Nora's fingers were creeping into her mouth, and all Terence could think of was Willy wearing gloves so as not to chew his fingers off with anxiety. That reminded Terence he was hungry, as evidently Willy's idea of a breakfast meeting was all meeting and no breakfast.
"Is he joking? Work with him?" Nora hissed. Charlie was listening, and Nora choked off whatever she meant to say next. It was apprehension not dislike driving her dismay, but she knew the hint of either would disappoint Charlie.
"You'll be fine," assured Terence, scouting the cupboards for something flat. Finding a cookie sheet, he laid it against the edge of the table, scooting the overturned bowl on to it. "If the table gets scratched, it's his own fault."
The table was fine.
"Aha!" Terence beamed as he turned the bowl upright. "Do you want this? Is there more?" He looked down the table at the pitcher of milk. "Can you pass that, please?"
Noah obliged.
"Because if you don't want this, Nora, I'll have it. I'm starved." Holding the pitcher of milk, Terence surveyed the crowd in the sudden silence. "Sorry, poor choice of expression."
George pooh-poohed the gaffe with a wave of his hand. "No offense, we're doing better now. If I'm going to work with you, I need some clothes."
"Well, not with me," said Terence, picking up a spoon, "but clothes are a good idea."
"I'd bet you'd find what you need in the closet in the bedroom Willy thought you'd use," offered Noah. "And look at you, Terence— I see you've been subjected to the ol' switcheroo, too. Let your jacket out of your sight, did you? I thought it was just us, but I've never seen a camo pattern that color."
"Me either," agreed Terence.
"That makes me," Noah waved his hand in the air, "maybe all of us— feel less singled out." Unfolding himself from the table, Noah took his plate over to the sink.
Nora, having retrieved the remaining granola from a container in one of the cupboards, knit her brows. "Is that why you sleep with that old sweater under your pillow, dear?"
"Sure is. I've had that sweater since we met."
Nora smiled. "I think you were wearing it."
"Sure, sure, and I think I was," Noah smiled back. "At the rate, our clothes are being replaced— I figure that's the only way I'll keep it. It's seen better days, but it's my favorite."
"S' 'ell 'im."
"Please don't talk with your mouth full, Terence," pouted Grandma Josephine. "It pains me enough Mr. Wonka only knocks once and barges right in, without your piling public mastication on top of all his bad examples."
Grandpa Joe gave her hand a pat. "This is his Factory, dear."
"Terence's?" laughed Georgina.
"You're right," crowed George from the other room. "I've got my choice in here. And they're not weird! They're normal. Mostly." He held an Ascot in his hand, considering wearing it.
Giving Georgina a poke with her foot under the blanket, Josephine turned away with a sniff, shaking off Joe's hand. "You know I mean Mr. Wonka. And that's why I didn't mention the cereal, or the rude way he left. I'll be glad when we get our house back."
Listening to the ruckus, Charlie bet Willy would be more glad than they were when the family got its house back. "We better get going if I'm to get to school on time. Are you ready, Dad?"
"Charlie's right." Nora wolfed a few bites, and turned to Grandpa Joe, who nodded before temptation made her speak with her mouth full.
"I'll tidy up. You have fun. Pick a nice spot. Come on, George," Grandpa Joe hollered. "Everyone's waiting for you."
George appeared nattily dressed and Charlie was out the door, crying, "We'll take the Elevator!"
"Must we?" Nora muttered, putting her bowl in the sink.
"We must," smiled Terence, offering her his arm, only to have Noah sweep him aside.
"That's my privilege, old chap."
Terence acquiesced with a bow, and Nora laughed at the attention, wrapping her fingers intimately around Noah's arm from beneath. "Shall we?"
This wasn't a morning for eating—pains aside—it was a morning for thinking… possibly planning. Having made, as he did every morning, the round of his house, Dr. Wonka found himself in his surgery, at his work table, rolling the events of the night around in his head. He'd been angry then. Hell, why not admit it? He'd been enraged. Anger makes for mistakes, and rage is worse. His head was cooler now. Cool heads prevail. Shall I make a move? Is there a move I need to make? Turning that thought over, Dr. Wonka ran his fingers across the newspaper he'd laid next to the scrapbook.
Willy was there well before them, and they found him pacing to and fro before the Factory doors like a pirate trying to measure out the steps to a misplaced treasure. When he saw them, he snapped his pocket watch closed with a determined click. "Where ya been, people?"
"Changing," piped up George, eyeing Willy up and down.
Willy had obviously been doing the same thing, because the rainbow coat was gone, replaced by a silver frock coat so pale it was almost white, like the inside of an oyster's shell, shot through with diagonal periwinkle hairline stripes so fine they only served to seem to change the color of the coat with the changes of the light hitting it. It positively shimmered.
