The Ersatz Elevator Read online

  "It would have been a perfect meal for Aunt Josephine," Violet said, remembering one of the Baudelaires' previous guardians. "She never wanted to use the stove, because she thought it might explode."

  "Pomres," Sunny said sadly. She meant something along the lines of "As it turned out, the stove was the least of Aunt Josephine's problems."

  "That's true," Violet said quietly, as the children heard someone sneeze from behind a door.

  "I wonder what the Squalors will be like," Klaus said.

  "Well, they must be wealthy to live on Dark Avenue," Violet said.

  "Akrofil," Sunny said, which meant "And they're not afraid of heights, that's for sure."

  Klaus smiled and looked down at his sister. "You sound tired, Sunny," he said. "Violet and I can take turns carrying you. We'll switch every three floors."

  Violet nodded in agreement with Klaus's plan, and then said "Yes" out loud because she realized that her nod was invisible in the gloom. They continued up the staircase, and I'm sorry to say that the two older Baudelaires took many, many turns holding Sunny. If the Baudelaires had been going up a staircase of regular size, I would write the sentence "Up and up they went," but a more appropriate sentence would begin "Up and up and up and up" and would take either forty-eight or eighty-four pages to reach "they went," because the staircase was so unbelievably lengthy. Occasionally, they would pass the shadowy figure of someone else walking down the stairs, but the children were too tired to say even "Good afternoon"--and, later, "Good evening"--to these other residents of 667 Dark Avenue. The Baudelaires grew hungry. They grew achy. And they grew very tired of gazing at identical candles and steps and doors.

  Just when they could stand it no longer, they reached another candle and step and door, and about five flights after that the stairs finally ended and deposited the tired children in a small room with one last candle sitting in the middle of the carpet. By the light of the candle, the Baudelaire orphans could see the door to their new home, and across the way, two pairs of sliding elevator doors with arrowed buttons alongside.

  "Just think," Violet said, panting from her long walk up the stairs, "if elevators were in, we would have arrived at the Squalor penthouse in just a few minutes."

  "Well, maybe they'll be back in soon," Klaus said. "I hope so. The other door must be to the Squalors' apartment. Let's knock."

  They knocked on the door, and almost instantly it swung open to reveal a tall man wearing a suit with long, narrow stripes down it. Such a suit is called a pinstripe suit, and is usually worn by people who are either movie stars or gangsters.

  "I thought I heard someone approaching the door," the man said, giving the children a smile that was so big they could see it even in the dim room. "Please come in. My name is Jerome Squalor, and I'm so happy that you've come to stay with us."

  "I'm very pleased to meet you, Mr. Squalor," Violet said, still panting, as she and her siblings walked into an entryway almost as dim as the staircase. "I'm Violet Baudelaire, and this is my brother, Klaus, and my sister, Sunny."

  "Goodness, you sound out of breath," Mr. Squalor said. "Luckily, I can think of two things to do about that. One is that you can stop calling me Mr. Squalor and start calling me Jerome. I'll call you three by your first names, too, and that way we'll all save breath. The second thing is that I'll make you a nice, cold martini. Come right this way."

  "A martini?" Klaus asked. "Isn't that an alcoholic beverage?"

  "Usually it is," Jerome agreed. "But right now, alcoholic martinis are out. Aqueous martinis are in. An aqueous martini is simply cold water served in a fancy glass with an olive in it, so it's perfectly legal for children as well as for adults."

  "I've never had an aqueous martini," Violet said, "but I'll try one."

  "Ah!" Jerome said. "You're adventurous! I like that in a person. Your mother was adventurous, too. You know, she and I were very good friends a ways back. We hiked up Mount Fraught with some friends--gosh, it must have been twenty years ago. Mount Fraught was known for having dangerous animals on it, but your mother wasn't afraid. But then, swooping out of the sky--"

  "Jerome, who was that at the door?" called a voice from the next room, and in walked a tall, slender woman, also dressed in a pinstripe suit. She had long fingernails that were so strongly polished that they shone even in the dim light.

  "The Baudelaire children, of course," Jerome replied.

