by Alex Wellen
The phone in the kitchen starts ringing. Nobody makes a move.
“I should go,” he tells us, reaching for his jacket. “Lara caught me up on her life. We’ve hardly seen each other since …”
“Prom.” Lara remembers affectionately.
The telephone keeps ringing.
“I’d love to get an update on your world, Pay Day. But you probably have plenty of things to do … like answering that phone.”
“Andrew, would you do me a huge favor and grab that,” Lara asks politely. “We’ve received three hang-ups since I got home and there were four more on the answering machine. Maybe you’ll have better luck.”
I fling her a curt “sure” and head for the kitchen, snapping up the phone seconds before Gregory’s answering machine does.
“Hello?” I roar into the receiver.
The breathing at the other end is slow and heavy.
“Hello?”
More breathing.
“This is the part where you hang up on me,” I remind the caller.
“Oh Andy sorry I got distracted,” Sid says, his voice shakier than usual.
“Hey, there. Everything okay?”
“Dandy. What’s with you?”
I peek into the living room. Tyler’s got the Day sisters giddy with laughter.
“I’m about to be blindsided for the second time tonight,” I mutter.
“What’s that?”
“Nothing. What can I do you for?” I stay as upbeat as possible.
“I’m fresh out of cholesterol medication and Cookie won’t give it a rest. Any chance I could persuade you to make a late-night run to the pharmacy?”
I’m about to say yes when I hear Gregory’s voice: dispensing medical advice or medication without supervision is a no-no for a pharmacy technician. I check my watch. It’s after 10:00 P.M. Every thing’s closed.
“Gee, Sid,” I begin, studying the three of them in the living room.
“You’d really be helping me out,” Sid urges.
“What if I grabbed you one pill, just to get you through the night, but tomorrow we switch your prescription over to the Walgreens in Benicia. Okay?”
“Whatever you say, chief.”
“I can get to the pharmacy and back in, say, fifteen minutes?”
“Why don’t I meet you there? It’s a beautiful night and I could use some fresh air. Give me twenty minutes. I need to finish watching Antiques Roadshow—Cookie’s convinced the remnant collecting oil underneath our car in the garage is a priceless Navajo blanket. Are you sure you won’t be missed?”
“Positive,” I say, studying the reunion. “Good,” he adds. “We need to talk.”
CHAPTER 16
The Day Co-Pay
THERE are boxes everywhere. The pharmacy was closed a full week before I realized Manny Milken was storing all of our deliveries at his mother’s condo. In return for subletting the space, the Milkens helped themselves to some of our inventory. Manny thinks I won’t miss the rolls of toilet paper, vials of mineral oil, or bottles of shampoo, but I will gladly add Manny to Lara’s collections list.
With the future of Day’s Pharmacy in question I figure it’s pointless to bother restocking the shelves. For now, I simply place the new toiletries in the appropriate aisles next to their displayed brothers and sisters. If I were a guessing man, I’d say we end up returning most of this stuff.
Our medicine shelves are bare. We’re fresh out of Sid’s cholesterol medication, but we may have a new sealed supply in the back.
Lara’s stink is everywhere. Along every countertop, there are small mounds of paper: Bank of the West, Bank of America, Citibank, GM, and MBNA—each one of Gregory’s credit cards gets its own pile. Some of our biggest debtors have stacks, too.
The largest pile is simply labeled “Dad” and includes all sorts of medical records, insurance forms, and doctor’s prescriptions.
I am no closer today than I was two weeks ago to understanding why Gregory wanted me to wait to ask Paige to marry me. I may never know. Maybe it had something to do with all his money problems, maybe he never thought I was worthy enough for his daughter, or maybe there’s a clue in this neatly assembled stack.
It feels less intrusive if I flip through his papers quickly. Nothing really jumps out at me. You spend ten months with a guy in a pharmacy and you quickly get to know what sort of pills he’s popping. Sprays, capsules, inhalers—Dr. Brandon Mills was prescribing Gregory anything he could to help the Mayor of Pomona Street breathe. Gregory was also taking Lanicor, which is no shocker: you can’t swing a dead cat in Crockett without hitting someone on anticholesterol medication.
