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.
“Not exactly. I had already been Michelle at your apartment. I would have been recognized. But you’re right, I did need Joanne to take Emily’s place for a few days. In case questions were raised too soon. I didn’t want the deal to screw up. And I needed her to keep you busy and to return the car on CCTV.”
“Why did you bring me up here, Marla?”
“Good question. When you went to feed the meter I took your phone—you really need to be careful who’s watching you type in your code, you know. Everything’s on phones these days. I took it to the bathroom, I found your address, I took your key, I emailed your building, I read your recent searches. Where you were going, what you were planning. Search histories tend to give you a good feel for where someone’s head is. Recent breakup, running away, trying to escape what happened but they’re always there at the touch of a button, right? The happy couple. I’ve seen her, I know how you must feel. Losing a job, losing a boyfriend.”
“I haven’t lost a job,” I counter, my words drifting away on the breeze.
“And you’ve got a bit of an obsession with that story about the actress who jumped off the sign, haven’t you?” she continues regardless.
Instinctively my hands grip tighter onto the steel of the sign as a massive surge of adrenaline sweeps through me. The girl who fell from the sign. The realization hits me physically, momentarily knocking my balance and sending a fresh wave of vertigo through me. That’s why she’s brought me here, to the sign, because of the girl who jumped.
“You’re scared now, aren’t you? I’d never heard of her, her story. But I looked her up. It’s a good plot. Lots of pathos and bathos. That telegram offering her the new part the next day. Sad.” She gives a mock grimace. “So here we are.” She gestures out into the darkness. “I tried to ward you off. I gave fair warning. But you wouldn’t stop. Which means I can’t. Too many people have given too much for this part and I’m not going to let you sweep in at the last minute and steal it from under us. You don’t deserve this like she deserved it. Like we both deserve it. I get the chance she missed. I am getting out of this hole.Iam getting this part, not you with your nice life and your nice family and your other options. Emily and I were out here too long, we worked too hard to walk away when we’re this close, when we’ve sacrificed so much. I never wanted it to come to this but you haven’t left me any choice.”
I feel the blow contact my face sharply before I see it, the pain intense and shocking. My balance fails me but thankfully, wedged between the struts and sign, it’s impossible for me to fall. Instead my body slumps into the strut as I try to catch my breath and make sense of the situation. My vision fuzzy, I shake open my eyes just in time to see her elbow come down on me again. I dodge instinctively, her arm only grazing my shoulder this time, but I can now feel the hot trickle of blood from my nose and the bright taste of blood in my mouth from that first connecting blow. I can’t feel the side of my face at all. My breath comes in ragged desperate gasps as I watch her raise a boot to kick.
Frantically I fumble for my pocket and tug out the gun wildly, catching it on the fabric and jolting the seam hard, tearing it in order to release it. I swing the barrel out into the air between us unthinkingly. She freezes, her face a mask of surprise.
Thinking only of my life I flick off the safety as calmly as my shaking hand will allow me to, my face a tingling, bleeding mess. With a quick swipe against my shoulder I remove the blood from my mouth before speaking.
“Here’s what we’re going to do, okay,” I say as clearly as I can, my smashed and swelling face already making talking hard. My voice sounds weird. “I am not going to shoot you for a part. No one is dying for a part. Do you understand me? You have to stop. You have to leave me alone. There are other parts, other people. Even if I walked away from this role today you wouldn’t get it, Marla. That ship has sailed. Kathryn has the film, not Moon Finch. You’re playing with fire but if you really need this then go back to them and take whatever lead they offer. It doesn’t have to be this one. Either way, this stops. I want you to go.” I twitch the barrel of the gun toward the ladder. “Go now. I’m leaving tomorrow. You won’t see me again. But if I see you, if you follow me, I will protect myself, do you understand?” My hand has stopped shaking but the quake is now inside me, deep in my core muscles, like shivering in the cold. Marla studies me, unsure of her next move. “If you go now, I won’t report this,” I push on. “Any of it. I don’t want to be involved. But if I see you again, I swear to God, I will make sure they put you somewhere that you can’t ever get to me. Do you understand?”
