oh, say, some really high-end sex toys delivered at a sanctimonious holy-roller church to the holier-than-thou preacher. As a thank-you gift for marital counseling from”—she hesitated for a moment—“some tight-ass lady who sings soprano in the choir. Labeled
Adam laughed so hard that he choked at that one. “Let’s not forget the Internet,” he said, “and everybody’s best friend, Photoshop. Start with a cold cybertrail that dead-ends in Eastern Slobbovia, and you could put together websites that would cause lots of problems for people. Eternal problems, since of course the Internet is forever. Blogs full of intimate revelations and confessions. Political stuff that’s the polar opposite of what the person really believes. Horrible financial information offered as ‘insider tips’ from somebody who ought to know better and will definitely get in trouble with the SEC for it.”
That got accountant Kenny’s attention. “If you were willing to take your time about it and make a nonrefundable financial investment,” he said slowly, “there are all kinds of ways you can cause trouble for somebody down the road. Get enough personal information to set up dummy accounts that would appear to be direct conflicts of interest, for instance. It would be a little complex and require a bit of research, naturally.”
“But for somebody with your skill set,” Molly noted, “no particular problem.”
“I hate to think I’m becoming a cliche,” Molly said at one point, “but I believe this is giving me reason to live.”
It was all terribly hypothetical, of course. But since it
The woman who got the huge bonus from Western Health because she had cancelled coverage for the most insureds who had “lied” on their applications. The cancellations usually occurred right when the customers most needed assistance, and the purported lies often involved a forgotten yeast infection or ingrown toenail.
The health care executives who tried to enlist the aid of doctors in ferreting out similar application omissions so they could cancel coverage. Proactivity 101: Watch the Hippocratic Oath Circle the Drain. We were willing to bet that idea was a nonstarter, though, most doctors being unable to handle the paperwork they were already supposed to produce.
The bozos in San Diego County—elected officials for the most part—who managed to keep medical marijuana unavailable to those entitled to receive it for fifteen
But then Katherine pointed out that those San Diego obstructionists also had support from the feds. So we rolled in everybody else attached to this mean-spirited daisy chain—a wretched and misguided mishmash of government lawyers, elected officials, antidrug zealots with personal agendas, and the horses they rode in on.
And some Objects of Attention were more personal.
Like the employer who laid off Sheryl Masterson in a way that she lost her medical benefits through some cockeyed application of the law which maybe wasn’t even legal. This was a long time ago, when I was in high school, and Sheryl was a good friend of my mother’s. She lost her job and her insurance and her husband was already long gone. So she toughed it out through increasingly serious symptoms until by the time she finally saw a doctor, her ovarian cancer had cobwebbed throughout her entire abdomen.
Sheryl died rather quickly after her diagnosis, in terrible pain. I wished I knew the names of the doctors who refused to give her enough morphine for fear that she’d become addicted, so I could add them to the OoA list. Her former employer, who advertised his carpet cleaning service county-wide, would be easy enough to find.
On a more immediate and prosaic note, Katherine nominated a jerk at her pharmacy who bellowed information about her prescriptions and possible unsavory side effects to her entire zip code, even as she begged him to stop.
Making these lists was like eating M&Ms, or chips and salsa. Satisfying, simple, and tough to stop.
“Do you think,” Molly inquired mildly when we were together again a week later, “that perhaps we’ve taken this far enough?”
When we had all arrived earlier and settled around the fire ring on her patio, Molly pulled out and fiddled with her iPod. Moments later John Lennon warned from speakers hanging in nearby trees that instant karma was gonna get us, putting one and all in a relatively jolly mood. For once everyone was present and even feeling reasonably good.
At least until a group discussion of execution methods devolved to a detailed description of the Torture Museum up at Medieval Times in Orange County, a place that so creeped me out in seventh grade I couldn’t sleep for a week. Torture unto death was what Molly referred to with her question about boundaries.
“You mean you’re not gonna let us kill all these people, counselor?” Kenny asked.
“Afraid not,” she answered.
Adam grinned. “Then can we just mess them up a bit?”
Three days later, Katherine had a bad reaction to a new drug and died.
Her funeral was every bit as horrible as you’d expect, with sobbing third-graders whose parents should have known better and shocked cronies of her parents and her grandmother who kept wailing, “It should have been me,” until pretty much everyone agreed.
Molly went into a funk and stopped even going to the support group for a couple of weeks. She didn’t want me to take her anywhere, thank you very much, and said that she didn’t need anything and would be in touch if she did, as if I were some annoying telemarketer.
I pretended not to be terribly hurt and went about my business, working long hours and trying to remember the old Molly I knew in high school, the one whose bikini was always the sexiest, whose laugh the most infectious, whose mind the keenest. The brilliant girl whose vibrant energy made it clear that she was going to live forever.
Big. Fat. Lie.
I don’t want you to think that I was unfeeling back then, that what’s happening to me now is my own karmic payback for being too blase or smart-ass around four people whose lives were slipping away by the minute. I gave
