Ultimately, it wasn't so out of the realm of possibility that Veruca grew up to be a fit, young woman who was very physically strong, and to her it probably also symbolized the way she could turn her words into actions. While being a brat might have helped her as a child with other children because they would just give her what she wanted so she would stop bothering them, as she got older Veruca needed a new way of enforcing her power among her peers who soon realized they could just ignore her whenever she tried to do things her way. Not just did Veruca's toned muscles help her make near-impossible dance moves from Charlie's perspective on stage, but they also helped her enforce her status as Queen Bee amongst the other kids in her childhood years; she had punched a few kids in the face before for not listening to her and probably knocked them out all thanks to that cannon of an arm on her shoulder. Now as an adult, Veruca didn't interact with people on the daily that she needed to express her dominance towards, at least people at the same socioeconomic level as Veruca who could fight back if they trained to do so, and now that she wasn't a ballerina her physique served a new purpose.
As a model, the little brute's body was her most important trait and her vanity was her greatest job skill; all Charlie could think of now was Veruca the fitness goddess with her flat, washboard abdomen striking a pose for a photoshoot with the same grace that only a professional ballerina could muster. There was something so alluring of the idea of the sharp edges of Veruca's body for the Good Boy, from her well-defined jaw line to even the poise of her doing something as mundane as lifting both of her toned arms up to her chest and pointing them towards the side. Physically, she lived up to the muses that inspired artists from the Renaissance and even the ancient world, but he never would have had the courage to approach such a being if it weren't for their shared history, not just because of her immense beauty, but because the heir knew the little brute could beat him up without breaking a sweat for no reason than if she didn't like his uninspiring physique rupturing her idealized world of perfect bodies.
But, for the sake of his own manhood, it was best for Charlie not to think about how Veruca could best him in a fight, and instead he focused on his guest's dancing career, which led him to ask her about it, "This would have been like five years ago, correct?"
"About right," Veruca confirmed after giving her personal history a quick thought.
Charlie began imagining himself sitting in the audience section of a New York theater watching Veruca dance on stage and turning to the person sitting next to him and telling them that he knows her. And the smile that accompanied his fantasy turned to words which he told his guest, confessing, "I made many trips to the New York office in those days. If I'd known you were a ballerina, I would've gone to see you perform. A lot of the people I know in America have a passion for the higher arts like ballet, I guess they developed those interests to fit in with the city's elite, but I can't say I remember your name ever being brought up in discussions I had with them."
As it turned out, Veruca had a valid reason as to why Charlie never heard her name mentioned among his circle of New York acquaintances, which she explained, saying, "Well, I went by a stage name at the time, Erika Entwhistle. Daddy said I needed to conceal my identity when I was performing, and it ended up coming in handy following the brawl in the club."
Charlie chuckled at the thought of Veruca concealing her identity when she was on stage, in what world would she be able to fight the urge to have her true identity be known by the world so that the world may venerate her for her talents? Nevertheless, he was curious about the origin of her stage name, so he asked, "How'd you come up with that name?"
Nobody had ever asked Veruca that question, not her parents, not even her fellow dancers who knew who she really was, so she didn't really know how to respond to such a question. The only thing she could think of was to explain the thought process that went to concocting her stage name, replying, "There's two parts, Erika stems back to my time in Secondary School. In my Swedish class, the teacher, Mr. Larsson, called us by the Swedish equivalent of our names and we were expected to do the same with our schoolmates, for cultural enrichment, he said. Like you'd expect, the names weren't all that different, Stephen became Stefan, Caroline became Karolina, and...well...Charlie became Kalle."
"Oh, Kalle, he was one of the boys who couldn't stop looking at Mr. Larsson, too," Veruca added, reminiscing about an old, effeminate schoolmate of hers who shared a name with her fellow Golden Ticket winner, and who last she checked was now in a committed relationship with a French man named Jules.
After taking a stroll down memory lane, Veruca refocused her attention back on the question Charlie had asked her, adding, "Anyways, everything was going swell until Mr. Larsson got to me. There's no Swedish equivalent for Veruca, at least not one that's a name, so he called me the closest name he could think of, which turned out to be Erika."