Marla looks at me quizzically. I wonder if she believes me. If I’d believe her were the tables turned. I don’t even know if I believe myself. Because right now all I want to do is call the cops as soon as she’s gone.
She looks at me silently until I pull back the hammer on the Sig and finally she speaks. “I’ll go,” she blurts. “But I’m going to need your word. Yourword,Mia,” she repeats with unassailable firmness. “If you go to the cops, if you get in my way, I will find you, doyouunderstand? And next time you won’t have a gun.”
I feel my breath tighten in my chest. I believe her. She will kill me. Like Ben Cohan killed Emily. I will disappear. Of course, I can’t be sure she won’t try to do that either way; she could come for me again, anytime, any day, this woman who can pass for other people. Even if I reported this the police aren’t going to be able to immediately protect me from her. The legal system doesn’t work like that. People aren’t locked up without evidence.
I think of the iPhone buried in my pocket recording all of this, seconds ticking over seconds. This is my only evidence. Everything that’s happened out here. And that evidence will show I brought a stolen weapon to meet a stranger in the middle of the night. The best protection from Marla I could hope for pre-trial would be a restraining order, and something tells me Marla might not take that entirely seriously. I taste the blood in my mouth as the dark drop all around hazes in and out of focus. My thoughts come hard and fast, terrifyingly clear in their logic: the only way to be truly safe, to know for certain that this woman could no longer be a danger to me, would be to pull the trigger. Here, now. I could claim self-defense.
Fear fizzes through me at the mere idea of it, and I squeeze the gun’s grip tighter as if I suddenly might do something crazy. But I’m not like her; I’m not willing to kill for this. I’m not that kind of person. Am I?
“You have my word,” I tell her. “What you do is up to you. But you need to leave me out of it.”
“Agreed,” she replies.
And with her words I realize what I’ve just said, my statement making the recording in my pocket purely a form of evidence against me. I have verbally acknowledged that I will not report her crimes if she promises to leave me out of them. It’s a promise I make her take at gunpoint.
She begins to shuffle out of her wedged-in position between the two struts and sidestep carefully along the metal beam beneath us, taking as wide a berth past me and my weapon as possible, one foot painstakingly placed next to the other until she is almost close enough to reach out and touch. My eyes follow her every move, aware that at any moment she might lunge and grab the gun or knock it from my hands as she passes. My stinging face is a clear reminder of how dangerous this woman is and the precariousness of our current location. Once past me she pauses momentarily, steadying herself before moving on. She takes a deep breath and steels herself before swinging around onto the ladder. And that’s when it happens. Half on, half off the rungs, eyes still locked with mine, she loses her footing. I see the horror flash in her eyes as first one foot then the other slips from the rung. She drops, catching her own weight hard in her arms as she hangs two-handed from the top rung. And without thinking I am pitching forward, gun in one hand, as I grab for her flailing form. I reach her struggling body, her eyes desperate as she tries to find her lost footing.
But as my hands fly to help her I catch the look in her eyes, too late.
The air is knocked clean out of me. Her feet having easily found purchase on the ladder—she was never really in any danger—has freed up her right hand, which is now gripped viselike around my throat. The impact of her hand leaves me spluttering for breath as my windpipe burns under her tight hold. Without an option, I release the gun, my hands flying up to the choke hold on my neck. My weapon, my only lifeline, skitters onto the grating of the platform.
I stumble back as she pushes me hard against the metal of the platform away from the ladder, my breath knocked from me again. She slams me again, violently, onto a strut. The raw corrugated steel of the letter’s lip digs painfully into my mid-back as she tilts me backward over the front of the sign. She’s going to push me over. My eyes dip down into the darkness nearly fifty feet below; the sheer drop from this height at this angle will almost certainly kill me. I feel a sharp whip of panic as I struggle against her, trying to prize her fingers from my throat as her nails begin to break the skin. Unable to free myself from her grip I hook a foot under one of the metal struts to stop her pushing me any further as I gasp for breaths that just won’t come. Then from the deep recesses of my memory I recall something I learned in an after-school self-defense class years ago. Instantly I stop struggling, I stop pulling away from my attacker and burst toward her instead.
Caught off guard Marla loses her balance, her hands flying out to brace herself, releasing my throat as she staggers back.
