She did not wish to weep, so she turned her head into the pillow and pretended she did not feel the tears.
The next day Barnum arranged to have a coach take Amelia (dressed in one of her new dresses and wearing a bonnet to hide her bound hair) and her trunk to the Park Hotel.
The hotel was visible from the American Museum, and Amelia thought it absurd that Barnum pay for a coach—a thing he was sure to complain of later—to take her there when the walk was less than a minute long.
“No one must know you’ve been staying here,” Barnum said. “I’ve asked the coachman to drive north some way before turning about and coming back to the hotel.”
Amelia failed to see how he would guarantee that the coachman didn’t speak of this to the mobs of reporters that hovered outside the hotel, but then she saw the generous allowance he gave the man and realized he’d solved the problem the same way he did everything—with money.
Levi was to meet her in front of the hotel upon arrival. Barnum suggested that she not speak to or acknowledge the reporters at all.
“I think it’s best if we pretend that you can’t speak,” Barnum said.
“Why?” Amelia asked. They were at the breakfast table with Charity, who seemed more restrained than usual, as if she were sorry to have spoken so freely to Amelia the night before.
For Barnum’s part, he did not mention at all Amelia’s angry leaving. He went about with his morning and his business as though she’d never left.
“If you don’t talk, it increases the mystery,” Barnum said. “It will also keep them directing their questions at Levi.”
“And Levi is better at lying than I am,” Amelia said.
“To be frank, yes,” Barnum said. “It’s safer if we tell them you can’t communicate in any human language.”
“What will happen if they ask Levi how he convinced me to come here, then?” Amelia asked. This seemed like a fairly large flaw, in her eyes.
Barnum waved that away. “He’ll think of something. He’ll tell them he drew pictures to show you or some such thing. Really, the boy can generate the most outlandish stories at a moment’s notice.”
So Amelia was bundled into the coach and taken for a ride around the city, and then returned to the hotel at the prearranged time to find Levi as Dr. Griffin waiting for her, patiently taking questions from the reporters who each jostled for supremacy, shouting over one another in an attempt to have their questions answered first.
She watched from the window as he smoothly detached himself and strode to the coach, snapping his fingers for the hotel porter to take her trunk. The mob followed him like they were attached to his coat by string.
“Lady Amelia,” he said, offering his hand for her to take as she stepped out.
“Lady? How can a mermaid be titled?” one of the reporters asked.
“Thanks to a type of sign language I have worked out with the mermaid, she can communicate only with me. I have determined, during our conversations, that she is a kind of princess among her own people. Given this, I believe I should honor her heritage,” Levi said.
Amelia wondered if Levi had thought of this fiction prior to her arrival or if he’d made it up on the spot.
She soon discovered that despite Levi’s insistence that she could not speak nor understand them, the reporters persisted in shouting questions at her.
“Lady Amelia! What do you think of New York?”
“Lady Amelia! Why did you come here with Dr. Griffin?”
“Lady Amelia! What do mermaids eat?”
“Lady Amelia! How many more of you are there?”
And on, and on, and on. There seemed to be no question too trivial, and her refusal to make a noise or even turn her head did not deter them. The hotel staff had to be engaged to keep the reporters from following her and Levi up the stairs; she wondered how much money Barnum had paid to ensure their cooperation.
Their rooms were on the fifth floor of the six-story building with a view of St. Paul’s across the street. Barnum had explained that the hotel had a strict policy of not allowing unaccompanied women to enter, but since she was there as a “guest” of Dr. Griffin, it was permitted. However, “for your own safety,” a guard would be posted outside her door at night. Amelia doubted very much that her safety was Barnum’s concern. Rather, it was a ham-handed attempt at keeping her from scarpering. She wasn’t concerned. If and when she wanted to leave, she was confident she could do so and that Levi would aid her in that quarter if necessary. Let Barnum gnash his teeth about the expense of the guard in the meantime.
The hotel was not, she noted, significantly quieter than in the museum. For one thing the intersection below was always filled with people; for another, when the window was open, she could hear the terrible band that Barnum hired to play outside the museum. The office of the New York Herald was also nearby, and doubtless half of the reporters lurking in the hotel would rush across to file their dispatches shortly.
The room, she supposed, was luxurious, but to her luxury simply meant there was too much of everything. Too many folds, too many fabrics, too many objects on tables and shelves. The windows were large but covered in long curtains. At least the windows allowed in some light and air, a quality that had been lacking in the Barnums’ guest room.
She was to leave the hotel almost as soon as she arrived there, for another “exhibition” was scheduled for the Concert Hall that day. Barnum had hired a contingent of twenty men to stand about the hall and at the doors. Though each was dressed respectably, they had a rough look about them, as if they’d been drafted from places where they regularly washed blood from beneath their fingernails.
The second performance went much as the first one did, with the exception that the audience seemed both prepared for the spectacle and wary of the looming guards.
Several people stood when she changed, craning their necks and pointing, but no one tried to rush the stage again. She swam in a few loops inside the tank, unsure what else to do. The rehearsals had always been concerned with the timing of her entry onstage and affirming that the change could occur inside the tank; no one had discussed what she should do after that.
She broke the surface to look at the audience without the warping of the glass between them. When she did several people clapped and oohed, and she felt she had done what was expected of her.
Levi reemerged from the wings to take questions from the audience. Amelia dove back into the water then, swimming in various patterns and wondering how long she was supposed to do this.
Her days quickly became a tiresome repetition of that one. She would rise in the hotel, breakfast, walk the gauntlet of reporters and lookers-on with Levi, climb into a coach to the Concert Hall, change into a mermaid, and swim in circles until Levi declared the performance ended for the day. Most days she took her supper in her room, for if she did not, she would be bothered throughout her meal by men in the hotel who wanted to speak to a “real mermaid,” and who would not be put off by any amount of glib replies from Levi.
After a weeklong engagement at the Concert Hall, Barnum took out an advertisement in the newspaper stating that he’d made an agreement with Dr. Griffin to bring the mermaid “at a most extraordinary expense” to the American Museum for the benefit of his “discerning public.” Despite the extra cost to him, Barnum made sure that it was known that the mermaid would be exhibited “without extra charge.”
Amelia was not permitted, despite this change of venue, to return to her small guest room in the Barnums’ apartment.
“How can you advertise the program if you’re not in the hotel?” Barnum said. “The museum show won’t begin for at least two more weeks.”