"Wake up!" Sunny peeked out of the trunk and saw Count Olaf calling through the door of one of the tents she had assembled. "Wake up and get dressed for breakfast!"
"Can't we sleep ten minutes more?" asked the whiny voice of the hook-handed man. "I was having a lovely dream about sneezing without covering my nose and mouth, and giving everybody germs."
"Absolutely not!" Olaf replied. "I have lots of work for you to do."
"But Olaf," said Esmé Squalor, emerging from the tent she had shared with Count Olaf. Her hair was in curlers and she was wearing a long robe and a pair of fuzzy slippers. "I need a little while to choose what I'm going to wear. It's not in to burn down a headquarters without wearing a fashionable outfit."
Sunny gasped in the trunk. She had known that Olaf was eager to reach the V.F.D. headquarters as soon as possible, in order to get his hands on the rest of some crucial evidence, but it had not occurred to her that he would combine this evidence-grabbing with his usual pyromania, a word which here means "a love of fire, usually the product of a deranged mind."
"I can't imagine why you need all this time," was Count Olaf's grumpy reply to his girlfriend. "After all, I wear the same outfit for weeks at a time, except when I'm in disguise, and I look almost unbearably handsome. Well, I suppose you have a few minutes before breakfast is ready. Slow service is one of the disadvantages of having infants for slaves." Olaf strode over to the car and peered in at Sunny, who was still clutching the loaf of bread.
"Hurry up, bigmouth," he growled at Sunny. "I need a nice hot meal to take the chill out of the morning."
"Unfeasi!" Sunny cried. By "Unfeasi" she meant "To make a hot meal without any electricity, I'd need a fire, and expecting a baby to start a fire all by herself on top of a snowy mountain is cruelly impossible and impossibly cruel," but Olaf merely frowned.
"Your baby talk is really beginning to annoy me," he said.
"Hygiene," Sunny said, to make herself feel better. She meant something along the lines of, "Additionally, you ought to be ashamed of yourself for wearing the same outfit for weeks at a time without washing," but Olaf merely scowled at her and walked back into his tent.
Sunny looked at the cold ingredients and tried to think. Even if she had been old enough to start a fire by herself, Sunny had been nervous around flames since the fire that had destroyed the Baudelaire mansion. But as she thought of the fire that destroyed her own home, she remembered something her mother had told her once. They had both been busy in the kitchen — Sunny's mother was busy preparing for a fancy luncheon, and Sunny was busy dropping a fork on the floor over and over again to see what sort of sound it made. The luncheon was due to start any minute, and Sunny's mother was quickly mixing up a salad of sliced mango, black beans, and chopped celery mixed with black pepper, lime juice, and olive oil.
"This isn't a very complicated recipe, Sunny," her mother had said, "but if I arrange the salad very nicely on fancy plates, people will think I've been cooking all day.
Often, when cooking, the presentation of the food can be as important as the food itself." Thinking of what her mother had said, she opened the picnic basket in Olaf's trunk and found that it contained a set of elegant plates, each emblazoned with the familiar eye insignia, and a small tea set. Then she rolled up her sleeves — an expression which here means "focused very hard on the task at hand, but did not actually roll up her sleeves, because it was very cold on the highest peak of the Mortmain Mountains" — and got to work as Count Olaf and his comrades started their day.
"I'll use these blankets for a tablecloth," Sunny heard Olaf say in the tent, over the sound her own teeth were making.
"Good idea," she heard Esmé reply. "It's very in to dine al fresco."
"What does that mean?" Olaf asked.
"It means 'outside,' of course," Esmé explained. "It's fashionable to eat your meals in the fresh air."
"I knew what it meant," Count Olaf replied. "I was just testing you."
"Hey boss," Hugo called from the next tent. "Colette won't share the dental floss."
"There's no reason to use dental floss," Count Olaf said, "unless you're trying to strangle someone with a very weak neck."
