Side Effects

by Harvey Jacobs

  He drove past a clot of apartment houses flying a banner that read: if you lived here you’d be home already; then a cluster of senior citizen residences where he could see the ambulatory inmates staring from their balconies, looking down at the Long Island Expressway—a river of traffic as eternal as the Mississippi, deserving of its own Mark Twain. He drove through suburbs he recognized from watching All in the Family where Archie and Edith Bunker huddled together, worried sick about dark-skinned invaders next door. He passed exits to Forest Hills, Great Neck, Roslyn and Glen Cove—havens where the rich kept their families warm and safe in lush houses tucked among lawns and giant trees.

  His minibus sputtered and clunked in the slow lane, getting the finger from passing truckers, until he drove beyond Westbury and Smithtown, where the tidal surge of traffic thinned to a trickle, where there were still a few acres of empty space, where dust hovered in clouds over potato farms. He watched tractors pull wagons full of migrants toward shacks and sheds marked by smoke trails rising from their tin chimneys. He turned toward the south shore then east again, skirting towns called Bayshore and Patchogue, and caught the first clammy scent of the ocean.

  Old Montauk Highway took him through Quogue and Hampton Bays to Westhampton Beach, then Southampton—a mythic enclave, a sleepy WASP’s nest where Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar said the blessed people went to the beach in gowns and tuxedos.

  Beyond Southampton he stopped at a roadside diner, fed himself with a hamburger and fries, gulped a cup of sludgy coffee, pulled into a Mobile station, filled his gas tank, checked his dipstick, poured a quart of oil into the minibus’s gut, topped off the radiator’s reservoir with distilled water and hit the road again, man and car nourished and expectant. The station’s attendant told him to keep a sharp eye out for a sign pointing the way to Serene Harbor, only a mile or so after the Carvel ice cream hut.

  Simon found the sign and followed a rutted back road that skirted Southampton’s asshole. The route to Serene Harbor was lined with humble cottages, junk yards, a marina that rented Sunfish and kayaks, a string of battered motel cabins, a garbage dump where a thousand yelping gulls gave broken appliances and piles of trash the look of snowdrifts, a local deli, a bar and grill that sold pizza pies, empty fruit and flower stands, a field where two horses stood watching the sunset, a real estate office, an overgrown graveyard across from an abandoned church with a caved-in roof and fire-blackened timbers. The road curved along a long stretch with no visible evidence of human habitation, bridged a swampy pond, curled around groves of maple, oak and pine and ended at a reduce speed! children at play! sign that marked the outskirts of Serene Harbor, Founded in 1752.

  At last light, Simon pulled his minibus onto an empty field, found a spot camouflaged from the police by a hedge of yew, unrolled a mat he’d bought at a Salvation Army thrift shop, lay himself down under a bedspread he’d found stuffed under the driver’s seat, and fell into the best sleep he’d had in months, allowing that he jerked awake a few times during the night expecting to find a hovering nurse holding a can of Ensure and a bowl of generic hospital Jell-O, to hear pillow-muffled moans and groans floating through disinfected air, but when he realized there was no nurse, no Jell-O and the only sound was the sorrowful chirp of cicadas and tree frogs, he smiled and slept again.

  69

  Regis Van Clay, along with his wife, Lucille, and their three children—Price, 19, Anthony, 14, and Sheridan, 9—were about enter the Waldorf Astoria Hotel where Regis Pharmaceuticals held its annual meeting. With them was David Huffner, Regis’s speechwriter, scribbling a few last-minute changes in the final text of the CEO’s remarks to what promised to be a huge and ebullient turnout of stockholders, financial analysts, and the business press.

  Regis’s speech summarized the incredible achievements of the previous year. Profits were at an all-time high and rising. The numbers were a rousing endorsement of the company’s global strategy. With acquisitions in thirty-two countries spanning every continent, the future was more than bright.

  Wonder drugs like Stalagamide, Thumicsk, Xanelul and Expeloton demonstrated the company’s continuing commitment to research and development. Unexpected uses for those drugs had reversed a moribund profit picture and more than compensated for tremendous losses in Cripthalizine, Nonacripthae, Viloxidril and Aquathaline due to what Regis had come to call Apple Effects.

