She begins to shuffle out of her wedged-in position between the two struts and sidestep carefully along the metal beam beneath us, taking as wide a berth past me and my weapon as possible, one foot painstakingly placed next to the other until she is almost close enough to reach out and touch. My eyes follow her every move, aware that at any moment she might lunge and grab the gun or knock it from my hands as she passes. My stinging face is a clear reminder of how dangerous this woman is and the precariousness of our current location. Once past me she pauses momentarily, steadying herself before moving on. She takes a deep breath and steels herself before swinging around onto the ladder. And that’s when it happens. Half on, half off the rungs, eyes still locked with mine, she loses her footing. I see the horror flash in her eyes as first one foot then the other slips from the rung. She drops, catching her own weight hard in her arms as she hangs two-handed from the top rung. And without thinking I am pitching forward, gun in one hand, as I grab for her flailing form. I reach her struggling body, her eyes desperate as she tries to find her lost footing.
But as my hands fly to help her I catch the look in her eyes, too late.
The air is knocked clean out of me. Her feet having easily found purchase on the ladder—she was never really in any danger—has freed up her right hand, which is now gripped viselike around my throat. The impact of her hand leaves me spluttering for breath as my windpipe burns under her tight hold. Without an option, I release the gun, my hands flying up to the choke hold on my neck. My weapon, my only lifeline, skitters onto the grating of the platform.
I stumble back as she pushes me hard against the metal of the platform away from the ladder, my breath knocked from me again. She slams me again, violently, onto a strut. The raw corrugated steel of the letter’s lip digs painfully into my mid-back as she tilts me backward over the front of the sign. She’s going to push me over. My eyes dip down into the darkness nearly fifty feet below; the sheer drop from this height at this angle will almost certainly kill me. I feel a sharp whip of panic as I struggle against her, trying to prize her fingers from my throat as her nails begin to break the skin. Unable to free myself from her grip I hook a foot under one of the metal struts to stop her pushing me any further as I gasp for breaths that just won’t come. Then from the deep recesses of my memory I recall something I learned in an after-school self-defense class years ago. Instantly I stop struggling, I stop pulling away from my attacker and burst toward her instead.
Caught off guard Marla loses her balance, her hands flying out to brace herself, releasing my throat as she staggers back.
I gasp in a desperate lungful of air, pain ripping through my throat. But I know I only have a second before she is back on me. Without hesitation I act, moving to her and whipping my elbow hard into her face this time, the full force of my weight behind it.
She reels, her hands blindly grabbing for the strut and clinging for life as her left foot misses the platform edge. She stumbles forward to catch herself as her other foot follows suit. It’s her turn to panic now, still disoriented from the blow, blood pouring from her nose. She catches herself half on half off the platform. She hangs, fingers clawed, white-knuckled, into the grating of the platform floor in front of me. She writhes desperately trying to heave her weight back up to safety but the angle is wrong, her shoulders not strong enough. Her eyes blaze up at me in disbelief. This isn’t how she thought it would go. She tries again to kick her legs back up onto the platform, but each swing loosens her grip. Then a realization passes like a shadow over her face. She knows she can’t get back up without my help.
I grab for her arm with both hands. The impulse comes from somewhere animalistic deep inside me rather from any rational part of my brain. The part that saves. The part that tries.
“I’ve got you,” I rasp at her, my throat raw, my face swollen. A wave of relief floods her face and she kicks out once more for the platform to save herself.
Then, as if in slow motion, her leg finds the platform and she grins, grabbing my jacket and lurching me out over the drop. Without thinking I release her arms, bring my hands down hard on her grip on my jacket, and close my eyes as her fingers release and she topples backward out of sight.
Silence, and then the sound of an impact on the slope below. It doesn’t end there. I hear as she tumbles on down into the ravine beneath the sign. I fly over to the front of the sign to look but I only catch the movement of branches and vegetation far below in the darkness. I stare after her, my labored breath catching and hanging in warm fog around me.
Finally the ravine below falls silent but for my rasps and the sound of blood pounding in my ears. Marla’s gone. Disappeared again. My gaze is pulled up by the silent light of Hollywood glittering just out of reach beyond the hills and past the sheen of Lake Hollywood. I let the silence fill me. No screams, no rustles, no motion from the darkness beneath. There’s a chance she could have survived. I should call an ambulance.
Hands trembling, I try to loosen my phone from my zipped jacket pocket but, in shock, no matter how hard I try, my fingers won’t work properly, the joints too stiff and jittering.
I look down at them, shaking and bloodstained, and I realize how incredibly lucky I am to still be alive. And just like that the tears come.
34
Clearing Up the Mess
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 16
It’s only when I get back to the car and see my face reflected from the driver’s-side window that I realize I can’t possibly go back to the apartment like this. I look like the only survivor at the end of a horror movie: a wild thousand-yard stare, the front of my marl sweater stained, smeared with blood and hillside dust, my swollen bloodied face and tangled hair caked and crusted brown and red. I can’t go anywhere looking like this. I can’t speak to the police like this. I don’t look like someone who watched a girl fall from a sign. I look like someone who pushed a girl from a sign.
I turn from the car to survey the houses and driveways near where we parked. I try to ignore Marla’s car parked just ahead of mine. I try to block it from my mind.
I see what I’m looking for two houses down. The driveway is overgrown, there’s no car parked there, and I see the green snake of a hose lying tangled near an untended hedge. Perfect. The house looks vacant, the blinds are open, and no nightlight comes from within. Its disheveled garden hints that it might not have been occupied for some time. I approach with caution but, noting the lack of furniture through the front window, I figure it might be safe to gently turn on the wall-mounted hose tap. The reassuring sound of water greets me.
I slip off my jacket and sweater and lay them on the overgrown grass. I locate the cracked flowing end of the garden hose and brace myself for its icy blast as I bend forward to wash the blood and dirt from my hair. The water hits me viscerally, a punch of cold, prickling my scalp and burning white-hot through me. I shake the water through quickly, hurrying the process, and then delicately turn the flow onto my numbed face, my croaked breath catching at the hit of cold. My bruised and bloodied eyes, nose, and mouth are grateful, after the initial shock, for the cooling stream. Likewise the throbbing skin around my neck calms under the icy splash. As soon as I’m satisfied that I’ve removed the worst of the mess, I shut off the tap and quickly return the hose to its pile. I don’t want anyone wandering outside to find me, a soaking-wet actress with a swollen and bruised face wearing nothing but jeans and a silk camisole. I grab my soiled sweater, turn it inside out, and gently dry my tender face, and my hair, as best I can. Then slipping my unscathed jacket back on, and balling up the offended sweater, I head back to the car.
Inside I crank up the heat to full blast to settle my damp shivering body and get some life back into my limbs. I’m in shock, I know that much. I’ve researched the physical effects of it for various roles so I recognize it when I feel it. The short high breath, the sense of unreality, the inability to concentrate, trembling, cold, and a thirst. I grab my water bottle from my bag under the passenger seat and glug greedily until the plastic bottle crackles empty under my grip. I dig out a plastic bag from a side pocket and stick my balled-up sweater inside it, stowing it safely in the footwell.
I check myself in the rearview mirror, my skin gray-white in the dim street lighting, my wet hair hanging in thick damp coils. A drowned actress. My thoughts flash to Emily deep beneath the surface of the lake. I shake off the thought.