6. Martha
Martha
The Los Angeles sky is just like it was that day, but the air is warmer. Same year. Another season. It could easily be fifteen years ago, though. It feels like yesterday and also like centuries have passed.
And there’s blood. Of course, there would be blood.
It’s ours, I’m sure. The pavement is too hot beneath me, so I rise, taking form, holding steady.
A slow trickle of red oozes from my arm, and I remember.
Back in the hotel, I’d run into one of those fancy wall sconces on the way to Redfern’s room.
I didn’t have time to stop. No, definitely not.
Now the blood runs down my arm, absorbing beneath my shirt, trickling into the palm of my hand. Her hand. Our hand. I capture it in my palm, hold it under the sunlight, aware that, biologically, it isn’t mine. Not really. Then I open my hand and release it to the ground, drop by drop.
Glancing up, I notice a couple staring at me on the corner. When I look up, they turn away, mumbling something, but I don’t mind. I’d stare at me, too.
“Fucking tourists,” I mumble, then smirk at the irony, for I, myself, am something of a tourist. I come and go, appearing when there’s a good reason. Like recently, with the whole post-accident trauma. And before, too. Way, way before.
“Yes, you’re a fucking tourist,” I say louder, my voice familiar and soothing in my throat. It feels good to speak, good to release, even though I’m all alone. It’s been years of just listening … and listening.
My throat opens, and more sounds emerge, the same ones, but pleasing still. At least to me. “Fucking tourist!” I let myself shout. Then again and again. The couple on the corner moves away. A horn honks from a passing car and gives me the finger.
It’s okay. I know what I look like, bleeding and shouting to myself on the corner. And I don’t mind in the least. It feels so good to be out, the sunshine on my skin, the air on my face, even the new sounds entering my ears. It’s so damn quiet in the dark.
I laugh then into the wind as it picks up from across the road, the smell of the traffic off Sunset Boulevard sharp in my nose. Beyond everything, I think I can just make out the lightness of the sea air, the warmth carried in from the Pacific Ocean.
I have to hand it to her. She did it. My wounded little lamb did it. It was a good thing I emerged just in time. She would never have had the courage without me.
I can hear her thoughts, long and steady like a chant, an anthem, the same old song. With more time, I can drown it out, but not now. I haven’t yet got the strength.
Nicola’s voice is loud against my temples, insistent, and angry.
I know, I tell her. Shhh, Nicola. I know.
She doesn’t want me here.