Siren Queen(75)

“It was. They used to deal hash out of here too, and girls, sometimes.”

The basement club was deep and narrow like so much of San Francisco seemed to be, and my sister waved to some people she knew but led us to a booth at the back.

“Middle of the week, no one cares who’s here,” she said, slouching against the vinyl as Tara and I squeezed in opposite. “As a matter of fact, shouldn’t you be at work? I heard about the fire and stuff.”

I was saved answering when the curtains over the tiny stage came up to reveal a thick-set young man with his hair slicked and shiny with water and dressed in what I could now tell immediately was a hand-me-down suit. He stood, I thought with remarkably little stage presence, seeming to gaze over our heads as the woman in the announcer’s stand, dressed in a sheath of vibrant green silk, tapped the mic.

“Ladies and gentlemen, the Silver Moon welcomes back Hai Thuan Vu, the Ronald Wright of Chinatown!”

I had been to see Ronald Wright’s show a few times in LA. He was a lean and sepulchral man with deep shadows under his eyes, and when he wasn’t on stage, he mostly preferred to be called Andor.

“Well, Hungarians aren’t in fashion,” he said to me one night after a show, and if Hungarians weren’t, then Vietnamese certainly weren’t.

Still, as the music started, my sister’s friend was composed, doing the kind of nothing that is surprisingly hard to do when people are watching you. There was a tiny skip in the record playing, something that buzzed in my ear with every revolution, but then Hai Thuan Vu opened his mouth and sang, and I did not care about anything else.

It was fair to call him Chinatown’s Ronald Wright—like Andor, he had a rich and rolling voice with the kind of power behind it that could stop hearts. He filled up every corner of the room with the song, something French and soaring and joyful. It was like being drowned, and my mouth dropped open as I listened.

He sang and sang, and then on the high crescendo, he turned so that his side was to the audience and we could see his profile, his snub nose in line with his chin, the rise of his wise forehead and the cliff of dark hair oiled into place above.

As we watched, he reached into his mouth, still singing, his long fingers disappearing without stopping the torrent of melody. He was pulling something out, and when it came, it unfolded from his fingertips into a vast red shape, translucent and pulsing like my own pulse at my throat or—

“His heart,” Tara whispered, as enthralled as I was. “Fuck, but it’s his heart.”

Hai Thuan Vu turned to face us again, throwing his hands open so that the shape of his heart, pure red light, hovered over his head, and then, as if his voice pierced it with its final rise, it was gone and so was his song.

He was only a sturdy Vietnamese man standing on the stage, looking around diffidently at the scanty crowd. He had lost something, or dropped it, but it was gone. There was a scatter of clapping—I didn’t, I was much too stunned—and he took a brief bow before walking off the stage.

“He needs to stop doing that,” my sister sighed. “He loses the audience when he’s not singing, and he shouldn’t, not after something like that.”

“It was his heart,” Tara murmured, and she fumbled for her handkerchief, handing it to me so that I could wipe the tears from my face.

“How did he do that?” I demanded, and my sister raised her eyebrows.

“With skill and training and because, after all, it’s his heart. Why shouldn’t he?” She snorted. “There’s lots just as good on the chop suey circuit. Not that you would know that, would you?”

I bridled at her caustic words, handing the damp handkerchief back to Tara.

“No, I wouldn’t,” I shot back. “We don’t have anything like that back in Los Angeles.”

“Wrong again. But if you want, I can hook you up with Hai, or maybe the Yang sisters, and Doreen Ng, and lots of others.”

There was a kind of tension to her voice. She wasn’t asking. She couldn’t, and she wouldn’t, but this was one bridge I could cross for us at least.

“Yes, I would like that,” I said. “You can write them down for me, or you can send the list on later. But I would very much like to have it.”

My sister looked at me a fraction too long, but she shrugged.

“Sure. Sounds good. Now I need to go make sure that Hai’s not losing his dinner in back after a performance like that. Come on. You can meet him now if you want to.”

We met Hai, who turned out to be as shy as any ingenue despite the power of his voice. I couldn’t stop staring at him, but it turned out that when it came to actually talking, I was as shy as he was. My sister filled in the gaps for us, all but wrestling his card out of his pocket to give to me, and I nodded my thanks, hoping he knew how much I meant it when I said how skilled he was, how beautiful his heart was to see.

“You can relax, you know,” my sister said, exasperated, as we left. “Dottie Wendt isn’t here to expose the fact that you’re Chinese to the world.”

“I know,” I said, scowling, but I realized that maybe I hadn’t before that.

We made our way back to the car, Tara tactfully asking my sister more about the chop suey circuit and the performers who were making their way in it. They sounded like me, American born, most of them, eager to show the world how they could sing and dance and juggle, and I did my best to remember as many names as I could. My sister didn’t want to be me, but I suspect that there were few who wouldn’t have minded.