The Cheshire
by Bill Kte'pi
10-19-97
for Michelle Hansard

  Alice took a long, enthusiastic drag off her cigarette the minute 
she got out of work - eight hours writing blurbs for young adult novels 
without a cigarette break; she'd thought of quitting (the job, not the 
nicotine nipple) more than once, but Maryann - her parole officer - 
wouldn't stand for it.  Alice had quit heroin, quit drinking, quit pot 
and acid and coke and whoring and cheap makeup - but she drew the line at 
her two-packs-a-day.
  It was raining, and like always Alice had to keep from looking up 
to see where the tears were coming from.  Old habits, older even than the 
ones worn by the nuns at the orphanage - older than me, too, Alice 
reminded herself, making that daily half-assed stab for sanity.
  She hopped up the crumbling steps to the entrance of her 
apartment building, repeating her mantra: There's no Wonderland.  Nothing 
behind any looking glasses - hell, no one even had looking glasses 
anymore, just mirrors.  Made with mercury, not silver - Mercury, the god 
of speed, suited the 20th century better than any metal of warding.  
Nothing behind the mirror except a medicine chest full of mood 
stabilisers and sleeping pills.  And whoever she was, she wasn't Alice 
Liddell.  That Alice had married, mothered, and died long before this 
Alice could've been born.
  She unlocked her apartment door, both locks, and dropped her 
purse on the table while she listened to her messages.
  Beep.  "Ali, it's Maryann, I can't make our appointment tomorrow 
- call me and reschedule?"
  Beep.  "Hello, Miss Little.  I'm calling about - about your ad, 
in the weekly?  I don't know why a raven's like a writing desk, but I, uh 
- my name's Eric, I'm thirty-seven, divorced ... I've got a good job ... 
uh, my number is 253-3179, call me whenever or I'll call when you're 
home."
  Beep.  "Alice.  It's been difficult finding you, thank you for 
placing the ad.  You have a photograph of me, I believe?  A daguerrotype 
--" Alice dropped her cigarette and fumbled to turn the volume up on the 
machine.  "-- with Dinah.  I'm afraid I haven't a number where you can 
reach me, but I'm ... anxious to see you.  I shall try again later."
  There were more messages, more would-be suitors responding to her 
personal, as well as a creditor and her sponsor checking up on her ("a 
hundred and three days, kiddo, keep it up!"), but Alice didn't hear them 
- she was fumbling through a shoebox in the closet, tossing aside her 
degree in English, AA chits, a nostalgic needle, and - there.
  It was a faded yellow daguerrotype - the only thing she'd been 
found with other than jumbled memories and a blue gingham dress when she 
stepped out of a Kansas City revival theatre in 1981.  It hadn't been 
faded then - the yellow was from cigarette smoke more than anything else. 
 It was a simple, unassuming, highly improbable photograph - its subject 
a large, fluffy, white cat in a Victorian rocking chair.  Under the 
chair, a second cat's tail swished just out of range of the left leg - 
but there was no second cat, just the tail fading off to nothing and 
naught.  The Cheshire.
  "There's no Cheshire Cat," she repeated to herself, "no White 
Rabbit, no Wonderland, dammit, no Queen of Fucking Hearts."  She'd tried 
to find her way back - tried every drug she could, hallucinogenic and 
otherwise; tried meditation, trances, pain rituals, sweat lodges, prayers 
and madness and hypnosis and psychotherapy.  Nothing.  The photo was a 
hoax, her memories symptomatic of a dissociative disorder.
  The problem - well, one of them - was she'd never thought of 
herself as the "real" Alice, the one Charles Dodgson wrote Alice's 
Adventures in Wonderland for - she had no memories of that Alice's life, 
only of the life chronicled by Lewis Carroll - madness and tea parties 
and talking animals.  Worse, her memories conflicted, as she remembered 
Alice's Adventures Underground, Wonderland's first draft, as vividly as 
she did the two published novels.  What's more, she knew why a raven was 
like a writing desk - or she had.
  In a daze, Alice stuffed the daguerrotype in her purse, fed 
Pepper (her sixth cat), and fell asleep on the couch, dreaming 
caterpillar dreams with a thousand shoes.

  Alice spent the next day succinctly summarising the contents of 
the latest three novels in a series about an adorable and mischievous 
pair of twins with a penchant for solving crimes their police chief 
father was always stumped by, her mind constantly wrapping itself around 
the phone message of the previous evening, like chocolate molding itself 
around chewy nougat.  She wanted a drink.  She badly wanted a drink.  A 
glass of wine, preferably an Italian red; a stiff shot of Remy Martin 
cognac, with the tiniest hint of sweet cream swirled in; anisette on the 
rocks; Captain Morgan's and Coke in a red plastic tumbler.  She'd called 
her sponsor four times before lunch, but she couldn't explain why she 
wanted the drink so desperately, and moral support only got her so far.
