—
Back on the road, fiveminutes 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 thereisanother 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 mobilephone 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.
They already know I destroyed their beautiful car. I wonder, vaguely, how they found out so quickly but then assume Miguel must have called them again after last night. He was pretty angry about the Audi mechanic giving me back a “faulty” vehicle. But then it’s just as likely that the garbagemen have informed their insurance company of the accident.
I notice the time and bolt upright. It’s four-fifteen in the afternoon on Tuesday. I’ve been unconscious for twelve hours. I only meant to rest my eyes.
Marla’s body has been up on that hillside for over twelve hours. Another wave of nausea overtakes me and my head swims as I let it pass.
My thirst, already extreme last night, is now uncontrollable and I scramble to my feet heading to the kitchen and gulping greedily from the tap. Next I open the fridge and sit cross-legged on the cool kitchen tiles as I gorge myself on cheese, cold cuts, and whatever else I can reach. I haven’t eaten in over seventeen hours and those seventeen hours have been the most traumatic of my life. I let snapshots from last night flash through my mind as I stuff cold olives and leftover salad into my mouth.
The cold breeze at the top of the sign, the smell of Marla’s cigarettes, the shimmering surface of Lake Hollywood in the darkness. And then the blood, my blood, dripping down onto the gray marl of my sweater, the uncontrollable shuddering inside me. Marla’s face inches from mine, her eyes, the warmth of her breath on my cheek before she disappeared into the void. The sound of her soft body hitting the earth forty-five feet below and tumbling, twisting down, down, down into the dusty valley, unable to stop, unable to save herself. I pause, a chunk of Brie halfway to my mouth.Could she have survived it? Should I have gone back? Should I go now?
I try to think rationally, morally, legally.Was it my responsibility to save her if the impact didn’t kill her?
She tried to kill me but I certainly didn’t intend to do the same. I only pushed her because she was trying to drag me down with her. I could feel my own feet slipping and I knew she’d never stop. Even if it killed us both. I let her fall to save myself.Is that okay?
Lost in thought, I finally pop the waiting chunk of cheese into my mouth. It will have to be okay, I decide, because that is what I did.
But I didn’t call the police, did I? I didn’t call an ambulance. If I was so sure I did the right thing…wouldn’t I have called someone to help us afterward? I could have even called anonymously but the thought never crossed my mind at the time.
I don’t think calling an ambulance would have helped her, a quiet voice inside me answers.
No, but that’s the way things are done, isn’t it? If someone has an accident you call an ambulance.
You did what you thought was right at the time. You did the best you could, the quiet voice answers. That’s all you can ever do.
—
After showering I examine mydamaged body in the mirror. The swelling around my nose has gone down; in its place a sickly green-yellow bruise now runs horizontally from under one eye straight across the bridge of my nose to under the other eye. An eye mask of bruising. Another livid purple-and-red contusion under my right eye, a small cut in the middle of my lower lip. I don’t remember when, but I must have bitten down hard on it at some point. My unremoved makeup is now clogged under my eyes, my skin sallow, and my freshly rewashed wet hair adds to the horror show. I push my hair to one side and look at my aching neck, the skin blood-blistered and bruised, scabs already forming where Marla’s thumbnails broke the flesh. I rifle through my washbag and pull out a tube of antiseptic cream, too late by far but the act of gently applying the cool cream gives me the illusion of clawing back my own body. Across my left shoulder and running diagonally over my chest is the blood-blistering and bruising caused by the seatbelt last night.
