Lovesick (10 page)

Gregory is in the corner inhaling his slice. Both of us have a decent alcohol-sugar buzz going. I can finally visualize my get-Gregory’s-blessing flowchart.
Okay, Andy, it’s time for Plan B: Mock Cookie. Then butter him up.

“Man, she sure loves cake,” I observe of Cookie.

Cookie seems to be competing in some sort of secret cake-eating contest.

“Who doesn’t?” Gregory says, polishing off his.

“No, but she
really
loves cake,” I say.

Cookie picks some crumbs from her lap and pops them in her mouth.

“How’s your mom feeling?” Gregory yells across the table to Manny.

Manny interprets this as
I love you. You’re an interesting person.

Manny’s mother, Margaret, suffers from Parkinson’s. Manny speaks quickly; he’s nervous that Gregory might lose interest at any moment.

Standing there like a schmuck, I eventually excuse myself for the gift giving.

In the living room, Sid is now on the floor next to the bad end table. He’s flipped it upside-down and is trying to distinguish between two different-sized wrenches. Annoyed, he waves off my help. Nearby, Belinda and Cleat have found a cozy spot on the floor and are huddled together so they can share one heaping portion of chocolate cake. As we gather around, Paige agrees to open my gift last.

Mildred and Beatrice have chipped in and bought Paige a crystal vase.

“That gift calls for a crocheted doily,” Lara goads.

“It would be my pleasure!” Mildred cries.

Paige politely squeezes Mildred’s hand.

Gregory and Manny rejoin the party and Manny reminds everyone that he gave Paige the teddy bear, as if anyone could forget. Gregory’s gift is the party. Belinda and Cleat bought Paige a massive aromatherapy candle and Paige insists on everyone smelling it. Cookie’s gift is next. The gift-wrapped lump contains a ghastly, hand-knit, light blue sweater. Mildred finds it stunning. Beatrice finds it stunning. When Cookie’s not looking, Sid slips Paige a savings bond.

As Paige unwraps each present, she expresses gratitude and remarks on the beauty of each gift, kissing each gift giver.

It’s Lara’s turn and she’s chock-full of gag gifts. A mug that says “Look Who’s 30!” An “Over the Hill” parking hangtag. Even a gaudy greeting card celebrating “The Big 3-Ow.”

“This next one’s from Andy,” Paige brags, reaching for the box.

“It’s a puppy!” she concludes, rattling the tightly wrapped gift.

Beatrice doesn’t think that’s funny at all.

I’ve wrapped Paige’s gift in a Nine West shoebox. Paige opens it and is thrilled to find a pair of strappy cream-colored high heels.

“I love them, but I think I have a
pair just like
these already,” she says, inspecting them.

“No, those
are
your shoes,” I tell her, “but I’ve redesigned them so they’re
adjustable.
Now you can change the height of the heels to fit any occasion.”

I dramatically present one of the shoes to the room like a card trick.

“You just pop this off,” I say, tucking the base under one armpit, wrestling to separate the heel. I’m perspiring. “And a different heel can snap into place. You see, different male parts slip smoothly into the female keyholes.”

The room is silent.

Gregory stopped listening a while ago. He’s back to his ball game.

“Genius,” Paige tells the room.

“It really is,” Beatrice agrees, confirming her decision is okay by Mildred.

I dump the remaining heels on the floor. There are three complete sets. I begin handing out the wooden blocks to partygoers. Sid studies his; Cookie and Gregory politely pass. I snap the five-inch set in place. Paige straps them on and I help steady her to
her feet. While Paige gingerly models the pair, parading around the room, I launch into the details of the design.

“The heels snap in and
away
from the toe to create a differential force in the opposite direction. With each step, Paige locks the heel more tightly in place.”

“I have a question,” Sid says, raising his hand.

“Yes, to your question, I do think we should PMP it,” I say, anticipating his next words.

“Actually, my query is more one of stability,” he says.

