Pandora by Holly Hollander

(Mr. Lief doesn’t answer—just shakes his head. He has one of those bent-down pipes in his mouth, but it doesn’t seem to be lit.)

Molly: “It was them! I know it was.”

(Megan nudges her, but she won’t shut up.)

Gerri: “It was who, Mrs. Lief?”

Molly: “The ones that used to phone. They haven’t called no more. Not since Larry passed on, not one call. They got him, but I’m goin’ to get them.”

Megan: “It didn’t have to be them. Everybody knows Larry’s dead now.”

Gerri: “Your husband was receiving threatening calls,

Mrs. Lief?”

Molly: “Yes!” (Cries.)

Megan: “No!”

Gerri: “Do you know anything about this, Mr. Lief?

Have you informed the police?”

Lief: “I personally only answered one crank call, and that was at least six months back. I’d practically forgotten about them. They weren’t actually threatening—at least the one I answered wasn’t.”

Megan: “The police know already. They’ve talked to us.” (Back to the studio, where Gerri’s sitting at one of those long lunch-counter desks TV newspersons use and nobody else does.)

Ben: “Gerri, what were those calls about?”

Gerri: “It took a lot of digging—Mrs. Lief was very upset, and Lawrence Lief’s father and sister didn’t want to talk, but whoever called told war stories, if I can put it that way.”

Ben: “War stories?”

Gerri: “Yes, from Vietnam. All this may’ve had nothing to do with the bombing.”

Ben: “But it might. Did it really end months ago, as the victim’s father implied?”

Gerri: (Shaking her head.)“Ben, the victim’s wife received one two days ago—the day before he was killed.”

Then off they went to look at a million white chickens that had gotten loose on the Dan Ryan Expressway. If I’d had Les or somebody there to talk to, I’d have bitched because Megan never mentioned my name or said I’d been hurt; but what I was really thinking about mostly were Munroe’s kids, kids that weren’t nice-looking or anything, and now no daddy.

Then I started wondering whether Megan knew it was me who told the cops about the calls, and if she did, whether she was mad. If she didn’t, sooner or later I was going to have to tell her. It wasn’t Larry that I felt sorry for, or Munroe either. Munroe had just been a guy in a loud shirt, like a million other guys; Larry’s troubles were over. I felt sorry for Munroe’s dim little wife and her three kids, whose troubles had just begun. And for Megan and Molly and Larry’s dad. Especially for old Mr. Lief, because although he wasn’t showing it, I had the feeling he was the one who’d never get over it.

Baseball then. You can’t get away from baseball scores on the news. The Cubs lost. The Sox lost. Watching the TV news, you’d think there isn’t one pitcher in baseball who can throw a strike. Every time they show somebody at the plate, you can bet he’s going to get wood on the ball, even if he’s thrown out at first, maybe. If I were managing the Cubs, I’d have a hundred curvy cheerleaders, like the Honeybears or the Dallas Cowgirls; and when a guy from the other team was at bat and they revved up the TV cameras for him to sock one, I’d signal my Cutecubs to shake their goodies to get his eye off the ball. All the other teams would have to sign gay players, and it would change the entire complexion of the game.

When we’d seen the run that beat the Cubs and the run that beat the Sox (there’s a joke there, but I wouldn’t want you to think I go after every one I see), the newsroom was back, with Cutter Williams, anchorman supreme, in one of his five-hundred-dollar suits. “Our city has been the site of many famous crimes and the home of many famous criminals. John Gacy lived here; so did Al Capone. But for each famous crime we remember, there are hundreds of others we forget. That, tonight, is the subject of Ben’s Commentary.”

Ben was always away from the lunch counter for this, turned around in a swivel chair, at a messy desk that might really have been his. “There was a terrible explosion in Barton yesterday,” he said. His face wasn’t Sad the way an actor’s face gets; just serious. “Today’s papers are full of it, and the televised news shows—such as this one—are full of it. Even the politicians are full of it, at least when we reporters are asking questions. It’s always safe, politically, to be against a mad bomber.

“Two men were killed in Barton, other people were hurt—”

Hey, that’s me! Lookit me, Ben!

“And many more might have been killed. But in the thirty hours or so since the Barton bombing, eight other persons have been killed on the streets and in the homes and bars of Greater Chicago. A famous poet, T.S. Eliot, once wrote, ‘This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper.’ Those eight have hardly had the whimper, as far as the politicians and the news are concerned. We talk about a war against crime. They’re the casualties of the skirmishes of the war crime fights against us. Just before we went on the air tonight we got word that the body of an elderly man, as yet unidentified, had been found near a parking area in the northwestern suburb of Palestine. He had been shot in the chest with a thirty-eight, and his pockets were empty except for sixty-two cents in change and a torn artificial rose. Just like one of those poppies they sell on the street for the casualties in the VA hospitals—casualties that nobody remembers.”

Then Ben was gone and we were left with a couple California beach bums peddling beer. I started to yell and pound the damn whiter-than-white scratchy sheet, and after a while I remembered to turn off the TV and yell louder. It wasn’t very long before a nurse came running to ask what was the matter, and pretty soon an orderly