Lovesick

by Alex Wellen

  Brianna manages a meek smile.

  “I’ll write down my address so you can send me an invite,” Belinda suggests, rubbernecking to see what Cookie’s got in her cart.

  “You just got your invitation, missy,” Cookie snarls. “Don’t push your luck.”

  “Be sure you charge her for that tube of Aspercreme,” I tell Belinda. “This isn’t your personal medicine cabinet,” I yell over.

  “Add it to my tab,” Cookie says.

  “We’re not doing those anymore,” Lara screams back.

  But it’s too late. Red plastic shopping basket and all, Cookie marches out, knocking backward the bane of my existence, Tyler Rich.

  Tyler Rich is dressed to impress in a tan linen sport coat and a black dress shirt with the top two buttons undone. He’s got gobs of gel in his hair, all slicked to one side.

  “Hi there, Andy,” Tyler greets me as if we’re friends. Then he turns to Lara. “Ready?”

  “Can you give me five? I need to print off these records for the insurance lady,” Lara explains. Brianna is at least six years younger than Lara. “And I want to change my outfit.”

  Lara starts assembling the needed paperwork, but the coast is clear for Brianna to exit safely. Brianna begins gathering her things. Slowly bending down to hook Loki to her leash, Sid gives me the signal to stop Lara.

  “Why don’t you give us a few more days to get you copies of everything,” I tell Brianna. “I’ll deliver them to you personally. I want to make sure you get exactly what you need, and our records are a total wreck.”

  “They certainly are not a wreck,” Lara complains, rushing to prove it.

  “Fine,” Brianna says, backing away. “What’s another week, right?”

  “That’s not necessary,” Lara calls over. “I’ve got it all right here.”

  “We appreciate it,” I say, walking over and placing a hand on Brianna’s shoulder, pointing her to the door.

  Lara is beyond pissed. There will be hell to pay, but for the time being, it’s over and I’ve won.

  Sid and I follow Brianna to the front of the store. She brushes past Tyler, without returning his hungry stare. Someone’s managed to knock the doorstop loose. Sid goes to jiggle it open for Brianna, but Loki’s leash gets tangled up in one of the wheels of her rolling bag. Loki lets out a tiny squeal. Brianna can’t take too much more drama. I separate them, jerk the door open, and Brianna’s free.

  Tripping over Loki’s leash, I stumble outside and all of a sudden my face and Brianna’s are inches apart. On impulse, I almost hug her—Brianna needs a hug, but that would be inappropriate (and would only rub the ointment in more). We stare. The small schnoodle then drags Sid outside, and without a word, Brianna breaks for her car, tossing her heavy bag through the open window and onto her backseat.

  “We really appreciate it,” I yell over to her and wave.

  Brianna waves back without making eye contact. Quickly unparallel-parking, she manages to tap the cars on either side before zooming off.

  “What are we going to do about her?” I ask Sid out of the corner of my mouth.

  “A fair question indeed,” Sid answers.

  CHAPTER 22

  The Father of Invention

  I BRACE for complete meltdown, but it never happens. If Gregory were still alive, I’d be knocked over by a magnitude 6.0 or higher before stepping foot back in the pharmacy, but his eldest daughter would prefer to ignore me.

  Who would have dreamed I’d yearn for the days when Gregory asked me if I was disturbed. But Lara won’t give me the satisfaction. The opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s indifference.

  Tyler Rich has hoisted himself up on the glass display case, feet dangling side to side. It’s plenty sturdy to bear his scrawny build, but I warn him anyway: “Please don’t sit on that. You’ll break it,” I demand, wishing he’d fall through.

  Tyler hops down. “Uh, oh-kay,” he says with an air of disdain.

  In the short time it took me to usher Brianna out, Lara has transformed into evening wear—high heels, a fashionable brown blazer, and some pink lip gloss. She looks prettier than ever—more like her sister than ever.

  Without a word, Tyler and Lara file out.

  “Good night!” Belinda manages to get in as Lara runs, not walks, out.

  “If you say so,” Lara says from the sidewalk.

  Belinda and I exchange looks.

  “This job rocks!” Belinda complains with a mild lisp and the peace sign. She just got her tongue pierced and she still hasn’t gotten used to the silver barbell.

