You make your way out into the Los Angeles night, turn right
at the end of your uncle’s Beachwood Drive property and head for the
Hollywoodland sign. As you walk the mile and a half or so to the flashing
lights you allow your determination to push you forward, ever forward, forward
until you’re off the street, into the park, and climbing the hill itself. It’s
chilly atop that hill, but you keep moving until you get to the oversized H
which flashes, along with the other letters of the sign, in several second
intervals. The maintenance ladder is there, leaning against the giant H on the
opposite side of the lights – the side where you now stand.
After a moment’s hesitation you find the courage to actually
climb the forty foot ladder to the top of the enormous letter. It gets windier
the higher up you climb in your fine dress, shoes and purse, but you push your
growing fear aside as you continue with your journey. Finally, after several
minutes, you stand upright on top of the towering H. Looking outward at the
city and its sea of lights, you pause. You can hear the enormous, industrial
bulbs of the sign flicking on and off every few moments in their pre-set order:
HOLLY…WOOD….LAND. The impact is eerie, as is the sight of the rugged hill with
its shrubbery below, shrubbery which becomes visible every time the lights burn
on, only to hiss off a moment later.
Two hundred performances. Tommy had been performed
two hundred times on Broadway. You were interviewed, applauded, and valued.
Now, out here on the edge of the abyss, you’ve got a failure for a movie under
your belt with Thirteen Women and have no immediate prospects. And all
at the age of twenty-four. The wind continues to blow. You find yourself remembering
past turbulent times – the loss of your father, the nightmare your marriage
became. Hadn’t, you think to yourself as you stand before the sprawling city, you
survived such ordeals? The darkness inside, however, wipes away any desire for
reflection.
You’re still conscious moments later as you lay sprawled on
the hard desert earth fifty feet below. You cough up blood, then look back up
at the H. The lights continue to burn on and off intermittently, causing the
shrubbery and rocks around you to switch from visible to invisible in the matter
of brief moments. You summon the effort to turn your head and can just make out
the Los Angeles skyline far below the hills. In the morning all the lights will
be off, those before you, as well as those which flash behind you, for the darkness will by then be
gone. You, however, will be gone as well.
Yet there’s still the matter of your few remaining moments.
