LYLA
Demi finally ascends in a black athleisure suit, loose on her tiny frame, pierced in places by bones. She is thinner than I thought. She tugs at her clothes as if embarrassed, but she must work hard for that body. Maybe she works harder on pretending to be embarrassed.
“Ready,” she says unnecessarily. I follow her through the opening onto the street.
I study the bristles in her body, the hook of her shoulders, the tension in her hips, the odd way she shuffles on the edge of her feet, toes curled in. She is so tense, so afraid. She must know something, or else she senses it. She is scared of a thing that might be me.
We pass the white van and her eyes are held by it so long that I say, “I don’t know where that came from. It just turned up one day.”
Demi stiffens as she nods. Her hands are fisted in her pockets.
I try to walk beside her but she stays slightly ahead, watching me out of the corner of her eye. On guard. We reach the place where the road splits, drops easily down onto the main road or steepens perilously up into the hills.
“Let’s go up. I want to show you something.”
She swallows hard but follows me. I don’t give her a choice.
The streets in the hills are not made for walking. They are not made for driving either. They are designed to keep people out. The roads are steep, curved and narrow. There are no sidewalks. There are blind turns, cracks in the roads and in the walls that hem them. There are cars parked at perilous points with their bumpers shaved, their back ends busted, their mirrors snapped back.
Demi’s back is rigid. Her fingers stay buried in her pockets. Her head swivels left and right. I picture a fast car barreling down the road, unable to stop in time, plowing her body into one of the stone walls that screen the better homes, popping, smashing her bones to powder in places so she becomes a mangled version of herself: half a face, no hands, a crooked spine, a missing shoe, shuffling down the same path. I would win then. I would win and I wouldn’t even have to lift a finger. I wish there was a God who worked like that. Effort makes victory bittersweet. I want to win by not even trying.
An engine roars from above or below. Her head snaps up. She scrambles, first to the left and then to the right. We balance at the edge of a cliff as an SUV steams past.
It vanishes through a hairpin turn and she shivers, steps back onto the road. “Why do you walk here?” Her voice has a fearful snap. “Do you want to get killed?”
“I’ve never been hit,” I say like it’s obvious. “I’ve never even come close.”
“No.” She shivers again. “Of course not.”
The hill is steep and we walk fast. Our breath puffs in tandem. Soon we are looking out over Los Angeles: the mirrored hills across the valley, the bulging blackish eye of the observatory, the messy stacks downtown. I stop to look at the view but Demi only glances at it, then looks quickly away, like she betrayed herself.
“Left here.” I indicate. The walk is easier now. We catch our breath but don’t speak. We are locked in this heavy silence, so this whole exercise feels like torture. I scrape my mind for something to say. “You make more money than Graham.” I don’t know why I say that.
She laughs like she has just landed back here beside me. “How much does Graham make?” Her throaty voice is teasing, playful.
Even if this conversation is inappropriate, even though Graham would be angry, I feel a dark thrill in telling her, in what seems an exceptional betrayal, “Three thirty.”
“A year?” she blurts then. “Sorry. Duh. My brain.” She brushes her head.
“He has family money, too, from Margo. Margo has more money than God. Or the devil.”
“Do you like her?”
“Are you kidding? I don’t like anyone who has more money than me.”
She bursts out laughing. I feel dizzy with it, that childhood feeling: Someone laughed at my joke! Someone likes me! It reminds me of Elvira. She used to have the most wicked sense of humor. We would laugh and laugh for hours out on her porch. Laughter made us feel like we owned the world. Laughter made us feel like we won. Until Graham came down from above. And she stopped laughing.
We are walking side by side now, moving from the left to the right side of the street, whatever side seems safer. A vista opens up to the west, across Beverly Hills and Santa Monica, all the way to the jewel blue ocean. To our right, the reservoir looms.
She stops in her tracks. She is so jumpy, it’s making me uneasy.
“Have you been here before?” I ask.
“Once.”