"The 'Pig and Pepper' chapter where Duchess appears is hilariously funny," the Pillar reads from a local newspaper. Behind us, the chauffeur buys our tickets.
"Really?" I am stretching my tight dress a bit. I am not used to this kind of intimacy on my skin. Neither am I comfortable with my heels. What's wrong with sneakers, or better, being barefoot?
"That's what the papers say." The Pillar looks at the billboards showing "previous attractions." "Damn," he mumbles. "We missed Shrek the Musical."
"And 'Coraline' by Neil Gaiman," I point out.
"Who's your favorite, Lewis Carroll or Neil Gaiman?" He points his finger playfully at me.
"Carroll." I don't hesitate. "Lewis Carroll or J. R. R. Tolkien?" I shoot back.
"Carroll." He doesn't hesitate either. "Lewis Carroll or C. S. Lewis?"
"Hmm." I love the Narnia books. "Nah, Carroll." I can't resist. "Lewis Carroll or Charlie and the Chocolate Factory?" I am starting to love this game.
"Can't compare an author to a single book, Alice," he says. "Here is a good one: who has a better sense of absurd humor, Lewis Carroll or God?"
I raise an eyebrow. I can't answer that. "Who do you think?" I feel eerily playful.
"God, of course." He waves hi at his approaching mousy chauffer, panting with the tickets in his hands. "Just look at what he has created." He secretly points at his chauffeur. "It can't get absurder than this."
"There is no such word as 'absurder.'" I bite my lips at his blunt sense of sarcasm.
"Who said it's a word? Absurd is an emotion." He winks and welcomes the tickets the chauffeur gives him.
"Eight tickets, like you ordered," the chauffeur remarks.
"Eight?" I grimace at the Pillar.
"My seat and yours." The Pillar counts on his fingers. "Two seats to our left and right, two behind us, and the two front of us."
"Why?"
"Precautions, Alice," the Pillar says. "Who knows what might happen inside? I have a bad feeling about this."
"All seats are also right in the middle of the theatre," the chauffeur elaborates.
"Evil people, such as terrorists, are dumb." The Pillar spares me the burden of asking. "They usually start bombing the back seats if they've intrusively entered from outside. Or bomb the front seats if they're sleeper cells. Middle is just fine."
"Not if the theatre's chandelier falls on your heads in the middle." My knack for opposing him grows in me.
"If something hits you in perpendicular line straight down from the sky, that's not a terrorist," the Pillar says while he hands a piece of his portable hookah to hide in my dress. "That would be God's sense of humor."
"What is that for?" I look at his Lego hookah.
"They don't allow hookahs inside, and I have a bad feeling I will need it."
I tuck it under my dress, counting on the Pillar to deal with security on our way in.
"So, let me be your guide for tonight, Miss Edith Wonder." He requests I engage him, and I do. "Pretend I am your father," he hisses between almost-sealed lips as we stare at the security gate. "A smile will do wonders, too."
We both smile, but I have to ask, hissing, "Why did you call me Edith?"
"In case something horrible happens, I don't want them looking for you," he says, not looking at me. "Also, your sister has been mean to you. Let's get her in trouble." We keep on smiling at the guards. "Tell the security man on your side that his taste of clothes is exceptionally très chic. That'd be a good distraction."
"But he is wearing a boring uniform," I hiss through my plastic smile.
"And he happens to be in his mid-forties, not wearing a ring, and probably desperate to hear a compliment from a beautiful young lady too," the Pillar says as we close in. "Make him think this a special conversation between you and him, behind daddy's back."
I do as he says when we enter. The man blushes and doesn't bother checking the tickets. I emit a seductive laugh and turn to the Pillar when we're inside, "It worked. How did you pass your guard? You haven't promised anything you can't keep?"
"Nah." He raises his chin and greets a few ladies he hasn't seen before. "I puffed hookah smoke in his face. It hypnotized him long enough for me to pass."
"Just like that? You didn't show him anything?"
"Of course I did." He smiles broadly at he crowd. "My middle finger."
Chapter 3 4
"The theatre is on the eastern boundary of the Covent Garden area of London," the Pillar says, pretending to guide me through as we eye everyone around us, looking for a clue to the Muffin Man. "It runs between Aldwych and High Holborn," he continues. "Not to be confused to the many other so-called Theatre Royals in the world."
"I'd prefer you tell me what Lewis Carroll has to do with all of this," I say as we enter the auditorium.
The Pillar gently holds my hand as if I am a princess and ushers me to my seats. "No farting, I promise," he says to the seating crowd we pass in the row.
We finally are seated.
"Lewis Carroll used to work briefly with the theatre," the Pillar says, holding my hands between his. "They used a few plays he'd written long before he got mad; I mean, long before he wrote Alice in Wonderland."
I sit and listen, not telling him about my vision of Lewis.
"You have to understand that these Victorian times were harsh," the Pillar says. "We're talking about London's filthiest, cruelest, poorest, and hungriest times. You couldn't tell people's real ages. From their unnaturally skinnier and smaller sizes, you'd think they were dwarves." He asks me to hand him the hookah piece, and begins preparing his weapon. "Food was so scarce that poorer people went down in size and length. It's true. Look at me. I am not that tall. And I lived these times."
"Proceed, please." I try to pose like someone who's accustomed to being in theatres.
"Carroll wasn't in any way fond of London. He loved Oxford, with all its books, grand halls, and studios," the Pillar continues. "He had also been a priest for a brief time; the Oxford Choir in the church will never forget him. But then Lewis developed a great interest in photography, particularly kids, like Constance's photograph."
The light in the hall dims, preparing for the start of the play.
"As you might have heard, photographers will tell you a camera never lies," the Pillar says. "In Carroll's case it was exceptionally true. The poverty his camera caught was heartbreaking. If you'd ever paid attention to his photographs, mostly of young homeless girls, you would understand his obsession. Poverty, hunger, and unfair childhood screamed out of every photo."
"I could imagine Lewis like that."
"Before writing books and puzzles, Lewis directed small plays in Oxford to entertain the poor, skinny kids with tattered clothes. He did it because there was not enough money to buy them food. In all history, art has been food of the poor, Alice. Remember that." The Pillar seems lost for a moment. I wonder what memory he is staring into. "Carroll called his intentions 'saving the children.' He wanted to save a child's childhood. He wanted to save their memories from being stained by the filth of his era."
"I couldn't save them!" Lewis' words ring in my ears.
"Those plays he directed for them introduced Carroll to the art of nonsense," the Pillar explains. "Kids are nonsensical by nature. A lame joke would make them laugh, because they are at ease with who they are. Unlike grown-ups, who are weighed down by the years."