business,” I said.
“I guess we should keep all our actions quiet,” Squeak said. “That way Hangfire won’t catch on.”
“We hope,” Pip said.
“We hope,” I agreed, but I didn’t feel agreeable. I wondered what the Bellerophons were up to. And Ornette, I thought. And Theodora, and Sally Murphy and her strange porter. And my sister, and a thousand other people I might not see again. Not after what I was about to do. I looked out at the night, and the taxi turned left and swung into the shadow of Ink Inc., the pen-shaped tower making the dark even darker just where we were.
“Snicket,” Squeak said, braking and breaking the silence, “how about you give us a tip like you do?”
I had a system with the Bellerophon brothers, recommending books in exchange for their services. It’s a system I wish were used more widely in the world. “Have you read a book called The Turn of the Screw ?” I asked.
Pip pointed his thumb at the hood of the taxi. “We get enough hardware in our ordinary lives,” he said.
“It’s not about hardware,” I told him. “It’s about a babysitter and some ghosts. It’s difficult but it’s spooky, and speaking of which, stop here, will you?”
The Bellerophons stopped their taxi, and I peered out at the loading dock of Partial Foods. It was empty and eerie, with a crumbling cement ramp and the back door of the grocery store, locked now and probably forever. I could see a discarded apple core, sad and mushy in a clump of weeds, and the torn wrapper of a long-gone candy bar, balled up and forgotten near the train tracks.
“You never told us the whole story of what happened here, with all those stolen honeydew melons,” Pip reminded me, referring to recent events chronicled in a report that is not recommended for the general public.
“True,” I admitted.
“The train won’t stop here,” Squeak said to me. “It’ll just race on by.”
“I know it,” I replied.
Pip turned around to look at me. “Do we have to ask again about doing something foolish?”
“No,” I said. “You definitely don’t have to ask.”
“Maybe that’s the wrong question,” Squeak said, looking at the strange, bare place where he and his brother had taken me. “Maybe the right question is, do you really want to be here?”
I thought of all the places I wanted to be, not as difficult and not as spooky. I stepped out of the car and deeper into a mystery of which I couldn’t make head nor tail, and I answered the question the best I could.
“No,” I said, “I don’t want to be here,” and I thanked them for taking me there and sent them on their way.
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