XI : The Invitation

A/N: Here, have a nice long chapter to compensate for that last one. Also, it's February 1st!

Our dear, dear Buckets, so trusting of the entirely wrong person.

Feel free to, you know, review. It makes my cold dead corpse type a little faster.

"Spin me round again and rub my eyes, this can't be happening." - Imogen Heap (Hide and Seek)

As soon as they were back in the car, Willy breathed a great sigh of relief. That woman Montgomery was bringing back unpleasant memories by the bushel, which was most vexatious. Jealousy and irritation were two emotions that never went very well together.

He didn't sleep that night, instead working on diminishing the ever-growing stack of paperwork on his desk. Included in that paperwork was an elegant cream envelop, which was unceremoniously dumped into the rubbish without further investigation.

Francis had a problem. His name was William Wonka, and he owned the world's largest and most successful chocolate company. He also knew a lot of government secrets.

First of all, it is important to note that Willy Wonka did, in fact, close his factory because of spies, but not because the spies were stealing his recipes (although they were). It is not really my place to tell you of the terrible event that transpired the night before Wonka closed his factory forever, but I can tell you what happened afterwards. Wonka got a fake ID and got the heck out.

You see, there are many islands in the South Pacific, a surprising number of which are 'officially uninhabited'. Of course, the higher-ups know full well these islands are not, in fact, uninhabited. They are used for a variety of top-secret and ethically questionable projects, which are deemed 'classified'. Therefore, if one were to steal information, or, say … test subjects … they would be blacklisted immediately.

How was Willy Wonka supposed to know that islands Wikipedia considered "uninhabited" were not the place to flee in times of distress?

Charlie sat in his room at his desk pouring over geometry problems. He was beyond frustrated, having passed mildly exasperated some time ago. His parents had gone out in the city for the day, and Willy was shut in his office, presumably recuperating from last evening's dinner.

He glanced at the clock. Half past ten. Francis ought to be in her shop by now. He could do with the change of scenery. He packed up his materials, left a note for his parents, and set off to 17th Street.

He found Francis in the back room, icing a cake. It was on a sort of spinning plate, which she rotated with one hand while piping icing evenly along the top in a spiral. A record player in the corner played scratchy music in french.

"Hello, Charles," Francis greeted him, without looking up.

"Hi."

Francis finished a spiral and turned around and beamed at him. She glanced at his messenger bag stuffed with papers. "Stuck?"

Charlie bit his lip. "Yeah. But if you're busy…"

Francis laughed. "I'm always busy. Why don't you go sit down somewhere and I'll find you in a couple of minutes with some tea."

"And if the volume of cube x is 216 units and the length, base, and height are all congruent, what is the height of of one side, measured in units?"

"The cubed root of 216?"

"Which is?"

"6."

"Exactly. Making more sense?"

"Yeah, I guess."

There was a companionable silence.

"Does he go out often? Now that he's got you, I mean," asked Francis casually, after several minutes had elapsed.

Charlie giggled. "If you only knew how much effort it took to make him take me to the park, you wouldn't be asking. That was the first time he left in like, ages. Sometimes he has to go out on business, though."

To Charlie - and a lot of others, although he didn't know - Francis was tremendously smart. She knew all about the governments and politics and random stuff common people weren't supposed to know. He had asked her about it once, but she just said she had a good memory and lots of spare time. Charlie didn't know if he quite believed that.

What kind of business did a cake baker have in Switzerland for eight months? What kind of cake business made enough money to buy whole highrises?

And, of course, that niggling question in the back of his mind why him? There was nothing extraordinary about him, for heaven's sake. Why take such a special interest in him?

Francis held his gaze for a long time, lips pressed together in thought, interrupted only when the bell on the door jingled and someone entered. She turned to the gentleman, a grey-haired fellow in a tailored business suit, who entered. He held a black briefcase in one hand and his fedora in the other. She spoke to him in another language, perhaps french?

The man was silent for a moment before he replied, also in french.

Francis beamed again at Charlie and stood up.

"I'm sorry, but I need to talk to this gentleman privately, Charles," she said. "I wasn't expecting him until tomorrow; I'm sorry to cut this lesson short."

Charlie didn't quite know what to make of the stately stranger. It was all suddenly very mysterious.

"So," began Francis, exhaling smoke from the cigarette between her fingers.