  “Take some magazines. That always makes you feel better,” I tell her.

  “Lifetime subscriptions wouldn’t do the trick.”

  Belinda snaps up the newest In Touch magazine. She scans the stacks some more, stuffing a copy of The New Yorker in her bag before flipping the WELCOME sign to CLOSED, and leaving.

  I check the cash register. In addition to her lightning-fast wardrobe change, Lara managed to find enough time to clean out the front register. I’ll never know exactly what we collected in receipts our first day back. If I had to guess, I’d put the figure around $700.

  Paige is working the late shift, so I’m having dinner with the Brewsters. Cookie’s making brisket and sweet potatoes, and Sid assured me there’d be plenty of extra. I also promised him that I’d drop by with their refills—between the two of them they take about two dozen different pills, sprays, and drops.

  Sid’s brown-box delivery is sitting on the pharmacy counter. I unfold the flaps of the box and find two dozen neatly packaged and labeled plastic containers. Each bottle indicates the name and dosage of the sorted pharmaceutical samples. I pull out a small white one that used to hold antacid tablets. On a strip of masking tape, Cookie’s book club has written in black Magic Marker: “Amoxicillin/40 mg.” I unscrew the top and eyeball the contents. There has got to be at least three hundred pills inside—enough to sustain two dozen seniors for about a month.

  From the middle shelf I pull down our container of amoxicillin and give it a rattle—it’s half-empty There is a new shipment of unopened tablets around here somewhere, but for financial reasons, I’d prefer we resell those to the next owner; that, or just send them back to the manufacturer.

  I unscrew the large jar of pharmacy pills. Then I take Sid’s contraband and dangle it. Am I really doing this? Once you commingle them, there’s no going back, Andy. After this, I’ll never be 100 percent sure of what I’m prescribing our patrons or submitting to insurance. I tip the small antacid bottle a few degrees lower, but then stop. Didn’t Sid mention something about Gregory conducting quality control on everything the book club sorted? I study the contents of both containers: they sure look the same—both pills are pale yellow and octagonal in shape. But are they the same dosage? Maybe these sample pills are old, or expired? I shouldn’t be doing this. I’m not qualified to do this.

  It only then occurs to me: What if Gregory already tainted these pharmacy pills long ago.

  I close my eyes and dump the contents of one container into the other.

  Bottle by bottle, felony after felony, I contaminate the rest of our supply with Sid’s free samples. I’m prepared to traffic in illegal drugs, but I’ve decided insurance fraud is over the line. We desperately need some income, but now that I know, I want to avoid filing any more illegal claims. Lara thinks she knows who owes the biggest tabs; Sid thinks he knows who needs the Day Co-Pay most; what I need to figure out is who, if anyone, can actually pay. If not the folks on either of their lists, there must be others—maybe Mills won’t, but surely some of the other doctors who traded samples for supplies can.

  Lara’s files may also help. I start poking around her workstation. Sitting on her desk is Target File No. 7—“Louise Rothkin.” Rothkin is that woman Manny almost killed after delivering her the wrong heart medication. Thanks to Sid’s list, now I know that she is a major recipient of the Day Co-Pay (That would explain why Roth kin never pressed charges against us.)
I flip open the manila folder, half-expecting to see a mug shot of Louise paper-clipped to the pages; instead the dossier contains what one would expect: prescriptions, insurance forms, and receipts.

  What would really be helpful is if I could locate that black ledger I see Lara writing in all the time. But Lara’s padlocked the top drawer to her oak desk and password-protected her computer. Boy, is she paranoid.

  I aimlessly pull open and slam closed more drawers looking for anything that might help me assess the liquidity of our customers. Nothing.

  Then I notice a rectangular wooden panel just below the counter to the black granite sink. I hook my fingers underneath the bottom edge of the plank, but it’s glued shut. I try to wiggle the panel side to side, but it won’t pop off. Along the top is a small lip. Pulling down on it gently causes the whole façade to tip forward on hinges to reveal a small compartment.

  This is no dummy drawer at all.

  I squat down and cock my head to one side to see, but it’s too dark inside. Blindly feeling around, my hand smacks into a small plastic box. I know what it is instantly. “Son of a gun!” I whisper as I pull out the organic chemistry set.

