The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove

and art, among all men for all time; but if I transgress and forswear myself,may the opposite befall me."
    Does that mean dishonor for all time?she wondered. I'm just trying to do the right thing here.Finally.
    She made a note to call Winston back and schedule his appointments. four Estelle Boyet As September's promise wound down, a strange unrest came over the people of Pine Cove, due in no small part to the fact that many of them were going into withdrawal from their medications. It didn't happen all at once – the streets were not full of middle-class junkies rocking and sweating and begging for a fix – but slowly as the autumn days became shorter. And as far as they knew (because Val Riordan had called every one of them), they were experiencing the onset of a mild seasonal syndrome, sort of like spring fever. Call it autumn malaise.
    The nature of the medications kept the symptoms spread out over the next few weeks. Prozac and some of the older antidepressants took almost a month to leave the system, so those people slipped into the fray more slowly than those on Zoloft or Paxil or Wellbutrin, which was flushed from the system in only a day or two, leaving the deprived with symptoms resembling a low-grade flu, then a scattered disorientation akin to a temporary case of attention deficit disorder, and, in some, a rebound of depression that dropped on them like a smoky curtain.
    One of the first to feel the effects was Estelle Boyet, a local artist successful and semifamous for her seascapes and idealized paintings of Pine Cove shore life. Her prescription had run out a day before Dr.
    Val had replaced the supply with sugar pills, so she was already in the midst of withdrawal when she took the first dose of the placebo.
    Estelle was sixty, a stout, vital woman who wore brightly colored caftans and let her long gray hair fly around her shoulders as she moved through life with an energy and determination that inspired envy from women half her age. For thirty years she had been a teacher in the decaying and increasingly dangerousLos AngelesUnifiedSchool District, teaching eighth graders the difference between acrylics and oils, a brush and a pallet knife, Dali and Degas, and using her job and her marriage as a justification for never producing any art herself.
    She had married right out of art school: Joe Boyet, a promising young businessman, the only man she had ever loved and only the third she had ever slept with. When Joe had died eight years ago, she had nearly lost her mind. She tried to throw herself into her teaching, hoping that by inspiring the children she might find some reason to go on herself. In the face of the escalating violence in her school, she resigned herself to wearing a bulletproof vest under her artist smocks and even brought in some paintball guns to try to gain the pupils' interest but the latter only backfired into several incidents of drive-by abstract expressionism, and soon she received death threats for not allowing students to fashion crack pipes in ceramics class. Her students – children living in a hyperadult world where playground disputes were
    settled with 9mms – eventually drove her out of teaching. Estelle lost her last reason to go on. The school psychologist referred her to a psychiatrist, who put her on antidepressants and recommended immediate retirement and relocation.
    Estelle moved to Pine Cove, where she began to paint and where she fell under the wing of Dr.
    Valerie Riordan. No wonder then that Estelle's painting had taken a dark turn over the last few weeks.
    She painted the ocean.Every day.Waves and spray, rocks and serpentine strands of kelp on the beach, otters and seals and pelicans and gulls. Her canvases sold in the local galleries as fast as she could paint them. But lately the inner light at the heart of her waves, titanium white and aquamarine, had taken on a dark shadow. Every beach scene spoke of desolation and dead fish. She dreamed of leviathan shadows stalking her under the waves and she woke shivering and afraid. It was getting more difficult to get her paints and easel to the shore each day. The open ocean and the blank canvas were just too frightening.
    Joe is gone, she thought. I have no career and no friends and I produce nothing but kitschy seascapes as flat and soulless asa velvet Elvis. I'm afraid of everything.
    Val Riordan had called her, insisting that she come to a group therapy session for widows, but Estelle had said no. Instead, one