"Kevin, would you do me a favor?" the hook-handed man asked, as Sunny struggled to open the jug of juice. "Will you help me comb my hair? These hooks can make it difficult sometimes."
"I'm jealous of your hooks," Kevin replied. "Having no hands is better than having two equally strong hands."
"Don't be ridiculous," one of the white-faced women replied. "Having a white face is worse than both of your situations."
"But you have a white face because you put makeup on," Colette said, as Sunny climbed back out of the trunk and knelt down in the snow. "You're putting powder on your face right now."
"Must you bicker every single morning?" Count Olaf asked, and stomped back out of his tent carrying a blanket covered in images of eyes. "Somebody take this blanket and set the table over there on that flat rock."
Hugo walked out of the tent and smiled at his new boss. "I'd be happy to," he said.
Esmé stepped outside, having changed into a bright red snowsuit, and put her arm around Olaf. "Fold the blanket into a large triangle," she said to Hugo. "That's the in way to do it."
"Yes ma'am," Hugo said, "and, if you don't mind my saying so, that's a very handsome snowsuit you are wearing."
The villainous girlfriend turned all the way around to show off her outfit from every angle. Sunny looked up from her cooking and noticed that the letter B was sewn onto the back of it, along with the eye insignia. "I'm glad you like it, Hugo," Esmé said. "It's stolen."
Count Olaf glanced at Sunny and quickly stepped in front of his girlfriend. "What are you staring at, toothy?" he asked. "Are you done making breakfast?"
"Almost," Sunny replied.
"That infant never makes any sense," Hugo said. "No wonder she fooled us into thinkine she was a carnival freak."
Sunny sighed, but no one heard her over the scornful laughter of Olaf's troupe. One by one, the villain's wretched employees emerged from the tent and strolled over to the flat rock where Hugo was laying out the blanket. One of the white-faced women glanced at Sunny and gave her a small smile, but nobody offered to help her finish with the breakfast preparations, or even to set the table with the eye-patterned dishes. Instead, they gathered around the rock talking and laughing until Sunny carefully carried the breakfast over to them, arranged on a large eye-shaped tray that she'd found in the bottom of the picnic basket. Although she was still frightened to be in Olaf's clutches and worried about her siblings, Sunny could not help but be a little proud as Count Olaf and his comrades looked at the meal she had prepared.
Sunny had kept in mind what her mother had said about presentation being as important as the food itself, and managed to put together a lovely breakfast despite the difficult circumstances. First, she had opened the jug of frozen orange juice and used a small spoon to chip away at the ice until she had a large heap of juice shavings, which she arranged into tiny piles on each plate to make orange granita, a cold and delicious concoction that is often served at fancy dinner parties and masked balls. Then, Sunny had rinsed her mouth out with melted snow so it would be as clean as possible, and chopped some of the coffee beans with her teeth. She placed a bit of the ground coffee inside each cup and combined it with more snow she had melted in her own hands to make iced coffee, a delicious beverage I first enjoyed when visiting Thailand to interview a taxi driver. Meanwhile, the youngest Baudelaire had put the chilled bread underneath her shirt to warm it up, and when it was warm enough to eat she put one slice on each plate, and using a small spoon, spread some boysenberry jam on each piece of bread. She did her best to spread the jam in the shape of an eye, to please the villains who would be eating it, and as a finishing touch she found a bouquet of ivy, which Count Olaf had given his girlfriend not so long ago, and placed it in the small pitcher of the tea set used for cream. There was no cream, but the ivy wou
ld help the presentation of the food by serving as a centerpiece, a word which here means "a decoration placed in the middle of a table, often used to distract people from the food." Of course, orange granita and iced coffee are not often served at al fresco breakfasts on cold mountain peaks, and bread with jam is more traditionally prepared as toast, but without a source of heat or any other cooking equipment, Sunny had done the best she could, and she hoped that Olaf and his troupe might appreciate her efforts.