CCLaP Journal #5

Harvey and Stella for two years when they were all in school together.

Though he hadn’t seen Reid, who the article said now lived in Connecticut, in over a decade, Harvey was thrilled by the growing demand for ExCella—not only because Harvey had lived with its creator, but because for all Harvey knew, maybe something Harvey had said during those two years, some hypothetical or idea he posed, or theory he tested in Reid’s presence, stuck to the back of Reid Redford’s mind and, ten years later, birthed ExCella. It certainly was possible.

Having prepared the prescription, Harvey stopped in front of the article and viewed the portrait. The photograph featured Reid peering courageously into an offcamera horizon. Though Harvey noticed some graying in Reid’s temples, he had to admit that the man looked like some kind of pharmaceutical superhero. Beneath the portrait, a caption echoed Harvey’s own thought: “Now the world wonders, what will Dr. Reid Redford do next?”

Harvey looked at the window, where the boy was looking at him and his cheeks flushed. “I,” he fumbled, “I lived with him for a few years. The creator of your pill, that is. The man’s a genius. But he was always very happy and very funny, too.” Harvey could tell this wasn’t making an impact on the boy. He walked to the counter.

“Anyway,” Harvey said, “This ExCella is supposed to be revolutionary. I’ve even started taking it myself.”

Garrisoned by gate and guard, this was a street where residency brought with it a certain handful of intangibles. In fact, to call this a street was actually incorrect, a faux pas; this was a drive, lined with stately, seven-figure brick homes built in classic American styles, each a mansion posing for its own Rockwell. The gate at the top of the drive kept the outside world at bay, while high fences between properties fortified one’s castle against even neighbors, the fortress-like walls of the mansions themselves a double layer. The drive boasted a long pedigree of senators, of newspaper publishers and rail magnates, of university presidents and, more recently, financiers. These names never adorned the mailboxes, as family names might in other neighborhoods; only the addresses were written there, the numbers spelled out in cursive script.

The lawns were manicured weekly by a corps of men and mowers, one of the actually tangible benefits of residency here, unlike the status and privacy, which hung mistily over the drive. And this particular lawn service was the only thing that stopped the lawn at Twelve Delaware from growing into a mass of tangled reeds.

Twelve Delaware was an American Colonial of red brick and white pillar, crowned with delicate cornices, a semicircular drive unfurling before it. Its symmetry, however, was upset by an addition constructed by the current owner, which, built with bricks a few shades lighter than the rest of the house, grew tumorously from the eastern wing of the mansion.

The house was quiet. Piles of mail sat neglected on a table inside the front door, and, as their structures lost integrity, spawned smaller piles on the ground around the table. Science periodicals and magazines never leafed-through; love letters from pharmaceutical companies that gushed over the recipient’s past work and reminded him to keep them in mind for the future; all collected dust. Of the mail, only the lucrative royalty checks ever escaped their envelopes. The private lab, one of the many luxuries afforded in the mansion, was still as pristine and unspoiled as the day that addition was completed. The light switch there remained un-flicked.

The many diversions found in the house did not divert. A table in the basement was lined to suggest ping-pong but its surface was covered with enough fuzz to warrant March 2014 | 181