The warm glow of light seeped over the window sill, and into his room. Sleepless since the lights had gone off, Charlie slid out of bed and crept across the floor to see what he could see.
This time, only the other side of the wall was lit, but Charlie still knew. It was Terence, with bent head and determined stride, crossing the courtyard. Charlie's hunched shoulders relaxed at once. Everyone was home now, and that was good. With a smile stealing over his face, Charlie stole ever so silently back to his bed, where he was soon in happy dreamland.
A third of the way down the Factory's empty main corridor, a splotch of brown marred the red of the carpet; a curly brown splotch, mounded in an untidy heap. Terence slowed at the sight. Softly lit, the corridor showed no sign of anyone. The place may as well have been deserted. Tapping his fingers on the side of his sleeping bag, Terence turned his head to check the shadows in the vestibule. The rasp of the fabric dropped like lead into the silence.
"Willy said you'd probably bring your own accommodation, roughing it as he says you like to do, and to tell you, you are welcome to sleep anywhere."
The words snapped Terence's head back 'round. Eshle had detached himself from the heap on the floor, and was standing next to it, with a stiffness and dour face in sharp contrast to his earlier demeanor towards him. Terence took note.
"I'm sorry to keep you up."
Eshle barely moved a finger, pointing.
"Willy says you can use this as a pillow, if you like."
With slow steps Terence approached the dubious 'this'. Eshle stood aside to let Terence pick it up.
"Tonight's coat?"
Tight-lipped, Eshle nodded, first fastening his attention on the ratty buffalo coat, and then on the person holding it.
Terence saw it all, and understood the undercurrent. If he'd stayed put after dinner, as Willy had asked, Willy wouldn't have had to use it. Terence brushed aside the tinge of guilt, answering the unspoken accusation.
"Willy's a big boy. He can manage for himself."
"If you're his friend, why should he have to?"
Taken to task by the staccato words, and burning eyes, Terence shook out the coat, and draped it over his arm.
"And there you have a point. Why indeed?"
Unflinching, they locked stares, until mollified, Eshle relented.
"Oompa-Loompas stick together. Finding ways to help each other is what we do. It's the first thing we do. It surprises us that's not the way of the rest of the world." He paused. "We did see you get rid of that person on the bench. Thank you."
"You're welcome." Terence paused. "If I don't use this as a pillow, what then?"
With a nod, Eshle agreed the shift would close the previous subject.
"Then Willy will take it back to wherever he got it from."
"I don't see him here to do that."
"He's in the Inventing Room."
Terence raised a brow.
"Where I can't go."
"Actually," Eshle smiled an impish smile, and waved a genial hand toward the entrance behind them, "he said if you asked, you're welcome to join him. Take the Elevator."
If only that Elevator didn't have such a distinctive 'Ding!'. It was worse than shouting from the rooftops for announcing your presence. Terence would have loved to stroll around the Inventing Room for hours, taking it all in, but that 'ding' did in that hope before he could think, 'what is all this?'
"You're early," floated Willy's voice, from the depths of the room.
For what?
"You don't have any collision lights," Terence called back. Dead silence. Terence smiled. "What are these colored balls doing in this tank of water?"
Footsteps, accompanied by the tapping of a walking stick, clicked across the polished floor. Willy, in full regalia, appeared beside him.
"They're being tested."
"Why are they shooting around?"
"I have collision lights."
"Not tonight you don't. They are off, off, off. I pity the poor aviator who flies into your smokestacks, for want of those lights."
"I pity my poor smokestacks. Try not to fall in, while I correct that. I'll be back in a jiff."
As Willy's footsteps clicked away, Terence left the tank and moved to a large machine near the center of the room, that towered high over his head. Hundreds of capillary tubes snaked into the top of it, making a complete, closely packed circle. These, were the machine in operation, filled a central glass globe that in turn joined with a not much smaller metal drum. The design, except for the tubes, repeated itself in ever smaller iterations until at waist level, it ended in a metal container no bigger than a pack of cards, and having a small door.
"You do get around."
Terence tore himself away from the colossal view long enough to acknowledge Willy's return, but that was all. "It looks like the gills of a giant mushroom joined to the wide end of a telescope. What is it?"
Pleased, Willy looked up, too.
