Chapter Twenty

(Meg's review team is in Wal-Mart.)

Meg: I heard they got copies of The Phantom of the Opera DVD early!

Emma: So where's the display? We've been everywhere!

Meg: Good question. Let's ask this cashier.

Leigh: Hey buddy, where're The Phantom of the Opera DVDs?

Cashier: We got a shipment in last night.

RAEB: And?

Cashier: Some jerk stole the whole lot!

Meg: (jaw drops) NOOOOOOOO!

Rose pressed her face into her pillow, trying to stifle her cries.

"It's not true!" she shrieked in a muffled voice.

Millie rubbed her back. "I'm sorry, dear. She was a good'un, Scarlet was."

"She's not dead!" Rose cried.

Millie sighed. If only Rose knew…

Scarlet's body had been found in an alley, horribly mutilated, around two thirty that afternoon. There had been no witnesses to the murder; it appeared to have been done quickly and quietly.

"Who would do such a thing to her?" Rose sobbed. "She never did any harm to anybody!"

"There are cruel people in this world," Millie said softly.

"But her cousin is coming in three days… she wanted to see Deidre… she has to see Deidre! It isn't fair!"

"Life isn't fair, dearie."

"But she wasn't supposed to… it's not fair!"

Millie stroked the girl's hair. "There, there… cry it all out. You've still a life to live. Don't let it affect you so."

"How can I? She…" Rose gasped, "…she was my friend, my confidante, my protector… my only friend…"

Rose spent the next few weeks in a sort of distorted nightmarish world. Scarlet's cousin came with her daughter, only to be met with grief and policemen and questions she could not answer and the responsibility of funeral arrangements and putting Scarlet's things in order. Rose longed to help her, but Ratigan had forbidden it because he did not want the police and Basil of Baker Street, who were working on the case, to recognize her. The police were under the impression that Jack the Ripper had come back after a nine-year absence, but one never knew what Basil could pull from the appearance of one familiar face.

Rose was angry with Ratigan. She wanted to help Scarlet's cousin, ease the pain, tell her how much Scarlet was loved and respected. But it was never to be. She had to remain loyal to Ratigan's wishes, as she had always done, because her heart would not allow the possibility of disappointing him.

Two weeks later, the cousin and little Deidre were gone. Scarlet's effects had either been sold or taken. The world moved on, focusing their attention on the next murders and violent crimes. To Rose it was one unending cycle of life and death. Why not give it all up? Everyone dies anyway. Why not succumb to death now, when there was no point in continuing in this turbulent life, forever spiraling downward in a web of misery and suffering?

Ratigan walked into the kitchen one day to find Rose clutching something to her chest, sobbing. A tattered green dress lay on the ground.

He felt something close to rage within him. Rose had been mopping around along for weeks, and it was really starting to get to him. The whore was dead. End of story. Why make some big production of it?

And here he was, still being bothered by it.

He cleared his throat. Rose's head snapped up. She jumped up and turned around, moving the object she had been clutching to her chest around behind her back while trying to wipe her eyes.

"So-sorry, sir," she whispered.

"What's all this?" Ratigan asked, glaring at her. "Are you still crying about that whore?"

"Ya-yes…" Rose stuttered, taking short, gasping breathes.

"Now listen," Ratigan snapped. "You're really trying my nerves with all this moping around for some goddamned whore. She wasn't of any use to anyone in life, so don't waste your breath on her in death!"

Rose seemed to stop breathing. She slowly pulled out the thing she had been holding: the dancing man and woman that Scarlet had bought for Deidre, along with a piece of paper.

Ratigan turned to go and leave Rose to think about what he had just said when she said, "You did it, didn't you?"

Ratigan ignored her and left the room.

Rose looked dumbly at the toy and the note in her hands. She reread the note:

Roz,

I dun it fer yoo.

Scarlet

She had found it within the folds of her old green dress from her days as a barmaid in the pub, along with the toy. Kitty had told her that she had seen Scarlet going into her room the night before her death, and then coming out the next day, an hour or so before her murder.

Rose had been tearing up her old dress to use as rags when she had found the toy and the note. And suddenly, it made sense.

Rose dropped the toy and the note ran out into the throne room. "No, say you didn't! Say you didn't!" she exclaimed.

Ratigan turned around, furious. "Rose, she was a goddamned whore! She was of no use to anyone! She knew the rules; knew that she'd be safe as long as she kept her mouth shut! She wasn't happy with keeping her mouth shut, so measures were taken!"

Rose stopped dead in her tracks. "What?" she asked weakly, hardly expecting that he would confess so easily. "You… you never told me?"

Ratigan's anger was growing. "What is there to tell, Rose? I cannot read where your loyalties lie!"

"What?" Rose asked, internally staggering from the blows of his words.

"You are naïve and inexperienced! You cannot handle what I do! I cannot get you to pick up a gun, to kill anyone!" Ratigan clenched his fists, took a deep breath, and slowly exhaled, loosening his shoulders. Then, in a notably calmer voice, he said, "What would you have done if you knew that whore was going to betray me to the Yard? Would you have stopped her, done anything within your power to shut her up for good?" There was an uneasy silence. Rose was too shocked to think, too shocked to react. Ratigan gave a smirk. "I didn't think so." He turned away again.

"I would have never let her betray you," Rose said in a small, scared voice.

Ratigan looked back at her in disbelief. She seemed to be rallying herself to say something she had been preparing herself to say for a long time.

