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.