Pandora by Holly Hollander

be darker than that around it; it has been protected from the light, which bleaches the exposed surface to some extent. A good deal of sunlight presumably comes through that large window for ten hours or more on many days. Eighty-eight millimeters is approximately three and half inches, which is what I estimated the dark spot at the end of the mantel to be. A man’s thumb is roughly an inch across, in case you didn’t know, and that fact is sometimes —please excuse the expression—a handy one.”

“This doesn’t mean a thing to you, does it? Just a cute little problem.”

Blue sighed and leaned a little more weight on his cane; I got the feeling that his leg was bothering him. “Certainly it doesn’t mean as much to me as it does to you. One of the things we all have to learn eventually is that our personal problems are not the personal problems of others. But I like you, and I don’t want to see you hurt. Also, I’d like to earn the check in my pocket; I need the money badly, and though I’ll deposit this as soon as I can and use the funds to stave off the worst of my financial difficulties, I probably won’t see any more unless I earn it. If I sound facetious, it’s because I’m not doing very well, and I must try, at times, to keep my own spirits up.”

“You’re a regular wizard,” I told him bitterly. “With you on the case my father’ll hang in a week.”

“Although this state has restored the death penalty,” Blue said, “it does the job by electrocution. For practical purposes, however, your father’s risk of execution is nil, as Lieutenant Sandoz pointed out. Wealthy, middle-aged white men do not go to the chair.” Blue limped over to the door. “Now I must be on my way. I wish that I could carry you back up to your room, but I can’t. If you like, I’ll ask Mrs. Maas to send the chauffeur in to you before I go.”

“Mr. Blue—”

He stopped and looked back at me.

“Take me with.”

“Are you serious?”

“Only for a couple of hours. Until dinner, okay? Then I’ll go home, I promise. I have to get away from her.”

“Your mother?” Blue was staring at me like he was trying to look right through me.

“As long as I was bitching at you it was all right, then when you went to leave it wiped me out. I’m going to have to be here with her, and every time I see her or hear her talking I’m going to think about what she did with Larry and what she did to my father—I need a little time to get my head straight. Please? She won’t even notice, and if she does she won’t give a damn.” All of a sudden I understood, or thought I did, why Elaine had never cared about me, and I added, “I’m like him.”

“You can’t go dressed as you are.”

“In the closet up in my room, you’ll find about a dozen blue shirts and three or four wraparound jean skirts. Bring one of each.”

“That’s all you’ll need?”

“That’s all I could get on. Underpants wouldn’t go over the bandages and stuff. Bring a bandanna, too, please. Top dresser drawer, right side. I’d better have a bandanna.”

I sat there and listened to him thump up the stairs, and about five minutes later thump back down.

How I Was Entertained at Blue’s

So there I was, sitting beside Blue in his old Rambler, my bad leg stuck straight out in front of me, holding on to my aluminum crutches. “What a beater!” I said.

And he said, “She’s got almost two hundred thousand miles on her, and she still runs like a top.”

Well, it takes all kinds.

The upholstery was shot, and I got the feeling that every time we hit a pothole we left behind a little red cloud of body rust; but once you realized that most of the racket was coming from a hole in the pipe, the engine didn’t sound so bad. It was a regular three-on-the-tree automatic, so Blue could prop his bum leg up on the doghouse and drive with his good one. Seeing him do it made me wonder if I could do the same thing. I said, “Hey, what has two heads, four arms, and two legs?”

He had been thinking and gave me a Look, but after a minute he said, “You must be feeling better. I give up. What?”

“Us.”

“Do you know the riddle of the sphinx? That would make it five.”

“I’m afraid I don’t. I ought to read more mythology, I guess.”

Blue was quiet then until we’d left the private road and got almost to Barton. Then he said, “So should I.”

“I thought you did already. A lot.”

“Not as much as I should. Do you know, I left behind those books I bought at the book sale? I’d paid you for them, hadn’t I?”

“I don’t suppose there’s much chance of getting them now.”

“No. Fortunately, I read them first. Or at least, I read the parts I was most interested in.”

We swung right at the corner of Main and Half, then veered off onto Barton Road past the Cow House (which is a big, fancy restaurant), and a couple of car dealers. On the other side of the nature preserve we swung onto a side road, then onto another and then onto another, with the land getting hillier and hillier all the way. Most of it was covered with thick woods; I suppose those trees had been cut down once to let cattle graze, but the last guy to cut them had probably never seen a car. Pretty soon we were off pavement altogether, jolting along a double strip of dust.

“You ought to get a Jeep,” I told Blue.