But before he can finish, Loki darts in front of Paige. Paige shifts her weight to get out of the way and one of the wooden heels snaps. There is a collective, audible gasp as we watch Paige tumble forward. In that split second, Gregory’s paternal instincts kick in. With all his might he punts the gigantic white teddy bear toward her. Paige and Teddy embrace in midair and the good end table breaks their fall. Once again, Cookie has a matching set.

“You have got to be kidding me,” Cookie hollers.

Her head buried in Teddy’s furry chest, I can hear Paige laughing hysterically. I run over to her.

“I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. Tell me you’re okay,” I beg, trying to get her to lift her head. “Say something,” I plead. I turn her face toward me and I privately realize that these are not tears of joy. She’s holding her ankle; it’s starting to swell. “Oh man, you’re hurt. Is it broken?” I whisper.

“Sprained,” she assures me.

I offer to bring her ice, but she wants to come with me to the kitchen.

“Just Andy,” she says, kindly fending off advances from everyone.

“I can’t believe you broke Cookie’s table,” Manny says with a shit-eating grin.

“Just as I suspected, the screw split the wood,” Sid says, inspecting the broken heel.

I throw Paige’s arm around my neck and we slowly limp off the field. In the freezer, Cookie and Sid are stocked to the gills with ice packs. Gently applying the cold compress to her bruised ankle, I keep my head down out of humiliation.

“I’m such a jerk. I ruined your party,” I mumble.

“Don’t flatter yourself,” she kids.

“How does that feel?”

“Cold. I don’t care about my foot.” Paige wipes away a tear. “The shoes are a beautiful gift, Andy. I’m upset because I’m old, be cause I feel ugly, and because I don’t know what I’m doing with my life.”

“A regular spinster,” I agree.

“You watch: I’m going to wind up being the Crazy Old Cat Woman of Nob Hill.”

“You don’t even like cats,” I remind her. “I thought you said thirty was the new twenty.”

“That’s a load. Twenty is the new twenty.”

I move the ice pack. Paige lets out a slight moan. I am on bended knee. It would be so easy to fix everything right now and propose.

“I haven’t given you your
real
gift yet,” I decide.

Igor Petrov’s ring may be stowed away in the floorboards of my apartment, but right now, it’s burning a hole through my pocket like kryptonite. I can’t wait two more weeks. I can’t wait two more seconds. I think back to Mac Daddy’s ILY chart and his recommendation on the perfect day of the week to spring the surprise.

“How is your availability this Wednesday?” I ask her.

“Uh, not great. I work. Day-side, I think.”

“I’m picking you up afterward and we’re going on a romantic escapade.”

“I dunno.”

“It’s too late. I’ve already made the reservation at an expensive B and B and it’s nonrefundable.” All lies. “We both have Thursday off. We’ll go up, sleep over Wednesday, and take our time coming home.”

She studies me thoughtfully.

“I guess,” she relents softly.

“Yippee. ‘You guess!’ That’s what I was shooting for.”

I’ve done it—I’ve initiated an irreversible launch sequence.

IF ONLY people still called them “apothecaries” or “chemists,” maybe I would have stuck it out in pharmacy school. Even “druggist” has a certain retro flare to it, though Gregory despises the moniker—says it feels too much like “drug dealer.”

Pharmacists generally get a bad rap. Doctors think we’re illiterate if we can’t read their writing. Patrons think we’re gouging them if we say insurance won’t pay. It really is appalling how people treat the world’s second-oldest profession. I’ll admit, for the better half of my life, I didn’t have a lot of respect for pharmacists, either. Count, pour, lick, and stick. Does it really take a rocket scientist to slap a label on a prepackaged tube of ointment?

But then I met Paige.

Back in high school, Paige compared her father’s work to that of a saint. She described a time, not so long ago, before the greedy insurance companies and parsimonious Medicare, before the insatiable pharmaceutical companies with their superprofits, when your small-town pharmacist was the local hero, and patrons were treated like family. That’s when folks
only
went to the doctor for one of the three B’s—bleeding, babies, and the big stuff—and the rest was reserved for someone like Gregory, the Mayor of Pomona Street, who happily dispensed medical advice from behind his mighty pharmacy bench.

