The Pandora Effect

by Olivia Darnell

  “Yes, and Chris Parker," he told her still holding onto her hand.

  “Chris?” She looked out the door at the truck. It really was Chris’ truck after all. “How did you...”

  “Sometimes,” he bent to kiss her hand and she felt an electric shock pass up her arm “I prefer not to answer questions.”

  “I think I know what you mean,” she said and looked at him in amazement. She really did feel she knew what he meant.

  She allowed him to escort her to the truck where Chris hopped out of the truck and went around to open the front door for her as if he had planned the entire thing.

  The dinner at the Bluebonnet Cafe went extremely well. The place was a refurbished fifties-style diner with lots of chrome and glass, black and white tile with booths along the window wall looking out over Main Street. Each booth had a small glassed-in juke box remote selector and they kept the Wurlitzer CD music machine going the whole time they were there. The specialty of the house was bacon double cheeseburgers and onion rings with loads of ketchup and chocolate malts. People came and went while they sat talking in their booth. Almost everyone recognized Chris and Cheryl. Some of them knew who Perry and Angelica were, but none of them could understand why Chris Parker was sitting in a booth with two almost complete strangers talking like he had known them all his life. Several people stopped by the booth to speak to them and were introduced to the Aligers by, of all people, Chris Parker who’d barely ever spoken more than three or four words to them in his entire life. Certainly there would be a lot talk around the town by the time Sunday's church services were over.

  When they had finally exhausted their supply of quarters for the juke box, Chris drove them to the apartment above the New Castle Gift Shop.

  “Joanne!” Billy Johnson waved to the dark-haired girl behind the counter at the Texaco store about five minutes before closing time. “You still got that Bud Lite on sale?”

  “Yeah, yeah. Glad to hear you're watching that school girl figure of yours,” she muttered and waved him off as she finished wrapping a rubber band around a stack of unruly dollar bills. “Just hurry up, will ya? I’m trying to close here.”

  “Oh, quitcher bitchin’.” Billy plunked the twelve-pack on the counter and pulled a rumpled twenty from his pocket. “Where’s Chris?”

  “Out,” she said shortly and picked up a stack of fives to count.

  “Out where?” Billy craned his neck to look out the store front as if expecting to see Chris outside somewhere.

  “Out! Out! Dammit, Billy!” She looked up at him. “You made me lose count.”

  Joanne started over and Billy drummed his chubby fingers on the counter impatiently. She wrapped the fives in another rubber band and slid the beer past the scanner.

  “He left a while ago with the Aligers,” she told him as if it were something Chris did everyday. “Their car broke down and he took them home. Didn’t come back, so I guess he went on home himself.”

  “You guess?” Billy frowned. “That ain’t like Chris to just take off with a bunch of strangers.”

  “It wasn’t a bunch of strangers.” Joanne made his change. “It was Mr. and Mrs. Aliger. They're the ones that own the old junk shop over on Catherine Street now.”

  “Still ain’t like him,” Billy insisted solemnly.

  “No, it ain’t,” she agreed irritably. “I guess I made him mad. I don’t know.”

  “He never gets mad,” Billy laughed and stuffed the change in his pocket and hefted the twelve pack. “You gonna come down to the game?”

  “I guess so.” She picked up the tens. “Where’s it gonna be?”

  “Down to Mike’s house,” Billy said as he started for the door. “Carla’s doin’ a double.”

  “All right, sure,” Joanne nodded. “I’ll be there.”

  “B.Y.O.B!” He hollered over his shoulder as he went out the door.

  “B.Y.O.B!” Joanne mimicked his gravelly voice and pushed her glasses up on her short, turned-up nose.

  It was very unlike Chris to just disappear. She had called the house at least half a dozen times since he’d left and had gotten no answer. In spite of the unconcerned air she had shown Billy Johnson, she was worried about him. It would not do at all to let that big idiot have something to rib Chris about later on. He was bad enough about making fun of Chris’ stutter. She finished counting the money and closed up the store and then left a message on their answering machine at home telling Chris where the game was.

  Thirty minutes later, she pulled up a chair at Mike Padgett’s dinette table. She twisted the top off a tropical punch wine cooler and lit up a long, skinny cigarette before raking in the cards on the table in front of her to shuffle.

