Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick was perhaps more relieved than anyone April 19th when word came in that Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev had been captured. After all, Patrick had the unenviable task of protecting his citizens by shutting down the Boston area with a “shelter in place” order — an order president Barack Obama told him couldn’t be implemented indefinitely, and would be lifted after the door-to-door search in Watertown.
Patrick spoke to a Cambridge-based marketing firm, HubSpot, on Wednesday, and confessed that after hearing the good news, he retreated to his vacation home in Richmond — three hours west of Boston — where he spent a nice evening there doing what pretty much anyone else would do after breathing perhaps their biggest-ever sigh of relief: he got drunk.
“She starts bringing me things to drink as a celebration. And by the end of the meal, I was actually quite drunk, by myself,” Patrick said, according to the Boston Herald.
Unfortunately, thanks to the stress inflicted by the previous few days, Patrick forgot his wallet and couldn’t pay his bill on the spot, but he was escorted home by his standard state-provided driver (we know some professional athletes who could learn a lesson or two from the responsible governor). According to restaurant co-owner Maggie Merelle, the governor “definitely” squared his tab.