fault.” Atticus started to pull himself up out of Lazlo’s lap when they heard a voice at the other end of the room.

           “You guys alright?” An employee of the gym was standing in the doorway of the room.

           “Yeah, yeah,” Atticus said, waving him away. “Just getting something out.”

           Lazlo kept asking Atticus if he was sure he was okay. Atticus reassured him until, after the fourth time, he said, “Jesus man, I can threaten to sue if it’ll make you feel better.” After that they shook hands and Lazlo left.

           Lazlo’s body trembled as he walked to where his little Toyota was parked in front of the out-of-place white wall. In the pocket of his gym shorts he could feel his prosthetic eye. He tossed his gym bag into the back passenger side and climbed into the driver’s seat, where he sat, smelling his own sweat, his breath shuddering, and his hands shaking. Through the windshield a blank white wall consumed half of his vision. The other half was blackness.

           No color rose to greet Lazlo, and yet, Lazlo saw color. He could see it, right there in the white wall, same as he saw it when he closed his eyes and let his brain form shapes in the blackness. It didn’t rise out of the black that wasn’t black. It was right there. He could see it in the wall, and he was somehow sure that it had always been there. Not just in the wall, but everywhere. Once Nyla had told him that white wasn’t really a color, but all the colors, the spectrum of light laid flat.

           Was this it? Was this that spectrum? Could you always see it? Were you always able to look, somehow, between your sight and world, and could you always find there, like an opaque static, the kind of color that makes the world warm?

           From inside his skull, Lazlo’s sighted eye stared at a blank white wall. In Lazlo’s pocket, the prosthetic eye stared into darkness. It saw nothing wrong.