the stash he won't look at directly
The James Principles of the Gifford Lectures, its razored-out receptacled heart now quite a bit closer to empty than Lenz would be comfortable thinking about directly
Context
The real clock of the whole scene, carried under his arm: the hollowed book whose drug-cavity is nearly empty, a fact he manages by declining to think about it "directly." The studied not-looking at one's own dwindling supply is the using mind's central discipline, and the book lets us watch him perform it in real time.