Lovesick (32 page)

Chewing on my sandwich, I survey the awesome collection. Some are empties. Others are duplicates. Most of the scripts are familiar. The labels on many of the plastic bottles suggest the contents are expired—in some cases the dates go back as far as the mid-1990s. But in all likelihood, most of the pills are new; Cookie and Sid are prone to recycle.

Dr. Yeardling wants to know everything Sid’s taking, so on a scrap piece of paper I make a list of the few prescriptions that don’t ring a bell—mostly stuff Gregory filled years ago.

When Loki hears something, she darts into the living room, leaping up and onto the couch. Unable to negotiate the plastic casing, she slides headfirst into the armrest. Above the pooch is that spectacular sepia-toned poster of Sid and Cookie. The skyscraper, Sid’s knee, Cookie’s curls, that ring, the perfect proposal, the engagement story of engagement stories. I study the photograph with a renewed perspective.
Other than honorable conditions.
Maybe Sid’s not wearing a military peacoat after all.

I examine the still, looking to Cookie for a clue. The twinkle in her eyes suggests something. That’s when Present-Day Cookie pulls into the driveway. Loki’s been anticipating her. I consider fleeing out the back door, but instead decide to take her head-on. Holding back the small dog, I walk out the front door.

Welcome home!

The eighty-two-year-old is still in the trunk of her car rustling up her groceries. When the screen door slams shut behind me, Cookie twirls around in shock. She points her cane at me with contempt. Chewing the last bits of my sandwich, I take two steps
closer and slowly raise both hands like a stickup. Then before I can explain, she jabs the rubber tip of her cane right below my rib cage and I splutter salami and cheese all over the driveway.

“What’s with you?” I cry rubbing my chest.

“You’re going to clean that up,” she talks over me.

I reach down inside the trunk to bunch together her groceries and she thwacks me hard on the small of my back with her stick.

“You broke into my house!” she cries as I yelp in pain.

“I thought you were home!” I scream. “The front door was open!”

“Yeah, right. Tell it to the cops.”

I follow Cookie inside. When she makes a move for the phone mounted on the kitchen wall, I block her path.

“Move!” she demands.

“Please just have a seat. You’re entitled to be angry,” I tell her.

Our faces are inches apart. We’re both exhausted. She throws her hands up in frustration, limps over to the kitchen table, and delicately takes a seat. The plastic cushion lets out a soft sigh.

“I’ll just call the authorities once you leave,” she says, folding her hands on her tummy. “Unless you plan on killing me, too?”

“You and I both know I had nothing to do with putting Sid in the hospital.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure. Sid never went into cardiac arrest when Gregory did the pill fillin’ around here.”

Cookie’s right. Sid’s recent escapade has shaken my confidence. I’m constantly second-guessing myself. Every day I’m placing vulnerable men and women in heightened physical danger. Sid detonated, and the rest of our patrons are ticking time bombs. There are too many prescriptions; the pills look too much alike; no one is checking my work.

“After I report you to the police, I’m going to walk right across the street and tell that fiancée of yours everything,” she threatens.

“Go ahead! I couldn’t care less at this point,” I say, walking over to her medicine counter. I grab a crusted-over eyedropper and shake it in her direction: “Half these prescriptions expired
last century, you know. You love blaming me, but the two of you aren’t exercising a whole lot of caution.”

“How about you stop poking your nose where it doesn’t belong?”

While we’re on the topic:
“Explain something to me, Cookie. When Sid was having his heart attack, why didn’t he choose to go to the VA Hospital?” I ask.

“He was too busy having his heart attack.”

“No, seriously. Sid told me he wasn’t allowed to go there,” I bluff.

“That’s a lie,” Cookie barks.

“What is? That he said it or he wasn’t allowed?”

Cookie narrows her eyes and considers her response.

“Is it the same reason he doesn’t use the Veterans Affairs Hospital to fill your prescriptions?”

Cookie continues with her frozen stare. Belligerence, hostility, anger, antagonism, scorn, contempt—I’m equipped to deal with Cookie’s entire range of emotions, but not the silent treatment. She’s starting to worry me.

“Hey.” I wave my hand in her face to get a reaction and confirm she’s still breathing. “What just happened? A minute ago you were reaming me out.”

