Lovesick (23 page)

I reach into my shirt pocket and shut the tape recorder. Sid is already on his hands and knees looking for his missing topaz. It’s gone. I help him to his feet.

“Cookie’s got a point,” he says, dusting off his bare knees, and then grabbing his back in pain. “That lid is never going to stay on the ring. I thought maybe a screw top, but that might be tough to disengage.”

“That would be bad,” I say. “There you are, having a heart attack and all, millimeters from the very pill that will save your life, and you can’t get the blasted thing open.”

I yank a sheet of personalized letterhead from the paper ream. On the backside, tucked in the lower right-hand corner, is a tiny advertisement.

“What do you think? Nifty, huh? Totally free if you agree to let them include that ad,” he says.

“But the invoice here says you paid thirty bucks in postage and handling.”

“Rush ordered them. Had to. We need to get serious.”

I hold the letterhead underneath Sid’s magnifying glass to inspect it.

“Do you like the company name and slogan?” he asks.

It reads: “Euraka Productions: Why Didn’t I Think of That?”

“I do. But I think you spell ‘eureka’ with two
e
’s, not two
a
’s,” I tell him.

“You’re kidding!”

I show him.

“Crappity, crappity crud!”

The business card also has the company’s online address.

“You actually registered
eurakaproductions.com
?” I’m impressed.

“How can you go wrong for $25?” the future mogul says.

“Well, for starters, Cookie could stab you in the neck. You heard her.”

“The Web address came with lots of free storage space and up to twenty free e-mail accounts,” he boasts. “I’m going to do the Web site myself. Signed up for a Beginners Web class at the Community Center. First session is Monday.”

“Haven’t you been the busy beaver,” I tell him.

I don’t care about the tacky advertisement on the back or the typos on the front, I want this letterhead. I’ve never had my own stationery. Sid carefully deals me ten sheets, licking his pointer finger with every page.

“This gives us the legitimacy we need when I send out all those query letters,” Sid says. “Between the bladeless wind shield wipers, adjustable heels, dog umbrella, and tactile timepiece, someone will bite. Maybe one day we’ll even have enough dough to buy ourselves a real patent.”

“I think you’re going to love my next invention,” I say, patting the tiny tape recorder in my breast pocket. “But it’s not ready for prime time yet.”

Sid raises a curious eyebrow. “Can’t wait,” he says, lowering himself from his stool.

We walk out of the garage to the driveway. It’s another exquisite summer afternoon in sunny northern California.

“Thanks for getting this stuff,” I say, shaking my share of letterhead.

“Didn’t do it for you. Did it for me,” he says, pointing over at Gregory’s house. “Can’t have you selling that place and some unruly
new neighbors ruining this neck of the woods. We’ll figure something out … something we all can live with.”

“I owe you an answer about the other night,” I begin.

“Hold that thought,” Sid commands, whipping out a cell phone.

When did he get that?

“Free,” he brags, wiggling the shiny silver phone.

He has yet to peel off the thin protective plastic that covers the display screen, and I highly doubt the cell phone service that accompanies this “free” phone is free. Sid excuses himself and walks over to the side of the garage to speak privately. In three days, he’s gone from homebody to Hollywood agent.

My pants start vibrating. It’s my cell phone. Sid’s calling me, I assume, until I realize the caller ID says “Paige Home.”

“So lemme guess. You’re having ‘buyer’s remorse.’ Stop worrying. The hall is beautiful,” I tell her. “The money’s spent.”

“What money’s spent?” Lara asks curiously.

“Oh, hey.”

“What money?”

“What money?” I repeat.

“You just said ‘the money’s spent’ … oh, Jesus, forget it.”

This is when I realize that the Vomit Mobile isn’t even in the driveway.

“Can I please speak with Paige?” she insists.

I tell Lara to look out her living room window. She does and I wave. I inform her Paige dropped me off a half-hour ago and left for work.

“Have you tried
Paige’s
cell?”

“Don’t you think I thought of that?” Lara says, frustrated to the max. “I called, and what happens? Her cell phone starts ringing ten feet away from me.”

“I wonder if Paige realizes her cell phone is wireless,” I tell Lara.

This is the first time I’ve made Lara really laugh. She gets as frustrated as I do about Paige’s forgetful habits.

