Work Text:
The phone rings just as she is already about to leave. The shrill melody rolls through the entire half-empty building of the publishing house – bounces off the walls, hits against the windows. Moxie stares at the ringing machine with irritation for half a minute or so. She has every right not to pick up. Her working day is long over. She has to get back to the lighthouse as quickly as she can because the last time she worked that late, she came home to discover that the stove burner was on and the whole house was reeking of gas. Father’s health gives in more and more with each passing day, and Moxie really, really needs to make sure that he and his senile dementia haven’t managed to cause any disaster today. Doesn’t matter who’s calling and what they want: she’s not obliged to answer.
“Shit,” she mutters at last and picks up the phone. Sometimes she feels like she’s too good of a journalist. The fact that lately she’s mostly been engaged in editing does not change that.
“The Stain’d Lighthouse, Mallahan speaking.”
“Moxie,” a pleasant male voice says. “What’s the news?”
Moxie tenses up.
“Snicket?” she inquires. If it isn’t him, she’ll apologize, and that’s it. The last time they saw each other his voice hasn’t started breaking yet.
“Yes, it’s me, Moxie. Hello.”
“Snicket, where are you? What’s going on?”
“You have been editing all my last manuscripts, Moxie. You know what’s going on.”
“All I know is that you’re up to your neck in shit. Don’t you want to drop by the publishing house for a change, like all normal authors do? To bring your new opus here yourself? Or to mail it, at least, instead of making me drive to God knows where again and look for your hidden treasures?”
“I’d love to, but I do not wish to put you in even greater danger.”
“Oh, so if you do not wish to put me in danger, perhaps you shouldn’t have asked for my assistance in the first place?”
“If you want to, we can break our agreement and I shall look for another publisher.”
“Fat chance,” Moxie says quickly. It’s stupid, but her heart is beating like crazy. A strange thing it is, talking to one’s own past. To the scariest, darkest, most disturbing part of one’s past. “Your novels bring us quite a profit. Besides, I… I am worried about you.”
“Thank you,” she has no idea if he is smiling or frowning on the other end of the line. If he is calling from their state or from some place abroad. From a phone booth, a hotel room, or a secret underground bunker. Is it even possible to make a phone call from a secret underground bunker? “In fact, I am calling you precisely to say that. Thank you for everything you’ve already done and continue doing for me – and for the Baudelaires. I could have written you a letter but I decided that this is something worth saying out loud.”
Moxie cannot help smiling.
“That’s what friends are for, Snicket. Or do you still prefer the word ‘associates’?”
“Let’s put it that way: I used to have a lot of associates but, as time went on, I found out that by no means all of them could be called my friends.”
“I see,” Moxie says, desperately trying to figure out what else to say until he hasn’t hung up and disappeared for many years again. “I am sorry… for Josephine. I remember her, you know”, and that is not a lie, she remembers indeed, though dimly, that serious girl who once visited Lemony in Stain’d-by-the-Sea. “A terrible death. She didn’t deserve that.”
“None of them deserved that, Moxie.”
Taking into account all that she knows about their organization, Moxie would not be so sure, but that is the thought she decides to keep to herself.
“I have almost finished working on the next part,” Lemony says. “You’ll receive information on where to find the manuscript in the next letter. I’m afraid I can talk to you no longer, Moxie. The train’s arriving any minute now.”
“Wait.”
She wants to tell him: we all remember you. Cleo, Jake, Kellar, Ornette, the Bellerophon brothers. We rarely talk about you but I know they remember. She wants to tell him: no idea if we would’ve bonded with each other back then and continued being friends now if it wasn’t for you. She wants to tell him: you know, I met Ellington. Have you ever noticed what a marvellous smile she’s got? The kind that could mean anything.
“Take care, Snicket,” she says instead. A phone call is better than formal letters with no return address but still she would have preferred that he was next to her right now; then she would have hugged him and there wouldn’t have been any need to say something. “I’m sure one day it all shall end.”
“Take care too, Miss Mallahan. I’m sure you’re right. The question is how it all shall end.”
She opens her mouth to tell him “oh, screw you” – and closes it at once, hearing beeps.