  I grab a rag, wipe off the thick coat of dust, and unhook the lid. Divided up like a box of chocolates are the key organic building blocks to life. The plastic spheres come in six different colors and represent six different atoms. There are a variety of plastic connectors that signify single, double, and triple bonds. If Organic Chemistry were a movie (spoiler alert: terrible movie, do not see this movie) it would certainly be presented in 3-D. That’s because the only way to truly understand how carbon-to-carbon bonds sit at 120° angles to one another is to fit them together yourself. And as Paige discovered, the blue hydrogen atoms and the red double bonds also make handsome stick figures.

  Gregory went gaga for this kit when he first got hold of it. Apparently they never had anything remotely this cool when he attended pharmacy school, back when pharmacists prescribed leeches for bloodletting. I can still picture him rolling his first plastic triple bond between his fingers with surgical care.

  It’s funny now, but it wasn’t so funny then. My o-chem professor would assign homework, and I would try to complete the assignment, but my models would bulge and tip over; they were highly unstable. Gregory, on the other hand, had a knack for “spatial diagramming.” His building blocks snugly snapped together like Legos.

  This kit was the first and maybe the last thing we ever really had in common. We bonded when we bonded. Gregory loved helping me with my homework. But then he began losing patience, skipping ahead on the itinerary. I’d walk into work and find future assignments sitting atop this plastic case like maquettes. I cut him off, cold turkey, and it didn’t go very well at all. I’ll think twice the next time I try to yank a toy from a seventy-four-year-old baby. That fight instigated our first magnitude 6.0.

  One month later, the course was over. Three months after that, so was my pharmacology career. Gregory loved that organic chemistry kit. I could have easily given it to him—I should have—but at the time, I figured neither of us needed a reminder of what I hadn’t accomplished. My presence here was reminder enough. Then I learned the local college bookstore was paying fifty bucks for a used set in decent condition. I searched for mine everywhere—even convinced Stinky Stanley that he lost his kit and took mine—but I was wrong. The most obvious suspect was the culprit after all.

  “Have you seen my o-chem set?” I asked Gregory.

  His reply still makes me smile: “Don’t look at me.”

  I reach back into Gregory’s cubbyhole and feel around some more. Amid the scraps of paper and dust bunnies is a black-and-white-marbled composition notebook. A thick brown rubber band holds the water-damaged pages shut. Like a kindergartner, Gregory’s printed his name and date across the cover in big, blocky blue letters. I roll the elastic band off, lay the notebook flat on the countertop, and crack it open.

  There it is—everything you’d ever need to know from the medicine man himself. From lip balms to lozenges, from capsules to cock tails, detailed descriptions on how Gregory converted tablets to topical gels, and compounded pills into potions. Every entry has a date. Some of the more advanced dishes include diagrams and charts. One page explains all the different ways to extract dangerous dyes; another reveals how to remove unnecessary preservatives. Gregory even wrote out a list of additives most likely to cause allergic reactions.

  All in caps, Gregory’s written “From B.R.” next to certain recipes. Gregory’s mentor, Barnaby Rothschild, gets credit for the lollipop and gummy candy formulas—just two of the compounding techniques I always assumed Gregory discovered.

  The first entry in the notebook is February 17, 1958—that was about the time Gregory started working at Ace’s Pharmacy alongside Rothschild. (It makes me sad that I didn’t take the initiative to create a notebook like this when I started with Gregory.) The page describes, step-by-step, how to make a suppository. Lucille Braggs’s fanny must be ringing. The most recent entry—one week before Gregory died—explains how to make penicillin chocolate bars. On the left side, he’s drawn a simple diagram of that portable electric cook range I convinced him to purchase. Next to the drawing, Gregory’s written two familiar initials: “From AA.” I’m touched.

  Dyes and chemicals stain many of the pages of this half-century-old notebook. I gently pull apart some of the less referenced pages. Buried between the success stories are the half-baked ideas and the partially realized delivery systems. The drawing entitled “Device for administering drugs with meals” shows a condiment shaker where you grind up pills like pepper. “Flip the top open and sprinkle,” Gregory writes. How unappetizing.