“Well, I might as well tell you,” she decides. “I’m not sure how
easy it’s going to be to sell the pharmacy. Apparently Walgreens
and
Longs Drugs made competing offers on Dad’s place about two years ago, and both times, my father passed. I haven’t heard back from Longs yet, but the Walgreens offer is definitely withdrawn.” Lara sounds worried. “Paige’ll probably be thrilled.”

Man, I always figured the pharmacy would cover at least forty grand of Gregory’s debt. Plus now we’ve got this ridiculous wedding hall to pay for.

“Just tell Paige to call me,” Lara says, interrupting my revised computations.

I tell her I will, and we hang up.

Sid eventually returns from his fictional phone call.

“Someone drown your puppy?” Sid asks me.

“I don’t have a puppy,” I say distantly.

“I know. You okay, small fry?”

“I’m not sure.”

Sid tries a different topic.
“You
wanted to know how many people there are on the Gregory Day Co-Pay?” I nod. “I’ve been asking around, compiling a list, checking it twice. An educated guess? About fifty.”

I now make it a practice to keep Lara’s Most Wanted list in my wallet just in case I run into a deadbeat. I unfold the sheet of paper and hand it to him.

“Uh-huh,” he says, ticking through the names. “Uh-huh, uh-huh. This looks awfully similar to my list,” Sid concludes, shaking his head.

“So you’re saying Lara’s hit list and Gregory’s Co-Pay match?” I guess I shouldn’t be all that surprised.

“Like father, like daughter,” he says, mildly entertained. “Listen, Andy, a lot of folks on these lists haven’t got a bedpan to piss in. We’re not talking about dipping into someone’s retirement nest egg; we’re talking about real people, with real money problems. You get me?”

“Trust me, I know plenty about money problems.”

“That’s just it,” he says. “We can help you. I was thinking about it: I say we can scale back,
way back.
Gregory lost track of
all those tabs. I can help you figure out which folks
really
need the Day Co-Pay bargain.”

I can only assume this includes Sid and his wife.

“Meantime, Cookie and the girls can still get you samples,” Sid adds, checking his watch. “You’ll get a little money from the insurance folks, some from the pharmacy sales, and even make a few collections on Lara’s list. This way you’ll be able to give Paige that wedding she’s always wanted.”

So I’m supposed to help Paige realize her fantasy at any cost?

“Let’s assume I agree to do this for a little while, we need an exit strategy. We need to figure out a way to get these people on the up-and-up. No more samples. No more insurance claims. I’m not kidding, Sid.”

“I promise,” he beams. “But we’re also going to need to enlist some help.”

“Your drug cartel isn’t enough?”

“No, some
special
help,” he says, trying to see behind me.

Sid checks his watch against the arrival of the 1965 Cadillac ambulance.

Manny Milken pulls up to the curb, waving hello from inside the cab. His car stereo is blaring the Kansas classic “Carry On Wayward Son.” He sings along, completely off-key and mangling every word he meets. (He’d be better off singing Chewbacca.) Manny climbs out, opens the trunk, places two small boxes on a dolly, and wheels it up the driveway, stopping every so often to pull up either side of his pants.

“Four minutes, thirty-five seconds,” he says, all proud of himself. Manny shows Sid the timer function on his personal organizer. “You’re just lucky I was in the neighborhood,” Manny says.

“Aren’t you always in the neighborhood?” I ask.

“Hey, man,” Manny greets me warmly.

Something’s wrong. “Why is he calling me ‘man’?” I ask Sid suspiciously.

Sid’s too busy inspecting Manny’s boxes to pay me any attention.

“Emmanuel, what we got here?” he says, squatting down.

“Product from Dr. Hardy, Dr. Mills, and Dr. Platt. Mostly Prazex, Celebrex, Diovan, and Lanicor.”

“Wait one-cotton-picking-minute,” I yell. “You swore Manny just did the deliveries.”

“Since we spoke, circumstances have … changed,” Sid explains.

“Oh, crap. I’m already regretting this.”

“Margaret Milken needs us.” Sid lays it out there plainly. “She’s on all sorts of medication. Parkinson’s has many complications.”

Manny stares at his sneakers.

“My mom loved Gregory,” he mumbles.

I forcibly rub my face with both hands. Sid studies the two of us.

