Lovesick (36 page)

“I’m glad to see you two kids patched things up,” Belinda says.

“Patch what up?” I pretend, all shocked.

“Oh, I don’t know, maybe it was the toothpaste and deodorant in the pharmacy bathroom or the inner tube and blanket in Aisle Nine. I mastered deductive reasoning in eighth grade, Andy. Which reminds me!” Belinda says, snapping her fingers. “I have a wedding gift for you.”

She quietly slips back in the house with the cookies.

“You slept on the floor in the pharmacy?” Paige whispers, slapping me in the chest with the back of her hand. “You said you stayed on Manny’s couch.”

Thirty seconds later, the front door opens, but this time it’s Marylyn, a vivacious woman, with silky dark skin. For a woman who looks to be in her midthirties, it’s hard to believe she has a nineteen-year-old daughter. Marylyn holds open the screen door but doesn’t invite us inside, preferring to watch us twist in the wind.

“We’re so sorry,” I say immediately.

“Forgive us,” Paige pleads.

“Don’t be mad,” I add.

Arms crossed, Marylyn mulls over our pleas for clemency.

“I forgive you,” Belinda yells on behalf of her mother.

Marylyn purses her lips slightly.

“Thank you for the flowers and these cookies. It really wasn’t necessary. I realize that the two of you are under a lot of pressure and mistakes happen,” Belinda continues from inside the house. “By the way, did I mention how brilliant my daughter is? Sometimes I’m jealous of her because she gets to lead what appears to be a carefree life, and all I do is work. My therapist tells me that I’m apt to express this frustration in counterproductive ways, but enough about me. The two of you should come inside and cool down.”

Marylyn can barely contain a grin.

“Well, you heard me,” Marylyn says, stepping out of the way. “You’re just lucky I was so crazy about your mother,” she tells Paige, kissing her cheek.

Belinda, Paige, and I sit down at the large oak table in the dining room, and I eat the cookies we just gave them. Marylyn brews some iced coffee and adds some homemade cupcakes with vanilla frosting to the batch of sweets. Then she goes back in the kitchen. Cookie is supposed to drop by later this afternoon to sample some of Marylyn’s cooking in anticipation of the Brewsters’ sixtieth wedding anniversary. Paige and I may have lost the most talented, reasonable chef in all of Crockett, but we’re both relieved to hear that Marylyn has moved on.

“I don’t think I ever told you how much I enjoyed working for your father,” Belinda informs Paige, with uncharacteristic tenderness.

Paige thanks her.

Belinda twirls a white business envelope between her fingers as she speaks. “The Days have always taken care of me,” Belinda reminisces.

“I take care of you!” Marylyn reminds her daughter from the other room.

“Yeah, where were you Christmas ’96? Your ‘Latchkey Parent of the Year Award’ is the closet,” Belinda screams back.

“Like a steel trap, that girl’s memory,” Marylyn yells.

“I love your family,” Belinda continues. “Every Memorial Day your mother would set aside one of those Red Rocket candy rings for me. That bossy sister of yours always found the time to babysit me. And your dad was
always
looking out for me. He gave me a job. He suggested I get tested for anemia, and sure enough, I needed iron supplements. Then he provided me with health insurance when my mother’s business tanked.”

“I sold that business
for a profit,”
Marylyn insists from the other room.

Belinda rolls her eyes. Marylyn’s said this before. “To your dad.” Belinda raises her glass, and then hands me the business envelope she’s been playing with. I open it, and inside is a single sheet of paper containing a neatly typewritten double-spaced list. In the left column are a dozen names. Down the right side are figures ranging from $500 to $1,000.

“It adds up to about $7,000, give or take a thousand,” Belinda says. “I’ve already made all the phone calls. Each of them will pay.”

“Pay what?” Paige asks.

“What they owe you. Their outstanding tabs,” Belinda explains.

“But didn’t my sister already figure all this out?”

“Your sister based her calculations on existing paperwork—scripts filled, insurance forms filed, transactions recorded. When I started at Day’s two years ago, I used to write everything down, right down to the last gumball. But then Gregory started getting annoyed. He said I was being too nitpicky especially when all he wanted to do was give everything away. Every time one of his
‘special customers’ came up to the register, he’d wildly start waving me off.”

I nod my head. I know this wave all too well.

