The Pandora Effect Read online

  “A date,” he said simply after trying unsuccessfully to reason out the logic.

  “Yes, you know.” She laughed. “Dinner? Flowers? A movie? Dancing? I just love to dance. A date.”

  “How about June 27th?” He asked.

  She flipped through the calendar on her desk to look at June 27th. “What time?” She picked up a pen.

  “Time? Does it matter?” He asked pensively.

  “Of course it matters,” she giggled and tossed her hair over her shoulder. “How about seven o’clock?”

  “Seven would be fine,” he nodded. “AM or PM?”

  “Oh, Mr. Aliger!” She laughed aloud. “You’re a card!”

  “A card,” he repeated her words in confusion. “Oh, a card! Yes. I have a card.” He pulled a business card from his inside pocket to hand it to her. It was satiny black embossed with white letters. She took it from him to look at it.

  Aliger Imports, Inc. P.O. Box 185703B, Houston, Texas 77252 followed by a toll free number and a FAX number.

  “You’re a riot!” She said and slipped the card into her desk drawer.

  “Is that all you need?” He asked.

  “It’s just a decoration,” she said.

  “What is?” He frowned.

  “The rose. Just for looks.” She smiled knowingly at him and he returned the smile.

  “I see.” He stood up.

  “Just take these over to the window. Dottie will take care of the rest.” She handed him the papers.

  “Thank you, Cheryl.” He reached for the papers and a spark of electricity passed from his fingers to her hand. She jerked her hand back and looked at it. “Your mother needs you at home,” he said in a low voice. “Now!”

  “Of course she does,” Cheryl agreed and looked at him blinking rapidly. She opened the desk drawer and took out her clutch purse. “I have to go home. I think something is wrong.”

  Perry went to the teller’s window where Dottie was waiting for him expectantly. Cheryl left her desk without another word and walked out the front doors of the bank.

  “Cheryl said you would take care of this.” He handed her the papers.

  “I wonder where she's going?” Dottie looked past him as Cheryl disappeared out the doors.

  “Her mother is ill,” he told her. “She’s going home.”

  “Perrygreene Kaylum Aliger,” the redhead nodded and read his name off the paperwork. “Now there’s one I’ve never seen.” The rest of the ladies had scattered and were now back at their various stations still watching him. “I hope it’s nothing serious. Her mother has a bad heart, you know.”

  “Yes, I know,” he said. “I’m sure everything will be fine.”

  “Now tell me, Mr. Aliger, just how do you say that?” She smiled at him and blinked her large green eyes. “You’ll need counter checks to start. How many would you like? Will there be a Mrs. Aliger on the account?”

  “Uh, yes. Twenty-five. No. I mean, no Mrs. Aliger.” He looked confused again.

  “That’s wonderful.” She nodded and began to process his paperwork.

  Perry Aliger stepped lightly down the steps of the Magnolia Springs First National Bank with his hands stuffed in the pockets of his slacks. The bright afternoon sun flashed on his diamond tie tack and the warm southerly breeze ruffled his fine hair. His shadow tripped along beside him on the bricks as if it had a mind of its own, rippling and contracting across the dwarf azalea bushes next to the walk. He crossed the street at the corner and began to whistle to himself as he walked along looking at the storefronts. A young boy of perhaps seven or eight rounded the corner of Catherine and Main and breezed past him, huffing and puffing as fast as his short legs could pump the bicycle pedals. He barely missed Perry and slid to a stop at the next corner to look back at him.

  “Hey, Dude! Watch where I’m going!” He shouted back at him.

  Perry stuck up one hand to wave at him and then froze.

  “Hey wait!” He shouted at the boy, but was too late. The boy had taken off again at his former breakneck speed down an alley between the dry goods store and the Western Auto.

  Perry broke into a run after him down the alley. He reached the next street just in time to hear the blasting horn, the screeching tires and the dull thud as the boy was knocked flying from his bicycle by a blue and white pickup truck. Perry dashed to one side and threw himself between the boy’s body and the red brick wall of the automotive store. Perry was knocked backwards by the impact into the rough wall. He felt his head bounce off the brick and brilliant stars swam in front of his eyes, but he managed to hold onto the boy as they slid down the wall to the concrete walk. When he was able to see again, he was surrounded by people looking down at him. Someone pulled the boy’s limp body from him and then someone else helped Perry up. A big, burly man in coveralls rushed toward them.