Which reminds me, I still need to find Sid that pill.
At the end of the aisle, I find lots more of Lara’s handiwork. She’s co-opted five new whiteboards from Aisle Two and hung them along the back wall where there’s room to walk. On each board she’s pasted dozens of insurance forms, co-payment records, and prescriptions. She’s drawn Magic Marker lines connecting people as if she’s mapping out some sort of terrorist network. I’ve seen Lara pace back and forth past this display, narrowing down her suspects. Lara is a determined woman. She’ll crack this case. Collar her old man. She’s already got some strong leads.
I study the scraps, scribbles, and dot-matrix printouts. I’m equally enamored and sickened by Lara’s masterpiece. I hate being the designated muscle around here: the guy charged with knocking over walkers, kicking out canes, breaking hips, sending a clear message to the community.
I grab a sealed, commercial-sized plastic bottle of Lanicor out of a box on the floor and head back down the aisle, inadvertently plowing into a delicately stacked pile of unopened packages. I inspect one. It’s one of those packages Gregory used to get, wrapped in brown paper, with no postage and no return address.
There is a large box nearby addressed to the pharmacy, in care of Sidney Brewster. Wrapped a dozen different ways with black electrical tape, the package is about the size and weight of a small boat engine. I slide it across the honeycomb tile floor with the side of my foot. The floor is uneven, and as it drops two inches, it sandwiches and crushes my flip-flop-exposed pinky toe. There is a short delay before the pain signal hits my brain.
“Son of a—” I scream.
“Gun?” Sid lip-synchs from the sidewalk, pantomiming a gun with his fingers.
The bell jingles as Sid pushes open the door. This is the first time we’ve both been back in the pharmacy since Gregory died.
I rub my toe in agony. He shakes his head.
“What sort of clown are you?” Sid asks.
“I dunno, the sad hobo type,” I guess. “It’s your freaking fault. Now my toe’s broken. This big, stupid package has your name on it.”
I hop over two aisles, grab an instant cold pack, and crack it in half. If only I could sue my employer for worker’s compensation.
“Who’s David Bloomington?” I yell as I bounce back over.
“You got me,” he says, putting his nose right up to the box to read the label. “Oh, you mean David Wallingford from Blooming-ton, Indiana.”
Like that helps. He kicks the box with his safely protected sneaker.
“I bought this for you,” he announces. “Get some scissors.”
I cut away all the tape, tear the box open, blindly jab both hands into the Styrofoam peanuts, and pull out a red GE canister vacuum.
“Seven bucks!” he exclaims, as I fish out the hose, nozzles, and dusting brush accessories. “You’d be amazed what some people auction online.”
“I thought Cookie cut you off from eBay?”
“Why do you think I shipped it here,” he says tapping his temple.
“Operation Jet Stream take two?” I ask.
“Bingo!” There still may be hope for our bladeless windshield wipers after all.
I hop behind the counter, drop the ice pack on the floor, and step on it lightly, to relieve the swelling. My pinky and big toe are about the same size now. It may be bro
ken—it’s so hard to tell with pinkies.
I pop a single cholesterol pill in a small bottle, fasten the plastic top tightly, and hand it to Sid. But before I let go, I warn him, “The first hit is free. But after that, you come to me. Got that, buddy? You want your fix, you come to Andy.”
Sid is not entertained.
“Tomorrow we’ll call Walgreens in Benicia and get you the rest of your refill,” I say.
“What’s all this?” Sid asks, changing the topic.
He’s poking through one of Lara’s little piles of paper on the counter.
“Evidence from a crime scene,” I confess. “Lara’s on to you. Your tab and Cookie’s put you on Lara’s most wanted list.”
“I suspected this might happen,” he says. “Let me explain.”
“No need, I’m the thug tasked with collecting, and in my book, Brewster, we’re even Steven.”
“That’s not it, I want to explain about the hang-ups at the house.”
I’m confused.
“That was you?”
“No.”
“Oh, then you know about the creditors?”
“Those aren’t creditors. At least not all of them,” he says confidently. “I also know about what happened tonight on Eckley.”
Now I’m completely lost.
