“Yes. It’s next to—”
“Right, I forgot, you’re Miss Books. Speaking of, did you enjoy the Audubon?”
“Very much. Thank you.”
Rose shrugged. “Birds. They peck, they shit, they fly. What is it you find so enthralling?”
“This girl,” Morie piped in, “she wishes to fly out the window and be gone from all of us.”
“Why do you talk about me as if I’m not here?” I snapped.
“Why do you insist on shouting from the shadows, eh?” Rose countered. “Come, bird. Come where I can see you.”
If only I could have managed it. I saw the ghost of me do just that—step forward and smile. But no. Every time I was near Rose my knees got dippy, my cheeks blazed, my feet turned into cast-iron pipes stuck in old shoes.
“I’m fine here,” I declared—stupid, proud.
“I’m not asking if you’re fine, child.” Rose’s glance—one moment delighted, the next scalding—reminded me of another thing Tan had said: that Rose could make a man hand over his money, his hat, even his horse, with one look of displeasure. I was no man.
I took a small step, at least I tried. My heart was banging so loud I was sure she could hear it.
Rose pointed a long, lacquered nail at the carpet in front of her chair. Her gaze fixed on that.
“Girl,” she said flatly, “I don’t ask twice.”
This was Tan’s moment. As we’d been talking, he’d sidled to my side of the large room, where he’d busied himself adjusting some flowers on the table behind me. When Rose commanded, Tan turned and, punching his fist into the small of my back, propelled me across the carpet.
I looked back, to let him know just how much I despised him.
He glared at me, pleased with himself.
Rose observed us, and I had no choice but to see myself in her cool gaze. I wasn’t good-looking, so what. I had cowlicks—one in front and one in back—and any notion of turning me into some fashionable Gibson girl would prove ridiculous. I dreamed of being king, never queen.
“You think you’re exceptional,” she said, her voice soft, confusing. She was looking intently at me with those gold-flecked eyes.
“No,” I admitted. “In fact, I think I am the least exceptional monkey in the zoo.”
“Liar!” She laughed. “Come, here, closer.”
I did as she asked.
“Good. Now, next time, hold yourself like this.” She pointed her finger, with its long, sharp nail, at the ceiling. “Steady, especially when you’re not. Steady, and no one will know you’re uncertain. Do you understand?”
I nodded.
“Say so.”
“I understand.”
Satisfied, she downed her cup, then wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.
“Trust me, girl, they will always put their needs ahead of yours,” she confided. “Our friend the mayor, he will beg, borrow, steal to avoid the cell that awaits him.” She shook her head. “He will bring down both of my houses—this one and The Rose—if he has to.”
“Can he?”
“Let’s hope for all our sakes Gene plays it smart, eh?” She sighed, and I knew she didn’t think that was likely. “Most people desire what they cannot have. There is no such thing as enough, not when a new, shiny thing beckons. I have made my fortune based on this one notion.
“Here, let’s put it to the test,” Rose said. She leaned forward, an elbow on each knee. “Take Morie here. Morie wonders if new dresses and expensive tickets to Caruso mean she’ll have to do with less in this week’s allowance. It’s a reasonable question. She came tonight to get more money from me, for a proposal a year hence. Don’t deny it, old gal.” Rose chuckled. “We are old soldiers, you and I. I might ask, what’s so urgent, but what difference does it make—Elsa, you always want more.”
“I only was tinking,” Morie sputtered, hands trembling.
“Tink away,” Rose said. “A year is a hell of a long time in the lives of men and girls. Pie will muddle through, so long as her beau remembers his promise. But will he? A notions shop? Unless he’s an idiot, I’d give him decent odds. Ladies always want new dresses.” Rose nodded, agreeing with herself. “One day, Pie, you’ll be Missus Buttons and Bobs. Not a grand outcome, but there you are.”
Rose ignored the anguish on Pie’s face, but it made me sick in my stomach. I watched myself siding one way, agreeing with Rose as the oracle, then swinging the other way, to how the world looked through Pie’s and Morie’s fearful eyes.
“Now, Tan,” Rose went on, “we know, has notions of grandeur. Tan, tell us: What are your plans?”
“Roast beef tomorrow,” Tan answered stiffly, and with that, he left the room.
Rose tasted her bottom lip, with its mix of whiskey and lemon cake. “That leaves only you, my girl.”
“And you,” I said.
“Yes, and me.” She sighed.
She was only forty—so young, I think now. Vivacious, flirty, cunning. Still, forty years for a madam must be measured in dog years. Rose, my Rose, had been at the game a long time. She’d come to San Francisco when she was just thirteen. Oh, I’d see glimmers of the shiny girl she’d once been—more often when I was small, on those nights when I’d come to the gold house and she’d ask me to perform. I couldn’t sing or dance, but I could spell cockamamie and electricity and she seemed to think there was a bit of magic in that. As I spelled, her lips moved. She didn’t know her letters, but she knew in various languages the words required of a madam, and that had done her just fine.
Beneath the layers of powder and rouge and kohl that hooded her eyes, Rose of The Rose was tired. It was evident in the slight sag of the shoulders, the few strands of gray in her lacquered hair. I didn’t understand, not then, that her ropes of pearls were in fact her armor. Rose talked of everyone’s desire but her own. But I’ve come to
