39. Failed Dreams

This is an excerpt from a quirky mystery novel I'm writing, "Eula May and the Flim Flam Nun".  I hope to have it ready for e-books by December 1. If you like this, please leave a comment.

I stopped in to our small, independent drugstore owned by old school friend, Orin Phillips, to pick up some calcium tablets laced with Vitamin D. I thought I might as well get a head start on preventing osteoporosis, although at 40 I was much too young. I had recently moved back to Karnak after living for 20 years—two decades, Oh my gosh that sounds so long—in Los Angeles. I was a 'tired' dancer. Not 'retired' just 'tired'.
       Orin greeted me with a big grin. “Welcome back, Judy. We missed you.”
       “Thanks Orin. I'm afraid some people in town are glad I failed to be a dancing star in Hollywood and had to come back home dragging my leotard behind me.”
      “You did pretty well for a while, there. I saw you on TV a couple of times.” “Yeah, I made it on to a few variety shows, but nothing lasted.”
      “Show business is really hard, but then it's hard to be a success in any field.” He looked sad.
       I didn't want to pry but I wondered what happened to him while I was away. “Did something crush your dreams?”
      Orin stared off into space. “I know what it’s like to want a better life. I did have a special dream one time, too. But it never panned out.”
     “Oh, Orin, did you want to go to Hollywood?” I asked, although I didn't exactly see him as a movie actor with his spiky red hair and face that turned red anytime a stranger asked him a question. 
     “No, nothing like that. I dreamed of discovering a pill that would take pounds off sensibly and safely and permanently. I was going to call them—Orin’s Life Savers. Because that’s what they would have been. But someone stole my formula and the world of the overweight is still struggling to lose pounds in unhealthy, dangerous, and temporary ways.
     “That’s so sad, Orin. Who stole it?” I never knew Orin was ambitious. I thought he was happy being a person everyone went to with questions.
     “It was one of those big pharmaceutical companies that make money from selling diet pills that don’t work, so people keep buying more and more of them. They sent a con man down here to talk me into giving it up. He said they would pay me for the rights to it. He took all my research papers. Later, when nothing else happened, I found it was all a lie. They just wanted to bury my great idea. And I had no proof of the hours I spent working on it and how successful it was.”
     “Oh, Orin, your discovery would have really been a major boon to all the people who want to lose weight.”
     “Well, I can’t do anything about it now. But that’s why I understood why you took off for Hollywood.”
    “Maybe it’s not too late, maybe you could still have your dream come true,” I tried to inspire him.
     He just shook his head and rang up my purchase. “No, it's best if I just do what I'm doing.”
     As I walked over to Jack Rockenbuck's office, I wondered if there was anything I could do to help Orin. Jack was another old friend who grew up to be an accountant. My taxes were a mess and I needed to talk to him about them.
    After Jack and I discussed what could be done to straighten up my problems with the IRS, I asked about Orin. I repeated the story Orin told me of how the big drug companies stole his effective weight loss formula. I concluded by saying, “Poor Orin, he was just trying to help people and he became a victim himself.”
      Jack’s eyes almost popped out of his head and he jumped out of his chair so fast it swirled around. “Victim!” he protested. “That’s a hot one.”
     “What do you mean? What really happened to his weight loss product?” 
      Jack pounded his fist on his desk, “That little druggist who looks like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth nearly killed everyone who took his pills. The FDA shut him down, as soon as the complaints started piling up. He sold the pills as a natural product, so it didn’t really come under the supervision of the FDA with all the necessary research and clinical trials, and so forth.     
      "But it turned out the pills contained a super dose of natural laxatives. And since the customers were told to take them several times a day, they were literally shitting their weight off. But they also were losing important nutrients upsetting their electrolyte balance.”
      I interrupted, “Please Jack, not a lecture. I don’t need to know the whole history of nutrition. Just tell me what happened to Orin.”
      He sputtered a bit, calmed himself and continued. “Orin pleaded innocent, said he had no idea people would be misusing them. Since the written directions didn’t say anything about taking more than one a day, no one pressed charges. I think his weight loss customers didn’t want anyone to find out how stupid they had been. Orin just made a substantial donation to help buy the new colonoscopy machine at the hospital with the stipulation that no publicity go out about the pills. He just stopped selling them.”
      I fell back on his client’s chair, sinking down into its depths. “Orin almost killed people.”
      “Yeah,” Jack agreed. “But the amazing thing about it, human nature being what it is, some people were upset he wouldn’t sell them any more pills. They were losing weight and they didn’t care if that put their health at risk.”
      Welcome back to Karnak, I thought. Land of failed dreams and failed common sense.
                                                      The End