  The Regis product spectrum had grown to include point-of-sale items for personal hygiene, cosmetics, dental care, first aid, pain relief, fertilizers and pet remedies, the manufacture of specialized equipment for doctors, dentists, veterinarians, laboratories and hospitals, devices for implants, transplants, instruments ranging from scalpels to colon scopes, a whole new pantheon of tests for pressure, pregnancy, blood sugar, viruses, bacteria, and top secret projects for the military. Huffner wrote: “Regis Pharmaceuticals has boxed the proverbial compass. Skill! Dedication! Imagination!—these energize our company’s tireless labors. Amazing new discoveries are stepping-stones toward the alleviation and elimination of illness, disability and, someday, morbidity. We are ever in the vanguard of the war against aging—and, yes, death itself!”

  A powerhouse speech.

  In the limo driving to the Waldorf, Huffner had been told by Lucille Van Clay to add the word scintillating somewhere, anywhere, into the text. He’d already used luminous, incandescent and coruscating (edited to sparkling). Lucille explained that her husband had a special fondness for scintillating, arguing that it was a word too seldom used in an age of false modesty. Huffner said it would be wrong for Regis to give the impression that he was gloating, too cocky. Lucille blunted that argument with the truism affirming a rooster’s right to crow when the sun rose. Her husband concurred.

  As the party was about to enter the hotel, a revolving door discharged a short, bald, bent old man with red eyes, blue lips and skin the color of wilted lettuce. He clutched a 38-caliber pistol in a trembling hand. The gun was aimed at Regis’s chest. “Don’t move, don’t breathe,” the man said, pausing to wheeze and cough. “Stop doodling,” he yelled at Dave Huffner who hadn’t noticed him. “Get the lady and the kids out of the way,” the man snarled at Regis. “You’re the one I’m here to assassinate. Don’t think I can’t shoot straight even with the glaucoma.”

  “What do you want?” Regis said.

  “I want you dead is what I want.”

  “That’s Regis Van Clay,” Dave Huffner said.

  “I know who he is, thank you very much. You seem to be the speechwriter. Here’s a text for today’s speech: So long, it’s been good t’know ya.” The man spit black phlegm. “Pray for yourself, Mr. Big Shot. You have thirty seconds.”

  “Would you please try to stop your hand from shaking,” Regis said. “What’s your problem? Why me?”

  “Why you? You see what I got in my hand? The other one, not the one with the gun.”

  “A piece of paper,” Dave Huffner said. “He’s got a piece of paper.”

  “Stay out of this, hack,” the assassin said. “A piece of paper that happens to be a prescription from Dr. Samuel Evinbaum who practices on Johnson Avenue, in Riverdale, The Bronx. You want to know what it’s for? Tonlara XL. The yellow pills shaped like pyramids.”

  “Tonlara XL? That’s one of ours. A vasodilator.” Huffner said.

  “I know it’s yours. I know what it is. It keeps me alive. You know how much it costs?”

  “Full price or co-pay?” Huffner said.

  “Sixteen dollars a pill. You ever hear of a fixed income?”

  “Hold your horses,” Regis said. “Do you know what it costs me to make those pills?”

  “Not sixteen bucks,” the man said. “I know that much. Every morning I get to choose between having a heart attack and having breakfast. Every night I get to ask myself if I want food, electric, rent or a pulse. Do I freeze in the dark, starve, move into a cardboard box on the street or drop dead? Enough with the choices. Have a good long nap.”

  “You idiot,” Huffner
said. “I’m surprised at you. You’re going to kill Regis Van Clay because he makes the drug that keeps you alive?”

  “You’re calling me an idiot?”

  “He didn’t mean it,” Lucille said. “He’s excitable. You know how writers are.”

  “He meant it,” Regis said. “Didn’t anybody ever tell you that the price of a drug is directly related to its effectiveness? Don’t you know there are hundreds of studies proving that cutting the price of a medication reduces its potency?”

  “This is not about potency.”

  “He means a discounted drug doesn’t work as well as the full price one,” Huffner said.

  “Thanks for translating,” the man said. “I never heard such bullshit.”

