“Still…” She pleaded. “You never know.”
Larry shot her one of his looks, the kind where the lower part of his jaw pulsed, the way it did when he disagreed with her. An uneasy feeling fluttered her stomach. “You were right, Larry. This isn’t fun. Let’s go back to the car. We’ll get a nice, cold drink at the hotel.”
Instead, he knelt down and started scooping up chunks of dry, hard-packed sand.
“Honey, didn’t you hear what I said?”
But he kept scrabbling through the sand. Then he stopped digging and sat back on his haunches. Jiggling it to pry it loose, he lifted up a gray tackle box about a foot square and five inches deep. Its surface, at least the part not covered with sand, was dingy and battered.
Marge was just about ready to go back to the hotel without him. Let him get poisoned by some weird biological toxin. “Larry, you just leave that thing right there.”
His response was to shake the box from side to side. A swishing noise could be heard.
“Larry.” Marge started to feel anxious. “It doesn’t belong to you.”
He looked around, a strange light in his eyes. The sun was casting long shadows across the desert, suffusing everything with a rosy, warm light. No one else was in sight. “It does now.” Cradling the box under his arm, he started back toward the car. “Let’s go. And for the love of God, don’t say a word to anyone.”
Marge pursed her lips. She knew better than to argue. She’d spent her whole life following the rules. School rules. Secretary rules. Wife in the suburb rules. She pasted “Hints from Heloise” into a scrapbook. She knew ten ways to get out stains, how to keep potatoes from budding, how to keep her husband happy. And anything she didn’t know, she learned on Oprah. Rules were there for a reason. You play by the rules, you find what you’re looking for. So what if she’d been a little restless recently? That didn’t mean she was looking for trouble. She stole a worried look at her husband. She never understood rebels.
As they hurried back to the parking lot, a man in a car at the edge of the lot flicked a half-smoked cigarette out his window. He seemed to be watching them, Marge thought. She shook her head. She must be imagining things.
Mirrored bronze panels reflected a series of chandeliers that drenched the hotel lobby in a giddy display of light. The casinowas off to one side. Larry gave it a wide berth and headed for the elevators, but Marge peeked in as she passed.
A room as big as a football field, the perimeter was rimmed with slot machines for the little old ladies and pigeons. Circular pits for poker, roulette, and blackjack took up the center, with rectangular crap tables around them. It was barely six o’clock, but coins were already clinking, cards were being dealt, roulette wheels clacked. Loud electronic music made it impossible to think. But then, that was the point, wasn’t it? Hundreds of greedy souls flocked to the place every night, each thinking they were the exception to the rule. They would beat the house. Larry had been one of them, Marge thought.
As she crossed to the elevator, she wondered how long it would be before someone noticed the bald, pudgy man with a dingy box under his arm. He did look suspicious. She slipped in front to shield him. She knew this wasn’t a good idea.
“But I had it when I checked in.” A brassy redhead in tigerstriped pants complained loudly at the front desk.
“Ma’am, I’m doing everything I can.” The desk clerk’s tuxedo was wrinkled, and stringy hair grazed his shoulders. He fingered one of several earrings in his ear. Marge wasn’t partial to men with earrings, but she knew she was supposed to be tolerant.
“I talked to housekeeping,” he was saying. “Put up a notice in the employee lounge. I even put a reward out for the bracelet.”
“Sure you did.” The woman glared. “You got some nerve, you know? Our money’s not good enough for you. You gotta steal everything that’s not nailed down.”
The desk clerk broke eye contact with the woman and-impolitely, Marge thought-looked around. His eyes swept past them but then came back and focused, Marge realized with a start, on Larry and his package. She stepped closer to her husband, but it was too late. The lady in tiger pants was still carping, but the desk clerk couldn’t take his eyes off Larry. As the elevator doors opened and they stepped inside, he picked up the phone.
Back in their room, Larry took the box into the bathroom. He wiped it down with a damp towel, then felt around the seam.
Marge stood at the door. “Please, Larry. It’s not too late. Don’t open it. What if it’s anthrax?”
“Marge.” He growled. “If you aren’t gonna help, at least get out of the way.”
Her mouth tightened. “At least let me try to find you some gloves.”
“Huh?”
“Rubber gloves. I saw a drugstore around the corner.”
Larry shook his head. He didn’t care about germs. Something was inside that box. It was a sign. And it couldn’t have come at a better time. What with the lousy economy, he hadn’t made his quota last quarter. Then there was last night. He needed a break. And God was finally sending him one.
“Let me wipe it with a little bottle of bleach,” Marge persisted. “It destroys viruses.”
He caught his wife’s reflection in the mirror. She’d always been a little loony, but now it had become big time. Quoting all those bimbos on TV. Yakking away about the environment. Refusing to let him eat fries or Cap’n Crunch. Too many carcinogens. He didn’t know what she wanted anymore. It wasn’t like he hadn’t been trying. He’d agreed to come here, hadn’t he, even though he liked the Dells just fine. But Marge wanted something new. Exotic. Well, he scowled, she sure got that in spades. He picked up the box and looked underneath.
“I’m going to put some alcohol on it.” Marge pulled out a bottle of alcohol from her travel kit. Saturating a cotton ball, she dabbed it on the box. A sharp, antiseptic smell filled the room.
“For cryin’ out loud, Marge.”
He snatched the box out of her hands. She was acting like Donna Reed on steroids. He wanted to pry open the box, but the lock seemed to be warped, bent at an odd angle. Even with the right tools, it would be tough to open. But he didn’t even have a screwdriver. He wondered if he should call a repairman. An “engineer,” they probably called them here. A fancy place like this probably had a slew of them, ready to pocket a huge tip just for changing a frigging light bulb.
He grabbed the faucet and splashed cold water on his face. Inthe mirror he saw Marge paw through her bag again. Frigging thing was big enough to hold an entire Wal-Mart. She pulled out a small, chunky red plastic object. With a white cross on it. A Swiss Army knife! He spun around. How the-
She smiled as if she was reading his mind. “I was reading this survey of female travel writers-you know, in New Woman magazine? It said if you don’t have a travel alarm or a Swiss Army knife, you’re not properly packed.” She handed it over. “Most women like the scissors and the small blade, but I kind of like the bottle opener.”
Larry swallowed his astonishment-every once in a while, his wife still amazed him. Snapping it open, he started levering the blade in and out of the box.
“One woman actually fixed the engine of her rental car with it,” Marge went on. “Another fixed her hair dryer. Of course, you have to check it in your luggage these days. But it’s worth it.”
Larry ignored her. Jimmying the blade, and then the screwdriver, he slowly widened the space between the lid and the base. Finally, a sharp upward tug of the screwdriver sprang the lock, and the box flew open. Larry took a breath, said a prayer, and looked in.
“My god!”
“What is it?” Marge crowded in behind him.
He lifted out a large plastic bag. Inside were at least a dozen smaller baggies, all filled with a white, powdery substance. He gingerly opened one of the bags, stuck in his pinkie, and brought it to his tongue. It tasted bitter and tingly. Maybe a slight numbing sensation.