Lemony Snicket & ? - Please Find Enclosed a Piece of Glass and a Bullet
The night is very dark, and a little chilly, the moon hidden behind a layer of grumpy-looking clouds which seem to be considering raining on the solitary figure walking briskly down a cobblestone street. He wouldn't be surprised if they decided to do it, with the time he's been having, but that doesn't mean he would appreciate it.
He's dressed for the weather, though, with a hat that casts a black shadow over his narrow face and a long, loose-fitting overcoat with the collar turned up to conceal his jawline. His hands are gloved, covering all the tiny scratches that line his palms, bandages wrapped around his fingers, and fingernails that have been broken and chewed. Those hands were never meant to be abused so badly, but then again neither was he, or anyone else for that matter, but that doesn't stop it from happening- to them, to him, or to anyone else.
Anxiously, Lemony Snicket touches a large envelope hidden inside his coat with one of those gloved and hurt fingers, reassuring himself that it's still there. It's precious cargo, containing the manuscript of the latest in his unhappy series, the result of long and difficult research completed by way of long and difficult treks in the footsteps of the three Baudelaire orphans. There is nothing he wants so dearly as to find them, but until he does, this is all he can offer; their story told to the general public, the injustices they've faced revealed. It is, in a way, a promise he's made to their mother, or perhaps really more to himself, as he made the promise on her grave and he's pretty she couldn't hear him when he said it.
He shivers despite the protection of his coat. He feels a familiar prickle in the back of his neck which all of us may feel at some point in our lives, and which usually indicates that someone is watching us. Lemony has felt this particular prickle a number of times in his life, and it has very often ended poorly for him, and so he picks up his pace without glancing back to see who it is looking at him. Hopefully, he thinks, he will be able to lose them with some well-chosen byways, and his manuscript will reach its destination unharmed.
It has been a long time, though, since Lemony was a particularly hopeful person. When he was young, he never had any delusions about the harshness of the world, even having been born into a wealthy and noble family as he was. Still, he had thought, back then, that things could work themselves out as long as one was strong enough to help them along. Now he isn't so sure, and "hopefully" seems like a perfectly meaningless word he needn't have wasted a thought on.
The prickle of being watched doesn't leave as he hurries down the street, picking up speed, hoping that this isn't the time when his luck finally runs out, a phrase which in this instance has nothing to do with luck, but instead means "when Lemony Snicket's enemies catch him and kill him after all these years of running and chasing".
He hears footsteps on the cobblestone behind him, soles clicking softly on the ground. His heart pounding, Lemony picks up his pace, finally breaking into a run when he turns a corner onto the main road. Cars speed this way and that beneath the dim streetlights, even at this ungodly hour. Lemony hesitates, looks over his shoulder, and sees three shadowy figures running after him, barely discernable from the black of the night.
Taking a deep breath, he throws himself out into the traffic, running across the street in a very dangerous way which you should never attempt yourself. The sounds of car horns honking and brakes screeching echo loudly through the night air, but Lemony can't take the time to apologize as he crosses, just barely avoiding ending up plastered across the hood of a sportscar with a red paintjob and likely spattering the windshield with a similar shade of red to the rest of the vehicle.
The confusion buys him the extra moments he needs to run down a skinny alleyway and cut across a much less busy street toward one of the city's many industrial districts, finally coming to a river that empties out at Hazy Harbor and following along its bank until he comes to an old cannery where there is a black jeep waiting for him.
At last, he has made it. Breathing hard, he fishes in his pocket for the keys, unlocks the door, and gets in. Lemony leans back against the seat, still trying to catch his breath, takes off his hat, and runs a gloved hand through his hair. It's a little too long and a little too scruffy, but he hasn't been taking good enough care of himself. His bangs are sticking to his head a bit from sweat, and, he realizes, his hands are shaking. But the important part is that he's made it. He's in the jeep now, he's survived another day, another night, and he's completed another manuscript. These little victories are what he must live for, at least until he finds the children.
Lemony removes the envelope from in his coat and unlocks the glovebox. He places the envelope very gently inside and shuts it in, then takes out a pen and a piece of paper and begins to write a brief, formal letter.
To My Kind Editor, he begins. He's already got a drop point in mind, and the way that his good and patient editor is meant to retrieve this precious envelope. He doesn't know the kind editor's name, only that they have been so good to him and that he couldn't appreciate more what lengths they are willing to go to in order to get these manuscripts and publish them. He's glad to have the process handled by someone else, because he knows he would not be able to deal with all the details or the amount of time he would have to stay in one place while his enemies got closer and closer to him all the while.