"It does kinda look like that. That," Willy pointed, "doesn't work the way I want it to yet, but it almost does. That— this— is my Three-Course-Meal gum machine." With a sidelong smirk, he glanced at Terence. "Watch out you don't slip on the leftover blueberry juice."
Terence jumped back, and reminded of the Ficklegruber's reaction to something Terence had said, Willy snickered softly.
"Kidding. There's no gum, and no juice. There's no nothing going on in here just now except some tests I have in progress, that I don't need to stop." Willy turned on his heel, and walked back to the tank.
"Why stop any of it?" Getting no answer, Terence followed, taking in for the first time how quiet the room did seem, and not only because it was late at night.
"These," Willy curled his fingers over the edge of the tank, "are Everlasting Gobstoppers. The Oompa-Loompas wanted to try snorkeling and scuba, and I wanted to see how long they last. I had an Oompa-Loompa sucking one, but after a year, he was gettin' kinda tired of it, and that was makin' 'im cranky."
"A year?"
"A year."
Seeing the colored balls flung about, Terence repeated his question.
"Why make them shoot through the water?"
"An easy way to put pressure on the surface of the candy, the way sucking them would. Each one has its own mark. The Oompa-Loompas swim around catching them, so they can measure them."
"Sounds like fun."
"It is."
"So how long do they last?"
"The Oompa-Loompas? Until their skin starts getting froggy, or they get bored." Terence made a face at that, and Willy, grinning back at him, got serious. "I dunno. None of the Stoppers have gotten any smaller. Yet." Caught by a thought, Willy put his chin in the palm of his hand, and tapped a finger against his jaw. "I probably, if they don't get any smaller, need to make different sizes." He tapped some more. "Humph."
Dropping his hand and the thought, Willy left the tank, heading for the back of the room.
"Come on. I'm solving a problem for you, you don't know you have. Yet."
"And which problem is that?" Terence wondered aloud. "The one where I don't know what I'm early for?"
"Ha! Not that one!" Willy sang out, happy to finally get a reaction, and in his zeal, opening up a considerable lead.
In the subdued room, Terence trailed after the disappearing Wonka. The room was huge, and high, and cluttered, and crisscrossed with catwalks, but it had a certain order to it. Each area had its own collection of needed machines, and supplies, and storage for whatever experiment was ongoing, and though at first look it was overwhelming, after a while, picking his way among the ovens, and cooktops with their pots and pans, and worktops, and shelves, and cupboards, and freezers, and coolers, and chillers, and gadgets, and gizmos, and who knew what else, Terence felt like he was making sense of the space. One thing, in particular, stood out.
"Is there any place in here to sit?"
Willy only laughed, as stepping aside and halting, he held out a hand. To his left was an expansive, well-lit worktop with incorporated oven, cooktop, sink, and storage. A few tools lay by a small shape near the edge of the worktop that could have been a half a cigar, or a whole bug. Before them stood a pear-wood secretary desk and chair, its back facing them. Terence could see a shelf running along the rear of the desk that he guessed sheltered pigeon holes in front. Underneath the writing surface was a narrow central drawer with sets of flanking drawers, two on either side. Desks of this type were small, Terence knew, but lockable. To the right, arranged diagonally near the desk, was a wide, scroll design chaise lounge, with a tufted fabric top and pear-wood trim. A low table sat at its far side, with a few Oompa-Loompa sized ottomans tucked underneath.
"How 'bout here? I mostly work standing up, but every so often, I like to have a spot where I can ponder." Willy held out his hands. "You can drop the pillow anywhere… ditto for your portable nest. I think you've carried them far enough."
Heavy though it was, Terence knew better than to drop the moth-eaten coat. He handed it to Willy, who took it to the desk, laying it carefully across the seat of the chair. Next he set his top hat on the desk, and leaned his Nerd-filled walking stick against one of its legs.
The chaise was inviting, and Terence made himself comfortable, his portable nest tucked at his side. Willy seemed to have forgotten about him, having crossed to the worktop, engrossing himself with examining the doohickey. There was loads that needed discussing, with none of it happening. Like a clap of thunder, Terence shot forward on the chaise, smacking both hands down on the fabric.
"WATCH OUT FOR THE COCKROACH!"
In the second before it dawned on him that this was pay-back for the juice gag, Willy took a sliding step to the side, his left hand raised like an eagle's talon, ready to strike at the vermin. Then he realized. This was a hoax. There were no cockroaches in his Inventing Room— everybody knew that.
