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As Hatter stands in front of the looking glass, Jack approaches him and shoves something into his hands. It's a small brown package; when Hatter opens it, he finds it full of little green pieces of paper and small round metal things. "Money," Jack says. "I don't need it anymore, but you will."
Hatter frowns. "This is how you get stuff, right?" He's heard about money before, from some of the resistance people who had gone through the glass at one time or another. "You give someone a piece of this paper, and they give you something." It seems odd to him. Why would anyone want a little scrap of paper, rather than something useful? But Hatter remembers – he doesn't have anything useful anymore. Not since the tea shop was ransacked.
"Something like that." Jack – King Jack, and one of the many reasons to go through the glass is so that he never has to call the weasel 'Your Majesty', Hatter thinks – claps him on the shoulder briefly before stepping back. Hatter frowns once more at the little brown package before shoving it into his pocket and straightening his hat.
And then he's falling, falling fast and hard, and he forgets the package entirely.
*
After he leaves Alice in her mother's capable hands (lovely woman, he wonders briefly what someone like her ever saw in the Carpenter), Hatter has no idea what to do with himself. He's tired and hungry, but he has no idea what to do to alleviate either problem. He could probably go back and sleep in the warehouse, but that's going to be a mess until they finish returning all the oysters back to their own world. And there's no food at the warehouse. His stomach loudly reminds him that food is a big deal – so, when he spots a sign with a picture of a sandwich across the road from the hospital, he figures that's as good an idea as any.
The menu in the little shop is confusing. Hatter ends up pointing to one of the pictures on the wall and saying "That one."
After the giant sandwich is made, he nods to the girl at the counter and starts to walk away. "Hey!" she shouts after him. "You need to pay for that!"
Hatter grimaces. Of course. He'd forgotten that part. He pulls the brown package out of his pocket and stares at it for a moment. There are numbers on both the green papers and the metal discs; the difference between them, however, is still a mystery. After a moment's thought, he decides – metal is worth more than paper, so the discs must be the right answer. He counts out seven of the little brown discs and sets them on the counter. “Here you go,” he says cheerfully.
The girl looks at him like he’s grown a second head. “Seven dollars, jackass.”
“What?”
“You’re really funny. Just pay me, will you? There are people in line behind you.”
Hatter looks at the people behind him - some of whom are grumbling at him - before looking back into his package of money. “Oh!” he says. “You want the little papers, not the metal things?”
The girl rolls her eyes. “Yes. The little papers.”
“Okay.” Hatter gives her his best smile. “Sorry, I’m new here.”
“What,” she mutters, “new to earth?”
After a moment of contemplation - how do they decide which papers should be the 1s and which should be the 10s, he wonders - he pulls out one of the papers with a 10 and hands it to the girl. She sighs in relief, reaches into the little drawer, and hands him three papers with 1s. “Here’s your change. Have a nice day.” She sounds like she’s wishing him anything but.
The sandwich is kind of tasteless. Probably not worth seven pieces of paper, anyway.
*
There’s a building down the street - a shopping mall, someone calls it, with a bunch of stores full of clothing and toys and a lot of people walking around and around in circles. There are some small tables set up, so Hatter sits down at one and pulls out his money. If he has to give up seven papers for a sandwich, he figures he should probably know how many papers he actually has. He lays them out on the table and sorts them by the numbers. He has four of 20s, three 10s, four 5s and seventeen 1s. A quick bit of math in his head tells him he’s probably all right for the moment - except, he thinks as he sniffs the sleeve of his shirt, he should maybe get some new clothes. (He actually should have gone back to the tea shop and salvaged some of his other clothes, but … well, hindsight and all that.) And if the signs in the store windows are any indication, new clothes might cost him a whole lot of his remaining papers.
He sees the stranger approach out of the corner of his eye a split second before the man’s hand darts out - towards Hatter’s money. He didn’t spend all that time looking after the tea shop to be easily robbed, however. He grabs the man’s hand and twists his wrist backward. When the man howls in pain, Hatter just scowls. “You want to be somewhere else, mate.”
“I didn’t do anything!”
“Not for lack of trying.”
The would-be thief yells for help. Hatter just rolls his eyes and grips him tighter, gathering up his paper money with his other hand and shoving it into his pocket. When a woman approaches - dressed in a truly ugly brown shirt, with a shiny badge pinned to her chest - Hatter releases the man’s wrist. “What seems to be the problem here?” the woman asks.
“Nothing,” Hatter says cheerfully. “Now,” he adds, glancing at the man still standing next to him.
The thief cradles his wrist. “He attacked me!”
“You tried to steal from me. It happens.”
“I didn’t do anything!”
The woman looks from Hatter to the man and back to Hatter. “Listen, guys,” she says finally, “it’s probably best if you both move on.”
The thief takes off before she’s even finished talking. Hatter looks up at her again. Her badge says “security.” “Not very secure,” he says, “if you let pickpockets go about their business.”
Her face hardens. “Move,” she says. “Before I escort you out.”
“Fine.” Hatter scowls as he stands up. “Security must mean something very different here,” he mutters under his breath.
