Siren Queen by Nghi Vo

Author:Nghi Vo
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

IX

Greta hid for most of September. Most of the publicity for The Belles of St. Desmond was already in the can, and after it premiered to raves across the country, Greta was in a position to have artistic fits. I brought her the papers that talked about her Scandinavian spates of darkness, seasonal megrims that turned the glowing starlet into a moon in eclipse. She laughed at them, and took up wearing a filmy nightgown left behind by a girl who had left to marry an orchard owner. It floated around her like a fog of dry ice, and it gave the dorm a reputation for hauntings when she walked the halls on restless nights.

Nemo’s Revenge wrapped, but Scottie Mannheim told me to hang on to the rubber tail. Return of the Siren had already gotten a green light, and Harry and I were back together. He was all beaming pleasure to see me, and he took me home with him every few weeks. A shot of me getting into his Bentley appeared in Variety, under the headline “Captain Tames a Siren?” and Harry offered it to me, framed, with a flourish.

Emmaline had gone to Gstaad at the end of August, and the papers were full of her teaching Cassidy Dutch to ski, to enjoy wine, to simply exist in the privileged peace of the Alps.

“They love to see nobility,” she said one night before she left. “Grace and generosity that elevates rather than degrades.”

It was the only time she had come close to mentioning Dutch during the fires. She knew how to ski, and how to snowshoe and fish through ice as well, doing it all in a cold that I couldn’t imagine in the California sun.

I read the magazine articles that had pictures of Emmaline flushed and triumphant on the slopes, and I missed her so much that I cut out one of those pictures and slid it under my pillow so I could see it at night. Greta would have disapproved, and Emmaline herself would have laughed fit to kill, but it was better than nothing. I decided I would ask her for a real picture when she came back. Perhaps she knew someone who could take a photograph for us, her at home and barefoot, pale hair bound in braids for sleep and a glass of red wine in her hand.

Without Emmaline and without Greta, I still went to the fires, walking between them with a kind of assurance that would eventually become the real thing. Sometimes I heard my name and turned away. Sometimes I stayed for a short time at Harry’s fire, one of an adoring cadre. I looked at the knowing women there and the charming men, and I wondered, but didn’t ask.

Once I walked through the darkness and found a gleaming platinum fire, and around it I could see men and women I didn’t recognize. They were painted in silver and black, and though their mouths moved, they did not speak. They

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