“Eckley Drive …” he repeats. “Harvey Martin …”
“So you know that maniac almost ran us off the road?”
“Harvey was confused.”
Sid slowly takes a stool at the lunch counter. I hobble over to the other side of the bar. I wish I could make us milkshakes, but the soda fountain doesn’t work and Sid is lactose intolerant.
Sid searches for the words. “I have a sense of your money problems,” he says, pulling a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbing his forehead. “Gregory never went into detail, but I suspect you have lots of bills, and that house of his is probably mortgaged to high heaven.”
“It’s not good,” I admit.
“Gregory had too much pride to accept money from us, and I for one didn’t have much to give. But we tried to find other ways to help.”
Sid’s throat is dry. I grab him a bottle of distilled water from the nearby minifridge and unscrew it for him.
“We owed Gregory” he says, taking a big gulp. “We still owe him.”
“Gregory would have done anything for you and Cookie,” I say.
“No, not just us….”
“I know. I’d do anything to get that time back, too. To make some sort of connection with Gregory,” I say with deep regret.
My nose tickles. My eyes are watering.
There is someone tapping on the front windowpane. I lean over to look and realize it’s that crazy fucking lunatic Harvey Martin. Principal Martin is wearing red flannel pajama bottoms and a white T-shirt. A few grayish wisps of hair jut out in different directions like a madman. Martin greets us with a maniacal grin and a slow, creepy wave hello, fingers fanned out.
I’m awestruck. Sid, you see him too, don’t you?
Sid spins slightly on his stool, lays his eyes on Harvey Martin, and waves the man inside.
“What the hell?” I mumble.
The overhead fluorescent lights flicker slightly. Time slows. Then the rest of the zombies start pouring in, one by one. First there’s Cookie Brewster; cane in hand, she limps toward me in satin purple pajamas. Mildred Pritchard is right behind her, in a neon pink jogger suit. She uses a walker to inch closer. That blue hair, Beatrice Lewis, looks even more like Big Bird than ever in her yellow nightgown and bouffant do. She holds her back in pain as she steps closer, dragging one foot. Harvey Martin is more like Frankenstein’s monster, rocking side to side. They’re all tired. In pain. Moaning in agony.
“I love that color!” Beatrice says, inspecting Cookie’s evening wear.
Cookie shakes her head in disgust. “It’s eleven o’clock. I should be asleep picking daffodils in la-la land right now,” she says.
When Cookie reaches her husband, she hands him her cane, and regally extends her hand. Sid then helps his wife take a seat at the counter.
“Let’s do this,” demands Cookie.
Mildred and Harvey catch their breath while the rest of the crew look on with anticipation.
“Fair enough,” Sid says, lowering himself off the stool.
He claps his hands twice and clears his throat. Then he pulls out a folded-up piece of yellow-lined notebook paper and addresses me directly.
“Our government has failed us!” Sid yells with a raised finger. “As drug prices continue to skyrocket, outpacing inflation, seniors on modest or fixed incomes struggle to gain access to critical drugs.” Sid loses his place. He flips between the first and second page.
“For Pete’s sake, I’ll be six feet under before you get to the point,” Cookie interrupts him.
Cookie slaps both hands flat on the lunch counter and leans in close. Her pajama blouse hangs loosely open, revealing some sort of heavy-duty bra. I uncomfortably concentrate on her eyes.
“A bunch of us old fogies haven’t been able to afford our meds for some time now. For years, we’d come in here with no money, no insurance, no nothing, and Gregory, God bless him, would give us our pills and charge us some token amount. We started calling it the ‘Gregory Day Co-Pay’”
Mildred adjusts her hairnet. Harvey Martin scratches his back with an unopened toothbrush.
“First it was just drugs, but then Gregory started giving away the farm—Q-tips, aspirin, whatever we needed. He tried to keep track with tabs, but this godforsaken town is teeming with in-grates and everyone started piling on. Before long, Gregory lost track of who owed what, and he went into debt. Deep debt. That’s when ‘we,’” she says, motioning over her shoulder wildly toward Martin and her book club, “started ‘subsidizing Gregory’s cause.’ Capeesh?”
“You lost me after ‘Pete’s sake,’” I say flatly.
