Pandora by Holly Hollander

Larry’s van was gone, having started up without my hearing it while I was looking around the house, probably before Mrs. Maas came back, because she hadn’t said anything about it. Okay, I’m hip.

So I went over to our little pasture, caught Sidi (not very hard because by that time I had a couple of lumps of sugar in my pocket), saddled up, and Hi-Yo!

Since I wasn’t going to catch a train or anything, I rode him right into town. There are two liquor stores in Barton, a big one and a little one; the big one’s My Case, at the corner of Main and Woly. Woly’s just a grotty little deadend street that folds when it bumps into the CW&N rightof-way, but there’s a string of shops down one side of it behind the liquor store: the Redman Lounge, one of the very few spots in Barton where you (you, not me) can buy a drink, the Whileaway Travel Agency, the Magic Key, and so on. I tied Sidi to a parking meter (no ticket for me, because where would the meter maid put it, right?) and went in.

I guess locks run in the Hollander blood; one of these days I’ll get in the business if I have to open a deli. That was a joke, but it’s really the truth about locks. They’re nice and solid, and they’ve got this shine to them and snap with a good, solid chink. There’s not much plastic even about the cheap ones you have to buy for your locker at school, and the classy ones have more class than any car I’ve ever seen. What I’m trying to say, I guess, is that I always liked the Magic Key. It wasn’t one of those bright places like a chain drugstore, and it wasn’t dim like the Wicker Works. It was dim in places and bright in others, which I think is how a store should be, and it smelled a little bit of sewingmachine oil, which is okay with me. A lot of my friends go for incense, and it’s a great cover-up for pot; but I think incense belongs in church.

“You!” somebody yelled. “Put that down unless you’re going to buy it.”

I turned around—I’d picked up one of those fancy gadgets you snap on to keep your sister-in-law from calling Nome on your touch-tone phone—and naturally it was Megan, sticking out her lip trying to look tough. Molly was there, too, working on the books or something behind the counter.

Molly was Larry’s wife. She was from some little place the other side of Nashville, and it was my opinion that if somebody thought she was pretty that somebody’d make a pretty good truck driver. Basically what she had was one of those thin poor-li’l-me hillbilly faces, with lots of yellow hair as puffy as cotton candy (and as sticky, too, I’d bet) piled up on top, and a shape like a sack of grapefruit.

Now that I’ve got that out of my system, I ought to be fair and tell some good stuff about her. Even though she could stop the average heavy construction job dead in its tracks, she knew she wasn’t pretty. You could see it in her eyes and the way she held herself when she thought nobody was looking, and as far as I was concerned that was ten points in her favor. The teasing and all that hair spray were just her dim-bulb way of trying to get pretty, so you had to feel sorry for her. And she tried to be nice to Megan and me, so who cared if she was really too old to be buddybuddy? Also, she did her best to sit on her accent. She didn’t succeed very well, but you could tell she was trying, and I’ve got to give her more points for that; I’m not going to spell out the way she really talked, or at least not very often. Megan said that Larry had met Molly while he was stationed down south after his second tour. It was getting married, she said, that made him decide to chuck the army.

“Well,” (“Wa-al”) “hello, Holly. Haven’t seen your smil-in’ face ’round here for many a day.”

“Gosh,” I said, “I can’t make everybody happy all at once.”

Molly and Megan both laughed.

Back then Megan was about my best friend—if not really the best, awfully close to it. Her father owned the Corner Cobbler, which wasn’t a shoe-repair shop like it sounds but a shoe store; but the Liefs weren’t rich, and when you are (or think that you are) it’s hard to get to be best friends with anybody who isn’t. I’ve already described Molly, so I might as well describe Megan, too. She’s really pretty, with page-boy blond hair and a perky baby-face that goes just fine with it. I’d have paid a yard at least for those big, brightblue, dirty-flirty eyes of hers, and nobody’s ever called me stone ugly. Her worst feature was her hips, I’d say; Megan’s a little wide across the pockets.

“Holly, can’t you tell us—just us, we won’t tell anybody—what’s in that box? Is it gold? ”

“Stop hissing,” I told Megan. “You sound like the radiator on Kris’s Mustang.”

“I’m playing pirate.” Her voice went into a parrot squawk. “Pieces o’ eight! Pieces o’ eight!”

“Well,” (“Wa-al”) “it could be gold, couldn’t it, Holly? I believe I’m goin’ to go. Maybe they’ll pick my name.”

“They’re going to draw by number,” I told Molly. “And for all I know it could be chock-full of diamonds—it’s plenty heavy enough. It could also be full of rocks. Elaine got it at some junk shop. She says they didn’t have a key and didn’t want to bust it open.”

“Whatever ’tis, it’s mine. That sign in the bank’s got me purely fascinated.”

“You birds busy now?”

“I am. I got to watch out for things here. But you and Megan can go traipsin’ off if you want to.”

“I’m learning the business,” Megan explained. “Larry says if I do he might put me on the payroll.”

So Larry had come up without me even having to do it. When you’re hot, you’re hot. Naturally I asked, “Where’s Larry now, anyhow?”

Did you ever make some innocent little remark that laid the festivities stone cold? You know, “My, my, what’s that doing in the punch bowl?” And nobody says, “Looks like the backstroke,” because there really is something in the punch that ought to be in the zoo. Sure you have, so you know just how I felt. Megan quit smiling, and for a second there I thought Molly was going to cry. Her face had a sort of spasm.

Megan said, “He’s in South Barton someplace. Changing the locks to keep sombody’s ex-wife out.”

“Something’s the matter, huh?” (Subtle’s my middle name.)

“Oh, someone’s been phoning for him, and Molly’s a little scared about it.”

“I don’t believe it amounts to cow flop,” Molly said, and the way she said it you could tell she was worried stiff.

“Who is this someone?”