  “If you’re set on killing me, kill me.” Regis said, “but get your facts straight. I laugh when I hear people complaining about the cost of an item as scintillating, yes, I said scintillating, as Tonlara XL. Because I know if I lower the price, it could kill you. Don’t ask me to explain it. It has something to do with human nature. I’m not saying generic drugs don’t work for some people. But whatever the reason, the cheaper the pill, the more work for the undertaker. You think I want to charge sixteen dollars a pill retail?”

  “This is crazy,” the man said, thrusting his gun against Regis’s belly. “You’re saying you’re doing me a favor by charging sixteen dollars for one lousy pill?”

  “Absolutely. Do I want you to starve? Do I want you homeless? Do I want you in intensive care? Do I want that on my conscience? This is my wife standing there. Those are my children clinging together. Do I want them to think of their husband and father as a callous human being? But there is proof. Tons of proof to back me up.”

  “You’re saying you have statistics?” the man said.

  “Reams of statistics,” Regis said. “Before you pull that trigger, take a minute to think things over. How about I arrange for you to get a month’s supply of Tonlara XL. Free samples. Huffner, make the arrangements. And send this man a copy of those reports on the lethal results of excessive price reduction in places like Canada, Israel and emerging nations in Africa. Send him those reports and the samples even if he does kill me.”

  “Yes, sir,” Huffner said. “A month’s worth of free samples and the stats.”

  “How come I never heard about such a report?” the man said. “I watch the news.”

  “Blame the liberal media.” Regis said. “Not me.”

  “What about free samples?” the man said. “If discounts are dangerous, what do your statistics say about free samples?”

  “Uncertain. If you want to take the risk, be my guest. You know, it’s ironic. Did you ever ask yourself why my company is called Regis Pharmaceuticals and not Van Clay Pharmaceuticals?”

  “I did wonder about that,” the man said. “It kept me up all night.”

  “Let me tell him,” Huffner said. “Because Regis’s father, August Van Clay, our beloved founder, may he rest in peace, was a greedy old bastard who would have denied a Q-Tip to a bleeding orphan who didn’t have the penny to pay for it. Yes, the company was originally called Van Clay Pharmaceuticals. The minute Regis here inherited controlling interest, he changed its name to forever erase the memory of his price-gouging biological progenitor. Regis Van Clay swore an oath to dedicate himself to humanity.”

  “I’m confused,” the gunman said. “But I’m going to kill him anyhow. How much can it cost to make those Tonlara XL pills?”

  “Actually, thirty-four cents,” Regis said the instant a sniper from the NYPD Swat Team dropped the would-be assassin with a single clean shot to the head.

  “You were amazing,” Huffner said. “That spiel about statistics was brilliant. Incredible.”

  “We probably have numbers like that in a file cabinet someplace,” Regis said. “If we don’t, make sure we get some. As for your spiel about my father, I have to say I resented your references to the finest man I ever knew. Changing the name to Regis Pharmaceuticals was a way to fuck the IRS.”

  “I was trying to save your life, boss.”

  “Hand me my speech. Lucille, Price, Anthony, Sheridan, get your tails in gear. Listen to that murmur from inside the auditorium. The sheep are bleating for their shepherd.”

  70

  Serene Harbor proved to be everything Simon hoped it would be—a forgotten cul de sac, proud of its past but comfortable with a shabby present. Simon’s eyes, glazed by the jumbled sights of New York, suddenly cleared. He focused on every separate detail of the tiny town’s anatomy.

  Serene Harbor was built along a waterfront where a few sailboats bobbed on waves tamed by long stone jetties. An old barn painted with a sign, serene harbor yacht club (there were no yachts, only a few dinghies and a Boston Whaler), sat on an inlet across from a barbered park, mostly lawn, that hosted a few stately trees, a playground with a slide and swings, a picnic table and well-spaced wooden slat benches facing the bay. Each bench was marked with a brass plaque engraved in memory of someone who’d once walked on local earth but now danced among angels: this bench is dedicated to mrs. julia bowsticler—now she smiles down from the stars.

  Across from the park, an abandoned factory building loomed over the landscape, looking displaced and a bit menacing, like the homeless men and bag ladies Simon had seen crouched in Manhattan doorways. A sign near the factory’s roof read: international time in flaking gold letters.