“Prescription drugs, Andy,” Sid chimes in. “We’d get him free drug samples. Whatever, wherever, and however we could and he’d distribute them.”
“Digoxin, Monopril, Viagra, Lanicor, you name it,” Mildred shouts.
“But no narcotics,” Beatrice chirps. “And no amphetamines.”
“Yeah, no class two narcotics,” Harvey Martin assures me.
“How responsible of you!” I cry. “These pills just dropped out of the sky?”
“No, we’ve got a system,” Sid explains calmly. “The free samples come from local practitioners. Cookie pressures Dr. Mills. Mildred’s assigned to Dr. Platt. And Beatrice works closely with that nice ear, nose, and throat gal on Hudson, what’s-her-name.”
“Hardy,” Beatrice pipes up. “Dr. Cynthia Hardy.”
“Right, right, right. The doctors would put together brown box collections and Manny Milken would pick them up and deliver them here,” Sid explains, pointing to the stack of generic packages I just knocked over.
“Jesus, Manny knows?” I holler.
“No, Manny’s clueless. He just delivered the stuff to Gregory,” Sid assures me. “Gregory would give us the packages and then Cookie’s book club would meet once a week and sort the sample pills.”
“We’re not big readers,” Cookie says on behalf of Mildred and Beatrice.
“There is absolutely no way Gregory was okay with this,” I insist. “The guy wouldn’t let me prescribe water.”
“Before he handed out the samples, Gregory would stay here late and check our work. It was totally on the up-and-up,” Sid insists.
“Up-and-up?” I yell. “He commingled legitimate pills with free samples that were clearly marked ‘Not for Sale.’ Then we distributed them and”—panic strikes—“and we filed the forms and committed insurance fraud!”
“I didn’t realize we were dealing with such a prude,” Cookie ridicules me from her stool. “Down!” she commands her husband.
Sid helps her, handing Cookie her cane. “Clearly this ain’t happening.”
But Cookie isn’t going
anywhere. Mildred and Mildred’s walker stand in her way.
“And what about Looney Tunes over here?” I ask, pointing my thumb at Harvey Martin. “You’re a cop, for Christ’s sake!”
“Volunteer peace officer in the Contra Costa County Sheriff Department’s Reserve Program,” he clarifies.
Like that makes a difference, I say with my hands.
“It’s no big whoop,” he assures me.
He steps right up to me. Harvey Martin has always been a close talker.
“I’d go to the Veterans Affairs Hospital, they’d give me whatever I need, and I’d hand it over to Gregory.”
Then he starts with the theatrics. Harvey clutches his heart and puts on a thick Italian accent: “Ooh, ahh, ooh, my chest. No problem, Mr. Martin, here’s a prescription for Lipitor. Ooh, ahh, ooh, my head. Take some Frova, Mr. Martin. It’s my bones, my bones I tell you. How about this 90-day supply of Boniva?”
“You realize you almost killed us tonight!” I scream.
“And for that, my friend, I apologize,” he yells back like he means it. Harvey Martin places one hand on my shoulder. “Since Gregory passed I got all these drugs piling up in my house. I thought maybe I could drop them off at the house, but you’re never alone. I saw your car tonight, and thought ‘bingo, here’s my chance,’” Martin cries, snapping his fingers. “I chased after you, but then Paige poked her head up, and I guess I panicked. Sorry.”
“Harvey gets a little overexcited sometimes,” Sid explains.
“None of you can afford drugs? What about Medicare?” I insist.
“Medicare sucks!” Cookie blurts like some adolescent.
“It’s too complicated. Too pricey,” Beatrice echoes.
“That stupid jelly doughnut ruined everything,” Mildred complains.
There is a slight pause before Sid gently reminds her: “You mean doughnut hole.”
Mildred nods, warmly. Cookie doesn’t appreciate Sid showering attention on another woman.
The dreaded Medicare “doughnut hole.” The doughnut hole is the government’s legal loophole in the Medicare prescription coverage plan: it represents the span of time or “hole” during the year when a senior citizen has to pay for drug benefits in full, but receives none. During the doughnut hole, Medicare folks fork over twenty times what they’re accustomed to paying.
