The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove - By Christopher Moore Page 0,11

rocking-chair-wise, country lawyer against their Botany 500 sophistication and pulled down over two hundred grand a year in the bargain. He lived with one of his clerks, an earnest doe-eyed Stanfordite with surfer girl hair and a figure that mocked gravity. Richard had introduced Val to the girl (Ashley, or Brie, or Jordan) and it had been oh-so-adult and oh-so-gracious and later, when Val called Richard to clear up a tax matter, she asked, "So how'd you screen the candidates, Richard? First one to suck-start your Lexus?"

"Maybe we should start thinking about making our separation official," Richard had said.

Val had hung up on him. If she couldn't have a happy marriage, she'd have everything else. Everything. And so had begun her revolving door policy of hustling appointments, prescribing the appropriate meds, and shopping for clothes and antiques.

Hippocrates glowered at her from the desk.

"I didn't intentionally do harm," Val said. "Not intentionally, you old buggerer. Fifteen percent of all depressives commit suicide, treated or not."

"Whatsoever in the course of practice I see or hear (or even outside my practice in social intercourse) that ought never to be published abroad, I will not divulge, but consider such things to be holy secrets."

"Holy secrets or do no harm?" Val asked, envisioning the hanging body of Bess Leander with a shudder. "Which is it?" Hippocrates sat on his Post-its, saying nothing. Was Bess Leander's death her fault? If she had talked to Bess instead of put her on antidepressants, would that have saved her? It was possible, and it was also possible that if she kept to her policy of a "pill for every problem," someone else was going to die. She couldn't risk it. If using talk therapy instead of drugs could save one life, it was worth a try.

Val grabbed the phone and hit the speed dial button that connected her to the town's only pharmacy, Pine Cove Drug and Gift.

One of the clerks answered. Val asked to speak to Winston Krauss, the pharmacist. Winston was one of her patients. He was fifty-three, unmarried, and eighty pounds overweight. His holy secret, which he shared with Val during a session, was that he had an unnatural sexual fascination with marine mammals, dolphins in particular. He'd confessed that he'd never been able to watch "Flipper" without getting an erection and that he'd watched so many Jacques Cousteau specials that a French accent made him break into a sweat. He kept an anatomically correct inflatable porpoise, which he violated nightly in his bathtub. Val had cured him of wearing a scuba mask and snorkel around the house, so gradually the red gasket ring around his face had cleared up, but he still did the dolphin nightly and confessed it to her once a month.

"Winston, Val Riordan here. I need a favor."

"Sure, Dr. Val, you need me to deliver something to Molly? I heard she went off in the Slug this morning." Gossip surpassed the speed of light in Pine Cove.

"No, Winston, you know that company that carries all the look-alike placebos? We used them in college. I need you to order look-alikes for all the antidepressants I prescribe: Prozac, Zoloft, Serzone, Effexor, the whole bunch, all the dosages. Order in quantity."

"I don't get it, Val, what for?"

Val cleared her throat. "I want you to fill all of my prescriptions with the placebos."

"You're kidding."

"I'm not kidding, Winston. As of today, I don't want a single one of my patients getting the real thing. Not one."

"Are you doing some sort of experiment? Control group or something?"

"Something like that."

"And you want me to charge them the normal price?"

"Of course. Our usual arrangement." Val got a twenty percent kickback from the pharmacy. She was going to be working a lot harder, she deserved to get paid.

Winston paused. She could hear him going through the glass door into the back of the pharmacy. Finally he said, "I can't do that, Val. That's unethical. I could lose my license, go to jail."

Val had really hoped it wouldn't come to this. "Winston, you'll do it. You'll do it or the Pine Cove Gazette will run a front-page story about you being a fish-fucker."

"That's illegal. You can't divulge something I told you in therapy."

"Quit telling me what's illegal, Winston. I'm married to a lawyer."

"I'd really rather not do this, Val. Can't you send them down to the Thrifty Mart in San Junipero? I could say that I can't get the pills anymore."

"That wouldn't work, would it, Winston? The people at the Thrifty Mart