  A block inland, Revolution Street, the town’s commercial center, was bracketed on one end by a Civil War cannon and a flagpole, on the other by a windmill with its arms locked in place. Between those landmarks were a market, a pharmacy, a general store, a post office, a library that had once been a mansion, two antique shops, a hardware store, the three-story Union Hotel, Bob’s Fish Market, The Skull & Crossbones Bar, the cube-shaped Commodore Cinema, and the Town Hall.

  Side streets named for the nation’s founding fathers were divided into small lots where Serene Harbor’s citizens lived in decrepit houses, many dating back to the 18th century. Scrubby gardens struggled to grow in sandy soil. Roses, hydrangeas, daises, impatiens, poppies, hostis, beach plums, yews and wisteria all bespoke noble attempts at preserving order and elegance.

  Other houses, more decrepit, forsook useless blooms and greenery; their lawns cultivated more practical crops of auto parts, stacks of tires, boats on trailer beds, the skeletons of cannibalized appliances, stone elves, sundials, birdbaths, claw-footed bathtubs, sinks, broken toilets, and assorted pieces of abandoned furniture, many missing parts like drawers or legs. Rusted bedsprings protruded metal tentacles that curled like overgrown weeds.

  Among those junk piles was a wide assortment of broken tricycles and bicycles, many plastic toys and, here and there, a battered doll. Simon let himself wonder if those dolls had been dropped by children rushing off to school that morning or if they’d been abandoned by changelings now with adult bodies and kids of their own.

  Cars, some dating back to the heyday of chrome trim and tail fins—Fords and Chevys with an occasional Buick, Studebaker, Kaiser or Caddy shell in the mix, ex-army Jeeps and pickup trucks were parked in pebble driveways or along low, crumbling curbs.

  On higher ground, Victorian fossils, once the homes of whaling captains and kings of commerce, advertised rooms for rent, offered bed & breakfast accommodations, displayed for sale signs tacked shamelessly onto tipping wrought iron gates.

  At the tiny library, Simon leafed through a pamphlet on Serene Harbor’s polyglot population and its reputation as “a model for tolerance.” The booklet mentioned that “the Caucasian community coexisted on excellent terms with two Black enclaves, each with a distinct demographic. One, an inland community, was made up of modest shacks once populated by whalers many of whom had been Indians and Africans.” A footnote said that area was nicknamed Lionel Hampton. “The second Black area spread along a strip of beach where affluent Negroes built summer cottages in the booming decade of the 1920s then passed them along to their fortunate descendants.�
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  The booklet emphasized Serene Harbor’s spirituality. There were churches for Methodists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Roman Catholics, Pentecostals and Baptists. There was even a synagogue built by Jewish factory workers; the sprinkle of Jews dated back to the existence of a factory built early in the 20th century when industry made a feeble attempt to replace the vanishing whaling trade as Serene Harbor’s chief economic engine.

  Each race and religion had its own hallowed ground: the black cemetery, tucked among maple and oak trees, was a mile from the beautifully landscaped Protestant burial field where butchers, bakers and candlestick makers shared choice territory with the wealthy nabobs of Serene Harbor’s halcyon days. In that fancy bone yard, mausoleums and obelisks stood beside splitting tombstones with weather-erased inscriptions that marked the graves of heroes of the Revolution, 1812, the Civil War, Teddy Roosevelt’s wars, two World Wars, and the “police action” in Korea. The Catholics had their resting place nearer to the ocean, a peaceful gathering place for stone saints and cherubs. The small, crowded Jewish cemetery outside town was almost entirely hidden from the highway by a collapsing fence and a few skimpy evergreens.

  Visionaries had long since sensed that Serene Harbor was a candidate for inevitable gentrification; the abandoned factory, with a fine water view, was the obvious key to upgrading the community. The International Time Company had built their ill-fated clock and watch factory on land (originally bought for a song) where whale blubber was once processed into lamp oil and candles. In those days it was easy enough to find cheap labor—immigrants were recruited on Ellis Island, transported to Serene Harbor on a railroad spur that no longer existed, and quickly taught to manufacture metal casings and paint luminous dials.