  “Five card draw,” Mike announced as she began to deal out the cards.

  Joanne dealt the cards and threw in her nickel ante. Her first cards didn’t look too promising. A nine and a deuce of hearts.

  “Anything wild?” She asked hopefully looking around the table over her glasses.

  “Nope,” Tyler answered. “That’s sissy-girl stuff.”

  She made a face at him and picked up her three remaining cards.

  “Did Chris call?” She asked trying to sound casual.

  “Get a life, Joanne,” Billy told her as he studied his hand. “Maybe Chris is just beginnin’ to break out.”

  “Yeah, on his ass!” Mike laughed. “I’ll take two.”

  Joanne dealt him two cards and Tyler took one. Billy kept his hand.

  “It ain’t right,” Billy commented.

  “What ain’t right besides this hand?” Tyler looked up at him.

  “It ain’t right for Chris to sit down there at that gas station on Saturday nights and then hang around with a bunch of ol’ farts like us.”

  “Speak for yourself, Billy!” Joanne frowned at him.

  Billy tossed in a dime and Tyler folded. Mike raised another nickel.

  Joanne put in her fifteen and looked at Billy. “I guess you think its OK for me to sit around down there then?”

  “I’m just sayin’ that... are you gonna call or what, Mike? I’m just sayin’ that Chris oughtta get out more. Get him a girl... or maybe get married, that’s all. Somebody to spend his money on.”

  “Yeah, right,” Mike nodded. “He don’t need no wife.”

  Mike put in another nickel and Joanne called.

  “He’s gotta girl,” Joanne told him.

  “Ha!” Mike laid down his cards and everyone groaned. Two aces and three nines.

  “Dammit, Mike!” Tyler shook his head. “You put hexes on the cards or what?”

  “Nope!” Mike said smugly as he raked in his winnings.

  “One of these days, ol’ buddy, I’m gonna take you to Vegas and make us both rich,” Tyler threatened for the hundredth time. He picked up the cards and smacked them on the table before shuffling them.

  “Uh, uh, no way!” Mike told him. “Vegas is full of evil. Runnin’ over. Wouldn’t be caught dead there after dark.”

  “Oh, here we go with the bullcorn.” Billy puffed on his cigar to keep it lit.

  “It’s true,” Joanne sided with Mike. “My pop always said Las Vegas was the Babylon of the New World.”

  “Babylon, eh?” Billy laughed. “If Vegas is Babylon, then Reno must be Rome and Jersey City like Sodom and Gomorrah, huh? Nice places to visit, but you wouldn’t want to live there. Might get nuked.”

  “Nuked?” Tyler frowned at him.

  “Yeah.” Billy leaned back in the chair while Tyler dealt the cards. “Seen it on TV. Some guy was sayin’ that Sodom and Gomorrah, that’s them cities under the Dead Sea. Said they was destroyed by a nukular explosion.”

  “There you go,” Mike nodded. “God moves in mysterious ways, I tell you.”

  “So you think that God sent some ICBM’s to zap old S and G?” Joanne smiled.

  “More like IGBM,” Tyler corrected her.

  “What’s that?” Billy asked in all seriousness. “What’s the G stand for?” />
  “Well.” Tyler laid down his cards and picked up his can of beer to take a long swallow creating a dramatic pause. “ICBM stands for Intercontinental Ballistic Missile, right?”

  “Yeah, so?” Billy narrowed his eyes suspiciously.

  “Well,” Tyler said slowly. “If God sent missiles to wipe out Sodom and Gomorrah, then they would be Inter Galactic Ballistic Missiles!”

  Billy, Mike and Joanne groaned in unison at his sorry joke while he laughed enthusiastically.

  Mike shook his head solemnly after a moment. “If God sent a missile, it wouldn’t be one like we already had. Why, he’d just snap his fingers or wink his eye and Kaboom! It’d be all over. But there ain’t no nukular bomb at the Dead Sea. God sent his Angels to kill them people with fire and brimstone straight outta hell. They stopped and talked to Abraham and told him what they was fixin’ to do. Then they went in there and gave ’em all a chance to repent, but they didn’t and so Kaboom!”

  “Fire and brimstone?” Billy looked at his cards and laid two on the table. “I thought them was tools of the Devil. What was Angels doin’ with fire and brimstone?”

