Pandora by Holly Hollander

Blue had reeled off about Pandora before the explosion.

“Okay,” I said, “you got me. Or anyway you got him because I shot off my mouth. But do you think he’d be dumb enough to go around talking like that if there was a bomb and he planted it?”

Straight-faced again, he said, “I don’t know. Would he?”

“Heck, no. Listen, nobody’s ever told me—is my mother all right? Elaine Hollander?”

He studied his clipboard. “She must be. She’s not on the injured list.”

“And she’s not dead?”

He shook his head. “So far the only identified fatalities are Drexel K. Munroe and Lawrence L. Lief.”

“So far?”

He looked grim, like it might actually be getting to him a little. “A lot of the injured are hurt worse than you are, Miss Hollander.”

“I’m hip.”

Just then the nurse came in with my breakfast tray: coffee, vitamin, fake orange juice, small bowl of oatmeal, tablespoon of cold scrambled eggs, and half a slice of toast. Whoopee. “I’ll let you eat now,” Ritter told me. “Somebody will come by to see you again later.”

“Don’t be a party pooper. Stay and join me.”

It was too late—he was halfway to the door. The truth was I had a lot more questions to ask him; I think he must have seen them coming, and that was why he beat it. I decided next time I’d ask questions first, and if I didn’t get answers I wouldn’t give any.

And by golly I stuck to it, too. Next time turned out to be some kind of plainclothes detective—I never got it straight where he was from, maybe Illinois Bureau of Investigation, which is a ripoff of the FBI, exactly like it sounds. He wasn’t giving any info and wasn’t getting any info, and pretty soon he went away.

Lunch was peachy keen—a li’l square of broiled fish, the cutest tiny paper cup of tartar sauce, some boiled carrots, two slices of white bread, a pat of margarine, and a glass of milk. I could have cried.

After lunch came proof positive that Elaine Hollander, also known as Mommy and my Aunt Elaine, had come through with flying colors, plus talking a blue streak. “My darling, my poor little darling, you’re conscious! Do you like my flowers? I was here half the night, did they tell you? How are you feeling? Isn’t it just too awful, too terribly awfully terrible!”

“Right on,” I said. Then—first things first—“You got a roll of Life Savers in that little bag? Chiclets? Breath mints? Anything?”

“No, dearest, nothing but cigarettes, and I know you’re trying to stop smoking.”

“Gimme a cigarette,” I told her. “I’m going to eat it. As soon as you go, I’m going to eat the flowers, too.” I looked at them when I said that, and all of a sudden I didn’t feel funny or even hungry anymore.

“Well, you really shouldn’t, you know. I shouldn’t either. It’s terribly hard on the complexion.”

She lit me up. It was my first in three days, and though I’ve never been a heavy smoker (half a pack a day was my limit at the worst), it tasted pretty damn good. I took a big drag. “Elaine, where’d you get it?”

“Get what, dearest?” She couldn’t be that dumb. She was playing for time.

“That goddamn box. By now they must have asked you fifty times already.”

“You don’t think it was the box, too, Holly dearest?” She sounded hurt. Sounding hurt’s one of her very top talents, and she was so good I nearly felt sorry for her myself.

“Certainly it was in the box. It had to be in the box. Where the hell else could it have been?”

“Anywhere else.” Elaine waved her hand so her rings made a little rainbow dazzle on the wall. “Underneath the platform, or in that man Lief’s tool box. Personally, I think that man was wearing a belt of dynamite, just waiting for a chance to blow up where everyone would see him.”

“Larry Lief?” I couldn’t believe this.

“The other man—the one who won. You must have seen him raise his arms just before the bang … .”

“No, I didn’t,” I told her. I could smell her perfume over everything; over the flowers, over the smoke from our cigarettes, and the hospital smell. And somehow it was shrinking everything, bringing the bomb and the broken glass and the blood and death and confusion down to the level of what-can-I-wear-for-bridge.

“Well, he did. I was watching and I saw him, and hundreds of other people must have seen him, too.”

“Elaine, it had to be in the box.”

She shook her head positively. “Holly, dearest, that box hadn’t been opened in a great many years. If there had been a bomb in it, it would’ve gone off long ago. Or it wouldn’t work anymore.”

“I don’t think they do that, Elaine. They just sit there waiting. Where’d you get it?”

“I really must be running now.” She got up, smoothing her clothes. “On Wells, I believe. Or perhaps it wasn’t— it was a shop I’d never been to before. Bill might know … .

“Holly dearest, you can’t imagine what a state everything’s in. All those valuable antiques, and everyone just swarming over them.”

Elaine bustled out. I took a couple more drags on the butt and was grinding it to death in a little tin ashtray just as the nurse came in again. She smiled and said, “Do we think we could stand one more visitor? Our uncle’s here.”