I Will Find You(57)

“Thanks.”

“There’s one other thing,” Rachel says when I finish.

I wait.

“Cheryl visited me last night.”

I can feel the tightness in my chest. “How did that go?”

“I showed her the photo. She thinks we are both delusional.”

“Hard to argue.”

“She also said that my personal issues could be interfering with my judgment.”

“Those being?”

“I’m going to forward you some links, David. Read them. It’s easier than trying to explain.”

*



Rachel texts me links to three different articles on her proposed me-too article and the subsequent suicide of a young woman named Catherine Tullo. I settle back and read all three. I try to study the situation objectively, as though it does not involve a person I adore as much as Rachel.

But it’s hard to be objective for a lot of reasons.

I have questions for Rachel, but they can keep.

I lay back and close my eyes until I hear the call for North Station in Boston. I look out the window as we pull up to the platform, fearing a huge police presence. There are scattered cops, which is normal, I guess, but they don’t look particularly wary. That doesn’t mean much, but it’s better than seeing a hundred with guns drawn. I head out of the station and into my home city. I can’t help but smile. I head down Causeway Street and hit the Boston-ubiquitous Dunkin’ on the corner of Lancaster Street. I grab half a dozen donuts—two French crullers, two chocolate glazed, one toasted coconut, one old-fashioned—and a large cup of unflavored black coffee because I hate flavored coffee, especially from Dunkin’.

I head down Lancaster Avenue with the Dunkin’ bag in my hand. I’m still wearing the surgical mask, but eventually I will risk that to eat the French cruller. My mouth is watering at the thought. Fifteen minutes later, I’m at the Bowdoin Street subway and on the Blue Line heading toward Revere Beach. I try to flash back to past times when I made this journey in my youth. We had a group of guys back then, all of us in the same class at Revere High. I was closest to Adam Mackenzie, but we had TJ, Billy Simpson, and the man I was on my way to visit, Eddie Grilton.

Eddie’s family owned the pharmacy at Centennial Avenue and North Shore Road, a stone’s throw from Revere Beach station. His grandfather started the place. Everyone I know got their prescriptions filled there, and way back when, first Eddie’s grandfather and then his father ran numbers and books for the Fisher crime family.

The small parking lot behind the pharmacy was completely isolated from the street. Back in the day, it was our main hangout. We drank beers and smoked weed. Of course, that was a long time ago. The crew was mostly gone now. TJ was a physician in Newton. Billy opened a bar in Miami. But Eddie, who had wanted out of this town more than any of us, who hated his grandfather’s life and his father’s life and the teen years he’d been forced to work in the pharmacy too, was still here. He'd ended up going to pharmacology school, just like his old man wanted. After he graduated, he worked that high counter until the old man, like the grandfather before him, keeled over and died of a heart attack. Now Eddie ran the place and waited his turn to keel over.

When I get off at Revere Beach station, I grow wary again, not just because of the possible police presence but because this is my old neighborhood and if anyplace will see through my disguises, it’s here. I am within a thousand feet of my childhood home, the Mackenzie home, Sal’s Pizzeria, Grilton Pharmacy, all of it.

Grilton Pharmacy looks slightly worse for wear, but it had been slowly deteriorating for as long as I can remember. The watered-down brick was barely red anymore. The neon sign above the store was rusting on the edges. When it was turned on, the letters spasmed illumination. I keep my head lowered and move down the alleyway toward our old hangout in the back. There was one parking space. I remember Eddie’s dad always kept his Cadillac back there. It meant something to Eddie’s dad, that car, and he kept it perfectly waxed at all times. Now Eddie kept his Cadillac ATS in the same spot. Things change and yet everything stays the same.

I get deep when I’m tired.

I huddle behind a garbage dumpster. The coffee is still hot. That’s Dunkin’ for you. I inhale a French cruller and slow down midway through the coconut. Prison has its share of abuses, but I guess I’d overlooked the inherent cruelty brought upon my taste buds. I’m giddy from the flavor or the sugar high. Or maybe it’s experiencing freedom. It is so easy to shut down in prison, to make yourself numb, to not let yourself feel or experience anything remotely connected to pleasure. It helps really. It kept me alive. But now I’ve been forced out of that protective shell, now that I’ve let myself think about Matthew and the possibility of redemption, all the “feels” are rushing in.

I check the time. No one uses this back entrance. I know this from the decades we gathered here. It won’t be much longer, I think, and sure enough, the back door opens and Eddie steps out, an unlit cigarette dangling from his lips. He has the lighter in his hand and the moment the glass door closes behind him, he hits the flame and puts it up to the end of the cigarette. His eyes shut on the deep inhale.

Eddie looks older. He’s skinny and stooped with a paunch. His once-coarse hair is fading now, leaving him somewhere between receding and bald. He has a pencil-thin mustache and sunken eyes. I don’t exactly know how to handle this, so I step into view.