  "But they're not coming today!" the woman cried.

  "Of course they are," Jerome said. "I've been looking forward to it for days and days! You know," he said, turning from the woman to the Baudelaires, "I wanted to adopt you from the moment I heard about the fire. But, unfortunately, it was impossible."

  "Orphans were out then," the woman explained. "Now they're in."

  "My wife is always very attentive to what's in and what's out," Jerome said. "I don't care about it much, but Esmé feels differently. She was the one who insisted on having the elevator removed. Esmé, I was just about to make them some aqueous martinis. Would you like one?"

  "Oh, yes!" Esmé cried. "Aqueous martinis are in!" She walked quickly over to the children and looked them over. "I'm Esmé Gigi Geniveve Squalor, the city's sixth most important financial advisor," she announced grandly. "Even though I am unbelievably wealthy, you may call me Esmé. I'll learn your names later. I'm very happy you're here, because orphans are in, and when all my friends hear that I have three real live orphans, they'll be sick with jealousy, won't they, Jerome?"

  "I hope not," Jerome said, leading the children down a long, dim hallway to a huge, dim room that had various fancy couches, chairs, and tables. At the far end of the room was a series of windows, all with their shades drawn so that no light could get in. "I don't like to hear of anybody getting sick. Well, have a seat, children, and we'll tell you a little bit about your new home."

  The Baudelaires sat down in three huge chairs, grateful for the opportunity to rest their feet. Jerome crossed to one of the tables, where a pitcher of water sat next to a bowl of olives and some fancy glasses, and quickly prepared the aqueous martinis. "Here you go," he said, handing Esmé and the children each a fancy glass. "Let's see. In case you ever get lost, remember that your new address is 667 Dark Avenue in the penthouse apartment."

  "Oh, don't tell them silly things like that," Esmé said, waving her long-nailed hand in front of her face as if a moth were attacking it. "Children, here are some things you should know. Dark is in. Light is out. Stairs are in. Elevators are out. Pinstripe suits are in. Those horrible clothes you are wearing are out."

  "What Esmé means," Jerome said quickly, "is that we want you to feel as comfortable here as possible."

  Violet took a sip of her aqueous martini. She was not surprised to find that it tasted like plain water, with a slight hint of olive. She didn't like it much, but it did quench her thirst from the long climb up the stairs. "That's very nice of you," she said.

  "Mr. Poe told me about some of your previous guardians," Jerome said, shaking his head. "I feel awful that you've had such terrible experiences, and that we could have cared for you the entire time."

  "It couldn't be helped," Esmé said. "When something is out, it's out, and orphans used to be out."

  "I heard all about this Count Olaf person, too," Jerome said. "I told the doorman not to let anyone in the building who looked even vaguely like that despicable man, so you should be safe."

  "That's a relief," Klaus said.

  "That dreadful man is supposed to be up on some mountain, anyway," Esmé said. "Remember, Jerome? That unstylish banker said he was going away in a helicopter to go find those twins he kidnapped."

  "Actually," Violet said, "they're triplets. The Quagmires are good friends of ours."

  "My word!" Jerome said. "You must be worried sick!"

  "Well, if they find them soon," Esmé said, "maybe we'll adopt them, too. Five orphans! I'll be the innest person in town!"

  "We certainly have room for them," Jerome said. "This is a seven
ty-one-bedroom apartment, children, so you will have your pick of rooms. Klaus, Poe mentioned something about your being interested in inventing things, is that right?"

  "My sister's the inventor," Klaus replied. "I'm more of a researcher myself."

  "Well, then," Jerome said. "You can have the bedroom next to the library, and Violet can have the one that has a large wooden bench, perfect for keeping tools. Sunny can be in the room between you two. How does that sound?" That sounded absolutely splendid, of course, but the Baudelaire orphans did not get an opportunity to say so, because a telephone rang just at that instant.

  "I'll get it! I'll get it!" Esmé cried, and raced across the room to pick up the phone. "Squalor residence," she said, into the receiver, and then waited as the person spoke on the other end. "Yes, this is Mrs. Squalor. Yes. Yes. Yes? Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you!" She hung up the phone and turned to the children. "Guess what?" she asked. "I have some fantastic news on what we were talking about!"

