UNTITLED STORY
Chapter Ten
May 1912
Rose leaned against the counter
tiredly, wiping her hands on her apron, then reluctantly moved toward the
entrance to the restaurant as another group of diners came in. She had been
fortunate to find a job quickly, working as a waitress in a small café near the
waterfront.
She had been surprised at first
at how tiring the job was—the waitresses that she had seen before had always
seemed so bright and efficient. Of course, she had only patronized expensive
restaurants in her old life, and they could afford to hire only the best and
most experienced. The waterfront café, on the other hand, was about as cheap
and low class as a person could go. While the area where the customers ate was
clean enough, the kitchen was grimy, with odd patches of grease and dirt on the
walls and the occasional rat or cockroach boldly making their way across the
floor if no one chased after them.
Rose was able to eat at the café
at half-price if she wanted, but after one meal, she had wisely shied away from
the food in the place. It was poorly cooked, either half-raw or burned, and
sometimes both, and she had struggled with an upset stomach for several days
after eating there. Having grown up as she had, she had never developed the
ability to withstand the bacteria in the poorly stored, poorly prepared food,
and it showed. She had lost weight since striking out on her own, although she
was beginning to adapt, beginning to develop the ability to tolerate what
others around her seldom even noticed.
She turned her head as she led
the new group to a table, ignoring the whistles and catcalls as the men stared
at her low-cut uniform. The café mostly catered to working men from the docks
and the women, many of them of questionable reputation, who followed them. Rose
wasn’t comfortable with the uniform, though she had worn equally low-cut gowns
as a member of the upper class, largely because some of the men assumed that
her attire gave them permission to grab, pinch, and otherwise attempt to
"flirt" with her. The uniform was shorter than any dresses she had
worn since she was a child, revealing her feet and ankles, and they stared at
them, too, though what was so fascinating about her feet was beyond her.
The job didn’t pay well, but it
was enough to pay her share of the rent and buy groceries if she was careful
about her money and saved her tips carefully. The tips weren’t great—not many
of the customers had much money to begin with—and those who did tip well were
often put off by Rose’s refusal to flirt back.
Most of the flirting was
harmless, she knew, even if some of the men did believe that they had the right
to grope her, but she couldn’t bring herself to laugh and go along with it as
the other waitresses did—she was grieving for Jack, and didn’t even have the
heart to pretend to enjoy the attention, and she found the behavior of some men
to be so boorish that it took all her self-control not to slap them or shout at
them. She needed the job, no matter how distasteful it was at times.
In order to allow herself to buy
the extra things that she needed or wanted, she had taken a second job at
night, working as a stagehand for a small theater off-Broadway. It didn’t pay
enough for her to quit her day job, unfortunately, but it did allow her to see
how the theater worked firsthand, and she hoped that it would provide her with
the contacts she needed to become an actress. The current play was Pirates
of Penzance, and she watched the actors and actresses with fascination,
memorizing their every move and practicing at home when she had the time,
hoping that soon she would be able to fulfill her dream of becoming an actress.
Rose stepped away quickly as one
of the men—a regular—attempted to pinch her bottom. He grinned impudently at
her. She kept her face carefully neutral, longing to slap the grin off his face
and wishing that she didn’t have to work in this place.
Cassie, too, had found a job,
cleaning rooms in a hotel uptown, but there had been no jobs available when
Rose had inquired. It was probably just as well. She could serve food and take
orders well enough, but she didn’t really know how to clean—though she was
learning—and wouldn’t have lasted long as a maid.
Her new life wasn’t all that she
had hoped, but it took time to make a new start, and still, aside from the
obnoxious men she met as a waitress, it wasn’t bad, and she hoped that soon
things would be better.