  “I didn’t see the kid!” The man was shouting in a panic-filled voice. He stood looking down at the boy who was laid out on the sidewalk. A man in a business suit knelt beside him. “I didn’t see him!”

  “Are you all right, Mister?” He heard a woman’s voice near his ear. He shook his head and walked toward the street. The boy had blood on his face from a cut on the side of his head above his ear. Someone grabbed his arm and he shrugged them off to kneel beside him. His freckled face was stark white, his eyes were partially opened but rolled back in his head. A thin trickle of blood ran from his ear. People were shouting and running about. A lady was weeping uncontrollably behind him. Rough hands grabbed him and dragged him forcefully away.

  “Don’t touch him!” Perry looked up into the face of hefty man dressed in a brown uniform who was scowling at him. “Get back! My God! That’s Reggie Greene! Did someone call for an ambulance?”

  Perry tried in vain to get back to the boy, but he was pushed and shoved and pulled until he found himself on the outskirts of the growing crowd. He stood watching helplessly as two police cars and an ambulance skidded to a stop near the blue and white pickup truck. Lights were flashing and sirens were engaged. Horns honked. People continued to shout.

  A different woman approached him and caught his arm. “Are you all right?” She asked him and then eyed the front of his shirt. He looked down to see blood stains on his white shirt. Not his blood, but the boy’s.

  “I’m alright,” he told her and stood on tiptoe to try to see what was happening. Two paramedics were lifting the boy gently onto a stretcher. A policeman approached him. “He needs my help,” he told the officer.

  “He has help.” The man frowned at him. “Now can you tell me what happened?”

  Perry put one hand to the back of his head. It came away bloody from the blow he had taken against the brick wall.

  “Looks like you need to be checked out.” The man looked at him closely.

  “It’s all right.” Perry stared at his hand. He felt disoriented and frustrated.

  “Officer!” Another woman approached them. “I seen the whole thing. I wuz right here. I seen it all. That man there.” She nodded at Perry. “He caught that boy right out of the air. Coulda been kilt hisself.”

  “Is that right?” The man eyed Perry doubtfully.

  “Yes. Yes, but...” Perry frowned as one of the paramedics slammed the rear doors and ran to get into the front of the ambulance.

  The officer caught his arm as he started forward. “Come on over to the hospital with me. We’ll have that head looked at. You can tell me all about it.”

  The big man dragged him down the walk to the police cruiser waiting at the curb. He stopped to talk to another officer, a thin wiry man talking to the driver of the blue and white truck.

  “Frank!” He interrupted them. “I’m goin’ over to the hospital. You take care of this end.”

  As he was pushing Perry inside the car, the woman who had seen it all came after them. “What 'bout me?” She wore a dirty pink sweatsuit and pink rollers in her hair.

  “Yeah, yeah,” the policeman told her and brushed by her on his way around
the car. “Tell Frank about it.”

  “That sorry bastard?” She looked around. “I wouldn’t piss on him if he wuz on foire.”

  “Lookout, Hannah.” The man stopped to look at her in consternation. “If you don’t watch your mouth, I’m gonna cite you for P.I. Now go on home. We already got plenty of witnesses.”

  The old woman held up her middle finger and stuck her tongue out at him. He shook his head and climbed in the car under the steering wheel.

  “Sorry about that Mr.... uh?” He looked at Perry.

  Perry had turned to watch the woman stagger off down the street muttering to herself.

  “Aliger,” he answered absently.

  “Mr. Aliger,” the officer repeated the name. “You must be new around here. Name’s Louis Parks. Sorry about old Hannah. She’s an eyesore, but she’s harmless. A little on the nasty side sometimes.”

  “She was only trying to help.” Perry felt he had to defend the woman.

