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After the harrowing week between twin explosions at the Boston Marathon and the tense manhunt that followed, Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick needed a stiff drink. In a candid conversation with employees at Hubspot, a Cambridge-based marketing firm, Patrick talked about what it was like to live through -- and be in charge of -- one of the most difficult moments in recent Boston memory.
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The state and city governments made the tough decision to put the whole city on lockdown Thursday, April 19, a controversial and unprecedented move Patrick admitted could have turned out badly if they hadn't successfully captured bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
"Look, the reason why it worked out in the end is because we found him," Patrick said. "If we didn't find him then the people would be bitching and moaning about how we kept them indoors all day."
Patrick also spoke about how, that afternoon, he tried to sneak in a nap at the State House, only to be interrupted by a phone call from President Obama.
"The phone rang: It was the president. 'Deval, I’m briefed,'" the president told him. "'What are you going to do about the city? You can’t keep it locked down indefinitely.'"
Patrick recounted how he told Obama they would lift the lockdown if they hadn't managed to find Tsarnaev after the door-to-door check in Watertown. Of course that's exactly what happened: Once the lockdown was lifted, a Watertown resident noticed blood in his backyard and spotted Tsarnaev camped out in his boat.
One the whole thing was over, Patrick went out to the Berkshire Mountains in western Massachusetts to decompress.
He went for a swim, he said, and then to a local restaurant, Rouge, a bistro in West Stockbridge.
"I sat in the corner and Maggie, who runs the (restaurant), asked, ‘Do you want to be near people or away from people?’ I said, ‘As far away as I can,’" he recalled. "So she put in the corner, me and my book on my iPad, and she starts bringing me things."
"She starts bringing me things to drink as a celebration," he said. "And by the end of the meal, I was actually quite drunk, by myself.”
The governor admitted he also forgot to bring his wallet, and left with out paying the bill.
"I called her over, and I said to Maggie: ‘I really appreciate it. I’m very relaxed.’ And I also have no money. Can I bring it down tomorrow or something?’ " he recalled.
Maggie Merelle, co-owner of Rouge, told the Boston Herald that, not only did he come back later to square his tab, she had no idea he'd had too much to drink.
"He wasn't tipsy," she said. "I never would have known."
Merelle recalled the governor ate duck confit, french fries, soup, salad and "a glass of chardonnay or two."
"We just wanted to nourish him," she said.