Then, in a strong, tremulous voice, she said, "Your success is my success. Your happiness is my joy. Your downfall is mine as well. Whatever happens to you happens to me." She looked him in the eyes. "Professor Ratigan, your destiny is my destiny."

So it was out… well, almost. Rose waited expectantly for his response, for the words she had been dying to hear for so long.

Ratigan gave a short laugh. "Rose, every one of my men understands that. Their livelihoods are tied to my successes. The question is, can you confirm your loyalty to me?"

Rose resented his answer. This conversation was not going the way she had always planned it would. "But… I have, so many times! What else can I do?"

"Hm."

Rose shifted her feet uneasily. "Sir, I'm sorry. I… I had no idea Scarlet was going to do you such a wrong turn. I would have stopped her somehow…"

"Would you have killed her?"

Rose bit her lips. Then, "Yes, sir. I believe I would have."

A wave of relief seemed to wash over Ratigan. Normally he would have bothered Rose for the word 'believed', and forced her to say that she definitely would have killed for him. But he decided that he was satisfied with her original answer.

"Then let's have no more mopping around about this whore. Understand?"

"Yes, sir," Rose said, feeling the last of her goodness, her purity, rapidly slipping away from her.

Rose felt like a fool. She had almost held her heart out to Ratigan, and all she got in return was a laugh and an answer that literally told her, "You should be devoting yourself to me because nothing less is expected of you." Her talk with Ratigan threatened to throw her down into the abyss of her own darkness with despair of the hopelessness of her love for him.

But the next day, when she went to work, Ratigan surprised her with a gift- a gold bracelet studded with rubies.

"What did I do, sir?" Rose asked hopefully.

Ratigan simply answered. "You've been loyal to me, Rose. I reward those who are loyal to me."

It was enough to lift Rose up out of her depression. The world was brighter, cheerier. She belonged here with him. He may not say he loved her, but maybe, just maybe he felt something. Right?

Young girls have the craziest notions about love, especially a first love. Many older than them have the same juvenile notions. This is why people tolerate abuse, violence, disloyalty on the part of the person they love. It was why Rose could harm others for him. He was evil; he was against everything she had been brought up to believe in. Her faith in people, in goodness, was shaken because of him. His goodness, his kindness to her was all that mattered. All that mattered was his love, if only she could attain it!

But why would he love such a plain, stupid, unsophisticated little girl like her? She was nothing special, she told herself. He deserved beautiful, witty women, women who were everything she was not. She was jealous of those women, jealous of any woman she saw speaking with him. Then she would think: how could he ever feel anything for her?

It was the hopelessness of the position that Rose despised. How could he ever feel the same for her as she did for him?

One bright, clear night, as Ratigan was eagerly setting another one of his brilliant plans in motion, Rose thought to herself,

I've always been right behind you, sir. Perhaps some day I will be right beside you, as your equal. Maybe then you can love me…

"Good morning, sir," Rose said cautiously to him one morning as she came into the study with his breakfast.

He had been in one of his depressed moods recently. The reason? Ratigan could not find a foolproof way to sabotage Queen's Moustoria's Diamond Jubilee that was to take place in a few days. Every plan he thought up, each more elaborate than the last, had some sort of loophole Ratigan would discover soon after outlining it to her or Doonegan.

Ratigan was sitting at the table, looking at something. "Rose, what is this?" he asked.

She set her tray down and looked over his shoulder. She recognized the toy that Scarlet had bought for Deidre, the one that had been left in the folds of her green dress. She explained this to the professor, who was looking thoughtful.

"They dance, like real people," Ratigan said more to himself than to her.

"Yes it does, sir."

"Who made it?"

Rose tried to remember the name of the toymaker. "I don't exactly recall." Actually she had tried to forget everything about Scarlet since then, including that toy. Shortly after she had found out Ratigan was responsible for Scarlet's death she had shoved the toy in a drawer in the kitchen and had promptly forgotten about it.

"I want you to find out today. Go back to the store, find the name of the toymaker."

"Why?"

"Just do it!"

(Meg and everyone else barges into her room, only to find Ratigan sitting in a chair eating chips watching the masquerade scene with a whole pile of Phantom DVDs next to him.)

Ratigan: (singing to himself) "Masquerade! Paper faces on parade! Masquerade, hide your face so the world can never find you…"

Meg: YOU!

Ratigan: (chokes on chips, then looks up, embarrassed) What? What are you doing here?

Luke: Well, it was sort of obvious when the Wal-Mart guy said that the guy who stole the DVDs was wearing an opera cape and a top hat.

Ratigan: Wal-Mart people even know what an opera cape is?

RAEB: That's rude!

Ratigan: I doubt the intelligence of a store that sells little, fat, singing things with warts all over them.

RAEB: You mean Booh-bahs? Those things are scary! Like Tellatubies!

Meg: Okay, whatever. I'm just taking one of these DVDs and getting on with my Phantom experience.

Ratigan: No, you're not! That was the point of stealing them!

Meg: Then why did you bring them all back to my bedroom? Take your stolen stuff back to your own place!

Ratigan: I'm not wasting my space with this garbage!

Meg: You were singing to it, jerk! How can it be garbage if you were singing to it?

Ratigan: That "Float On" song by Modest Mouse is also garbage, but it's catchy.

Leigh: (singing) "All right, all ready, we'll all float on"-

Meg: Argh! You're all impossible!