  “God moves in mysterious ways.” Joanne sipped her cooler and repeated Mike’s words. “I’ll take one.”

  “Maybe it was devils instead of Angels,” Billy suggested as he rearranged his cards.

  “Well, it wasn’t,” Mike told them and picked up his own draw of one. “It was Angels. Says so right in the Bible. ’Sides, God made everything, didn’t he? I guess he’s got the right to use fire and brimstone if he takes a notion to.”

  “Don’t question the Bible, Billy,” Tyler told him. “You’ll get yourself in a world of trouble.”

  Billy mumbled something rather obscene about trouble and a knock sounded on the patio door behind them. Everyone froze as if the trouble had already come.

  “Open up! Police!”

  They sighed as one when they recognized the voice of Louis Parks.

  “Maybe you’re right, Ty,” Billy grumbled and got up to open the door for the Sergeant. “Here’s the po-leese done come to arrest us.”

  Louis Parks stepped inside the little dining room of Mike’s mobile home and plunked a six pack on the counter. Sweat beaded on his forehead and ran down his neck.

  “Damn! It feels good in here.” He wiped his face with his hand and pulled a beer from the box. He took off his cowboy hat and hooked it over the front of Carla’s cuckoo clock. “It’s hot as hell out there,” he added as he popped the top on the beer.

  He hoisted his jeans and sat in the fourth chair, turning up the beer.

  “We was just talkin’ about hell,” Mike told him.

  “And fire and brimstone,” Tyler added.

  “It’s that extra weight you’re carrying around.” Joanne eyed him mischievously. “You ought to get a belt to match your gun.”

  “What do you mean?” Louis looked down at his stomach.

  “A forty-four!” Joanne told him and everyone laughed.

  “Ha! Ha!” Louis nodded. “At least I got an ass to hang my jeans on, Miss Priss.”

  “I say, old fellows, suppose we put an end to this unholy banter,” Tyler put on his best mock-British accent as he began to feel the effects of the alcohol. “We were just discussing the intricate and perplexing question of whatever happened to those havens of sin and vice, Sodom and Gomorrah and the interrelationships of Angels and Demons.”

  “What?!” Louis looked at him as if he had lost his mind.

  They played out the hand and Mike won again.

  “Now what was that you said, Tyler?” Louis asked as he shuffled the cards.

  “I just said I thought it might have been devils instead of Angels that blew up Sodom and Gomorrah,” Billy answered him instead of Tyler. “Mike says it was Angels that done it and he says they used fire and brimstone. That sounds more like the devil to me.”

  “It was Angels!” Mike reiterated as he picked up his hand. “You need to study up on your Bible, Billy. Go to Sunday School or somethin’. The old testament is full of interestin’ things.”

  “What’s that got to do with anything, anyway?” Louis was perplexed. “They got what was comin’ to ’em.”

  “Yeah, we always do,” Tyler nodded and laid down two cards. “Divine Providence and all that.”

  “Death waits for no man,” Mike said ominously. “Time’s up and you’re a goner.” He snapped his fingers.

  “Maybe not,” Joanne studied her cards. “It’s possible to cheat death just like cards.”

  “Oh, bullshit!” Louis grunted and begged a Hava Tampa from Billy. “How can you cheat death?”

  “Pay off the devil.” She smiled and raised her eyebrows up and down. “Sell your soul.”

  “Oh, right,” Louis laughed nervously. “Have you sold yours?”

  “Nope. Ain’t gonna,” she told him.

  “Have you had an offer?” Tyler leaned forward to look at her.

  “I didn’t say nothing like that.” She grinned at him and took one of Mike’s Marlboro’s to light it up. “Give me two cards, Louis.”

  “You’re fulla shit,” Louis grumbled as he dealt her the requested cards.

  “No, she ain’t,” Mike objected. “Happens all the time. And most the time you don’t even know what’s goin’ on til the deal’s done and in the bag. Ain't you never seen that old movie? The Devil and Daniel Webster? Happens just like that.”

  “How you figger?” Billy pursed his lips thoughtfully. They had his attention. “Damn! I’ll take three this time. This is pitiful!”

  “Take the other day fr’instance,” Mike mused over his cards and then glanced at Tyler. “Tyler nearly got hisself killed over at his aunt’s house.”

  “Mike!” Tyler glared at him.

