The interior of the factory was exactly as Laura had expected (meaning that it was beyond anything she could have imagined). Upon vacating the claustrophobic, intensely patterned hallway that they had initially entered, Wonka led the lawyer into a small, albeit tall, cavernous room with pink lighting. The red carpeted floor on which they had walked to this point stopped abruptly and turned into a white tiled floor. The room opened across from them into a canal flowing with murky, brown water; a boat, which specifically reminded Laura of a carousel, bobbed in the water with vigor of the current.
"Mr. Wonka, sir! Your water is horribly polluted! You've not had lawsuits over the state of this river alone?"
Mr. Wonka grinned knowingly at the lawyer - it was quite obvious that he'd heard comments of the like before.
"Oh, dear Laura - may I call you that, Laura?"
"No."
"-the river is entirely made of gooey, delicious, scrumptious chocolate, dear Laura!"
"Miss Tasis."
Wonka simply ignored Laura's frustration as he made a swift skipping movement towards the whimsical boat which sat upon the chocolate stream. "Come now, I know we both have busy schedules, Laura. We absolutely mustn't dawdle, especially when there is so much to talk about."
Laura bit her tongue, following the candymaker onto the ship. The boat began moving as soon as the two boarded, drifting at a leisurely pace down the sugary river under the colorful, brick tunneled ceiling. It took only seconds for Laura to feel the stickiness left on her hand after she placed it on the railing.
"Mr. Wonka, is this not a most unsanitary practice!" she exclaimed. "You're creating an inevitable breeding ground for bacteria by using a candy boat to transport actual people on! Not to mention, all bacteria is easily spread into your chocolate stream!"
"I'm glad you've asked about that, I really am. I have not yet introduced this invention to the public, but I've created a type of lollipop that will last unwrapped for as long as you need it to! Imagine that! Being able to lick your lollipop a few times and then place it away overnight without fear that those dreadful microscopic bugs trying to get at it! I've decided to name it a Lick and Leave Lollipop. That's what this entire boat is made out of!"
"Mr. Wonka, are you suggesting a permanently sterilized confection?"
"Precisely!"
"But, Mr. Wonka, I simply don't believe that! Doctors- surgeons- all medical professionals have been searching for something like that for years!"
The candymaker smiled and tapped his head. "They're simply not thinking big enough. You must think big to catch those tiny, ghastly little critters."
"You're making absolutely no sense, Mr. Wonka," Laura said, exasperated, looking over her shoulder in hopes of seeing their destination in the near future.
"What is this 'Mr. Wonka' business? I thought we were on a first name basis," Wonka returned, flipping subjects abruptly.
"You calling me by my first name out of nowhere does not initiate a first name basis. It's inappropriate."
"That's exactly what it does! By definition!" the candymaker exclaimed, waving his hands at either side with a triumphant grin. "Call me Willy, please."
Laura's austere countenance broke for just a moment, her lips breaking into a slight smile - while it was only a light, second-long smile, Mr. Wonka caught it.
"I am not calling you Willy," she returned, turning her face to look out the opening of the boat's spiralled railings as if to conceal her expression.
That was the end of the conversation (or perhaps simply a pause, caused by an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object).
The boat led the two in front of another tiled walkway, this one evolving into a short hallway with a large red door at the end that was visible from the stream. Laura followed the candyman onto the tile, refusing the hand offered to help her up - whether through ignorance of its presence or stubborn independence - and crossed her fingers in hopes that the red door was that of his office.
"Let's get down to business," Wonka chirped, opening the red door for Laura. "Please, sit down anywhere - I'll grab all of the paperwork, and we'll have this sorted out before you can spell koraysicalers."
Finally, thought Laura, relieved. She followed Willy into the room and looked for a seat - upon doing so, she realized that every piece of furniture and decoration in the study had been cut neatly in half and thus only half remained. The clock on the wall ticked on as if unaware of its uselessness, and stuffing bulged from underneath the couch's upholstery.
"Where on earth has the other half of your room gone?" Laura asked, caught up in her confusion. She checked herself afterwards, however: Was she truly surprised at this point?
Wonka grinned as he took a seat - or half of one - on a physics-defying wooden chair opposite from where Laura stood. "It's funny you ask that, dear Laura. When I constructed this factory, I made sure that no room was like another - I was so caught up in the designs of the rooms of the golden geese and the shaving cream that I did not stop to think about how my room should be." He paused dramatically. "I couldn't possible allow for one ordinary, boring room in my magnificent factory - so I made the executive decision to cut everything in half and donate the other half to charity."
"What can a charity possibly do with half of a chair?" Laura asked, crossing her arms.
"A whole lot more than they can do with none of one!"
The lawyer sighed and took a seat on the couch across from the candyman. She opened her briefcase and pulled out the materials that she had collected and sorted beforehand, taking care to organize them accordingly on the coffee table before her so that they faced Wonka. Laura then pulled three pens from her jacket pocket - one red, one blue, and one black - and lay them neatly next to her notepad.
"I want to just clarify the matter at hand before we begin, so we can prime our brains," she began, entering her 'working mode'. "Correct me at any point. You have received complaints from four families of children who had toured your factory under the "golden ticket" promotion - the complaints consisted of accusations of the injuring of four children, one belonging to each of the respective families, and a failure to return the children back to their original state despite medical action."
Wonka, who stared at Laura with electric blue eyes as she spoke with a nod, shrug, or huff here and there, responded in defense. "I made them sign a waiver beforehand, you see!" he declared, shoving a mammoth, rolled-up sheet of parchment towards Laura. "It expressed their consent to taking full responsibility for anything that may occur within the my factory during the tour, and required that they not hold me legally responsible for any mishaps that may take place."
Laura pushed the parchment aside, jotting down a few notes in blue pen before responding. "I've read the waiver, Mr. Wonka - I only wish that you would've had someone from our firm draft it, you see, for while you did require the families to take responsibility for any accidents that occurred during the tour, they did not give you written or signed permission to operate upon their children after these accidents occurred. Just think of the consequences there! If you had left little Mike Teevee little, or Violet Beauregarde plump, you would not have been liable for their current condition! When you stretched Mike and juiced Violet, you became inherently responsible for their post-tour conditions."
Willy pursed his lips and gave an indifferent shrug. He uncrossed his legs and stood, walking over his halved desk where he opened a cabinet and pulled out a bottle of fizzing, violet liquid. "Would you care for a drink, Miss Laura? This beverage has been developing for a while, and I think I have it just right. It's not alcoholic-" he paused, giving a small smile - "but it might as well be."
"No, thank you."
Willy poured her one anyhow, placing their glasses on the table.
"Where were we, again?"
They worked for the next hour - every defense or suggestion thrown forward by Mr. Wonka was immediately shot down by Laura's knowledge of the waiver and the laws that applied. Willy, though irrefutably impressed, began to grow tired of the back-and-forth that seemed to give way to absolutely no progress at all. He, unlike Laura, wanted to see immediate results and solutions - but, as the lawyer pointed out, lawsuits were not completely unlike taffy: while one cannot coat them in sugar, as done with taffy, to make them less sticky, stretching them out makes them all the more bearable to chew. Under this logic, she began to point out all of the compromises that were possible in his scenario - at which point Willy grew so bored of the jargon and technicalities that Laura knew it was time to take a break.