Lovesick (11 page)

Today’s special is penicillin-infused dark chocolate. The recipient of these mouthwatering candy bars is Adrian Mackowski, the most miserable six-year-old this side of Marin County. Two months ago I singed all the hair on my left arm when Gregory forgot to turn off the propane Bunsen burner he uses to melt the chocolate. The near-work-related accident provided some leverage. Gregory took my advice and replaced the open flame with a cheap portable electric range. Since then Gregory’s candy bars have started looking a lot less like blobs, and a lot more like slabs. Today’s batch looks particularly delectable.

“Yummy,” I say, rubbing my belly. “Can I?”

“If you do, you’ll want to refrain from operating any heavy machinery. And stay out of the sun,” he says. “Penicillin can cause blotchiness.”

“Maybe a Three Musketeers Bar instead,” I say, walking out from behind the counter, grabbing one, and wiggling it in Belinda’s direction.

Belinda nods, mentally adding it to my nonexistent tab.

“You could make these,” Gregory assures me, squatting down at eye level to inspect the candy bars for lumps.

“You think so? I learned from the best.”
I am such a miserable suck-up.

I haven’t so much learned from the best as I’ve learned
nearby
the best, picking up tips and tricks as best one can. Before I dropped out of pharmacy school, before I befriended his best friend, and be fore I fell in love with his daughter, Gregory showed signs that he might take me under his wing. One time, he even sat me down for a compounding lesson.

“I’m impressed,” he marveled that day, as I popped the pristine handmade pills out of the mold. It was beginner’s luck. We both knew it.

But then I started dating Paige, and he lost complete interest in my career, and I lost complete interest in him. When I ultimately bailed on pharmacy school halfway through my second semester,
Gregory didn’t say a peep. It was just as well. The coursework was only going to get tougher, the student loans higher, and what I really came for was within reach. The only thing standing in my way now: Gregory.

I’ve had all day to do this. I’ve had weeks to do this. I’ve put this off for far too long. Paige and I leave for wine country in less than an hour.

I step right up to Gregory and tap him lightly on the shoulder.

“GREGORY, can we talk?”

“Isn’t that what we’re doing?”

“No, I mean
privately,”
I whisper.

“But there’s no one here.”

Belinda cups her ears to give us space.

“Andrew, how about we talk-and-work? We’ve got, like, two dozen scripts that still need filling.”

“Talk-and-work, sure thing,” I say.
Deep breath.
“You know we’re headed out of town this evening.”

“We who?”

“Me and Paige.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

“It’s part of my birthday gift to Paige.”

Gregory starts reliving last night. “You’re not going to make her wear those ridiculous shoes, are you? She nearly broke her neck.”

“No,” I say, offended. “I’m not going to make her wear the shoes.”

“Good.”

The bell on the front door jingles.

In walks a petite blonde in a tight-fitting, above-the-knee blue
pinstriped suit. She’s dragging a big black leather briefcase on wheels. Brianna McDonnell is hardly the typical insurance collector. Silky golden locks cropped just above the shoulder, Ivory-girl skin, angelic features, and a bright, energetic smile, she might as well have just walked off a movie set. So splendid a specimen, one is inclined to stare, and that’s when you notice something slightly off. Leaning this way and that, Brianna hides it well, but at equilibrium, she can’t manage to stand up straight. Brianna has chronic back problems.

“If it isn’t my favorite deadbeat druggist,” she calls out to Gregory.

“Go away,” he tells her, kindly.

She walks right up to me at the counter. “It’s Andy, right?” she says leaning in, making direct eye contact. That citrusy scent is intoxicating.

“Andy I am,” I say. Whenever I get nervous I somehow turn into Dr. Seuss.

“Is he always this grumpy?” she asks.

“Always.”

I assume she can see my heart pounding through my button-down. Brianna delicately bends down to retrieve something from her briefcase, but her body won’t cooperate. A pinched nerve, a herniated disc, a pulled muscle, whatever it is, it’s killing her. As she grabs her paperwork, there is a shooting pain and she moans in agony.

Gregory is concerned.

“I thought we had an agreement,” he demands.

“I
have
a chiropractor.”

“No, you need a doctor-doctor. No acupuncture. No physical therapy. No stretching. None of this holistic crap. It’s enough already.”

“Humph,” she says.