Cookie doesn’t flinch.

“Hello?” I snap my fingers. “Was it my line of questioning? Forget what I said,” I plead, pulling up a seat next to her. “Don’t be mad at me, Cookie. Everyone’s mad at me. I’m sorry.”

Nothing.

“Say something—anything—and I’ll leave. Then you can even call the police.”

Cookie won’t speak to me. She won’t move. She wants me to go away and after another couple of excruciating minutes of silence, I do.

ON JANUARY 13, 1987, ten years and ten days after Gregory Day invented his “medicine-dispensing pacifier,” two thousand miles away, in the tiny town of Dequincy Louisiana, with a population no larger than Crockett, Jesse Clegg filed a patent application for a “medicine feeder.” The pacifier depicted in Clegg’s technical drawings could have been photocopied straight out of Gregory’s composition notebook. Clegg’s device shows a plastic nipple and a small squeeze bottle connected via a long plastic tube just like the one Gregory drew.

In describing the need for this “new and novel apparatus,” Clegg eloquently wrote:

(“Mental pain and anguish.” Boy, they knew how to write patents back in the eighties.)

Jesse Clegg eventually received U.S. Patent No. 3,426,755. It appears to be his or her first and only patent. It should have been Gregory’s, but I should count my blessings. Even though Gregory didn’t receive the patent for a medicated pacifier, thank goodness he invented it a decade earlier, or who knows what would have become of Baby Paige.

In the mid-1990s, a company by the name of Baby Me Products licensed U.S. Patent No. 3,426,755 from Jesse Clegg. Best I can tell from the prior art, the Clegg device triggered an explosion in the pacifier field. Inventors from around the world began proposing different ways of dispensing medication to infants, or as one inventor from Montevideo, Uruguay, in December 1995 described the potential consumer base: “small children still of sucking age.”

My research takes me until dawn. I review all previous patents with one eye closed, terrified that someone, somewhere, at some point in history beat us to the punch, but alas the world has yet to see a pacifier like the one I have in mind.

By noon, our PMP is on file with the Patent Office. It takes three sheets of Euraka Productions letterhead to write out our story in longhand. Then I print “Personal & Confidential” across the front of the envelope, drop the pacifier proposal in the mail, and pray.

Twenty years ago, Baby Me Products took a chance on a first-time inventor. Maybe they’ll do it again.

LARA hasn’t shown up at the pharmacy since the Lemon Lolly incident and I give Belinda the day off. Flipping the sign on the front door, I make an executive decision: it’s the Fourth of July, Day’s Pharmacy is closed.

Sid never should have had that coronary, and I intend to prove it. Yes, he’s old as dirt and blind as a bat, but he’s also heavily medicated and in decent physical form. His cholesterol should be low, his heartburn virtually nonexistent.

There were dozens of prescriptions on Sid and Cookie’s kitchen
countertop, going back as far as fifteen years. I use the quiet time in the pharmacy to review all the drugs Sid was taking, to understand how they interact, and to arrive on an explanation as to why he ended up the way he did—flat on his back.

Sid’s ticker
: According to Janus’s comprehensive computer database, Sid’s anticholesterol and heartburn meds, taken together, pose all sorts of risks. But of the dozen possible side effects, “heart attack” isn’t one of them.

Sid’s tush
: Sid takes special medication for an enlarged prostate, but Janus isn’t aware of any “clinically significant adverse effects.”

Sid’s noggin
: Sinus infections. All the nasal sprays come back clean. Glaucoma. I found five different eyedroppers in Sid’s kitchen. Nothing troublesome jumps out at me, except for an expired vial of Metalol. Apparently, a common side effect of Metalol is a “darkening of the neighboring skin.” This would explain Sid’s raccoon eyes.

A bit further down in the Metalol entry of Janus’s database is a list of the drug’s active ingredients. The hyphenated word in the center of the page nearly gives me a coronary of my own: beta-blockers.
Metalol uses beta-blockers.

I quickly write up my findings and drive to the hospital. Dr. Yeardling’s shift doesn’t begin for another hour, but the night-duty nurse promises to deliver my package to him as soon as he arrives. Before leaving, I check in on Sid, who is fast asleep. I’m told he had a rough night, but is now stable.