Nora took in the periwinkle top hat that matched the periwinkle stripes in the coat, and the periwinkle gloves that matched them both, more than convinced that only Willy Wonka could pull off wearing a look like that, but pull it off he did, in spades.
Willy hefted his cane at the scrutiny, then dismissed all the eyes on him in favor of Charlie's. "Don't stray, stay till you're met, and don't speak to strangers who speak to you first."
"That'll be easy," answered Charlie with a laugh. "Strangers don't speak to me. They don't even notice me."
The laugh wasn't what Willy wanted to hear. Not at all. Stepping forward, Willy took the edges of Charlie's coat lightly in his fingers, sliding his hands down the fabric beside the zipper as he dropped to one knee before Charlie, stopping when their eyes were level. When they were, Willy curled his fingers around the fabric he was holding until his grip threatened to crush it.
Charlie didn't feel a thing, but he could see it. The look in the amethyst eyes and grip conveyed what the words had not. Charlie didn't know what Willy feared, but he knew now it wasn't a game, and whatever it was, it scared Willy, for real. "I won't Mr. Wonka— Willy."
Willy's smile was as instantaneous as the release of his grip and the leap to his feet. "Then wonderful, we're all set. Anything else?"
Terence had a question, but he wasn't going to ask it now. The others shook their heads, and began to file out. Hanging back, to delay him, Nora took hold of Terence's arm.
"I'm serious," she whispered. "Any advice?"
Terence smiled. "You mean 'how to's? Rules won't do you any good— there aren't any. Use an algorithm instead: Pretend you like him, and assume he's doing the best he can."
Nora dropped Terence's arm. After last night, she wouldn't have to pretend.
In his wildest imagination Dr. Wonka had never considered Willy would consider moving a house. On the other hand, The Boy had been privy to the firsthand example of a master, in whose footsteps he could follow. Dr. Wonka's shrunken chest puffed with pride for a moment, thinking what a coup that move had been, but he soon sagged again in his chair. That move hadn't worked out exactly as he'd planned. That was the trouble with The Boy— he never did what was expected of him, and that went all the way back to his mother expecting him.
Dr. Wonka took a minute to unclench his teeth. He knew how awful that was; only one step away from grinding! Oh, my God, the horror! Confound that boy and that memory to drive him to this! Shuddering, Dr. Wonka pushed pent-up breath through his teeth in disgust. Anger wouldn't do now. Practical was what he needed— dispassionate distancing.
The paper beckoned, and Dr. Wonka reached for it. Whose house was moving? The name, to his annoyance, slipped his mind. His finger found the line. Bucket. No names. Not a distinguished family. Dr. Wonka prided himself on knowing all the names of the distinguished families in this town by heart. Wonka had been one of them until The Boy had trashed it with candy… and eccentricity… and that wretched… chocolate. My God, even thinking the word left a bad taste in his mouth. Should he stand by? Do nothing? Cause trouble?
Dr. Wonka's eyes drifted to the wall of clippings, not seeing any of them.
Nora stood in the hall, unsure what to do next. The others had left, and Willy was staring at the door in a trance. There was no one to give her a hint—not even one Oompa-Loompa—but Charlie had told her the Chocolate Room, their home's new home, was at the other end of this hall. Perhaps if she started down that way, Willy would join her.
Back in the present, Willy pivoted to see Nora half-way down the hall. So like a paren, no patience, going their own way without bothering to consult… Head cocked, Willy crossed a leg with his toe resting on the floor, his right hand resting on the walking stick he held out to his side. No point in calling out… parens don't listen. No problem. He'd wait and she'd figure it out. The locked door that made that a dead-end would do it if nothing else did.
Nora turned and walked backwards, checking, only to see Willy had taken up a stance similar to the one she'd seen Dr. Grant use. It had meant 'I'm waiting' when Dr. Grant used it, and odds were it meant the same thing here. She retraced her steps to Willy's smile.
"That is a way to the Chocolate Room," Willy said silkily, as she approached, flipping the walking stick in his hand to let the end rest on his shoulder, "but it's not the way we're taking today. Today we're taking the scenic route, because today we want a bird's-eye view. We are, after all, picking a home site, and home sites are best picked from the air."
"The air? Do you mean we're using the Elevator?"
Willy's laugh was infectious. "No, dear lady, not if that idea pales you the way it does. But we'll still be pretty high up. Come on."
Nora stayed rooted, the earlier scene at the door haunting her. "Is Charlie in danger?"
Willy stiffened. "I wouldn't allow him out if he were."
"I trust your judgement."
Something inscrutable flicked across Willy's face. Wordless, he turned away. Nora followed.
The clippings… Dr. Wonka was seeing them in their frames now. They were the way to go… one last fling. The first step: enlist the aid of his trusted allies. They'd been oh, so helpful in the past, and they were oh, so much younger than he was; so spry and able to gad about, gathering the facts he needed. The question was, who to call first? Prodnose? Slugworth? Ficklegruber? All three? All three!