“Come on—you two knuckleheads are a match made in heaven,” Sid laughs. “No one’s got a better sense of who’s on the Day Co-Pay than Manny. And Andy, you’re going to need someone to continue with the pickups and deliveries. Someone who will work
free of charge
, idn’t that right, Emmanuel?”

Manny nods.

“Here,” Sid says, pulling a two-way Motorola radio out of each of his back pockets. “These have a range of five miles. That means, no matter where you are in Crockett, the two of you are only a walkie-talkie click away.”

Manny eagerly takes his. I pretend not to want mine.

I stole two packs of Hubba Bubba chewing gum from Day’s Pharmacy a half a lifetime ago. This is how I’ll make up for it: not by working for Gregory, but by stealing for him.

I’M LIABLE to kill someone. I’m liable if I kill someone.

It was so much easier when Gregory yelled at me. I never appreciated the sense of security that comes with having a skilled pharmacist available to check your work. Filling prescriptions
should be
a cakewalk. Janus is right here if I have any questions. She’s familiar with the side effects, allergic reactions, and drug interactions associated with more than seven thousand drugs. In fact, the Janus software suite is so smart it even self-updates, twice a day. That’s how we knew, for example, ten hours before Paige’s news station did, that Simpson Pharmaceuticals was pulling its hypertension pill, Betapro.

But even with Janus at my fingertips, I’m still on edge. I don’t know how Gregory managed to keep up. Every day, it seems the FDA or a drug manufacturer or an investigative reporter or a class action lawsuit or a scientific journal is issuing some sort of new warning or drug withdrawal. These days, the unthinkable has become probable: osteoporosis meds that actually cause bone deterioration; arthritis drugs that prompt heart attacks; and now the latest atrocity—antidepressants that actually
increase
the risk of suicide.

This business is fraught with danger. Combined, Gregory and I used to fill about a thousand scripts a week, and this is one of the only jobs where you need to be 100 percent correct 100 percent of the time. The wrong medication, the wrong dosage, the wrong instructions to the wrong customer, one sloppy prescription, one misplaced decimal place, and … DEAD.

It just so happens that I could also go to federal prison for filling scripts without a license. Lara knows this but couldn’t care less, so long as the cash registers.

It’s the pharmacy’s first day back in business and Lara promised me—
she promised me
—we’d stick to selling candy, food, magazines, toiletries, and over-the-counter drugs. Then Selma Patterson came in wanting her blood pressure pills, and Lara said
do it
, so I did it. More folks came in looking for basic refills and I did them, too. This morning alone, I filled about a dozen prescriptions. But when it came to Lucille Braggs, I put my foot down. She demanded her medication, and I told her, in not so many words, that when it comes to making suppositories, I don’t know my ass from a hole in the wall. Lara could insist all she wanted, it just wasn’t going to happen.

I wish Gregory were here.

All things considered, though, reopening the pharmacy turned out to be pretty uneventful. About thirty customers came through this morning. We might have had more patrons if the front door weren’t still busted. Until I finally propped it open, feeble humans found it impossible to operate. Many of them never even bothered—I think they assumed we were still closed, seeing as half the door is boarded up. Of the customers who forced their way in, many of them dealt with Gregory’s death in a similarly obtuse manner: he or she would walk up to one of us, express heartfelt condolences, pause, and then ask where we keep the Tylenol.

All of today’s customers had medical insurance or paid in cash or credit, so the topic of tabs or shakedowns never came up, though you can feel Lara eyeing every customer like they’re walking dollar signs. For someone who’s spent the better part of her life in Crockett, Lara doesn’t seem to know anyone. If we were to put all sixty people on her deadbeat list in a lineup—something Lara would jump at the chance of doing—I’d be surprised if she could identify ten. I’m not ready to confront anyone since my episode with Mills.

It’s so empty in here without Gregory. If it’s possible, the lighting feels poorer. The dust feels heavier. Lara’s presence infuses this place with an uncomfortable library vibe. She and I don’t argue like Gregory and I used to. I’m not sure we’ve said more than ten words to each other.

It’s only after the royal arrival of the Brewsters that Day’s Pharmacy begins feeling anything like it did before Gregory died. Loki announces their visit by bolting down the aisle, picking up too much speed, and sliding and slamming right into the sunglasses rack. Three pairs crash to the ground.