From the hospital in Vallejo, I cross back over the Carquinez and head home. But instead of stopping in Crockett, I pass right through. I’m on Eckley Drive, the very same road to hell that reunited us with our deranged high school principal, Harvey Martin. It was all downhill from there. That was the night Paige asked me if we could “wait” to get married, that Tyler reentered our lives, and that Sid invited me to join his drug gang.
If we stay on this road, we could be in Vegas by sunrise
, I told her that night. But instead we took a series of wrong turns, and here we are.

I’m working on less than two hours of sleep. Twice already I
nearly drove Hulk off the road and into the Carquinez Strait. I’m in so much trouble. I went to all this effort to protect Paige, to preserve the memory of her father, to make peace with my former father-in-law, and for what?
More secrets. More trouble.
Sid and Paige are right: I invent cockamamy timepieces that can’t tell time and high heels that crack in half. I’m no better a pharmacist, either: I hand out drugs willy-nilly. I killed my father-in-law, drove away the love of my life (more like dropped her off at the curb), and possibly put my best friend in the hospital.

I’m running. But the farther I get from Crockett, the more I realize I can’t leave. I won’t leave Paige, not in this mess. I’ve tried to help but only put more lives in danger. I’ve committed hundreds of felonies. Paige has had enough heartache and hardship. The last thing she needs right now is to inherit my rap sheet. I will find her and we’ll talk. We’ll figure this out one way or another. If it’s over, then it’s over, but I won’t run.

I turn around and head home. When I arrive on our street, I stop one house short of Gregory’s, just as I’ve done so many times before. Lara is home, but the Vomit Mobile is nowhere to be found. I call the news desk where Paige works, but she isn’t on the schedule until tomorrow. I check Ollie’s Auto Shop, but there is no sign of Paige’s car. I try Manny on his walkie-talkie. He hasn’t seen her either but suggests I try the Crockett Community Center—he made a delivery there this afternoon and thinks he caught a glimpse of her flipping burgers at the Independence Day barbecue.

The Community Center is closed and deserted. Next door is Alexander Park, where the parking lot is empty but for one car—a white MR-2 Toyota Spyder. The Vomit Mobile. Cold to the touch, the car hasn’t been driven in hours.

The longer I search for her, the more convinced I become of the inevitable: Paige is with Tyler Rich on his floating bachelor pad. I picture the two of them naked in Tyler Rich’s whirlpool. Fireworks go off behind them as they clink champagne glasses. As painful as it is, I need to see this for myself.

I take Loring Avenue to the Crockett Marina, a gorgeous one-mile stretch of road along the Carquinez Strait. Halfway down
Loring is the entrance to the construction site where Paige and I used to park. Underneath the Warner Construction billboard is a sleek architectural rendering of what the community is supposed to look like one day. The Waterfront Oasis is selling “30 completely renovated river-view lofts that provide the perfect blend of contemporary living and small town vibe.” The brick façades of the once-dilapidated C & H warehouse are newly sandblasted.

The Crockett Marina is dark and deserted. Stapled to the telephone pole at one end of the wharf is a red flyer touting this evening’s celebration: “Join Us for Freedom, Flags, Fireworks, and Fun.” I make my way down the barely lit pier of the teeny boatyard. Beyond the sailboats and Jet Skis are the houseboats. There are no security guards, and at most, a dozen small boats, so finding Tyler Rich’s isn’t difficult. The
Lobsta Mobsta
is farthest out.

Tyler Rich’s gas-guzzling love boat is two-tiered. All the windows are tinted black. A small grill is bolted to the floor of the boat, and a bunch of flotation devices are strewn about the back porch.

I tiptoe closer and brace myself for cackles of laughter or moans of ecstasy, but all I hear is the sound of waves splashing up against the boat’s hull. The
Lobsta Mobsta
is uninhabited.

In the far distance, I hear someone set off a few firecrackers. Then the high-pitched whistle of a bottle rocket. Paige is always saying that Lydia used to call these sounds “the hooligan fireworks,” and she graded each explosion on its level of difficulty and danger. There is a deep boom. A five-finger blast for sure.