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.
My lips are tinged blue and swollen from Marla’s blow, and the bridge of my nose is wider than usual. I touch it gingerly and wince.
I feel the hot blast of the car heater beginning to loosen the joints in my hands and feet, my trembling slowly starting to subside. This will have to do for now, I can’t stay here any longer and run the risk of attracting attention. I can only pray that I haven’t done so already.
I fish the car keys from the tight confines of my jean pocket and start the engine.
* * *
—
Everything feels like a dream as I drive. The car slips anonymously onto the 101 south, joining all the other nighttime traffic flowing toward Downtown LA. The strange lights and billboards of Hollywood add to the surreal nature of this odd journey. I try not to think about what just happened, but imagined images of Marla’s broken pale body flash through my mind as I drive.
I left her.
I may not have meant to but I did.
Somehow, I don’t know how, I made it to the bottom of that ladder. I jumped the final six-foot drop onto the hard dust of the hillside. Ankle twisted, wrists jarred, and body shaking like a leaf, I sat in the dirt and stared unseeingly into the darkness, shock sweeping through me. After a while I stood up and started to the car, the walk longer and darker on the way back.
In my lap, as I drive, my phone nestles unused. Somewhere back in the darkness Marla remains.
I come off the 101 and tap a waypoint destination into the car’s GPS. I need to do one more thing.
After five minutes of sailing through nighttime streets the warm lights of my destination loom ahead, glowing out into the night, as I carefully turn off the main road and follow the little lane that loops around the building to a small hatch. I lower my window and order some food.
Parked in the car park, I perfunctorily eat until the food is gone then carefully place my bloodstained sweater inside the brown McDonald’s bag, covering it with my used wrappers and rolling down the brown bag’s top. I grab my baseball cap from the glove box, put it on, and hop from the car, just a girl grabbing a late-night snack and disposing of her litter.
* * *