As They Slip Away (Across the Universe 2.50)
“And you want . . . me?”
Luthor pauses in his flurried excitement, really looking at me, taking in my disheveled hair, wrinkled clothes, and sleep-encrusted eyes. “Of course you,” he says simply, and my heart fills with song.
I stand perfectly still in our little studio as Luthor sketches me. He wants to make the statue in a “classical ” pose, as he says it, and he keeps telling me to rearrange my arms, or hunch my back more, or hold up one hand.
“ No, no, no,” he says, frustrated. I’m not offended—he’s frustrated with my posing in the same way that I get frustrated with my voice when I can’t reach a note. “Like this. ”
He strides across the floor and pulls my arms down. He runs both his hands down my arms, making my elbows straighten and pulling my hands slightly behind my hips. I glance down at him; he doesn’t see me as a person in this moment—I’m not Selene, I’m a model.
Luthor slips behind me, pushing one hand into my spine so my back curves inward, making my chest jut forward.
Slowly, he walks around, inspecting me and my pose, stopping when he faces me. “Up,” he says gently, tapping my chin. I lift my face toward the ceiling, the warm light from the high windows cascading down my cheeks.
“ Perfect,” he whispers. “You’re perfect. ”
I glance down at him, careful not to move my body or my face. When he looks at me now, I know he’s seeing past my skin, into the very heart of who I am.
Orion approves Luthor’s design quickly, and if he thought there was something odd about his selection of me as a model, he doesn’t say anything. After lunch, workers from the Feeder Level bring a huge pillar of brown clay, and Luthor tells them to drop it right there, in the center of the floor, where the light from the windows hits it just right.
He brings in buckets of water and lays out his tools in a neat arc next to the clay. “ We could go down to the pond with Kayleigh and Harley,” I suggest.
Luthor shakes his head, his attention focused on lining up each tool correctly. They look almost like Doc’s medical instruments: a dull-bladed knife, tiny needlelike picks, a scalpel. “I want to work here,” Luthor says. “With you. Alone. ”
As if on cue, Victria barges into the studio. “So, ” she says loudly, her voice bouncing off the walls, “this is where you two have been hiding. ”
Bartie trails behind Victria. He carries his guitar on a strap across his shoulders, one hand unconsciously stroking the strings.
“ We’re working,” Luthor says pointedly.
“ So are we. Looking for inspiration and all that. ” Victria ignores him and heads straight over to me. There’s something almost protective in her stance.
“Look for inspiration somewhere else,” Luthor growls, and I can’t blame him. He was just about to get started on the sculpture he’s planned for two weeks; Victria and Bartie’s interruption could not have come at a worse time.
“I need Selene. ” Victria lifts one shoulder, as if she’s helpless in the face of her whimsical muse.
“ So do I. ” Luthor hasn’t moved away from his clay, but his hands are motionless, his body stiff.
Victria leans over. “You’ve got a sketch. ” Her words are casual, but she touches my arm, pressing into my skin as if trying to convey a message to me through my flesh. Bartie shifts nervously by the door.
“ But I’ll still need her. ”
Before the two of them can dissolve into a real fight, I speak up. “Why do you need me, Victria?”
“I need a song. Music. ”
“You have Bartie. ” I hope none of the others notice the bitterness in my voice. She does have Bartie, all of him, even if she doesn’t appear to want him the way I used to.
“ But I need singing. ”
“Yeah,” Bartie says, looking up for the first time. “ You’re the Siren, remember. Sing us a song that’ll make us want to drown. ”
Victria and Bartie chuckle at the jab, but Luthor just scowls. “Will you leave if she sings? ” he says.
Victria hesitates, but Bartie says, “Yes. ”
“ Just get rid of them,” Luthor says, waving his hand as if he’s sacrificing something to let me sing.
“I . . . I don’t know what to sing,” I say, suddenly shy.