Chapter Three
Meg: (venting her anger on a pillow) Stupid, jerk-faced drunk people! I hate them all!
JWJ: How do you know those people were drunk? They could have just as easily been Democrats.
Meg: (glares at him) Shut up, ok? SHUT UP!
Lizz: Meg, it's only a little scratch…
Meg: It's on the whole back of my car! It's like Tsu Hzi came back to life and decided to file her nails on my car!
Lizz: Tsu Hzi?
JWJ: The Dowager Empress of China in the late 1800s. You should see her photo—those nails could impale someone!
Lizz: Ewww…
Meg: I'm going to kill the drunken sped who decided to ruin my car!
The first night will forever live in Rose's memory as the worst night of her life. Already weary from lack of sleep, and aching with the knowledge that all she had left in the world was now in the hands of Giovanni, her mind was not completely on this new and tiring work. Trying to balance heavy trays laden with heavier mugs full of drink, she had to deal with drunken rodents grabbing her skirts or the occasional fistfight that could break out in front of her at any moment. She ended up dropping three trays that night, which Giovanni forced her to pay for with the last of her money.
The last patron did not leave until three o'clock that morning. Rose took the empty mugs into the kitchen, where Millie washed them.
Rose was dog-tired, but she was informed by the other two barmaids that their work was not done. The tables had to be wiped off, the chairs put upside-down on the tables, and the floor swept and sprinkled with sawdust to soak up spilled liquor. And when that was all done, the stage needed to be cleared of weapons and rotted vegetables, and one of the private rooms needed to be cleaned up, because "the Boss 'ad been usin' it for 'is guests."
Rose assumed that they were talking about Giovanni. She had seen him making a big deal about some mice that had come in at the door, but had ushered them to one of the private rooms before anyone could take a good look at them.
It was nearly five o'clock by the time they were finished. Rose approached Giovanni, who was reading yesterday's newspaper at one of the tables.
"Sir? You promised me a room for my work."
He took his time finishing what he was reading before he even acknowledged her. "Oh? I did, didn't I? Still here, huh."
"Of course," Rose said, slightly offended.
Giovanni slowly got up. He looked around a bit, and then led her to the staircase. Rose could not wait to get some sleep. She was exhausted.
But instead of going up the staircase, Giovanni showed her a small door underneath the stairs. He opened it, showing her a cramped, dusty, dirty space.
"You sleep here."
"What? But… but you promised me a room!"
"I promised you a room in exchange for those wages. You're not worth the price of an experienced barmaid. You're slow, clumsy, and too timid. No one wants that. So you get the room you deserve. Or you could leave…"
Rose knew that she had dug herself into a trap. She shook her head. "No. It's fine."
"Work starts again at five. Be here." He left her, satisfied with himself. He could always scam fresh meat; they were too inexperienced to put up much of a fight about it.
Rose knew she would have to stay. She could not go back home now; not when without clothes and her possessions. Her mother would mock her, saying "What good did running away do you, huh? What did you achieve? Nothing." She would be seen as a failure. So she would stay; at least for a month. By then her mother would be sorry for everything she ever did to her, and she would have her things back. It was long enough.
When Rose told Scarlet her plans to stay for one month, the woman slapped the girl. Rose held a hand to her cheek and stared at the woman in bewilderment.
"Why… why did you…" she could not finish.
"Because ye're a dang fool! Ye can't last a month!"
"Of course I can! I lasted last night!"
"Millie tells me that Gio is scamming ye. Can't ye see 'e'll only find ways to scam ye more? And then ye'll get desperate agin, and end up like me."
Rose blushed. "I won't. My morals are too important to me."
"That's what many 'ores I know once thought. Don't overestimate yerself, love."
"But you don't understand what type of a person I am."
"I 'ope yer right. But promise me ye'll go 'ome before ye end up like me."
"I promise, Miss Scarlet. I promise."
It was a tough month. Rose, who could never fall asleep when the sun was out, became a creature of the night. She had no blankets or pillow; she slept on the cold, sometimes wet dirt floor of the closet underneath the stairs, sometimes padded with old newspapers Giovanni had already read. The only clothes she had were the ones on her back.
She had no money to buy food, so she tried to earn extra money by doing the washing for the tenants of the rented rooms above the pub. It was not enough; she could hardly scrape enough together to get one decent meal a day.
Some of the more well-to-do employees, such as Miss Kitty, took pity on her and gave her odd jobs to do for money, such as washing and mending costumes or delivering letters. Scarlet and many of the other ladies of the evening watched out for her, to make sure that she did not get harassed by anyone outside the pub. They felt the need to protect her.