"Ya got me," Willy said, dropping his arm, the unaccustomed surprise making him giggle nervously for a second. "This is not, heaven forfend, a cockroach. It's not even alive. It's a candy dragonfly nymph."
"As in dragonfly bowl, dragonfly nymph?" Willy had made one of these for Georgina before he'd moved the family into the Factory, but with mixed results. George had eaten half of it.
"Yeah. That." Willy moved to the other side of the table, where he could work, and keep Terence in sight, at the same time. "I have to finish this before the morning meeting."
"The thing I'm early for?"
"Yeah. That." Willy, absorbed in the work before him again, rearranged the implements and pulled a sheet with spun candy dragonfly features closer to the main body. "You know… What if this were a cockroach? Like for Halloween. What if this were all crackly and crispy on the outside, with long legs that hung out of your mouth and looked gross as you ate it?"
"Like spider legs?"
"Yeah, like those. With a gooey center, in different colors, like gut-brown, and bile-green, and blood-red, but they stayed separate, and were sticky, so when you opened your mouth, it looked like insect innards were covering your teeth." Willy's eyes were sparkling, and he laughed. "What about worms? Yeah… worms… A great big ball of wrigglely, gummy worms, all curly and green, and brown, and grey, with long tails sticking out, like the snakes on Medusa's head, in all different lengths, all separate from each other. You could bite into the ball and shake your head around like they were spewing from your guts… Like they were eating you, instead of you eating them."
"You're getting all this from a cockroach mention?"
Transported, Willy whipped a postcard size notebook out of a pocket in the tail of his coat, and began scribbling madly with the pencil stuck in its spirals. "You have to write it down immediately, or you forget. They'd be treats AND tricks!"
"They'd be a great reason to chew with your mouth open. Parents would hate them."
"Wouldn't that be lovely?" Willy stared ceiling-ward, lost in the possibilities. His eyes came back to earth. "You're a terrible retailer."
Terence wasn't going to argue with that.
"I've decided they can stay. All of them."
"Just now?"
"Tonight, at dinner. And after. That Ficklegruber. I want the house moved in here yesterday."
Terence smiled crookedly. "I was thinking the same thing."
"Good. This," Willy pointed to the dragonfly, "should take care of your shop, while you devout your full attention to hustling up the move. I assume you still think it's important to keep that shop for your cover?"
Terence nodded, and Willy made a face while rolling his head. "Whatever. I have to finish this now, or it won't be ready for the meeting. I'm almost done, but you're on your own till I am." Having said he worked standing up, for this, as delicate as it was, Willy pulled out a stool and sat down.
"Do they know about the meeting?"
"They'll find out in the morning," said Willy, lowering his head.
Terence looked around. Explore, or stay and watch? He had a meeting to go to, a house to move, and it was almost two in the morning. The smart move would be a nap. He unrolled his sleeping bag and undid the zip, spreading it out like a blanket. It was a mummy bag, not very wide at the bottom, and he stuck his feet in.
"I won't be that long."
"You will if you keep watching what I'm doing, and don't work." Terence rested on his side, his head propped up by his hand. "I may as well catch a nap, and you did say anywhere."
"Hm. I did, didn't I."
Terence readjusted his head in his hand to see better. From mosquito netted shelters in the tropics, to a chaise lounge in Willy Wonka's Inventing Room, watching Willy Wonka work: you just never knew where you might end up. Willy was warming and attaching tiny spun sugar pieces to the work he had already done, building it up like glazes on a painting. It was painstaking to watch, much less do. "You're going to a lot of trouble for a candy Georgina will have eaten in a second."
"No, I'm not… I have my standards, and I hope not." Willy hadn't looked up.
Terence turned to the desk. A stoppered, glass vial sat off to the side nearest him, filled with little brown candies, with lighter beige speckles running through them. They looked good, and they looked like fudge. They were individually wrapped, in bite sized pieces, but the wrappings looked old, and the rim of the stopper was dusty.
"Can you reach that?"
Willy's eyes were glittering as Terence turned to him, and then back to the vial.
"I think so."
Willy had stopped work, nodding eagerly to encourage him.
"Do it."
Terence leaned over and took the vial.
"Open it."
Terence opened it.
"Take one."
Terence obliged.