It’s not a total loss, though - the girl at the table next to him flags him down before he leaves. She stands up and walks away with him. “That guy’s here all the time,” she says. “He’s a total creep. I hope you chased him away for a while.” Turns out, she works in one of the clothing stores; when he tells her he needs clothes, she drags him back to work with her and lets him pick out something that looks reasonably comfortable. When he’s dressed, she only takes one of his 20s, even though he knows the price tags add up to far more than that. “Consider it a thank you,” she says.
There’s something in her smile that says she might be willing to thank him in a far different way - an invitation that would have been all too welcome just a short while ago, but now, he’s got other things on his mind. He does kiss the girl’s cheek before walking away. There’s no reason to give up flirting entirely, after all.
Hatter leaves the shopping mall with new clothes, a telephone number he’s not going to use (he doesn’t even have a telephone - or one of the strange little devices that seem to function as phones - even if he wanted to use it), and most of his money still intact. He considers the day a success.
*
And then there’s Alice, and money doesn’t matter so much.
*
Hatter spends a lot of his days wandering around the city. (Alice’s mother still believes he’s a construction worker, and she’s suspicious enough of him without also knowing he lied about that, too. So, being out of her sight for a large portion of the day seems like the prudent idea.) Once he orients himself, he starts to make friends along his usual routes - a man selling hot dogs on the street, the woman who works at the little bookstore where Hatter stops to read newspapers. The old lady who lives in the red corner building he passes most days doesn’t seem to like him very much - nor does her tiny little dog - but he grows strangely fond of hearing her swear at him when he taunts little Muffy.
He likes walking past the small theater a few miles away from Alice’s; there’s always someone interesting lurking outside. Actors, costumers, makeup artists, harried stage managers - they all swear loudly, laugh even louder, and after their first meeting, welcome him like an old friend when he approaches. He can tell them stories from Wonderland, couched as theater productions he once worked on. “Seriously,” Vince, the stage manager, asks him after he tells a mixed-up version of their flight from Mad March, “a ceramic rabbit head? How did the prop people manage that?”
“Cookie jar,” Hatter replies. “A giant one.”
“How did the actor wear it?”
“Well, it broke pretty easily, so not very well.” Hatter flexes his fist at the memory. He can almost still feel the ceramic shattering against his knuckles.
He leaves that part out of the story, though.
*
Alice takes him out to eat at a dark place with candles on the tables and waiters who all remind him of Jack. Hatter isn’t terribly impressed, but Alice insists. “It’s romantic!” she says.
“Musk wine and apricot tea cakes are romantic. This is …” Hatter waves a hand in the air. “Stuffy.”
Alice makes a disgruntled noise, but then their not-Jack waiter comes back with their food, and she lets the topic drop. Once he’s started eating, Hatter upwardly revises his opinion of the restaurant. He’s particularly fond of the purple thing at the center of his plate. When he asks, Alice grins. “That’s eggplant.”
Hatter eyes the plate doubtfully. “Eggs don’t grow on plants. Nor are they purple. Unless you’re talking about a toopa pigeon, but nobody’s seen one of those for a hundred years, and they don’t exist over here anyway.”
Alice laughs. “It’s just a name. It’s not meant to be descriptive.”
“And you said Wonderland was weird?”
“You have a point,” she concedes, putting her hand over Hatter’s. He smiles. He’ll put up with a dozen different stuffy restaurants full of not-Jacks if it means she’ll keep looking at him like that.
As their dinner approaches its end, Alice excuses herself to visit the restroom. While he waits, Hatter looks over to the table next to them, where another couple is dining. The man pulls a small box out of his pocket and pushes it across the table; the woman covers her mouth with her hand and makes a high-pitched noise. When she opens up the box, she pulls out a small, delicate necklace with a shiny white stone - a diamond, Hatter guesses, though a small one. Her eyes wet with tears, she stands up and lets the man fasten it around her neck.
When Hatter turns back, Alice is sitting back down. She’s looking over at the couple with a half-smile. When she looks back at him, she shakes her head. “I’m really not that into jewelry. Other women are, I get that, but it’s not like I can wear it when I teach, and what’s the point of having something pretty and valuable if you’re just going to keep it locked away all the time?”
“Besides,” she says, her smile fading, “the last time someone gave me jewelry, I ended up in Wonderland.”
Thinking about Jack is not really behavior Hatter wants to encourage. He raises his eyebrows. “Which, all in all, turned out quite well, don’t you think?”
That gets him a more genuine smile. “Yeah, it did, didn’t it?”
*
Later that week, Hatter passes a jewelry shop down the street from Alice’s work. He’s curious enough to go inside and look around. Jewelry, it seems, is expensive. Really expensive. Which he should have expected - jewelry could be traded for some pretty in-demand items and services in Wonderland, but the specific numbers involved in this world’s value for it makes Hatter’s head spin.
He’s running low on money, anyway. When he asks Alice how to get more, she just shrugs. “Get a job, I guess. Though you’re going to need some ID for that, which is a problem.” Luckily, there’s a note shoved into the money package with a name and phone number, with the instructions “call for ID and background.” Turns out, the White Rabbit knew a guy who made illegal paperwork for all of them. Alice doesn’t really approve, but she can’t think of any other solution to his problem, so she doesn’t object when Hatter goes to see him. He’ll have a whole new life in about a week, but until then, he’s stuck with a few pieces of papers - dollars, he now knows to call them - and a handful of metal coins. Not much.