Brianna starts flipping through a stack of papers.

Manny Milken arrives. He holds the door open for Dr. Bran don Mills, a general practitioner in his early sixties who works around the block. Milken and Mills give each other mixed messages,
prompting them to enter the pharmacy at precisely the same moment. Their shoulders collide in the doorway knocking Mills’s brown leather medical bag out onto the sidewalk and Manny’s packages down two different pharmacy aisles.

I expect as much from Manny—the type of guy you’re amazed still has all ten fingers—but there’s nothing quite as satisfying as seeing that balding, smug, pretentious Dr. Mills look like such a stooge.

“Doctor Mills!” Gregory says, genuinely thrilled to see his friend and primary physician.

“Doctor Day, always a pleasure,” Mills replies politely, clip-clopping across the tile floor in golf cleats.

It kills me that Gregory lets Mills call him “doctor.”

“Brandon, I need you to recommend a good back doctor for Ms. McDonnell here. She’s twenty-six and falling apart.”

Dr. Mills gives Gregory’s request some serious consideration.

“Tess Mayor. She’s an orthopedist in Vallejo.”

Brianna playfully snaps the pen I’m using from out of my hand, flips over her stack of papers, and starts writing. Mills spells out the doctor’s name for her.

“Tess is always completely booked, so you’ll need to tell her I sent you.”

Brianna writes this down, too.

Good ole Brandon Mills: always looking for the goddamn referral.

“The last doctor said I needed
surgery,”
Brianna complains.

“Go see Tess, she’ll make you right as rain,” Mills assures her. “Which reminds me, you’re due for your seventy-five-thousand-mile tune-up,” Mills tells Gregory. “I’ll need you to make an appointment with Diane
soon.
I’m on vacay part of June and most of July.”

Gregory nods, and then goes back to filling prescriptions.

“Mrs. Mills and I saw that gorgeous daughter of yours on the eleven o’clock news last night,” Mills says. “The camera loves her.”

Gregory raises both eyebrows in agreement.

“Have to make today’s trip quick,” Mills says, as if he’s doing us a favor.

“Whatever you need,” Gregory casually replies and, with a majestic gesture, grants Mills free rein of the pharmacy aisles.

So begins Mills’s biweekly shopping spree. Forgoing the stack of red plastic shopping baskets near the doorway, Mills starts sliding Tylenol, toothpaste, and dental floss directly into his medical bag in apocalyptic fashion.

Only now do I notice that Manny’s spent the last five minutes staring breathlessly at Brianna. He, too, is intoxicated by her pheromones. I bob my head in his eye line, whistle loudly like a parrot, and wave to get his attention.

“Sometimes Manny goes on little vacations without telling any of us,” I inform Brianna. “Idn’t that right, Manny?”

Brianna blushes slightly.

“I’m ignoring you,” Manny tells me, stepping behind the counter.

He introduces himself to Brianna as “Emmanuel.”

“Nice to meet you,” she says, sticking out her hand.

They shake, and Manny doesn’t let go, but Brianna doesn’t seem to mind.

“Emmanuel!” Gregory yells. “Let’s get with the program.”

“This everything?” Manny says, lifting the cardboard carton of brown bags.

“Give me those, you ignoramus,” I demand.

I snatch the delivery from him. Gregory slides a pile of octagonal-shaped pills into a wide, burnt-orange cup, twists the cap shut, and hands it to me. I check it over, rubber band instructions around the bottle, drop the goods into a small brown bag, and place the contents with the others.

“Say it,” I command, playing keep-away with the carton.

“Are there special instructions?” Manny mumbles in Gregory’s direction.

Manny is required to ask this question ever since he inadvertently delivered Ms. Rothkin the wrong heart medication. She caught the mistake, and decided not to sue, but it’s the closest Gregory has ever come to firing Manny.

“One note,” I say on Gregory’s behalf, finally relenting the carton. “Roy Crane needs his insulin shots. He has a physical therapy
appointment at 3:30, and I promised him that you’d wait until he arrives home.”

Manny knows it’s against California state law to leave medication on a doorstep or in a mailbox. That means he either needs to get a signature, redeliver, or wait, and Manny hates to wait: “That
so
kills business,” he whines.

Manny places the carton on the counter, slicks back his thick oily black hair with one hand, and pulls out a handheld electronic organizer with the other.