Maybe it was my recollection of how Paige lovingly described Gregory’s work, or perhaps the job just reminded me of Paige, but the more I searched for the right career, the more I kept coming back to pharmacology. After a couple of moderately successful years of community college, I finally managed to gain admission to the UC-San Francisco pharmacy program. When it came time to find an internship, second semester, second year, I immediately
thought of Day’s Pharmacy. When I heard Paige had returned to Crockett, I made landing a job there my mission.

This was my chance to reunite with Paige plus see a real pharmacist in action, crushing pills daily mortar-and-pestle-style. I learned that Big Pharma produced the drugs and doctors prescribed them, but it took a gifted pharmacist to figure out how to deliver them to a patient’s bloodstream. Someone like Gregory—a devotee of a dying breed of medicine men known as compounding pharmacists.

The compounding pharmacist is a practitioner of a lost art, one dating back to medieval times when medicine was made from scratch. When Gregory entered the profession decades ago, he was still responsible for physically shaping most of the pills, filling the capsules, preparing the salves, and mixing the suspensions. Compounding isn’t even taught in pharmacy school or tested on the Boards anymore. Nowadays, most drugs come in standard forms, strengths, and dosages. When you go to chains like CVS, Rite Aid, or Walgreens, you’re basically stuck with whatever flavor the commercial drug maker is currently mass-producing.

But not at Day’s Pharmacy. And not with Gregory.

Gregory is old school. His customers are not beholden to any pharmacy chain or pharmaceutical company. The folks who come here keep coming in large part because they know that Gregory can tailor-make medication to their specific needs. Like a magician, he can extract dangerous dyes, remove unnecessary preservatives, and steer clear of additives that may cause allergic reactions. The man is an artist, always nurturing his craft. You can see it on his face: Gregory is most fulfilled in his work when he’s compounding.

Many of our elderly customers, about two-thirds of them women, have trouble with pills. For example, the Widow Riggs can’t take her arthritis tablets without her ulcer acting up, so Gregory pulverizes the pills and transforms them into a trans dermal gel that she can apply topically to her wrists and ankles. Former lightweight boxing champ Mickey “Bulldog” Bratton doesn’t have
the strength to swallow his cholesterol capsules, so Gregory mashes them up, mixing in syrup, and converts the whole suspension into a sweet cocktail. When the Rally sisters, Rhonda and Fay, kissed the same infectious man in a two-week span, Gregory concocted an antibiotic lip balm. Gregory compounded a nasal spray for Sally C’s bronchitis. Conrad Callahan, who used to play catcher on Gregory and Sid’s old softball team, insists on taking his pain medication in lozenge form. And Lucille Braggs, that spitfire, prefers a suppository to pills.

At the other end of the evolutionary continuum are the children. Thanks to a generous free supply of C & H sugar, Gregory is a regular candyman, routinely turning out lollipops, sugary drinks, and gummy cures.

“QUIET around here today,” Gregory says with a mix of relief and anxiety.

Gregory is unusually upbeat today. I think he’s still riding Monday’s high as grand marshal of the Memorial Day Parade. Crockett is about the only town left in the East Bay that still goes gangbusters for the holiday. The afternoon kicks off with an air show; people build elaborate floats; every generation from every arm of the military and every conflict since World War II marches; and bands from all over Contra Costa County perform their little hearts out.

This week is notoriously slow for business, Gregory reminds me again.

“All those lamebrains are freezing their asses off at the beach right now,” I say.

Gregory manages a grin. In the last two hours we’ve had six customers. I think Belinda is on her tenth magazine.

“By the way, I stuffed a half-dozen candy rings under the register. Extras. Feel free to distribute them to worthy recipients,” he says generously.

Alas, I already know about the rings and I’ve already found at least one worthy recipient: Gregory had chili at Langley’s for lunch and I had two Red Rockets.

“These need to cool,” Gregory warns me as he carefully sets down a tin of confection masterpieces.