Adverbs by Daniel Handler Page A

It’s a comedy. Here I’m going mad when they’re reading the hypnotist’s last will and testament, and in the corner a terrible creature is taking me away.”
    Mike’s shirt was soaked too, and he took it off and handed itto her without thinking. “Here you are something else,” he said. She found a towel and touched his bare back as she drooped it around his shoulders like a shawl, and he shivered. “You have white makeup and a cape and a cardboard crown.”
    “The Snow Queen,” the Snow Queen said.
    “Are you really?” Mike asked.
    “How did my lines sound?” she asked back.
    “At one point,” Mike said, “one time it sounded like you said fingersauce .”
    “Hardly the words of the netherworld of Kata,” the Snow Queen said, and unlaced his shoes, sneaker by sneaker.
    “Was it fun?” Mike asked. “A movie star? I bet you got to go to parties.”
    “It’s funny you should say parties,” the Snow Queen said sadly. “I had this part over there, taped up near the light switch, where I was sort of a ghost grandma. I had a line, ‘It’s a party!’ They had me do it fifteen times, ‘It’s a party! It’s a party! It’s a party! It’s a party! It’s a party! It’s a party! It’s a party! It’s a party! It’s a party! It’s a party! It’s a party! It’s a party! It’s a party! It’s a party! It’s a party!’ And it never even made it into the picture. Nobody wanted to hear it. You can say something and say something, but still nobody wants to hear it.”
    “I want to hear it,” Mike said, his soaking socks off.
    “I was in love,” the Snow Queen said. “That was the last thing I was in, and the director fell in love with me, or anyway we had a baby. But the baby passed on.”
    “My baby sister passed on,” Mike said.
    “It’s a terrible thing,” the Snow Queen said. “I’ve barely gotten out of bed since, and the director too. He couldn’t think of anything else but all those monster stories. I ran away from him and wasted away all my money to forget, and if I had one wish now, it would be for that baby back, something to love on these cold days alone.”
    “If your baby was alive,” asked Mike, “would it be my age?”
    “Oh goodness no,” the Snow Queen said, and then slapped her strong hands on her knees. “If you could have one wish, what would it be for your turn?”
    Mike looked out the window down at the street. Most of the signs were dark, and some of the rain was almost hail. “I guess calamari,” he said, blushing because he knew it was dumb. “I had it in Santa Cruz and I really liked it, but probably I can’t have it now.”
    The Snow Queen smiled and walked over to her freezer. Inside it was so covered in frost there was only one thing in it. She pulled it out and threw it on the table in front of him. It was a bag of calamari, frozen and pictured on the packaging. Everything she said was coming true. She was a prophetess, something from elsewhere, and this is part of love too. You must believe what is happening, every pronouncement the love is making, or you might as well go back to the diner and wait for someone who has forgotten you completely. “I have a microwave,” the Snow Queen pronounced grandly. “It’ll be ready in three to five minutes.”
    In three to five minutes the world can change, and three to five minutes might even be a generous estimate for a relationshipbetween a young boy and an older woman from the netherworld of Kata, if you know what I mean. But all love gets over, and we must get over it. Even Mike, young as he was, knew that the guy he was waiting for at the diner wasn’t going to show. The whole world seemed up in that apartment, like the freezer of the Snow Queen might give them a limitless menu if they could just wish for everything they wanted. They grinned at the microwave, Mike especially because he was the one who loved the calamari, but the Snow Queen too, because she was the one who loved him. He was innocent,