“I work better on a full stomach.”
“Well, two can play at that game, Snicket. I’m going to go see Sharon Haines, and we’ll see who comes closer to solving the case.”
The roadster took us back through town. It was hot, and the sun kept glaring at me. It reminded me of Stewart Mitchum, who also liked to glare but was nowhere near as bright. Why would Stew tell his parents he wanted to focus on his education, I asked myself. And then I asked Theodora to drop me at the corner. If too many people see you getting rides everyplace, they get the impression you belong in a car seat. The corner was hot, too. Peppermint ice cream. Maybe Jake Hix will have some in his freezer for dessert.
From the outside Hungry’s didn’t look like anything special, and inside it didn’t either. Certainly there wasn’t anything special about the owner, Hungry Hix, a bitter woman with little patience for young people. What was special about the place was Jake Hix. He was a young man, but old enough to have a sweetheart and a job. The sweetheart was Cleo Knight, the brilliant chemist, and the job was cooking up the food at Hungry’s. It is possible that his genius was more impressive than Cleo’s, and in my case he gave away the food for free, as my funds were limited, a phrase which here means that Theodora didn’t give me an allowance. When I walked into the room, he was standing at a blender that was whirring and crackling away at something the color of bricks. Watching him was Moxie Mallahan, sitting at the counter with her typewriter case hoisted up beside her. I almost didn’t see who was sitting next to her until I was already inside. Nobody noticed me for a second—Moxie because she was watching Jake, Jake because he had his nose in a book, and Kellar Haines because he was pretending not to notice me as I sat at the counter with everybody else.
Jake looked up and turned the blender off. “How are you, Snicket?”
“Hot and starving,” I said, nodding to Moxie.
“I have just the thing,” he said, “but I’m going to make you taste it before I tell you what it is.”
“Finally,” I said, “a mystery I might solve. How’s the book?”
Jake marked his place and tossed it to me. “Has anybody made you read this?”
“No,” I said, looking it over. “I can never remember if that word in the title has one A or two.”
“I have the same trouble,” Moxie said sympathetically.
Jake cut big slices of homemade bread and tossed them into the oven to toast. Jake’s bread was delicious. It took days to make and started with a small bowl of milk rotting on the windowsill. He should tell the Mitchums the recipe, I thought. They have some warm milk at their house. But Jake was telling me the book’s story. “Two guys are friends, supposedly, and then one of them tricks the other one and he falls out of a tree and breaks his leg. The moral of the story seems to be, some boys are mean at school. I don’t need a book to tell me that.”
“If you want a good school story,” I said, “try The Children’s Hour.”
“I’m not sure I want a good school story,” Jake said. He took the blender and poured the brick-colored liquid into three bowls. “I like a story that could never happen to me. If I want real life I’ll read a newspaper.”
“But the newspaper folded,” Moxie said sadly.
At last Kellar Haines spoke up from his stool next to Moxie’s. “But you don’t go to school, do you, Jake? It sounds to me like a school story is something that could never happen to you.”
Jake whisked the bread out of the oven and opened a jar of something orange. It looked like jam maybe. He spread it on the bread. “I can’t go to school,” Jake said. “My aunt counts on me to run this place.”
Kellar looked around the diner and nodded. “What about you, typist?”
“I’m a journalist, not a typist,” Moxie said firmly, handing him one of her cards. “My father counts on me, too.”
“Doesn’t anyone in this town go to school?”
“Lots of kids go to school in this town,” Jake said.
“I hope so,” Kellar said, running a hand through the spike in his hair. “Where would we be without a top-drawer education? Where would all the children be?” He turned to me and met my eyes. My eyes met him back, but I still felt there was something I wasn’t seeing clearly. “And you, Snicket?” he said. “You’re in a special program, if I’m not mistaken. That’s why you were hired to investigate.”
“You’re not mistaken,” I said.
“How’s your investigation going?”
“I’m stopping for lunch.”
“I don’t blame you,” he said. “The food’s delicious. You know what it needs, though? Lime. Lime from an Italian tree. My mother speaks Italian and loves limes, so maybe that’s what gave me the idea. Of course, there aren’t any Italian lime trees, not in this town. None at all. Still, some people waste their afternoons chasing after an Italian lime. There’s a word for that. Can you think of the word, Snicket?”
I knew how I looked when I looked at Kellar. I’ve seen how people look at me when they have no idea what I’m talking about. “Many words come to mind,” I told him finally. “Confused. Perplexed. Puzzled.”
“Those aren’t Italian words,” he said, and wiped his mouth and looked around at all of us. Then he slid off the stool and left the place. We all looked after him.
“Odd kid,” Moxie said, opening her typewriter. “Do you know him, Snicket?”
“His name is Kellar Haines,” I said. “All I know about him is that he’s a fast typist.”
Moxie raised her eyebrows so high they almost disappeared into her hat. “Faster than I am?”
“I wonder what he was doing here,” I said, instead of disappointing her.
“He came in about an hour ago,” Jake said. “I made him a Reuben with extra Russian dressing, and he talked my ear off asking about you. He’d looked for you at the library and at the Lost Arms, so he could deliver a message.”
“But he didn’t deliver a message,” I said. “You saw him walk right out the door.”
We all looked at the door. It had a small square window toward the top, made from that kind of glass that you can’t quite see through. You couldn’t see the street or anything that was happening, just a few vague shapes. My whole day had been like that.
“Look,” Moxie said. “He left my business card behind.”
“I guess he thinks he doesn’t need it,” Jake said.
“Or,” I said, “he doesn’t want it to be found in his possession.”
Moxie gave me a curious look and typed a few lines while Jake put the toasted bread in a pile on a plate and served up lunch.
“Here,” he said, “eat up and tell me what you think.”
It was soup, ice cold, a shock and a delight on such a hot day. The taste was sweet and crunchy and smooth and satisfying. Then I took a bite of the bread and something in the jam made me feel sparks on my tongue. It was a lunch of adventure. I felt my mouth grinning around the spoon.
“What do you think, Snicket?” Jake asked. “Does that cut the mustard?”
What he meant was, “Is this a successful soup?” and I told him it certainly was. “I don’t taste mustard,” I said, “but I do taste tomato and spring onion.”
“And lime,” Moxie said.
“But not from an Italian tree,” Jake said with a smile.
I tasted again. “Maybe a little