—
Back on the road, five minutes from the apartment building, I pull off my hat and look up at my reflection in the mirror once more, the streetlights here stronger. My face is a mess. There’s no hiding it: something clearly happened to me tonight. Something very bad. There won’t be any other way to explain it. Unless there is another way to explain it.
I know I’m not thinking straight because when the idea comes, I know it’s crazy but I also know I’m going to do it anyway. There’s only a tinge of fear at the thought of executing this brand-new plan where I’m pretty sure there should be a tsunami.
Regardless, I decide it’s happening. I scan the two lanes ahead for a suitable vehicle and catch sight of a garbage truck. I make sure my seatbelt is fastened, switch lanes, and let my foot floor the accelerator.
The impact into the back of the garbage truck fires me forward sharply, my already tender face buffeting into the instantly deployed front and side airbags. Then, rebounding, my skull whiplashes back into the headrest behind me, knocking the air from my lungs, my horn blaring the whole time. Winded, I sit in the ringing muffle of the car and wait for someone to come and check on me.
The garbagemen are beyond kind. They move my car to the curbside and sit me down, checking I’m okay. An ambulance is called. I explain the car had problems with its relay yesterday, I don’t know how it happened, I tell them, the brakes just didn’t seem to work.
Aside from me, no one is hurt—I couldn’t have hit the stationary truck at more than twenty miles an hour, but that was enough. My whole body aches. I pop my jacket collar up, hiding the bruises already blossoming around my neck from Marla’s hands, and when the paramedics arrive I’m careful to only let them touch my face, explaining away my wet hair as a late-night swim. Of course, I am Breathalyzed—I don’t blame them, the shuddering state I’m in I’d expect no less—but the alcohol reading is negative. My glass of wine at Nick’s house was over five hours ago now. I exchange insurance details with the city sanitation workers and once everyone is convinced that I’m safe to drive, I slowly crawl the car back the final two streets to the Ellis Building.
An overwrought Miguel sits me down and fetches me a sweet tea as I tell him all about the accident. When my story is clear and settled and the state of my face explained away, I finally take my leave.
Upstairs in the apartment, I fish out my phone, which is still recording. I stare at the numbers still flying forward. I recorded everything. Everything she said, everything that happened tonight, all time-and location-stamped. I press stop on the recording. I press delete. I empty the trash. And it is gone. I hastily barricade the front door in case, somehow, that broken body rises in North Hollywood and comes to find me. I strip off my clothes, shower, and collapse into bed.
* * *
—
I’m woken by my mobile phone ringing from the pile of discarded clothes in the bathroom. I haven’t moved an inch in my sleep and it seems like only a moment has passed since I let my eyes droop shut.
I shift in the bedsheets, my whole body aching as if I’ve been in a car crash, which makes sense because I have. I bat my eyes open. Sunlight streams in through the edges of the bedroom blind, and everything that happened last night floods back into my mind.
I lurch up into the empty room, nausea crashing through me. She tried to kill me. Marla tried to kill me like the girl who leapt from the sign. She tried to get rid of me using my own Google history, and fevered imagination, as a weapon. My hand flies to my burnt-out throat as I launch into a cataclysm of excruciating coughs.
Images of Marla’s white-knuckled hands and her face as she fell back disappearing from sight. I repress the urge to retch—the pain too intense for my battered throat. I stumble out of bed, lumbering my way out to the pile of clothes and the ringing phone.
Leandra at Audi. Oh, fuck, the car.
I decline the call.