  “She just wanted her name in the paper,” Louis Parks snorted and then ran the red light at the corner. “She couldn’t care less about that boy. She hates kids. And she don’t like nobody else for that matter.”

  “Her only son died in Desert Storm,” Perry said casually and rubbed the knot on the back of his head gingerly. He looked at the purplish red blood on his fingers and rubbed them together. “She’s lonely and bitter and unwanted.”

  “Unwanted for sure,” Louis agreed. “Who’d want to have anything to do with her? It ain’t my fault her son got killed. Why do I have to suffer for it?”

  “You knew her son, didn’t you?” Perry asked.

  “I knew Larry Lipscomb, all right,” Louis nodded. “Went to school with him. High school hero, you know, football, all that. Got all the pretty girls. Lucky bastard... well, maybe not so lucky, huh?”

  “I suppose not.” Perry looked out the window.

  Officer Parks glanced over at the back of his head where the darkest blood he had ever seen was matted in the pale blonde hair. That had to hurt like hell. The man turned to look at him suddenly and he saw his eyes for the first time. He jerked his attention and the wheel away at the same time. It was almost as if the man’s eyes and his blood were of a similar hue.

  “Guess I sound pretty bitter myself,” he said for lack of anything else to say. “Yeah, I guess me ’n Larry was best friends one time. At least until he stole my girl, knocked her up and then joined the Army all in a matter of a few months. She always thought he’d come back and marry her. I don’t know. Maybe he would have, but then we got news about him bein’ killed. She killed herself and the baby was put up for adoption. I guess that’s when his mother went over the deep end. They wouldn’t let her keep the baby. Said she couldn’t take care of it. Sad story, huh?” Louis wondered why on Earth he was telling a perfect stranger one of his most bitter memories. He shook his head. He needed a beer.

  “Very unfortunate.” Perry kept his eyes on the man.

  “Yeah and stupid, too,” Louis continued in spite of his resolve to shut up. “I offered to marry her myself. I didn’t even care that the baby wasn’t mine. Man, I really loved that girl. But noooo! Good ’ol Larry was comin’ home. Yeah, sure.” He forced himself to be quiet and cleared his throat. “I didn’t mean to go all blubbery on you, man. I’m just upset I guess about the boy. Bobby Greene’s a friend of mine. That’s his boy. I sure hate to break the news to him. Hope I’m not elected, but I probably will be.”

  “Perhaps someone has already told him,” Perry suggested.

  “Maybe,” Louis nodded. “You from around here? I've never seen you before.”

  “I just bought the old Castle Gift Shop on Catherine Street,” Perry told him.

  “You don’t say?” Louis turned the cruiser into the parking lot of the small hospital emergency room. “Look, I’m gonna drop you off at the ramp and go park. Go on in and tell ’em Louis Parks sent you in. Tell ’em you was involved in the Reggie Greene accident. On second thought I think I’ll go back and take Hannah’s statement and then I’ll be back to take yours. OK? Maybe they’ll find someone else to talk to Bobby. God, I hope that boy’s all right.”

  “Give my regards to Mrs. Lipscomb,” Perry said as he got out of the car and watched him go.

  The ambulance still stood in the covered circular drive with the back doors open. He walked casually up the ramp with his hands stuffed in his pockets. The glass doors slid open to admit him to the Emergency Room reception area. No one was in evidence. Apparently everyone was in the back with their only patient. Perry walked down the brightly-lit hallway looking into each room he passed. He found the correct room at the end of the hall. The two paramedics, a nurse and a doctor were hustling around a gurney where the lifeless body of Reggie Greene lay. Wires and tubes ran from his arms and chest to various machines. The doctor held a set of white plastic paddles over the patient’s chest.

  “Clear!” Then a dull thump as he applied the defibrillator paddles.

  Perry flinched as the small body jerked up and then down. Totally unresponsive.

  “Oh, God!” The nurse drew in a sharp breath as the lines on the monitor settled into a flat pattern and the alarm continued to bleat.