One day, he thinks about heading back through the looking glass - just once, to get some of his stuff. Maybe he has things he could sell, make some money, feel more like a useful member of Alice’s society. But when he gets to the warehouse, the glass is dark. Weeks - months, even - have probably passed in Wonderland. All the oysters are no doubt home, and Jack has closed off the passage. Better for everyone involved, Hatter tells himself.
He doesn’t go back to Alice’s that night, not until very late. Mostly, he just walks. Everyone else seems to have somewhere to go, something to do. Hatter has a somewhere … well, a someone, and that’s generally better than a somewhere, right? But there’s no something, hasn’t been since he got here.
On his way back to the apartment, he passes a man slumped on a street corner, rattling a cup of coins and begging for change. Hatter shoves his hands in his pockets and hurries on. “Never,” he mutters to the doubts in his head.
When he gets back to the apartment, Alice is already asleep. He slips into bed next to her, and she turns to wrap her arms around him. “Missed you,” she murmurs. Hatter gathers her close and strokes her hair. Yes, he thinks - a someone is better than a something.
Having a something would be nice, though.
*
There’s no one outside the theater door today, which disappoints Hatter. As he passes the back door, he hears a loud voice shouting from inside - Vince, from what he can tell, and he sounds pissed. He’s curious, and he has nothing better to do, so Hatter loiters next to the door and tries to listen. He can only hear every other word, though, not enough to piece together what’s going on.
A few minutes later, the stage door bangs open, and Vince comes storming out. “God fucking dammit,” he says, pulling a cigarette out of his pocket. Then, he notices Hatter out of the corner of his eye. “David! I didn’t see you there, sorry!”
“No worries. What’s wrong?”
“I just had to fire the girl working on props for this show. Didn’t want to hire her in the first place, but she’s related to the guy who owns the building.” Vince makes a face. “She couldn’t read a cue sheet if her life depended on it, and this is a seriously prop-heavy show. I can’t risk going live with someone who can’t put the prop gun in the right place for the climactic scene.”
Hatter blinks. He’s never been one to shy away from opportunity’s knock. “You need someone to work props for you?”
Vince narrows his eyes. “Can you read properly?”
“Since I was four years old.”
“And do you know stage right from stage left?”
“Yep.” Or he could figure it out, if it was somehow different than regular right and left. Alice had shown him how to use the internet - it might be the best thing about this whole world, he thinks, other than her.
“Will you show up on time every day?”
“Early, even.”
“You’re hired.” Vince held out his hand to shake on it. “Come back tomorrow, we’re breaking for the day. Ten o’clock, don’t be late.”
Hatter can’t resist doing a little dance when he’s around the corner and out of sight. The two women standing in front of the store on the corner surely think that he's crazy, but who could be bothered to care?
He has a job.
*
He doesn’t tell Alice about the job right away, not until he’s finished his first week and has a paycheck in his very own hands. (Checks, he learns, are other pieces of paper that promise a bank will pay you actual money. It makes just about as much sense as the rest of the money thing.) He goes to the bank and opens a bank account - it seems a little weird to just hand his money over to a bunch of strangers, but apparently everyone does it, and Hatter figures it’s probably safer than carrying stacks of dollars in his pockets. They even give him one of the little plastic cards that Alice uses to buy things.
That night, he comes back to the apartment with flowers and a small box. He hands the flowers to Caroline - who actually gives him a real smile, for the first time in forever - and heads back to the bedroom. Alice is reading something on the computer, but she looks up and smiles when he comes in. “What’s that?” she asks, gesturing to the box in his hand.
He puts his hand behind his back. “First, I have some news.”
She pushes back from the desk. “What’s that?”
“Guess.”
“Hatter …” Alice rolls her eyes.
“Fine. Spoilsport.” He pauses dramatically. “I got a job!”
Alice lets out a high-pitched noise and comes out of her chair to throw her arms around his neck. “That’s wonderful! What is it?”
“Theater.”
She pulls back and grins at him. “Somehow, that doesn’t surprise me at all.”
Hatter holds out his hand and lets the box rest on his palm. “I got you something.” When Alice squints, he hurries on, “I know you said you don’t go for jewelry, but this is useful, I swear! And it seemed appropriate.”
Alice takes the box and opens it - and immediately lets out a surprised laugh. Hatter comes around to press against her back and rest his chin on her shoulder. Inside the box rests a delicate watch, with a face decorated with playing card suits. The heart is at the twelve o’clock position. “Hopefully this one will tell time better than the one you used to have.”
“I bet it will.” She takes it out of the box and puts it on her wrist. As she admires it, she leans her head against his. “You didn’t have to get me a gift. It’s not my birthday or anything.”
“I wanted to.” He tightens his arms around her waist. “And I could. Finally.”
She laughs and turns around in his grasp. When she kisses him, it feels like the most valuable thing he’s received in this whole weird world.