“So I
stopped …
but I
remembered,”
she says slyly. “Ruth Mulrooney that sweetheart, helped me figure out the difference between the ones too poor to pay and the ones taking their piss-poor time. One day, these folks would put mouthwash on their tab, and the next day it was a bottle of aspirin. It added up. I kept notes. The people on this list
easily
owe you ten times what I have written down there. They’ve always had the money and I have no doubt that many of them eventually planned on paying—they just needed a gentle reminder, which I was only happy to deliver,” she says with a smug look.

Paige and I are touched by the extravagant wedding gift. We both know that seven grand will really help right now, but it also doesn’t change much, either.

“Why didn’t you say something before?” I ask.

“No one asked me,” Belinda says flatly. “You and Lara seemed pretty confident you had it covered with all your computers, charts, graphs, arrows, and whatnot. There were a couple of times I almost said something, but then Lara would talk down to me. It was only after I overhead one of those drug store reps from one of the chains talking to Lara about buying the pharmacy that I realized how bad things had gotten. It would just break my heart to see Day’s close its doors.”

Paige stretches her hand across the table and places it on Belinda’s: “Amen, sister.”

Belinda smiles back warmly, and the three of us sit.

WE HAVE
one more delivery. Paige hands me the last of the ribbon-wrapped plates of cookies and our paths diverge. I head for Sid and Cookie’s house, and Paige checks our mailbox for wedding responses. If she gets her wish, there will be at least one more goddamn “accepts with pleasure” waiting to be retrieved.

The only thing more annoying than a yes at this point is a yes accompanied by some sort of cutesy personalized note: “Congrats!”

One guest wrote; “Can’t wait!” printed another; “How fun?” (We suspect the question mark was a mistake). Just once, can’t someone “decline with pleasure” or even “accept with regrets”?

I let myself inside Sid and Cookie’s, this time through the front door. Cookie is in the kitchen. I hand her the plate of treats. Before accepting them, she confirms that Paige made them and not me. Then she points toward the den.

Sid is in tan slacks and a Hawaiian shirt, hunched over his keyboard, hunting and pecking. He hits the Return key and the Web page slowly loads. The Brewsters can’t afford high-speed Internet access. As the words appear, Sid puts his nose right up against the large monitor so he can read.

“I can show you how to increase the text size on the browser,” I tell him.

“Already did that,” he says, not breaking his concentration.

“Have you tried changing the resolution of the screen?”

Sid looks at me. He hasn’t. He turns around and gives me a warm smile. Seeing him safely back home at his personal computer makes me so happy.

“Looky here,” he says, using a shaky finger to help him zero in on the relevant section of the screen.

Sid is surfing the California Department of Health Services Web site. He lifts up his shades and strains his eyes to read the tiny print.

“Says that if you’re eligible for Medi-Cal,” Sid explains, “then you’re not subject to the Medicare doughnut hole.”

This is news to me, but it makes sense that those on Medi-Cal have no gap in coverage. Medi-Cal is California’s version of Medicaid—health insurance for low-income households.

“I think a few folks on our list should qualify for Medi-Cal,” he concludes.

“They’ll qualify, but will they apply?” I ask him. Both of us know that many of them have too much pride to claim such benefits, including Sid.

Sid doesn’t respond, instead gracefully tabbing over to another site.

“The Medicare page on the Department of Health and Human Services is much better organized than this rotten California page,” he tells me, pulling up a blue chart. “See here, if you live in our zip code, you qualify for forty-eight different Medicare drug plans. Some of these premiums and deductibles are reasonable,” he says, rubbing his chin.

We look some more and notice that many insurance companies now offer Medicare plans with no gap in coverage—no doughnut holes.

“Ruth Mulrooney called over here to patch things up with Cookie,” Sid says. “Ruth mentioned that you’re giving up that fancy wedding hall of yours.” Sid spins his chair toward me and starts whispering. “My wife thinks you should just combine your wedding reception with our anniversary party. I think it’s a splendid idea. Think Paige would go for it?”

“I’m really not sure.”

“Our kids and grandkids are paying for everything. We checked with them and they’re fine with it. We’ve invited a hundred and fifty people. I imagine it includes most of the same folks on your wedding list and then some. Outside of Crockett, how many additional invites do you think you’d need?”