"I can see why he did that, to this day and with all the traveling I've done, I've never met anyone named Veruca besides you," Charlie responded, completely unaware that he'd begun gently squeezing Veruca's wrists while they locked eyes.
The two did stare into each other's eyes for a prolonged period of time and it only stopped when Veruca shook herself out of the trance they both found themselves in and pushed Charlie's grasping hands away, followed by her declaring, "Oh...yes, my name is so unique and special because I'm so unique and special. Daddy always said my name was so fitting."
The thing is, Veruca really believed that she was as important as her father told her she was, but what was also real about her was how bitter she got when she remembered what her other parent would tell her about her name, among other things about her, growing up, adding, "Mother as well."
"Speaking of Mother, Entwhistle is her maiden name and to this day I don't know why I picked it for my stage name. I guess I was stumped for a surname and ended up picking the only other one I could think of," the little brute theorized, placing on display what kind of relationship she had with Mrs. Salt for her audience to see. In other words, Veruca had a love-hate relationship with her father, while with her mother the relationship seemed to be far less complicated, but not in a good way.
Despite the negativity he sensed the brat aimed at her family, Charlie could tell Veruca had a passion for ballet, he then remembered she had a mirror with a ballet barre attached to it in her penthouse which at the time he thought was to do random exercises. Although now it made sense that she would have such a structure in her home, it was a place she could continue practicing the art she engaged in since she was a child. And apart with issues surrounding loyalty and commitment, Charlie didn't understand why Veruca no longer danced professionally, leading him to ask, "Well then, if you liked it so much, why did you stop dancing ballet?"
All of the memories of those dark days following the night club incident gushed out and flooded Veruca's mind once again, and as it all flashed before her eyes she replied, "Even though the Manhattan DA couldn't prove I was responsible for that woman's death, word spread, and I was no longer welcomed in the world of New York ballet. I stopped showing up at Dollinger and stayed in New York for a few more months before Daddy recalled me back to Britain. Some other stuff occurred and now I'm here opposite of you."
The truth was Veruca was actually being sincere and heartfelt when she spoke about the end of her career as a professional ballerina, there was even a hint of sadness in her tone and a look of defeat on her face as she remembered the depressing events. Seeing how down she felt after recanting one of the lowest points in her life, Charlie thought it would only be fair if he told her about his most gut-wrenching moment, saying, "I know it must've been hard for you to admit to such a dark chapter in your life, it must've been even more difficult to relive it after all these years. So, what if I tell you the darkest moment in my life, just so we're even. Does that sound fine with you, Veruca?"
"Sure, go ahead," Veruca responded honestly, she didn't even sneer or roll her eyes as she actually wanted to hear what Charlie had to say, that or having to relive her dream job being stripped away from her sent her spiraling into a fit of depression so bad that she couldn't even care to snipe back at Charlie.
While Charlie was never involved in someone's death, he had undergone an experience in his teenage years that terrified him to his core, an experience he was now ready to recount for someone else, explaining, "Okay, so I'm 14, like three years after the tour of Wonka's factory, and school's off for summer vacation, this means I'm spending every waking moment with Willy Wonka. For the previous three years he's been teaching me everything I need know about how to run the factory, everything from the most exciting stuff like how Wonka Bars are made to the most mundane things I could fathom like how to read and sign off on business reports. Anyways, Mr. Wonka gets summoned somewhere else in the factory, so he leaves me alone in the office to continue reading those reports and I eventually doze off. I thought running the world's greatest candy factory would be all fun and games, but I was basically doing advanced schoolwork during my time off school. Anyways, so I start wandering around the office in hopes of finding something that might spark interest and I end up making my way to Mr. Wonka's desk. Now, his desk is covered in reports and personal memos he jotted down, new candy ideas and the like, but he also has this little tin box just sitting there. The box had a lock attached to the cover, the thing looked like a small treasure box, but it was wide open and full of a bunch of little yellow candies. I've never seen these candies before, so I took one and began sucking on it, that's where I messed up."