"So," replied the man, and Francis started to open the case, but the man quite nearly took off her fingers slamming it shut.

"I can't help feeling ever since Berlin that you're losing your touch. I can't trust you aren't being followed," he said tersely.

"I'm flattered, but you know what happened in Berlin was not my fault. Come to the back room." She led him into the back and motioned to set the case on the table.

Charlie sat on a purple patent leather stool in the Inventing Room, watching Willy do fancy calculations with lots of uncommon denominators and numbers with slashes through them. They were attempting to create a sweet that made things taste like their opposite. At first they had tried modifying another candy which made sour things taste sweet, but now Willy had scrapped that idea in favour of starting from scratch. It had something to with pH and the viscosity of frog saliva extract, but that bit had gone over Charlie's head. Charlie had left his mentor fussing over calculations alone in favour of doing his English assignment.

Well, that was one reason. The other reason was the tension he felt rising between his mentor and Francis. He had a feeling that the fancy cream envelop he had received today from the latter might just be the catalyst to that tension.

That envelop wasn't going to open itself.

Up until Charlie had come to the factory, Willy ate whenever was convenient (which tended to be four a.m., midnight, and times like that), and slept, well … he drank a lot of coffee. But dear Mrs. Bucket insisted he have a least one square meal a day, and therefore he usually came to dinner.

He tended to be fashionably late.

Consequently, Charlie had already opened the thick cream envelope and was reading aloud the invitation written in swirly gold calligraphy when his mentor arrived.

'You have been Formally Invited

as a Guest of Frances Montgomery

to the

Two-Hundred and Sixty-Sixth

Annual Culinary Convention

at the

Grand Hyatt Hotel

on

Saturday, the Twentieth of December, Two Thousand and Seventeen

Eight o'clock to Midnight'

A small note fell out of the envelope, written in the familiar sharp script that punctuated the margins of his math notes.

'Charles-

No doubt your mentor has been invited, but he has never attended in the past despite having an award, well, several actually, named after him. I didn't expect this year to be any different, so you may come as my guest. I think you will value the experience. I will come to pick you up at six-thirty.

Signed,

Frances Abigail Montgomery'

Willy Wonka dropped his hat and Charlie looked up, trying to think of a way to temperate this situation.

"Mr. Wonka, you never told me there was an award named after you," he said at last.

Wonka glanced back and forth between the invitation in Charlie's hands a trifle confused and a lot annoyed. How dare that-that interloper take his Charlie to that god-awful function?! How dare she?!

Meekly, Charlie explained, "Miss Montgomery invited me to the "Annual Culinary Convention."

"Yes, I can see that," spat Wonka.

"That's so kind of her," said Mrs. Bucket in an effort to soothe the situation. "Goodness knows what we'd do without her, and we haven't even had the pleasure of meeting her!"

"Perhaps we ought to invite her 'round for dinner sometime," said Mr. Bucket, who wasn't as well-versed palliating measures.

Willy Wonka was decidedly incensed. First this … Montgomery … had stolen his valuable time with Charlie, and now she was inviting him to the Annual Culinary Convention?! And as if that wasn't enough, now she was being invited to dinner! In his own factory, no less! For the past fourteen months he had grown very accustomed to being the centre of Charlie's attention, and now he felt justly superseded.

When Charlie found Mr. Wonka the next evening, he was sat in a purple chair with half his hair in foils, reading Vogue. Charlie had never seen someone get their hair highlighted, and therefore promptly forgot what he had come to say.

After several minutes of awkward silence in which Charlie stared at Wonka and Wonka stared at the latest fashions, Wonka felt compelled to inquire why Charlie had come to find him.

"Um…," said Charlie.

"Very eloquent," replied Mr. Wonka sarcastically. "If it's about the Culinary Convention, you know I mind you going."

"Mum said you're jealous. But since you aren't going, I didn't think you'd object. Don't grown-ups always want kids to have experiences? And why is your hair in foil paper?"

"I'm not a grown-up," said Willy petulantly. "And I'm touching up my highlights ."

Under his breath, he added, "I never said I wasn't going, either."

A/N : This, kids, is why your teachers don't let you use Wikipedia as a source for your essays.

Linkwonka88 - you can't just,,,,,,,spoil the plot like that,,,,,,,,,,gosh,,!1! !