Chapter 8: The Mad Tea Party
(Secret Love Affair - Alice in Wonderland Parody)
(Secret Love Affair - Alice in Wonderland Parody)
The interview was a mistake from the
very start. Seon-jae hadn't wanted to go. The lizard patted him
familiarly on the back and forced him to wear his scaly clothes. He
could hardly bring himself to go into the lizard's room, let alone
wear his shirt. He saw a book open to an underlined passage:
They told me you had been to her, And
mentioned me to him:
She gave me a good character, But said
I could not swim.
He wondered who had marked the book,
and if it referred to him. When he went down the stairs their talk
made his whole body cringe. Then they wanted him to smile and play
something short and sweet on the piano. The whole thing culminated in
an awkward Portrait of Parents With College-Age Child.
The griffin brought over a crowd of
people from the mock @turtle1's farewell party. They scrounged fruit
and kimbap from the kitchen and sat outside at a big table under a
tree. The March Hair and the Hatter dispensed tea at one end of the
table, while the dodo and the duchess set up a game of mahjong at the
other. The Dormouse sat between the girls with his head on the
table, and they used him as a cushion, resting their elbows on his
back. “What is this?” he complained. “What about the gum and
the hairpin? I thought you two were mad at each other.”
“Not any more,” answered the March
Hair complacently. “She said she was sorry and called me unni.”
“You're the one I'm mad at,” the
Hatter pinched the Dormouse. “What were you trying to pull? Where
did you even get that car?” The March Hair snickered and stuck the
lid of the teapot on his head.
“Ok, 418,” he sighed.
“What?”
“I'm A Teapot." At her quizzical look he added, "HTTP code. They use it on April Fool's Day.”
The lizard made the fox sit next to
him, draping his arm around her shoulders, giving her wine, and
making her eat strawberries out of his hand. She escaped, sweating,
to her room to find that Seon-jae had marked the book:
If I or she should chance to be
Involved in this affair,
He trusts to you to set them free,
Exactly as we were.
She was about to go back downstairs
when she noticed her mirror going foggy. As it melted away, she saw
peering through the silvery mist an elderly lady wearing a crooked
shawl, with her hair in a sloppy knot topped by a silver crown.
“Would you just help me through, my dear?” the lady asked,
holding out her hand. The fox found herself supporting a bejeweled
arm as the lady climbed over the counter and stepped onto the floor.
“Thank you, that's much better!” The fox helped her straighten
her shawl and pin it in place with a brooch inscribed "@mdj101."
The mock @turtle1 was improvising a
jazz version of Swan Lake on the piano. Seon-jae, who had gone in to
listen and get away from the party, blenched to see a flock of little
girls in white swan tutus swarm down the stairs followed by a short
plump lady also dressed in white. As the fox shepherded the little
girls outside, the lizard yelled, “That's not even real jazz. Play
something classical!”
The mock @turtle1 laughed and began
with the famous:
Twinkle, twinkle, little bat! How I
wonder what you're at!
He couldn't resist souping it up and
ended in a Disney style, with a long run of flowery chords. The
lizard tried to get up, but he had drunk a little too much wine.
“Seon-jae! You show them too!” he hollered through the door.
Seon-jae was already sitting at the piano. He began bright and
brittle:
Up above the world you fly, Like a
tea-tray in the sky.
But soon he morphed into a moody minor
and then to a loud, crashing dissonance that ended with a
one-finger dirge.
As the fox tried to find places at the
table for the little girls the Hatter called, “I want a clean cup,
let's all move one place over,” and poked the lizard. He tried to
comply, but stumbled into the fox and made her upset the teapot in front of
the duchess.
“Yah! How could you?” the duchess
picked up a handful of mahjong tiles and threw them at the fox. As
she pitched more tiles in increasingly random directions, the little
girls began to screech. More people arrived, including @comickiwi,
the soup ahjumma, and several guards headed by @diamond888 and
@katchie82.
“Is the king here?” @diamond888
inquired in a formal voice.
The lizard tried to stand again. “That
punk needs to hear what I have to say,” he yelled, and fell down. Seon-jae and the griffin tried to hold
him up.
“We're here to investigate the king,”
@katchie82 told them. The lizard slumped to his knees. The guards
began busily looking behind bushes and knocking over chairs..
“No! Wait!” @comickiwi frantically
waved her hands at the guards.
The fox broke a bottle and threatened
them with it. “He isn't here! Out! That's the kind of noona I am!”
The soup ahjumma threw a cup of tea at
the fox. “If you make a living of running errands for rich people,
you should at least have listening skills!” she railed.
“Stop! Stop!” @comickiwi ordered.
“I came to give you some news! ALL of you need to listen!” The
duchess stopped throwing tiles, the little girls stopped screaming,
the fox put down her broken bottle, and the guards quit knocking over
furniture. Everyone held their breath.
“I have just heard from Seoul.”
@comickiwi announced dramatically. “Kang the lizard has won the
Baeksang Award for the best drunk scene of the year! He beat out Jun
Ji-hyun!”
Everyone cheered. The guards hoisted
Kang onto their shoulders and carried him around the garden. His
health was toasted in orange juice. When the excitement finally died
down they filtered out and piled into cars. @comickiwi went to find
the mock @turtle1. “Have you seen the White Queen?” she asked.
“I saw her once, but I don't
know where she is now,” he admitted.
“I wondered if she made it. I'm sure
she'll turn up,”
When everyone else had gone, the
earlier stress of the day crashed down on Seon-jae. He put on a fake
smile, tried to cheer up the fox, and sent her to go sleep. He made
it outside and then crumpled onto the sidewalk. One wrenching sob shook
him but no tears came. He felt oddly disoriented. Someone touched his
shoulder and he looked up to see the White Queen standing there.
“That's the effect of living backwards,” she said kindly. “It
always makes one a little giddy at first.”
“I don't understand.” A strange
calm settled over him.
“You aren't going to cry now. All
your tears are back in Chapter 2. @comickiwi asked me to do it.”
Her shawl was slipping again so he straightened it for her.
“What does this say?” he asked,
pinning the brooch more securely.
“101. It's HTTP code for switching
protocols. That's how I initiated the backwards protocol.”
When he got home he found his copy of
the book open to the last page.
Don't let him know she liked them
best, For this must ever be
A secret, kept from all the rest, Between yourself and me.
A secret, kept from all the rest, Between yourself and me.
