Chapter 5: Not a Laxative

Tillie's old college roommate ran a pharmacy on Eastern Avenue.

She locked the front door at eight and pulled the shade.

"Show me," she said.

I put the dish towel on the counter and unfolded it.

The empty bottle sat on the cloth, with its strip of masking tape across the front.

Beside it I set the single tablet, still in a twist of tissue.

The pharmacist turned on a lamp and looked at the tablet for a long time.

She did not touch it with her bare hands.

She slid on a pair of gloves and held it under a magnifying lens.

"Where did you get this?" she asked.

"It was in a bottle someone told me was laxatives."

"Who told you?"

"A woman I trusted."

Tillie stood behind me and put a hand on my back.

The pharmacist peeled the tape away from the bottle with a razor blade, very slowly.

Under it there was no label at all.

There was only a smear of old glue where one had been scraped off.

"Somebody took the real label off and taped over the spot," she said. "That's not a pharmacy habit. That's somebody who doesn't want it traced."

"And the tablet?"

She turned back to the lens, then went to a computer at the back and typed for a minute.

When she came back her face had changed.

"This is not a laxative," she said. "It isn't anything you can buy over a counter. I'm looking at the imprint, and I'd bet my license on what it is."

"What is it?"

"It's a drug that ends a pregnancy. A strong one. Doctors use it in very small, measured doses, in a clinic, with someone watching the patient."

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