  “And,” Mike turned up his chin and ignored Tyler “he’s like dead, you see? Layin’ on the floor. Plum dead. And then he hears this voice: Ty... ler, Ty... ler. He opens his eyes and what does he see?” Everyone had stopped to stare at Mike. “Why, a perfect stranger appearin’ outta nowhere to come and save his ass.”

  “Yeah? Is that right?” Louis turned his attention to Tyler who sat frowning at his cards. “I’ll stand pat.”

  “Kinda sorta,” Tyler mumbled and laid his cards face down. “I fold... again!”

  “So,” Mike continued to Tyler’s chagrin “Tyler’s supposed to be grateful to this guy, but what if Tyler was ’sposed to die? What if this fella, instead of bein’ a good Samaritan, is really a demon in disguise? Now Tyler owes him somethin’.”

  “I don’t owe nobody nothin’,” Tyler said in disgust. “He was just there when I woke up. That’s all. Just a coincidence.” He pushed the brim of his cap up and hooked one arm over the back of the chair.

  “Yeah?” Mike shook his head. “What if it wasn’t no coincidence?”

  “Dammit, Mike!” Tyler picked up his beer to finish it off and then fished another out of the cooler on the floor. “What if... what if...”

  “Who, Tyler?” Joanne leaned to look at him, her eyes bright with curiosity. “Who was the perfect stranger?”

  “See!” Tyler looked at Mike accusingly. “See what you started? Why did I ever trust you to keep your mouth shut?”

  Mike turned red with embarrassment and Billy laughed aloud. Louis leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest to stare at Tyler. They weren’t going to let it go now.

  “Yeah, see what you started Mike?” Billy said when he calmed down. “Tell her who it was Tyler.”

  “He wasn’t no devil!” Tyler said and let go a long sigh. “It was that new guy, Aliger. He lives right across the street from Aunt Mary.”

  “No!” Joanne leaned back in surprise and pushed her glasses up her nose. She took a deep swallow of her wine cooler and a long drag off the cigarette before putting it out. “I just met him this evenin’ and he sure don’t look like a devil! Unless you mean a handsome devil! He has such... strange eyes!”

  “Oh, you think so?”
Billy puffed his cigar. “I gotta see this guy! Didn’t you say Chris went off with him? And you ain’t heard from him since?’

  At that everyone fell silent and looked at each other accusingly. She had forgotten about Chris.

  “Don’t be silly.” Joanne looked down at her cards. “He seemed like a real nice guy.”

  “You mean to tell me that Chris Parker, our Chris Parker, went off with a perfect stranger? Why? Went off where?” Louis looked genuinely alarmed.

  “He just gave them a ride home,” Joanne told him defensively.

  “Them?” Louis frowned.

  “Yeah, him and his wife!” Joanne snapped at him. “So what’s the big deal?”

  “They ain’t home,” Louis told her. “I just came by there on my way out here and there ain’t a light on in the place. I didn’t see Chris’ truck anywhere either.”

  “Maybe he parked out back,” Joanne told him.

  “Nope. I drove by there. Just Mrs. Aliger's car,” Louis told them and they looked at him suspiciously.

  “Looks like you know a bit about ’em yourself.” Mike eyed him in a sidelong way.

  “It’s my job to know,” Louis cleared his throat and got up to get another beer off the counter.

  “Maybe he just dropped them off and went home and they went to bed and he went home and went to bed and didn’t get my message or maybe he went somewhere else and they went to bed and turned off...”

  “Whoa, Betsy! I know there ain’t nobody home because I knocked on the door!” Louis blurted out in spite of himself. “I had a question to ask Mr. Aliger about the accident. Did you say she was with them?”

  “Who?” Joanne looked puzzled.

  “That lady... Mrs. Aliger.” Louis frowned at her.

  “Yes, I said him and his wife.” Joanne was totally perturbed now.

  “What did they buy? Did she come in the store with him?” Louis asked her.

  “That’s a professional secret.” Joanne continued to frown. “I don’t ask you about police business, Louis. What do you think they bought? Eye of newt and bat’s ears? They bought gas for Chrissakes! And, oh yeah, a koosh ball.”

  “A what?” Louis leaned forward.

  “Come on, man,” Mike groaned. “We gonna play cards or what?”