Siren Queen(51)

Before anyone could answer me, there were two knocks at the door, slow enough that it sounded as if the knocker wanted to think in between.

“Go get that,” Harvey Rose said, and I didn’t need to see behind his green-tinted glasses to know that he was relishing some small bit of cruelty I couldn’t guess at.

With neither of the Mannheims looking at me and the shadow of October still hanging over us all, I crossed to the door and opened it to meet myself.

She was exactly my height with exactly my face, and her hair was done up in a chignon that my mother would have said was too old-fashioned to be borne. She wore gray silk in a shade I knew made me sallow but she hadn’t figured out yet, and she smiled, showing all of her teeth.

“Hello,” she said. “I’m Luli Wei.”

My first instinct was to hit her out of shock and offense, but the moment my arm twitched, Harvey Rose stepped forward and I went still.

“No,” I said instead. “You aren’t.”

I stepped back to allow her into the room. I felt as if I were shaking apart, but the dance teacher had taught me well, and I was as steady as a stone pillar on my tall heels.

My double came after me with a faltering gait, not tumbling but as if every step could send her sprawling. It made me think of tender young creatures who were too slow and too clumsy to escape the things that would eat them. I had looked like that before I signed my contract; I never dared look like that after.

Whalen nearly toppled his water glass before he could right it. Scottie looked green, and he was the one who finally spoke to Harvey Rose.

“What’s going on? Mr. Wolfe asked us here to do a test on Luli.”

“And you are,” Harvey said. “Here she is. Test her.”

Whalen and Scottie shot me panicked looks as if I could save them, but I couldn’t come up with anything. My thoughts whipped away in a high whistle of wind, lost in how wrong it was to watch myself stumble.

Finally, Whalen cleared his throat.

“Um. All right, Luli. Why don’t you tell us about yourself?”

I decided I was going to remember how quickly Whalen had been willing to call a horror by my name. If I was allowed to remember what they did to me after this.

My double laughed and recited the story going around about learning English from the Bible. It wasn’t how I would have told it. Her version was stiff and starchy and sweet, about her learning to be a real person from the good words, implying that of course she was a good American too. I never did. I hated that story. Mrs. Davis had told me to be sure of who I was, and she was right, because this was what would happen if I wasn’t.

“Good, eh?” asked Harvey Rose with just a touch of menace, and to my dismay, the Mannheims shrugged uncomfortably.

“Give her a script page.”

The words popped out of my mouth, and they turned to me, all four of them. My double was the closest to me, and her eyes went hard even as her mouth retained the small smile that so many of the interviews called mysterious.

“Hello, I’m Luli Wei,” she said softly to me, and I wondered who she had been before this. There were a few stray stitches at her temple, and when I looked close, I saw the hint of blond hair underneath. Whoever she was, she had lost a lot to stand where she was now.

“Uh, yes. I have a few new script pages right here,” said Scottie, fumbling with his papers. Whalen was still frozen, eyes darting back and forth as if he wanted to flee the room.

Scottie handed them to my double gingerly, and we all waited in silence as she read them over. When she read her face looked less like mine. In repose, her cheeks looked heavier, her chin more defined. When she was still, her face remembered even if she wanted to forget.

“All right. I would like to begin.”

She took her place at the center of the room, and Harvey Rose stepped close to me, as close as he could get without touching.

“Afraid?” he asked curiously.

I lifted my chin.

“Not of that,” I lied.

When she spoke the first few lines of the opening monologue for Siren’s Sea, I started to breathe again. Her voice was as glassy as a department store window, flat as a pancake. She stumbled and paused, and she sped up when she realized how tinny she was. She started to sweat. Her hands clutched at the paper, and by the time she was through, she was shaking hard.

“I’m Luli Wei,” she whined at the end, and I shook my head, laughing like the siren would.

“No, you aren’t.”

I pinned Whalen and Scottie with my gaze, reminding them of what had made Return of the Siren a hit. They looked at me, and they looked at each other, and it was Whalen who spoke first, turning to Harvey Rose.

“Come on, Rose. You can’t be serious. She ain’t no siren.”

Harvey Rose’s face was unreadable, and then he nodded, as if understanding that no, they did not have orange juice that morning.

“Thank you for your time, gentlemen. Miss Wei.”

He nodded to me, and then he took my double by the arm, dragging her out. It sounds cruel, but there was no cruelty at all in his face. He was a man removing a piece of equipment that had failed to perform, but perhaps if he fixed it, perhaps if he had the experts look at it again, perhaps if it was taken apart piece by whining piece …

The next day, my assistant came to me with what he called amazing news.

“You know, of course, that Edward Parr is a great fan of Oriental antiquities. It only makes sense that you two would find each other of interest. So tonight, at the Knickerbocker—”