I speak as the thoughts form. “They promised Emily Galatea?”
Marla smiles at my leap of logic. “They promised Emily Galatea. And then they promised it to me,” she says, wry disappointment in her voice. “I could not believe my fucking luck when they gave me that script.” She beams, basking in the memory. “No feeling like it. Nothing. I can’t imagine how Emily must have felt when they first offered it to her.”
We’re all connected by one part. The role of a lifetime. A role worth dying for.
Maybe even a role worth killing for?
The reality of my situation finally dawns on me. Marla might not be responsible for Emily’s death, but that doesn’t mean she won’t be for mine.
I force my right hand into my pocket and let it find a position on the gun’s grip, my thumb finding the safety and testing its give. I remind myself there is a bullet in it and inch my thumb away again. It’s odd how calm I suddenly feel, forty-five feet up in the air with a woman who wants what’s mine and clearly has a very different moral landscape from me.
I watch her stub her cigarette out against the corrugated sign, my mind finally piecing it all together.
It’s as simple as this: Marla found out Kathryn was eyeing me for the lead in Galatea, she looked me up, she knew what I looked like, and when she saw me at an audition she made friends. She read me like a fucking book, tried to get me to go ahead of her so she could steal my apartment key, read my emails, break into my apartment, but I wouldn’t go first. I went out to the meter. Since we met she’d tried everything she could short of incapacitating me to stop me from testing for her role. She deleted my emails, distracted, scared, threatened, and impeded me, anything to keep me from that part. So in a way, I suppose it had to come to this. I can’t say she didn’t try to warn me.
“You tried to stop me from testing.”
She gives me an apologetic look, her tone eerily lighthearted as she jokes, “Yeah. But it didn’t work, did it?”
“No, it didn’t.”
“And here we are.”
My mind races to catch up. “And Nick? He helped you?” I feel my head lightening, vertigo swimming around me.
Marla shrugs. “You keep bringing him up but I have no idea who he is. You seemed into the idea, though.”
Oh God. She lied. She dragged me up here with garden-variety lies. I feel my anger flare. I think of how quick I was to assume that all this was somehow to do with Nick, and then I feel a tight clench of guilt too. Why would Nick be involved with a man he clearly told me he found repugnant? My grip tightens around the gun. His gun. The only thing I have up here to protect myself. And now that I think about it, Marla told me Ben was responsible for her bruised face.
“And your face? They didn’t really do that either, did they?” I ask, trying to sift truth from lies.
“The video call from Moon Finch came after I’d returned your phone to your bag in the waiting room. I was about to head to your apartment. I knew they were still pitching me to Kathryn, and I knew it was between you and me. They told me they were going to back down. Kathryn wasn’t taking recommendations. They told me they’d get me something else. I told Ben that was unacceptable. I told him to try harder. I did this to my face and sent him a picture.” She clocks my expression and smiles. “It’s not as bad as it looks. I took Advil.”
“Why would you do that to yourself?”
“Leverage. Proof of what he did to me.” She shrugs. “He just needed another nudge in the right direction. And photos of me beaten up along with everything else I have on them paint a pretty damning picture, don’t you think?”
Marla’s reason for hiring Joanne shifts into focus. “You couldn’t collect Emily’s things from me looking like that,” I suggest.