Pandora by Holly Hollander

and Elaine’s got it out there on the platform with her, you’re a lot crazier than your friend the judge and my Uncle Herbert put together. To get it to come out even, I’d have to throw in Daffy Duck.”

Blue got mad. “Of course there was a real Pandora’s Box. And of course your mother has it there on the platform with her, just as we’ve got it in here, with us.” Before I could jerk my head away, he tapped my temple with the knuckles of his free hand. “It’s the part of the human brain that’s suppressed in the interests of society. You just mentioned your uncle, and yesterday you telephoned to ask me about him. He killed Alice Nyman Hollander because Pandora’s Box had been opened, if you like. Didn’t I tell you Pandora was also a part of the target?”

“I’m starting to think you really are crazy. You get hold of some old story—”

Blue raised his hand to stop me. “Is that old sunshine out there? That sun’s been beating down on some part of this planet from the beginning. In this school they no doubt teach you that the difference between myth and history is that history concerns past events and myth events that never were—provided that they condescend to mention either. But the real difference is that the events that make up history are over and done with, while myth continues, circling our earth forever, like the chariot of Helios.”

Elaine’s voice crackled from the loudspeakers again: “Five hundred and ninety-six. Is number five hundred and ninety-six here? You have to be present to win.”

Some people in the crowd outside took it up, yelling, “Five ninety-six!” Feeling in some dumb way that I was in a position of responsibility because Uncle Dee had handed me a cash box, I announced, “Five ninety-six,” to the assembled browsers. “Are any of you five hundred and ninety-six? If you are, you’ve won Pandora’s Box.”

A middle-aged guy in a Hawaiian sport shirt looked around. “That’s me!”

He scooted toward the stairs, and I went over to the window and stuck my head out. “He’s coming!” I yelled at Elaine. “The winner’s on his way!”

“How about that,” one of the other browsers said. “He was right in here with us.” He had a whole stack of books, and I pushed the prices into the little calculator that went with the job and gave him a shopping bag for them. “Got to wait on cash customers,” I told Blue. “Sorry, Professor.”

He chuckled. “I hope you realize what a customer you lost. That was mankind. He just heard his cue, and dashed on stage to speak his lines in the five hundredth—or five hundred millionth—performance of a drama that was ancient already when some wise Greek provided it with a name.”

Looking out the window, I could see the man in the Hawaiian shirt pushing through the crowd around the platform, holding his ticket over his head. I asked, “Do you really believe something bad’s about to happen, Mr. Blue?”

He shook his head. “I don’t think so. I think that I’ve been carrying on like an old woman. But I’m afraid something may, just the same—so often the old women are right. I don’t suppose you know where your mother acquired that box?”

“She bought it down in Chicago someplace.”

“Was there a price tag on it when you first saw it?”

“Not that I remember. What difference does it make?”

“None, I suppose. But I can tell you why I’m worried. Do you know much about the century before our own, Holly?”

“Sure, how much do you want? Abe Lincoln, the Civil War, the only good Injun’s a dead Injun, Jesse James, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Remember the Maine … .”

Larry was on the platform now holding a black leather case of lock tools. Somebody had taken the wire drum and the little girl down, but even so there was barely room for him and the man in the Hawaiian shirt, and Pandora’s Box on its stand; Elaine was starting down the rickety steps, with Larry holding one hand to help her keep her balance.

“All right,” Blue said, “that’s enough, and I think you’ve made my point for me. It was a rough hundred years. We haven’t—thank God—had a war on American soil in this century, but the Civil War was fought across half the continent. The west was lawless, and the east criminal. Indians killed whites and were killed themselves where you and I are standing now.”

Out on the platform, Larry was on his knees in front of the box, monkeying with the lock.

“It was a rough era,” Blue said again, “and if those people built a solid, clearly expensive chest and wrote Pandora on the lid, I wouldn’t advise anyone to open it—and particularly not at the urging of a woman—unless he was quite confident he knew what was inside.”

I guess the explosion knocked me off my feet, but really I don’t remember it. I was talking with Blue, and I heard a ringing, just for a moment, like a phone or maybe an oldfashioned alarm clock. Then I was underneath a table, with books scattered all around me on the floor and my blood ruining them.

How I Had Breakfast in Bed and Received Visitors

Somehow I rolled out from under the table and got up. Maybe it was quiet—I don’t know. My ears were ringing so bad I couldn’t have heard a garage band from the front row.

I stared at the wall, because some way I’d gotten the idea it had been blown down. It hadn’t, and if it had I don’t think I’d have been standing there; but at the moment it seemed like a miracle to see it where it had always been.

I was all alone there in the chem lab, with so many books and so much broken glass and stinking chemicals all around that I could hardly walk. I don’t suppose I would have balanced very good even if the floor had been clean. I was wearing my boots, and I could feel blood sloshing in the right one.

Just about when I got to the door, people started screaming—or maybe it was only that my ears had quieted down to where I could hear them.

Outside was a mess. Nobody had gotten there yet—no fire trucks, no ambulances, no cops. There were people all over the ground—I thought a hundred of them were dead