  “That’s it. I'm calling it.” The doctor put the paddles down. “Record the time of death at three...sixteen.” He pulled off his gloves and threw them unceremoniously on the floor. The two paramedics looked at each other in shock. The nurse managed to write something on a clipboard and then ran out of the room past Perry and disappeared down the hallway. One of the paramedics headed after her while the other one began to disconnect the monitors from the boy’s body. Perry stepped back into the hall and waited for him to finish his job. When he came out, he hardly glanced at the tall blonde man leaning against the wall, before going off toward the front of the hospital. The doctor felt of the boy's neck one more time before shaking his head, letting out a long sigh of relief and exiting through another door.

  Before Perry could move, the doors of the Emergency entrance slid open to admit a man of about thirty-five. He was wild-eyed with panic and stopped at the desk where the doctor was writing on another clipboard.

  “Where’s my boy!” The man shouted at him. The paramedic emerged from the first room with the nurse trailing behind him wiping her eyes.

  “Where’s Reggie?” The man looked around. The doctor and the medic took him by the arms and pulled him into the waiting room.

  Perry hurried into the examination room and pulled the sheet from Reggie. His head was back and his mouth was open. His eyes were still rolled back in his head and the wound on the side of his head oozed blood. Perry leaned over to listen to his chest and then pressed his palm over the boy’s forehead. He leaned close to his ear and spoke to him.

  “Reggie!” He waited. “Reggie, come on back now! Your daddy’s here.”

  Reggie’s eyes rolled in his head and he coughed before sucking in a deep breath.

  “It’s all right now,” Perry told him as he looked around in confusion.

  “It hurts...” he said in a low whisper and began to cry.

  “Who are you?! What are you doing?!” An angry female voice sounded behind him. Perry looked around to see the red-eyed nurse standing in the doorway with her hands on her hips.

  “I’m sorry.” Perry frowned at her. “Louis Parks sent me here. I was just talking to Reggie.”

  Reggie began to wail in earnest. The nurse flew past him to stare at the boy.

  “My God! He’s alive!” She practically screamed.

  Perry stepped back as Bobby Greene and the doctor rushed into the room.

  “Daddy!” Reggie began to shout as soon as he saw his dad.

  Perry walked into the hall and went back to the sliding doors. He could hear them laughing and crying and shouting all at once. The doors slid closed behind him and he stuffed his hands in his pockets and started back down the ramp, whistling to himself. He walked across the drive to the street and looked up at the gleaming courthous
e dome above the tops of the trees.

  Presently a bright yellow Volkswagen Beetle pulled up beside him and stopped in the street. Its engine purred softly as the driver reached across to open the passenger door. He stepped off the curb and climbed inside.

  “Are you all right?” the driver asked him.

  A petite, dark haired woman sat behind the wheel looking at him curiously.

  He reached up to feel the matted spot on the back of his head.

  “It was a very strange sensation,” he told her. “But it’s gone now.”

  “That’s good to hear,” she said and pulled away from the curb, heading back toward downtown.

  Chapter Three:.

  Louis Parks walked up the stairs outside the long cinderblock building that had been constructed to resemble a small castle of sorts. The apartment on the second floor had a circular turret at each corner on the south side of the building with large windows overlooking Main Street. A strange building and one that Louis had always liked since he had been a little boy growing up in Magnolia Springs. It was rundown and unkempt, but still the most interesting structure in town except for the imposing Gothic courthouse on the square. He had never been privileged to go inside the apartment at the top of the stairs. He’d never had an excuse though he had been in the junk shop several times. Now he was doubly curious to see what was up with the new tenants. The current occupant who had witnessed the near-tragic accident earlier in the day had been gone when he’d gotten back to the hospital, but everyone had been in such an uproar about Reggie Greene’s remarkable recovery, no one had thought about him until much later. He stopped in front of the gray and white door to squint at a shiny new brass plate which had been attached to the doorframe just above the doorbell. ‘QUO FATA VOCANT’ it read ‘PEREGRIN AND ANGELICA ALIGER’. A small movement near the base of the door caught his eye. He looked down to see the nose and whiskers of a tiny brown field mouse peeking out of a small hole in the cinder block. It edged out of the hole to look up at him suspiciously, wiggled its whiskers and snuffled the air before disappearing back in the hole.