  "The Quagmires have been found?" Klaus asked hopefully.

  "Who?" Esmé asked. "Oh, them. No, they haven't been found. Don't be silly. Jerome, children, listen to me--dark is out! Regular light is in!"

  "Well, I'm not sure I'd call that fantastic news," Jerome said, "but it will be a relief to get some light around this place. Come on, Baudelaires, help me open the shades and you can get a look at our view. You can see quite a bit from so high up."

  "I'll go turn on all the lamps in the penthouse," Esmé said breathlessly. "Quickly, before anybody sees that this apartment is still dark!"

  Esmé dashed from the room, while Jerome gave the three siblings a little shrug and walked across the room to the windows. The Baudelaires followed him, and helped him open the heavy shades that were covering the windows. Instantly, sunlight streamed into the room, making them squint as their eyes adjusted to regular light. If the Baudelaires had looked around the room now that it was properly illuminated, they would have seen just how fancy all the furniture was. The couches had pillows embroidered with silver. The chairs were all painted with gold paint. And the tables were made from wood chopped away from some of the most expensive trees in the world. But the Baudelaire orphans were not looking around the room, as luxurious as it was. They were looking out of the window onto the city below.

  "Spectacular view, don't you think?" Jerome asked them, and they nodded in agreement. It was as if they were looking out on a tiny, tiny city, with matchboxes instead of buildings and bookmarks instead of streets. They could see tiny colored shapes that looked like various insects but were really all the cars and carriages in town, driving along the bookmarks until they reached the matchboxes where the tiny dots of people lived and worked. The Baudelaires could see the neighborhood where they had lived with their parents, and the parts of town where their friends had lived, and in a faint blue strip far, far away, the beach where they had received the terrible news that had begun all their misfortune.

  "I knew you'd like it," Jerome said. "It's very expensive to live in a penthouse apartment, but I think it's worth it for a view like this. Look, those tiny round boxes over there are orange juice factories. That sort of purplish building next to the park is my favorite restaurant. Oh, and look straight down--they're already cutting down those awful trees that made our street so dark."

  "Of course they're cutting them down," Esmé said, hurrying back into the room and blowing out a few candles that were sitting on the mantelpiece. "Regular light is in--as in as aqueous martinis, pinstripes, and orphans."

  Violet, Klaus, and Sunny looked straight down, and saw that Jerome was right. Those strange trees that had blocked out the sunlight on Dark Avenue, looking no taller than paper clips from such a great height, were being chopped down by little gardener dots. Even though the trees had made the street seem so gloomy, it seemed a shame to tear them all down, leaving bare stumps that, from the penthouse window, looked like thumbtacks. The three siblings looked at one another, and then back down to Dark Avenue. Those trees were no longer in, so the gardeners were getting rid of them. The Baudelaires did not like to think of what would happen when orphans were no longer in, either.

  CHAPTER

  Three

  If you were to take a plastic bag and place it inside a large bowl, and then, using a wooden spoon, stir the bag around and around the bowl, you could use the expression "a mixed bag" to describe what you had in front of you, but you would not be using the expression in the same way I am about to use it now. Although "a mixed bag" sometimes refers to a plastic bag that has been stirred in a bowl, more often it is used to describe a situation that has both good parts and bad parts. An afternoon at a movie theater, for instance, would be a mixed bag if your favorite movie were showing, but if you had to eat gravel instead of popcorn. A trip to the zoo would be a very mixed bag if the weather were beautiful, but all of the man-and woman-eating lions were running around loose. And, for the Baudelaire orphans, their first few days with the Squalors were one of the most mixed bags they had yet encountered, because the good parts were very good, but the bad parts were simply awful.