There's a tap on the glass, badly startling Lemony. As he twists to look out the window, his pen makes a long, black scribble on the paper, ruining it. He can't see the face of whomever is out there, because his or her back is to the amber streetlights, making him or her look like a living inkblot in the shape of a person.
Frightened, Lemony tries to figure out whether he should answer whomever it is as he throws the paper and pen into the passenger seat. His hands move automatically, grip the steering wheel, jam the key into the ignition and turn. There's another tap on the window, but this one doesn't sound like knuckles or fingers, it sounds like metal against the glass, a loud and insistent clank, clank, clank that makes Lemony's stomach turn.
"Open the door, Snicket," comes a terrible voice, muffled by the inside of the vehicle and the rumble of its engine. "You better get out here if you know what's good for you."
Lemony does know what's good for him, and an execution by the river is just the opposite. He knows full well that if he gets out now, he'll be shot and thrown into the water and nobody will ever see him again. This manuscript will be the last and his kind editor might not even find it, and he can't let any of that happen.
So he throws the jeep into gear and presses his foot down on the gas pedal as hard as he can. The vehicle peels out, precious seconds lost, and Lemony hears the unmistakeable sound of gunshots as he drives off, followed by the horrible crash! of the back window being hit and shattering. He jerks forward, lowering his head to avoid letting it be hit, and turns the steering wheel hard in the opposite direction to the person firing at him.
He makes it across the otherwise empty lot and turns onto a one-car bridge, where he is horrified to see the other two people from before running toward him, still silhouetted, still anonymous, but now holding out guns and firing at him and his jeep.
One of them hits the wheel, or they must have, because suddenly the vehicle swerves violently to the right, and no matter how hard Lemony pulls the steering wheel to the left, the jeep seems intent on driving off the bridge to throw itself into the waters below as if it has suddenly decided that it urgently needs to practice for a high dive competition.
Like most vehicles, however, it is absolutely not suited to high diving, or to being in bodies of water at all, for that matter. Lemony knows this very well, and he screams as his attempts to stop the vehicle fail, and with amazing speed, it twists across the skinny bridge and careens over its edge, breaking through the old and rusting metal guardrail as easily as if it had been made of plywood.
Warm sunlight shines softly through a small window into a white room, where a man lies fast asleep, his face more peaceful than it had been in quite a long time. Happily, I can say that this is, yes, Lemony Snicket, that he is still alive and relatively well, and that he will be waking up in a moment. Despite what was going through his mind when he found himself cornered by the three persons who had been trying to kill him, he really has survived another day, another night, and his manuscript made it out more or less unharmed.
There is a woman in the room as well, although she is very much awake. She has been sitting by the bed for some time, watching the sleeping writer with a fondness that goes back for years. She is one year older than he, but when she looks at him now, she feels as if she were decades older instead. He looks so small now, and as young and soft as when they were children, though far more vulnerable. It's amazing to think that all these years have gone by, that they've grown and experienced their own lifetimes of pain and frustration and joy.
She reaches out slowly, and begins to stroke his dark brown hair, a soft smile barely lifting the corners of her lips. So much has changed in all these years, but looking at him now, it seems as if he alone has stayed the same. Despite the obvious lack of care he's shown himself, despite the stubble and the slight crow's feet, he still looks like the same boy who would follow her anywhere, leave sonnets in her desk, sing songs just for her in the night. He looks like the same young man she had loved and led around, whom she had sung with and lain with and made plans with.
She leans down over him and gently kisses his full lips, feeling like the prince in Sleeping Beauty. Perhaps he will wake and see her, she thinks, and the curse will be broken. But she knows it's never that simple.
Lemony's eyelashes flutter just so, but he doesn't wake up. His sleep is very deep, as his body is still recovering from his accident- if it's even right to call it that. Still, she knows it won't be long before he's back on his feet, back out there searching for the children.
The woman stands from her seat and retrieves a pen and a sheet of paper. Using the bedside table to brace her paper, she composes a brief letter to the gentle writer and leaves it there for when he does wake. She wishes she could stay, and watch his gray-green eyes open. She wishes she could stay and surprise him, and watch the joy flood into his sweet face.
However, now is not the time. She needs to move, to stay hidden until things are resolved. What good would it do for him to see her if she would be taken away again? What good would it do if the children can't be found just yet, if the defectors are just as likely to try again with her, and do the job right this time? No, for now, things need to stay as they are.
With the light touch of her slender fingers on his bare wrist, she turns and leaves the room, letting the door close quietly after her.