  Another page shows a small thermos with two airtight compartments: the upper chamber stores pills and the bottom chamber houses a small supply of water. The vial is cylindrical in shape, measuring no more than six inches in height and two inches in diameter, and according to Gregory, “easily clips onto a belt or fits inside the trousers.” Is that a combination pill-water storage unit in your pocket or are you just glad to see me?

  A few pages farther in, there is an entry labeled “medicine-dispensing pacifier.”

  Per the diagram, the medication is initially stored in a squeeze bulb that feeds a plastic nipple via thin tubing. The date next to Gregory’s medical pacifier is hard to make out. I lift the composition notebook off the table and hold it two inches from my face.

  The moment of conception: January 3, 1977. I do the math—Paige was an infant at the time, no more than six months. Paige must’ve been sick.

  A thin brown passport-sized booklet slides from in between the pages of Gregory’s notebook and drops to the floor. I bend down to pick it up. Embossed on the front of it is an image of an old wooden ship. The words American Trust Company Since 1854 appear around the seal.

  The first page says “Savings Account” and it certifies that the original owners are “Gregory Day and Lydia Day.” The bankbook is labeled “Book 3,” issued to the couple on June 8, 1997. The starting balance is $12,724, and over the next nine years, there is a deposit at the beginning of every month for $30.

  I flip through it. Between the deposits and compounding interest, the balance starts adding up. The final entry, dated December 31, 2006, shows a single withdrawal for the full amount: $20,386.23.

  The white receipt connected to the wire transfer pokes out of the bankbook like a bookmark. The amount of the withdrawal matches the wire transfer to the penny. The account number of the deposit means nothing to me, but the name is unmistakable.

  CHAPTER 23

  Registering Complaints

  “I’VE got an idea for a wedding gift,” Paige tells me the other day.

  “Is it something we need?” I ask.

  “Not us,” she says. “Our guests.”

  “We give gifts?”

  “Yes, something sweet to remember the wedding, like a candle with our names and the wedding date on it.”

  “
Tchotchkes?” I confirm.

  “Yeah, tchotchkes. But I think it should be something that reminds people of us,” she says. “Like a CD with songs that are meaningful to our relationship.”

  “Why would everyone want a copy of ‘We Are the Champions’?”

  Paige doesn’t flinch.

  “It’s just … isn’t this wedding already all about us. They spend the whole day celebrating us and now they’re supposed to go home and keep listening to songs about us? It feels like too much.”

  “Forget it,” she says softly, shaking her head.

  “Plus we shouldn’t go breaking the law,” I tell her.

  I’m a hypocrite. I’m a fraud.

  “Can you repeat that?” she demands.

  “Songs are copyrighted like inventions are patented. We’d be stealing valuable intellectual property. You figure: twenty songs per CD, about a hundred guests—that’s like two thousand songs.” “But no one’s profiting off it,” Paige cries. “Precisely! These artists are entitled to some compensation.” The decision on wedding tchotchkes is still pending.

  WHAT I’ve learned over the last week of wedding planning is that I have strong opinions on topics that I couldn’t care less about.

  Apparently I think a photographer captures the essence of a wedding, but a videographer distorts the fantasy, meaning we should book the former, not the latter. I think tablecloths and buffet station linens should match, but bridesmaid dresses don’t need to (though they should probably complement one another in color and style). Oh, and it’s criminal that Mindy’s Stationery Shop charges $600 for fifty wedding invitations.

  But that’s just me. Paige sees things differently.

  It was such a promising sign when we agreed to have the wedding at the Lawrence Hall of Science. But we were so young, naive, and flush with credit then. Plus, it’s easy to spend $3,000 you don’t have so you can get married overlooking one of the most spectacular views in the world. But that was a whole week and a dozen compromises ago. Amid all the fierce wedding negotiations, Paige has never invoked her parents, and still I am haunted by what they cannot give her. No matter what we do, is our wedding destined to come up short because Lydia can’t adjust her veil, or because Gregory can’t give her away? These tragic realities guide me every time we are forced to strike a compromise—calling out to me to help her realize her fantasy—and yet with every bargain, I expect the insanity to wind down, and it never does.