  One of the good parts was that the Baudelaires were living once more in the city where they were born and raised. After the Baudelaire parents had died, and after their disastrous stay with Count Olaf, the three children had been sent to a number of remote locations to live, and they sorely missed the familiar surroundings of their hometown. Each morning, after Esmé left for work, Jerome would take the children to some of their favorite places in town. Violet was happy to see that her favorite exhibits at the Verne Invention Museum had not been changed, so she could take another look at the mechanical demonstrations that had inspired her to be an inventor when she was just two years old. Klaus was delighted to revisit the Akhmatova Bookstore, where his father used to take him as a special treat, to buy an atlas or a volume of the encyclopedia. And Sunny was interested in visiting the Pincus Hospital where she was born, although her memories of this place were a little fuzzy.

  But in the afternoons, the three children would return to 667 Dark Avenue, and it was this part of the Baudelaires' situation that was not nearly as pleasant. For one thing, the penthouse was simply too big. Besides the seventy-one bedrooms, there were a number of living rooms, dining rooms, breakfast rooms, snack rooms, sitting rooms, standing rooms, ballrooms, bathrooms, kitchens, and an assortment of rooms that seemed to have no purpose at all. The penthouse was so enormous that the Baudelaire orphans often found themselves hopelessly lost inside it. Violet would leave her bedroom to go brush her teeth and not find her way back for an hour. Klaus would accidentally leave his glasses on a kitchen counter and waste the whole afternoon trying to find the right kitchen. And Sunny would find a very comfortable spot for sitting and biting things and be unable to find it the next day. It was often difficult to spend any time with Jerome, simply because it was very difficult to find him amid all the fancy rooms of their new home, and the Baudelaires scarcely saw Esmé at all. They knew she went off to work every day and returned in the evenings, but even at the times when she was in the apartment with them, the three children scarcely caught a glimpse of the city's sixth most important financial advisor. It was as if she had forgotten all about the new members of her family, or was simply more interested in lounging around the rooms in the apartment rather than spending time with the three siblings. But the Baudelaire orphans did not really mind that Esmé was absent so often. They much preferred spending time with one another, or with Jerome, rather than participating in endless conversations about what was in and what was out. Even when the Baudelaires stayed in their bedrooms, the three children did not have such a splendid time. As he had promised, Jerome had given Violet the bedroom with the large wooden bench, which was indeed perfect for keeping tools, but Violet could find no tools in the entire penthouse. She found it odd that such an enormous apartment would have not even a socket wrench or one measly pair of pliers, but Esmé haughtily explained, when Violet asked her one evening, that tools were ou
t. Klaus did have the Squalor library next to his bedroom, and it was a large and comfortable room with hundreds of books on its shelves. But the middle Baudelaire was disappointed to find that every single book was merely a description of what had been in and out during various times in history. Klaus tried to interest himself in books of this type, but it was so dull to read a snooty book like Boots Were In in 1812 or Trout: In France They're Out that Klaus found himself spending scarcely any time in the library at all. And poor Sunny fared no better, a phrase which here means "also became bored in her bedroom." Jerome had thoughtfully placed a number of toys in her room, but they were the sort of toys designed for softer-toothed babies-- squishy stuffed animals, cushioned balls, and assorted colorful pillows, none of which were the least bit fun to bite.

  But what really mixed the Baudelaire bag was not the overwhelming size of the Squalor apartment, or the disappointments of a tool bench without tools, a library without interesting books, or nonchewable items of amusement. What really troubled the three children was the thought that the Quagmire triplets were undoubtedly experiencing things that were much, much worse. With every passing day, their worry for their friends felt like a heavy load on the Baudelaires' shoulders, and the load only seemed heavier, because the Squalors refused to be of any assistance.

  "I'm very, very tired of discussing your little twin friends," Esmé said one day, as the Baudelaires and the Squalors sipped aqueous martinis one evening in a living room the children had never seen before. "I know you're worried about them, but it's boring to keep blabbing on about it."

  "We didn't mean to bore you," Violet said, not adding that it is terribly rude to tell people that their troubles are boring.

  "Of course you didn't," Jerome said, picking the olive out of his fancy glass and popping it into his mouth before turning to his wife. "The children are concerned, Esmé, which is perfectly understandable. I know Mr. Poe is doing all he can, but maybe we can put our heads together and come up with something else."