A few minutes pass in silence in the small and cozy room before Lemony's eyelashes flutter once again, and this time, they slowly lift up. With sleepy gray-green eyes, he looks around the room, pleased to find that he is still alive, if a little sore- someone has saved him, he realizes, though he doesn't yet know who it was. He shifts slightly, then tests his limbs, and is pleased again on feeling that nothing is broken or torn.
He turns his head, and is surprised and a bit confused to see a chair set up next to his bed as if he'd had a visitor. He spots the letter then, and slowly reaches out to take it, something which seems to take quite a bit of effort for him, as sleepy as he is. Settling back into his pillow, Lemony begins to read.
"To My Dear Mister Snicket,
I am sorry about your black jeep, of which I am aware you were quite fond, and which you used often to deliver messages to me and to your associates. However, I am happy to report that the doctors have told me that you, unlike your vehicle, will be just fine. I have received your manuscript and it will be processed and published posthaste, a fancy word meaning 'right away'.
I must implore you to be more careful in the future. If anything were to happen to you, no one would know about the children, your research would be left incomplete, and the promise you made to the person you loved would go unfulfilled. Furthermore, I wish to remind you that as it stands, your obituary would claim you to be an arsonist, which I know to be untrue, and that would be a very unfortunate way to be remembered. This may sound harsh, but the truth often is.
Please, Mr. Snicket, don't allow anything to happen to yourself. Remember, you are our only hope that the story of the Baudelaire children can be told to the general public.
With All Due Respect,
Your Kind Editor."
Lemony reads the letter over once, twice, three times. This is the first letter he has received from his kind editor that wasn't typed, and the handwriting, looping and refined, looks very much familiar to him. Despite how deeply he had been sleeping, puzzling this over shakes him from his haze as effectively as actually being shaken- although it is much less violent- and as he is reading it over a fourth time, something very important occurs to him.
How had they known about his promise, or the person he loved, for that matter? He had never once mentioned the reason he was so invested in telling the Baudelaire story or finding the children, and he has never spoken of the promise in the manuscripts, although sometimes he can't stop talking about her. He has considered mentioning the promise once or twice, but unless his kind editor is a mind-reader, that wouldn't matter.
He's never known his kind editor to echo his words, either. It's all very strange. Had he or she been the one sitting in the chair next to him as he slept? That has to be it. But the rest of it doesn't quite add up. Was his editor the one who had saved him?
Lemony studies the way his surname is written on the page, as perfectly formed as the writings of masters on old parchments, with a line slicing backward through the 'S' that, in a way, seemed to be its support. He remembers seeing it before, thinking it reminded him of a musical note, and suddenly it all comes flooding back on the crescendo of a very talented opera singer's voice, playing back in his head. It's the voice of a singer who wrote with the same refinement and grace she used for everything, one whose every letter he still keeps locked up as his most treasured possessions, taking out only to read yet again, as he has already done so many countless times.
His kind editor has been so good to him and so patient with him, he thinks again as he looks from the letter out the window, where he can just barely make out the sprinting form of a dark-haired woman down below. She stands to gain a lot from his research, doesn't she? Not financially, but in other ways, she could gain a lot from his hard work and bitter tears and bleeding hands.
Lemony doesn't mind that, though. If she is who he thinks she is, then his whole world has just shifted drastically, and gained new shape. If she is who he thinks she is, she could do anything to him, and he would take it gladly. If she is who he thinks she is, he would swallow poison for her, walk until his feet bleed for her, provoke a grizzly bear for her, jump from a cliff into the sea for her, throw himself into a pit of lions for her, even listen to Nero play the violin for her, only to see her smile. Not that those are the sorts of things that make her smile, of course. She wouldn't be at all who he thought she was if they were.
If she is who he thinks she is, then that means she heard his promise, and accepted it, and she knows that he didn't start those fires, and she is helping him both to tell the story of her children and to find them, and of course she was the one who saved him when he lost control of the jeep. If she is who he thinks she is, then he will take back everything he ever wrote about hope and miracles and all of that- it may seem farfetched, but he wants to believe that he isn't reading into things, and that when he finds those children, perhaps he could finally have a chance at happiness for the first time in fifteen years.
With tears in his eyes, and staining his cheeks, he folds up the letter and tucks it into the front of his hospital gown against his chest, feeling the corner of the paper scrape uncomfortably against bare skin. He doesn't want to hope. But he can't help it. And now he finds that after all this time spent not wondering who was helping him, suddenly he would do anything to see his kind editor face to face.
A/N. Reviews greatly appreciated.