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Kevin first noticed the little blonde girl as she charged imperiously up the hallway, tossing her feather boa over her shoulder.
“Isn’t it rawther extraordinary, Nanny?” she wondered, clomping by in her heels. “It’s almost Christmas and mama is still working in Hollywood!”
“She said she’d be home the day before Christmas Eve,” Nanny said, chasing the blonde girl down. “We’ll be seeing her soon enough.”
“I suppose I’ll have to contend myself with going to Susan’s Christmas party,” she admitted. But then she was scampering to a window at the end of the hall and peering down. “I swear I can see dinosaurs by the Statue of Liberty!”
“Wow,” Kevin murmured. She was a weirdo, but she also seemed to know exactly what was going on in the hotel. She almost seemed kind of cool – for someone who thought dinosaurs were running around out there.
**
He didn’t actually approach her until they were both dining one night. She was having an enormous sundae and he put out his hand and explained that he was new around here.
“Who dropped you off?” she wondered. “The stork?” She held out her hand and said she was Eloise and had been born here, in New York and in a trunk and in this very hotel.
But since Kevin wasn’t here for her high-handedness, so he told her she was weird. She poured a lemonade over his head. So he poured salt on her sundae and she paid a waiter to smash a pie in Kevin’s face.
It was prank at first sight.
***
After that the pranks flew fast and furious between them. She ordered pineapple pizza for him at all hours of the night; he tied her boa to a kite’s tail and sent it soaring over Central Park. To the horror of Nanny, it ended in a messy food fight during which Kevin forgot to be cool and absolutely began to pretend he was a mobster.
After that, a true was on. But it was a truce that was interrupted by the arrival of Marv and Harry, climbing up the fire escape, apparently set on robbing Eloise’s mom blind.
And Kevin couldn’t stand for that.
They had enough time to start equipping the apartment with booby traps. Eloise looked up mid-task, a curious look on her face. “Why are they called the Sticky Bandits?” she wondered, nose wrinkling up in horror.
“Believe me,” Kevin said, “you don’t want to know.”
She nodded and narrowed her eyes. There was a bowling ball with Marv’s name on it, only he didn’t know it yet. They may have plenty of experience fighting off one blond kid. But two?
They weren’t gonna know what hit them.