Siren Queen(43)
“A monster,” I said. “I know.”
The chlorine of the pool made my eyes sting and my hair turn to straw, but every day, I looked forward to getting on set. I was eager to get fitted into my tail and to have a web of plastic seaweed scattered with seashells draped artfully over my body. I had to shout most of my lines because the machine that made the waves was terribly loud, and during the scene where the captain wrestles the siren for control of Poseidon’s trident, Harry Long swung me into one of the plastic rocks so hard I saw stars.
He was aghast, carrying me, greasy legs and all, to his trailer to rest until a doctor could be found.
“It’s just a nasty bruise with a bit of a gash in the center,” the doctor said, poking painfully at my scalp. “Nothing terrible, she doesn’t even need a stitch. Her hair will cover it, she’s fit to work.”
“Preposterous. She’s not working for the rest of the day, I won’t hear of it.”
I started to protest, but he shot me a quelling look.
“You are not working hourly any longer,” he said. “You are going to nap here while I speak to the Mannheims about restructuring that scene, and then I am taking you home for dinner, something light if you can’t stomach much, and something ridiculous if you can. Don’t fuss.”
I lay back in the trailer, smiling a little as I heard Harry Long wave down Scottie with his stentorian tones. My head ached abominably if I moved, so I lay as still as a statue, examining the butterflies in my belly.
Oberlin Wolfe’s voice echoed in my mind. You came here without a patron.
I wasn’t going to be one of those girls who walked in wide-eyed and was surprised to find a wolf waiting in the place where wolves lived. I hadn’t heard anything terrible about Harry Long, but he was a king, and all kings are wolves.
The question was, could I do it? He was old enough to be my father at that time, and I heard his joints creak when he had to throw me around during the fight for the trident. He was kind though, and I remembered the glow in his eyes when he called me a monster. In his mouth, it was a compliment, and I would much rather be a monster than a victim.
I already knew that men roused nothing in me, but Harry wouldn’t be so awful, I decided. He was a gentleman, or acted like one, and I had never heard of him making trouble for any of the actresses he stepped out with after the fact.
As for Emmaline, in the fires, it was just us. We wouldn’t talk about Harry Long, just like we never talked about her studio-spun romance with the star of the Westerns, Cassidy Dutch, or the pictures of the two of them on horseback at his ranch in Nevada, snugged up tight on the back of his big bay stallion. The fires were real. Harry wasn’t.
I would make a different decision now, but I am a different person now. Nineteen is a long way from where I am these days, and there’s no crossing that distance, none at all.
Harry came back, and I realized I must have fallen asleep after all because the sun was low in the sky. Greta would wonder where I was, but my hours had been strange since starting Nemo’s Revenge.
“Come along, my dear,” he said. “Up you get.”
I let him usher me into the wrong-side passenger seat of his Bentley, a midnight-blue car that ate up the miles between the studio lot and his home in Bel-Air. He steered the car with a chauffeur’s competence into the covered garage.
“Take the guest bathroom,” he said. “There are some clothes that shouldn’t be too shabby a fit for you in the closet there as well.”
As much as my insides churned at what was going to happen, I was incredibly relieved to drag myself into the shower. The bathtub was large enough for me to lie down flat, and the hot water that hissed out of the showerhead seemed endless. I gingerly washed the dried blood out of my hair, wincing whenever I nudged my bruise, and I scrubbed the rubbery layer of grease off of my legs. I dried myself off thoroughly, dumping my clothes into the convenient laundry hamper, and I went out to find what exactly was waiting for me in the closet.
I’ll admit that my imagination was lurid. I imagined leather or lace, circus outfits, Chinese dresses, even a rubber tail like the one that I had worn all day. I was confused to find nothing more than a few dresses, too large for me and out of date by at least twenty years, hung neatly near the front. They were well made at least, and I found a green wrap dress that I could belt tighter around myself. I couldn’t find any shoes and had forgotten mine back on set, so I went barefoot.
I ventured out into the living room as cautiously as an old woman crossing a busy street, but there was nothing more frightening there than Harry Long in casual lounging clothes, barefoot himself and enjoying a glass of red wine.
“Do you drink?” he asked, and when I shook my head no, he smiled.
“Well, more of the good stuff for me, then,” he said. “Come, Teo set out some food for us, and I’m famished.”
He had a diction and an enthusiasm that could get away with saying things like “famished,” and he led me to the dining room where there was a tray of delicate light food. Cold salmon, cold rabbit, crackers, cheese, fruit and vegetables, it looked delicious and my head had stopped aching to where I could enjoy most of it. Harry pointed out delicacies I had missed, explaining where that came from or why this was so rare, but otherwise we ate in companionable silence. I relaxed, and then I remembered what was happening, and I tensed again. I could feel his eyes on my throat, on the way the dress sagged on my shoulders to reveal my cleavage, and I came to a decision.