Sense intervened. The dream of those glory days faded, and the energy left him. Dr. Wonka wondered if he even had their numbers anymore.
The scenic route was anything but: it involved a spiral staircase in the vestibule opposite the Great Glass Elevator's port, a myriad of narrow passageways with no windows—but with multiple turns that had Nora completely turned around—and many more staircases.
Willy dashed along without a care, but every time Nora thought she'd lose sight of him completely, he'd slow and let her catch up, even if the slowing was never enough to let her fully catch her breath. When she was sure they must have traveled to the other side of the Factory and back three times over, he stopped at a nondescript door, opened it, then barred her way with his walking stick. She looked from the stick to the eyes that didn't quite meet hers.
"It's a catwalk."
Nora nodded.
Willy shifted nervously. "It's narrow and the handrails are Oompa-Loompa height."
"I'll be careful," said Nora, making mental notes.
With the magic words spoken, the walking stick was withdrawn, and Willy ushered Nora in, following after her along the catwalk. "This," he said, when they had crossed, "is not the place. This place, is the beginning."
The beginning was a room not overly wide, but many stories high, filled by a tapering rock covered mountain structure, on the edge of whose flat top they were standing. In the middle of the flat top was a pool of melted chocolate as black as obsidian, but without the shine. The chocolate bubbled up from a fountain in the middle of the pool, flowed outward, and escaped the pool through a channel of smooth rock that was obsidian, polished to a high shine. The channel curved back around on itself, becoming a spiral of rapids descending along the ever-widening mountainside.
"Shall we?"
Willy was indicating steps cut beside the chocolate stream and Nora nodded. Following him, she noticed a bubbling fountain of a semi-transparent, sluggish fluid joining the chocolate river from a polished quartz tributary channel.
"Sugar," said Willy, with sparkling eyes. "Only partially melted."
Opposite that was a free-flowing steamy whiteness that traveled along a polished moonstone tributary.
"Milk. I'm making milk chocolate at the moment."
"Are these stones solid?"
"Nah, they're veneers, and this mountain is hollow, and filled with tanks filled with the things you see bubbling up," Willy laughed. "But they sure do look good. Everything here was plain old stainless steel once— vats actually, but that was boring, and I like to tweak things. This looks so much nicer."
Nora nodded agreement.
The rapids continued their swirling, churning, frothing course until a few spirals later, the chocolate gathered again in a larger pool. Oompa-Loompas dipped beakers into the mixture, testing it as it found the channel out of this pool, and hurried on its way down another set of rapids, with more tributaries joining in, filling ever bigger pools.
"We can skip most of this," Willy told her over his shoulder, as he led her over a shorter catwalk, through a door and down more corridors. "The Oompa-Loompas make adjustments as necessary, and it repeats until I have almost the flavor I want, and then we have this." He opened another door and stepped inside. This time, no catwalk was necessary.
Growing from the crevices, buttercups dotted the unpolished stone they stood on. Willy bent down and picked one, popping it into his mouth. Nora followed his example, delighting in the buttery, crispy lightness that tickled her taste buds. The branches of eight enormous willow trees hung over a huge pool of tawny brown chocolate, four on each side, dripping sap from some of their branches into the melted chocolate below.
Willy waited for Nora to say something, but Nora waited for him, barely resisting the urge for another buttercup.
Willy smiled. "Ha. We're below the tree line. But these are not real willow trees and that is not sap. Those look-like-sap drippings are some of the proprietary ingredients that make my chocolate my chocolate, and I'd tell you what they are, but then I'd have to kill you."
"Then please don't tell me," answered Nora in a flash, and so saying, she stuck her fingers in her ears and began chanting: "la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la— I can't hear you!" until she saw Willy giggle. Charlie said Willy giggled all the time, and Charlie told the truth, but Willy giggling wasn't Nora's experience. But here it was— Willy giggling. Nora stopped her chanting and turned back to the pool of chocolate. She'd heard Willy happily string more sentences together today than she'd imagined possible, and whatever he might say, a man wearing periwinkle wasn't intimidating. This might actually work.
Crouching, Nora looked further downstream. "There's another fall below this pool and then it's flat. Why is there a grate across the arch at the end of the flat part, and what's that sound?"
"That's a grate to prevent barrels— the Oompa-Loompas get up to all sorts of mischief— and the other is part of what we came to see." Willy tossed his walking stick an inch or three in the air and caught it. "Come on."
"Come on," Dr. Wonka roared aloud, to break the spell of the past that had overtaken him. "Arise! Don't let the fools drag you down! Find those numbers."
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, please review, and enjoy your day.
dionne dance: Thanks for your review. I liked that part too, because it threw Nora for such a loop. She was so sure. Ifwecansparkle: Thanks for your review, particularly your reference to the references and your fondness for the interactions.