Rose had been protected most of her life, sheltered from the ways of the world. And now that she was in it, she wanted to be sheltered again. She wanted everyone to appear good at heart. But her experience taught her many things: people can and will be evil.
Towards the end of that first month, a man was shot and killed right in front of her. All Giovanni did was clear away the body and then ransack it for money or anything that could be sold to a pawnbroker. She threw up that night, in the back alley, where she held a lantern over him as he searched the body.
She hated Giovanni with a passion. She had never wished ill will on anyone except maybe her mother, but she really wished that Giovanni were dead. He hit her when she did anything wrong, knowing that she would take it.
When the month was up, Rose reminded him of his promise to return her the bag. He did not give it to her for another two weeks. When she finally got it back, it was nearly empty. The man had sold most of her clothes and jewelry, leaving only the novel, one old dress, and some undergarments.
Rose was too weary to weep. She had known somehow that it would turn out this way, but she had fooled herself into thinking that her possessions would be returned to her.
That night, after the pub had closed for the night, it was broken into and robbed. Giovanni put the blame on Rose for not stopping them, since she slept the closest to the safe. The truth was, she had been sleeping in Kitty's dressing room, because Kitty often invited her to use the dressing room when she was not using it herself, and did not hear them break in.
He told her that she had to work for him another month to pay it off, and had to stand guard by the back door, to unlock the door for 'tenants' who might be out late. What he really meant was that it was kept unlocked for the mice who dwelt in the sewers underneath the trapdoor behind the bar.
Rose had seen the trapdoor, and had even gone down into it a few times. It only led to the sewers. But the other barmaids whispered of "the Boss", a mystery in the eyes of Rose. She knew they did not speak of Giovanni, for no one called him anything but "Gio". But the Boss was someone to be respected and feared, of whom some of the barmaids and whores told the most grisly tales, of how he had murdered widows, orphans, rich men and poor, lived in a lair filled to the brim with treasures beyond your wildest dreams, deep within the sewers underneath The Rat Trap. According to Lizzie, he often frequented the Rat Trap, but Rose had never seen him. His henchmen, regulars in the Rat Trap, were real enough. There was Fidget, the peg-legged bat, a lizard whose name Rose did not know, a few others: Tom, Jack, Kilburn, Charles, Gerald. But the Boss was never with them.
"Who is the Boss?" she once asked Scarlet in the alley behind the pub one night.
"The Boss? Who told ye about the Boss?" Scarlet asked, eyes narrowing at her.
"Just the other barmaids and some of the customers. Why?"
"'Ow much do ye know?" she said in a soft voice.
"Nothing, really, except that he lives under the pub. I've never seen him. I've seen some of his workers though. Like that bat, the weird one, Fidget."
"Shhhh!" Scarlet hissed. Looking around, she continued, "'E's got eyes and ears everywhere. Now lissen. Don't ask anyone about the Boss. Don't even try to find anything out. Now, I know yer a good girl. Ye wanna stay that way, right?"
"Yes…"
"Then don't start trying to learn about things that don't concern ye. The less ye know of the Boss, the better. If 'e got wind that a genteel girl like ye was askin' around about 'im, then 'e'd make sure that ye'd never get out of 'ere alive."
"Alive?" Rose asked slowly, getting a sick feeling in her stomach.
"Just don't go pokin' yer nose where it don't belong."
After that, Rose tried to avoid even hearing of others speak of the Boss.
She often dreamed at nights, when she would doze off while on 'guard duty', of this faceless phantom of a rodent… one who would not value the life of poor, friendless barmaid like herself.
But was she entirely friendless? Sometimes, when she was dozing on her guard duty, she awoke to find that someone had draped a dark, black cape over her. Each time she carefully folded it up and put it back in her hole of a room, only to go back later and find it gone!
Luke: Who does the cape belong to?
Emma: Are you familiar with GMD?
Luke: Umm, no.
Emma: Oh boy, this might take awhile. See, there is this big ra-… erm, rodent, named…
(Ratigan walks into the room, holding his head)
Emma: Ratigan?
Luke: Yeah, there's a six-foot something rodent over there… I think it's a ra-
(Emma slaps hand over his mouth. Ratigan ignores them and grabs a bottle of water)
Emma: Do you have a death wish?
Luke: Hm?
RAEB: (walking in, noticing Ratigan) What is he doing here?
Luke: Yeah, I let him in.
RAEB & Emma: WHAT?