Gene Wolfe: Pandora by Holly Hollander

While I was hiking up our private road I caught sight of a green van parked in front of our house. Yes, the exact same van (what an astounding coincidence!) with Magic Key of Barton on the side that I’d hitched a ride to town in. So naturally, genius that I am, I figured Megan had come over and wanted to Do Something; so I hollered and ran into the house.

Nobody was there. Nobody at all.

I checked the family room, which would have been where Mrs. Maas or Elaine would have dumped Megan, then my room, thinking she might have gone up there to play some tapes and wait for me. Zilch.

Finally I went through the whole damn house looking for anybody—all the bedrooms and the kitchen and the dumb little storeroom Elaine always called the butler’s pantry. Nothing.

I stuck my nose into the study, too, because I figured that was the one room where nobody, not even Bill, would take her, so naturally she’d be there. Naturally she wasn’t.

So then I thought, well, I’ll just take a look at the box, because that guy Blue was so anxious to find out what’s in it, and I felt like a dummy telling him I didn’t know. Maybe I can even figure out how to get the damned thing open.

I poked around for a minute before I remembered that Elaine had said somebody from the bank was coming out today to pick it up and put it in their window as part of the hype for the Fair. My father locked the study door a lot, so sometimes the cleaning lady and Mrs. Maas didn’t get in to vacuum and wipe off all the furniture and stuff like they should have, and I could still see exactly where Pandora’s Box had been sitting on the big library table, a ghost of its shape in the dust.

But the whole room felt funny somehow, like something else was missing. At first I thought it was just the box, but really I’d only been in there twice when it was there, as nearly as I could remember—when Bill lugged it in and that morning when I’d gone in to sneak a peek at the letter. Finally I decided it was just because the house was so quiet.

So you can bet it was just then that I heard a door close someplace, and if you come around asking about a certain teenage hellcat who practically jumped right out of her harness boots, I’ll be able to show her to you straight off.

I suppose you’ve got it all figured out that this being the kind of story it is, why naturally that door was being closed by a syndicate hit man at the very least. Wrong. It was only Mrs. Maas, and when I asked her what the heck was going on, she said “Mrs. Hollander” (my mother Elaine to you and me) had asked her to pick up a few things at the drugstore, and she had taken the opportunity to do a little grocery shopping. I looked through the “things” and told her Elaine practically never went in the water. It sailed right over Mrs. Maas’s head, but it started me thinking about Garden Meadow again. I wished I could have asked her about Uncle Herbert, who I was nearly ready to start calling Uncle Bert again. Only Barton isn’t exactly Pippington-on-the-Squeak, where all those nice English ladies drop arsenic in the tea and stab dubious women with Florentine daggers … .

(Hey, I don’t mean to change the subject all of a sudden, but hasn’t it ever struck you that if the Secretary of Defense was really smart he’d issue those Florentine daggers to all the combat marines? I think I’ve read a dozen books where somebody gets it with a Florentine dagger, and none of them even twitched afterward. Today I read in the News where a sixty-nine-year-old retired machinist got beat over the head with a beer bottle and slashed and stabbed with a big hunting knife, and after the guys had taken his wallet and split, he made it to the emergency ward on foot.)

Anyway as I was saying, in Barton we haven’t got those old family retainers who remember when Sir Rollo was but a wee tyke. Mrs. Maas had only been with us about four years and Bill less than two, so if I wanted to hear old family stories I’d have to make them up or ask the folks.

So I said, “Where’s Dad?” and Mrs. Maas told me she didn’t know, he’d gone out in the morning and hadn’t come back. (That would be to Garden Meadow, but he must have stopped somewhere on the way home.) So then I asked, “Where’s Elaine?” and Mrs. Maas said, “She was here when I left.”

No matter what my old math teacher may have told you, I’m a gritty brat who hangs right in there. I said, “What was Larry Lief doing here?” and she said, “Who’s Larry Lief?”

Strikeout.

Then she said, “Oh, is he that good-looking blond man who wears coveralls? About twenty-five?”

“He’s Megan’s brother,” I told Mrs. Maas, “and I’m pretty sure he’s quite a bit older than that.”

“Well, Mr. Lief’s been here several times to talk with Mrs. Hollander about Pandora’s Box. He’s the one who’s going to open it, you know, at the Fair, when they have the drawing.”

I hadn’t. But it made sense, because Larry was a locksmith and ran the only lock shop in Barton, the only one I knew about anyway, and since his shop hadn’t been open that long, he could probably use the publicity. I figured my father could have done it about as well, but that would have made it look like too much of a Hollander Family deal maybe, and besides you couldn’t ever count on him to be around; if there was trouble at some company and he was on the board he might have to fly to Algiers on about an hour’s notice. He could have loaned the Fair an expert from his plant, sure, but the plant’s way to hell and gone down below Gary.

Anyway I wandered out to the garage, just hanging around, thinking that the Caddy would be gone. But the Caddy was right there shined up like a wet seal, and Bill was in his room above the garage reading a comic. And 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.”