The Bitterest Pill

Fifty-seven

Jesse had learned over the last several months that AA meetings were for self-maintenance as well as for the crises. Of course, when you were close to falling off the wagon, meetings were crucial. The thing was, since you could never be sure of what would set you off to want to drink again, you couldn’t let yourself get lulled into going to meetings only when the thirst hit. The meetings weren’t a Band-Aid to apply when the bleeding started. As Jesse had witnessed, it was often too late. How many stories of regret and guilt had he listened to from people who’d gotten complacent, returning to meetings only after they had fallen down and taken the dive back into the bottle? He wasn’t judging them. Who was he to judge? But he took their backsliding seriously.

As he drove from Salem over to Maryglenn’s he called in to the station to check with Suit to see if the kid’s autopsy results were in or if there had been any developments.

“Nothing yet, Jesse,” Suit said. “Molly told me to have the guys keep an eye on the Walterses’ house. It’s quiet.”

“Good. Listen, Suit, unless it’s an emergency, I’d like a few hours of peace.”

“I got you, Jesse.”

He parked around the corner from Maryglenn’s as he always did and took the slow walk down Newton Alley. This time he wasn’t so much haunted by the events of months past as he was by what seemed to be happening to his town at the moment. He had had experience with drug scourges in the past. First there was the wave of cocaine that had crashed over L.A. like high-tide waves during a nor’easter. Worse was the crack epidemic. Cheap and dirty, it was a drug of the poor. People already suffering at the bottom end of things had their lives and the lives of their families destroyed by little vials of rock. But it was more than that. It was the associated crime and violence that came with the epidemic that Jesse had been forced to deal with, first in uniform and then as a detective.

This thing with opioids had the same feel about it, like the heat coming at you from a fast-spreading wildfire. What disgusted Jesse most of all about these drug scourges was the complicity of the people at the top of the food chain. The same people who had lit the fire, the big pharma companies, their stockholders, doctors, drugstores, were now screaming for everyone else to put it out. He knew that the fire would claim many more victims before it would come under control. It was always the way.

As Jesse reached the door to the warehouse and Maryglenn’s loft apartment, his cell buzzed. He saw that the call was from Molly and let it go to voicemail. If it was an emergency, she would get in touch with Suit and Suit would get in touch with him. Anything else would hold until morning.

“Hello, Jesse,” Maryglenn said as she came to open the door.

She stepped out, closing the door behind her. She was not dressed in her usual black-on-black, paint-speckled uniform. Instead she wore a long peasant skirt of several shades of red, a white satiny blouse, and a red bolero jacket. As was always his reaction to her, Jesse thought how different she was from the women he was usually drawn to. Her looks, her dress, so different from Kayla, Jenn, and Diana. Although he loved how they had been so careful about their appearance and dress, he admired Maryglenn for her unique sense of style and for not letting her self-image be so bound up in those other things.

“The Gull,” she said, grabbing his arm and looping hers through his elbow. “Dinner is on me. I insist.” Noticing his expression, she asked, “What is it?”

He didn’t quite know how to explain it so that it wouldn’t sound insulting to her, so he punted. “Nothing.”

She didn’t believe him, but that was okay.

They sat at a table at the rear of the Gull, one that afforded them a view of the marina, the ocean, and Stiles Island. He had sat at this table many times since his arrival in Paradise. The Gull had once been his go-to place, but in recent years the quality of the food had tailed off and it had pleased Jesse to do more of his drinking alone at his old house at the edge of town. Now he no longer drank at all and his house had been sold.

“What is it, Jesse?” Maryglenn asked again, as she noticed him gazing out the glass.

But this time, Jesse had something to say and it wasn’t about Maryglenn’s looks or her choice of restaurant.

“I couldn’t help but notice the... I don’t know, vibe, I guess, between you and Daisy. Even my son noticed it. Cole said he thought Daisy seemed jealous of me. I thought he was wrong, but now I’m not so sure.”

Maryglenn squirmed a little in her chair but didn’t turn away. “Did you ask Daisy about it?”

“Uh-huh.”

“And?”

“She asked me if I’d heard of Swingline Sue’s.”

“Had you?”

Jesse said, “I have now. Google is magical.”

“Do you have questions you want to ask?”

“No. But I would still like to know what it is with you two. Daisy’s been a friend and ally for a long time, and we’re... we’re something to each other. I don’t want that to change.”

She held her lips tightly together as she thought. Then said, “I don’t usually feel like I need to explain myself.”

“That’s fair. I don’t, either.”

“At art school, all of us used to go out partying together, dancing. No offense, but straight places suck for dancing. That hasn’t changed since I got out of school. So when I feel like dancing, I head up to Tipton. One night I was there with an old girlfriend from school and Daisy asked me to dance. I didn’t know who she was then. I danced with her. But when she kissed me, I backed her off by telling her I was already with my girlfriend. So you can imagine that she probably doesn’t think too highly of me with the man in town she’s closest to.”

Jesse laughed, shaking his head. “Daisy’s a pit bull to begin with. You sure pushed her buttons.”

Between courses, he explained about why he and his cops had done what they did at the high school.

“I know we don’t agree about some things, but I can’t let it stop me from doing my job the way I feel I need to do it. We can argue about drugs like marijuana. My bet, it will be legal in this state in a few years. But opioids are a plague and it’s not right.”

Maryglenn didn’t push back. What she did was pay the bill, grab Jesse by the hand, and make sure to have him speed back to her bed.