Willy had a rictus grin on his face, nodding his head like a bobble-head toy.
"Eat it."
Terence was dubious. The wrapping had the brittle quality wrappings like this get when they're about to disintegrate. His fingers started to untwist the cellophane.
"It'll be awful," Willy beamed.
Awful? Terence, with the candy partially unwrapped, took a whiff. It smelled fine. In fact, it smelled great.
"Would you eat it?"
"Not in a million years," laughed Willy. "You asked me why I have this place sorta closed down, and if you eat one of those, you'll have your answer. You know how good my candies taste?"
Terence nodded, still holding the morsel.
"Well, that's how bad they can taste, too, and if you don't believe me, eat that."
Terence re-twisted the wrap, and popped the impostor back into the vial.
"Smart man. I keep that on my desk to remind myself not to invent candies when I'm not my happy, chipper self. I actually take a nibble now and then, because I stop believing how unbelievably badly I can make things, and those things make me a believer again."
Terence replaced the vial on the desk.
"How old are they?"
"I made them after the spy thing. After I closed the Factory."
"I know Ficklegruber was one of the spies. This one's name is Felix, by the way. What did you say? This one's late-model? Not the man himself, but his son? I think you're right. What about the other spies? What were their names? Are they still around?"
With clasped hands, elbows on the table, Willy had knit his fingers together, nervously making and unmaking a steeple with them as he listened to Terence, turning his head further away with each word. Now he rolled himself off the stool and walked into the shadows, grabbing his top hat and walking stick from the desk as he went.
Willy didn't go far, and Terence let him be. His hands were behind his back, nervously playing with the cane he held parallel to the floor. His hat was on his head, which he had tilted back, in close examination of the shadows above him. In due course he returned to the desk, returned the items to their former places, and returned to his seat.
"I have to finish this."
Terence spared him an answer that would have added nothing, and closed his eyes to take that nap.
Willy, grateful, flew through the rest of the project. In half an hour, the completed nymph was safely in a box in his pocket. Tidying up his tools, he said to the chaise, "There is no 'Gruber' in Latin. I had to go with what it means in German. Pit. Or 'hollow'. And that's fitting. Those spies make me feel hollow."
A soft snore was his answer. Taking off his boots, Willy walked to the foot of the chaise. Terence, the sleeping bag blanket in disarray, was soundly asleep. Swell. I'm ready to talk, and he's asleep. Willy thought about adjusting the blanket, but thought better of it. It didn't matter; the Factory was plenty warm, and waking Terence was the last thing he wanted. Maybe getting ready to talk wouldn't take so long next time, and sleep was a good idea.
Taking his hat and walking stick, Willy left the room. Once out, he arranged with Kelii to post an unobtrusive guard or three in the room with Terence—we must keep him safe from the Inventing Room!—and made his own way to the nearest of his dozens of bedrooms, scattered all over the Factory. With the Factory so large, there were times when it wasn't practical to go to the one he loved best, and with time so short, this time was one of those times.
Every one of his bedrooms was differently decorated, because sometimes it wasn't convenience that warranted change, it was change for change's sake that warranted change, and decorating differently did that. Being near the Inventing Room, this one contained antique inventions whose functions progress made obsolete, and by little one-off inventions so elaborate, that though they worked perfectly, they were never practical, and had never been put into use. Some, like the Perfume Bottles for Hummingbird Taming, were just for fun. The bed itself was a carved wooden replica of a Victorian era steam locomotive, with burnished metal trim.
Soon snuggled into his narrow gauge bed, Willy ran through the names of the spies he knew about, and the recipes they'd stolen. That didn't take long. Then he ran through the names of all the other than Oompa-Loompa people he had sleeping in his Factory tonight. When he reached the end of that second list, he ran through it again, and when he reached the end for the third time, he closed his eyes, rolled over, and nestled the smooth silk of the pillowcase against his smoother cheek. He hadn't felt this lonely for years.
I do not own Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in any of its many forms, and there is no copyright infringement intended. Thanks for reading, and enjoy your day.
Cockroaches and bugs of all kinds: Another good reason to wear gloves. dionne dance: How 'bout those collision lights? I can't believe Mr. Burton left them out. And I agree: I'd avoid colliding with Terence's bad side any way I could. Ifwecansparkle: Thanks for reviewing. It's nice to know the last chapter had you on edge, and I hope you like this one.