This is Paige’s big chance to invite the entire town of Crockett to our wedding. I think about the possible add-ons: “Twenty?”

Cookie is standing in the doorway. Sid checks this figure.

“Fine,” Cookie determines.

After a moment Cookie notices Paige sheepishly standing behind her.

“Just so you know,” Cookie informs Paige, “next month, you’re having your wedding reception with our sixtieth anniversary party at The Old Homestead.”

“Okay,” Paige says, barely audible.

“But you’ll have to go and buy your own cake,” she demands. “I want my cake, and every bride should have her own wedding cake.”

“Okay.”

That was easier than I thought.

Paige’s face has gone completely pale. She hands me a letter. It is from the Special Investigations Unit of Blue Cross of California. I read the first sentence aloud to the group:

Be advised that your noncompliance with Blue Cross’s internal investigation into claims involving the matter referenced above is now being referred to the Healthcare Fraud Division of the California Department of Insurance and federal authorities for possible civil and criminal penalties.

I DOUBLE-CHECK. The liabilities clause in the Rite Aid contract specifically requires us to disclose any “outstanding tax liens or loans, delinquent property taxes, previous judgments, or pending civil and criminal investigations or legal proceedings.” Those lawyers—they’re always thinking.

The offer to buy the pharmacy expires in three days.

For weeks now, Lara, Paige, and I have been consumed with the possible financial repercussions of failing to pay off all this debt, but bankruptcy pales in comparison to incarceration.

I still can’t believe she did it. Brianna McDonnell loved Gregory; she was as sweet as they come, and yet she narced. She’s a narcer. Maybe she was looking to move up in the company or she was getting too much pressure from her boss. Maybe she still held some pent-up resentment toward Cookie and the Aspercreme incident. I gave Brianna too few records. I gave her too many. Whatever it was, it was enough to turn us in.

Paige and I jump out of the Vomit Mobile like superheroes. Barfman and Hurl Girl. We charge inside the pharmacy. Lara is already behind the counter moving boxes. She’s dressed for a fancy
dinner, which ended abruptly the moment we informed her about the Blue Cross letter. Her hair is pulled back in a ponytail.

“There are about a dozen boxes we need to go through,” she instructs us. “I’ve made a pile for each of us. Andy, there were four months of printouts sitting next to my computer. What’d you do with them?”

“I gave them to Blue Cross,” I tell her and then consider seeking safety underneath the closest archway for fear of a magnitude 5.0 or higher.

But Lara shrugs it off. “Then I’ll start over,” she resolves quickly. “It’s going to take me a couple of hours to reprint each prescription.”

From Aisle Nine, I hear Paige let out a gentle sigh. She’s found my inner tube, blanket, and clock radio.

“I’ve compiled a list and made three copies,” she says, handing them out. “It includes every prescription the pharmacy’s filled and every insurance claim we’ve filed with Blue Cross over the last two years. Right now, the audit only covers six drugs. I’ve gone ahead and highlighted those six with different colors. We need to find the
original
doctor’s prescription for each and every highlighted item.”

I have to commend Lara on her organization and swift thinking.

“Take Conrad Callahan’s prescription on September 27. Dr. Platt prescribed him ninety pills of blood thinner,” Lara says, waving the original prescription. “Day’s Pharmacy provided Conrad Callahan with
exactly
ninety pills and filed an insurance form with Blue Cross for
exactly
ninety pills. If I’m not mistaken, Blue Cross shouldn’t be able to tell that half those pills were probably free samples. Wouldn’t you agree, Andy?”

This is Lara’s first acknowledgment of the Day Co-Pay Paige gives me a look that confirms they spoke. I nod in agreement.

“Good. I say we give Blue Cross copies of every prescription. So long as what the
doctor prescribed
matches what
we filled
and what
we filed
with Blue Cross, we should be golden,” Lara concludes.

Paige and I exchange looks of relief. This is a solid plan.

For the next six hours, Paige and I hunt for and make copies of the original prescriptions, checking off each highlighted item, one by one. When Lara finishes reprinting the electronic records, she pitches in on the boxes. Just after 2:00
A.M.
, without uttering a word, Paige lowers herself from her stool, gives us both an exaggerated yawn, shuffles to Aisle Nine, and collapses on my inner tube.