  She smoked behind the building during her lunch hour, something 
she rarely did because it meant getting behind on work.  She pinched the 
skin between her thumb and forefinger till her chewed-down nails drew 
blood.  She rubbed her temples with her knuckles, twisted her gold studs 
into sparkles of pain in her earlobes.  She wasn't sure which she was 
fending off - the drinking or the madness.  Or if there was much of a 
difference.
  As she recited her mantra and hopped up the steps after work, she 
realised it wasn't her apartment building she was hopping into - it was a 
bar she used to frequent, not so many months ago.  Not so long ago that 
the bartender didn't pour her usual the moment she sat down, a Tanqueray 
and tonic with wedges of both lemon and lime.  R-rated Sprite, she called 
it.
  She took the drink, left a five on the counter, and retreated to 
the booth by the jukebox.  She stared at the glass while the ice melted 
and the condensation crawled down the outside, wetting the cocktail 
napkin.  She didn't sip, knowing sips would become swallows, birds of 
fancy that would swim in her gullet crying out till she fed them tequila 
worms and let them fly.
  "That way leads to madness," she whispered.
  "All ways lead to madness, Alice," he said from next to the 
jukebox.  "We're all mad here."
  He sat down across from her, just another guy in a leather jacket 
and jeans too tight and sunglasses too dark for a smoky bar.  Just 
another rummie in a purple-striped turtleneck, with odd-shaped nails and 
a tattoo of a mushroom on one of his knuckles, smoking Camel filters.
  "I saw your ad," he said.  "Did you get my message?"
  She nodded.  He took a sip of her T-and-T, fishing an ice cube 
out with his tongue and cracking it between his molars.
  "Who are you?" she asked.
  "Who are you?"
  "Alice.  Alice Little."
  He grinned.  Grinnnnned.  Like a smile grinding against the walls 
of the face.  "Little Alice.  Not so little anymore.  Not so Alice 
anymore.  Or are you?  The ad makes me wonder."  He took a piece of 
clipped newsprint from his pocket and laid it on the table - her ad.  
"Why is a raven like a writing desk?" he read.  "SWF, attractive, 
vivacious, enthusiastic mental explorer.  #6868."
  "Do you know the answer?"
  "Do you want it?"
  "I want a cigarette."  She pulled one out and he lit it - she 
inhaled while the flame still touched, tasting the fire against her 
tongue.
  "How long have you been here?"
  "I just came in - maybe half an hour ago, an hour."
  "No, not the bar.  Here.  Now.  Out of Wonderland."
  "Sixteen years.  I walked out of a showing of the movie - the 
Disney version - with no idea where I was.  I spent a month in a hospital 
before they sent me to the orphanage."  She took the daguerrotype out of 
her purse, laid it next to the personal.  "This was pinned to the inside 
of my dress."
  He nodded, running a fingernail along the photo.  "Poor Dinah.  
She misses - missed - you."
  "Who are you?  How are you?"
  He smiled, and turned the ad around so she could see it better.  
"An acrostic," he said, pointing to the first letter of each word after 
the opening question.  "S-A-V-E-M-E.  What do you need saving from, 
Alice?"
  "Right now, from this drink.  I've been sober fifteen weeks."
  "It's just juniper berries gone bad.  Take a sip.  What's the 
worst that can happen?  You'll think you're a character from a children's 
story?"
  "I can't be who I think I am."
  "No one is who they think they are.  Why should you be any 
different?"
  "You can't be who I think you are."
  "No one is who other people think they are, either.  Maybe I'm an 
afternoon-shift manager in a novelty shop in the mall.  Does that help?"
  "No."
  "The name of the shop is Cabbages and Kings.  Among other things, 
they sell bongs shaped like caterpillars and hats a friend of ours would 
have adored.  Ask me what you really want to ask me."
  "Can you take me back?"
  He took her hand in his, prying it off the wet glass, and held it 
up to his mouth as if to kiss it - but instead licked the drops of 
condensation off her fingertips, like a cat with cream.  "Alice.  
Darling, naive, Alice.  There's no back to take you.  You never left."
  "I am her, aren't I?"
  "You are - and you aren't."
  "And you're him."
  "I am - and I'm not.  Maybe we recognise each other because 
you're Alice and I'm the Cheshire Cat.  Maybe we're descendents of the 
originals.  Maybe we're brother and sister, separated after our parents' 
deaths and so traumatised we sought refuge in the books Father read to us 
as children.  Maybe we're simply mad."
  He produced a small square of paper with a bright red-and-orange 
Smurf Village mushroom drawn on it, slid his fingers between her lips, 
and placed it under her tongue.
  "I haven't done any drugs in over a year," she said, but left it 
where it was.
  "Shall I tell you?"
  "Yes.  Why is a raven like a writing desk?"
  He took the sunglasses off.  His eyes were those of a cat's.  "It 
isn't, Alice.  It isn't anything like a writing desk."
  And he faded away, leaving nothing but a grinnnnnnnnnn.