“Check this out,” he brags to Brianna, as if she’s interested. “It tracks all my deliveries irregardless of who sent what. Do you have one of these? Because if you don’t, you can have mine.”

Maybe he doesn’t say that last part.

“I do have one,” she says politely.

“Oh good,” he says, relieved to hear they’re compatible.

Manny uses the organizer to remind himself that he needs to wait for Roy Crane, but as he goes to press a button, the organizer slips out of his left mitt and crashes to the ground.

“Oh my God!” he screams.

He picks it up and tests a few buttons at random.

“It’s fine, it’s fine,” Manny reassures us. “I’m still figuring out how this thing works.”

“You’re still figuring how the Clapper works,” I tell him.

Mills laughs from two aisles away.

“I know how the Clapper works,” Manny shoots back.

“Okay, Mr. Day, you and me, we need to talk turkey,” Brianna says, all business. She checks her list. “I’ve been asking for those prescription records for three months now. You don’t want me to lose my job now, do you?”

Gregory ignores her. Manny is studying his deliveries.

“One of those is for your mother,” Gregory tells Emmanuel. “She needs to take the
entire
course of antibiotics. I’m not kidding here.”

Manny nods obediently.

Brianna is struggling to stay upbeat. I feel for her.

“This place is a mess, but if you tell me exactly what you need, I can probably pull those records for you,” I offer kindly.

“No!” Gregory thunders. “Andrew, I’ll handle this. Ms. McDonnell,” he lectures her. “I’m trying to run a business here, and if you people had your way, I’d be spending my days filling and filing insurance forms.”

Brianna’s back is acting up again.

“Blue Cross will have to wait. Sue me,” he says.

She shakes her head and starts packing it in. I check on Dr. Klepto in Aisle Three. I watch as he slides six of our most expensive toothbrushes off a spoke and into his bag. This from a man who is married with no children.

“Do you
really
need six?” I yell over.

Mills didn’t realize anyone was watching. He freezes, mortified.

“My—God, shut—up—Andrew!” Gregory screams, stretching out the words. “Brandon, pay no attention to him. Please accept my personal apology.”

Mills has what he needs and heads for the door, booking past Belinda just like I did to Lydia Day when I stole those two packs of Hubba Bubba bubble gum seventeen years ago. Belinda doesn’t even attempt to ring Mills up. He doesn’t have a tab and even if he did, it’s not like we’d ever dare collect.

Manny follows Mills out, waving good-bye. Now it’s Brianna’s turn.

“Thank you again for the doctor referral, Gregory,” she says politely, trying to get his attention. “I’ll be back
next Wednesday.
Please force him to put that paperwork together,” she begs me softly. “I’m running out of time.”

Brianna is barely out the door before Gregory is all over me. He’s boiling. The ground beneath us begins to shake. The overhead fluorescents swing wildly side to side. Toiletries vibrate off the shelves. A magnitude 7.0. We’re talking October 17, 1989, Loma Prieta big.

“Talk to a customer that way again and you’re fired,” he screams.

“How could you apologize to Brandon Mills?” I’m incredulous.
“The guy is scooping crap into his medical bag like a game-show contestant.”

“What business is it of yours?”

“Don’t you even care?”

“How much clearer can I be? Mind your own goddamn business!”

Gregory takes a step toward me. His hands are shaking.

“I’m just trying to help,” I say. “You’re giving away
expensive
stuff.”

“I know exactly what I’m doing. I’m the one paying the bills around here.”

“But you’re handing out toothbrushes and pills like they’re candy.”

“I’m not going to stand here and be lectured on how to run my business from a pharmacy-school dropout half my age.”

He’s more like three times my age, but I don’t correct him.

“You don’t understand,” I tell him softly.

“Just stop, Andrew,” he insists, flashing his palm at me. Gregory gives me a long, forced, cigarette-stained smile. “Our little talk is
over.
How ’bout I take care of my life and you take care of yours. Can you manage that?”

I press my lips together and nod.

I DETEST wine country. This makes me a deplorable person.

Only a monster could resist the gorgeous countryside, those charming trinket shops, the hidden outlet stores, the homey beds, and those home-cooked meals. If you’re not capable of appreciating northern California’s exquisite wine and the exhilarating journey these brave grapes make each season, then you must be dead inside.