by Lisa Jackson
“A-a beauty queen … actress from the fifties.”
“So really old.”
“No, no … she’s dead.” Gaze aloft, the woman shook her head. “Died a long time ago. Overdose of sleeping pills. Or … or something.” Her forehead crumpled as she thought.
“Then it’s not her.”
“I know.”
“Impersonator?” a man in a long overcoat who had overheard the exchange asked.
“I-I guess.” The woman again. “There’ve been a lot of them. But one … in particular. Kind of famous.” She snapped the fingers of her free hand, the sound muted through her glove. “Her name was … oh, gosh, I can’t remember. Doesn’t matter.”
Didi. Her name is Didi Storm, Remmi thought, her heart frozen in her chest. And it does matter!
Overcoat pulled a face of disbelief. “An impersonator of a dead woman … long dead, by the way. She’s gonna take a swan dive off the Montmort? Nah. Doesn’t make sense. Why would anyone … ?”
“Does suicide ever make sense?” the woman snapped, her lips pursing a little.
“Whoa. Sorry. I was just sayin’—”
Overhead the woman swayed and the crowd gasped. Firemen were gathered at the base of the hotel and someone in a uniform, a sergeant, she thought, was ordering the throng to “Stand back. Give us a little room here.”
Without a trace of empathy, water beading on his Giants cap, the kid observed, “It looks like she’s really going to do it.”
“Oh … oh, no. Come on, let’s go. I can’t watch this.” His mother hustled her son through the gathering throng of horrified lookie-loos and the boy, reluctantly, his gaze focused on the would-be leaper, was dragged past nearby observers holding cell phones over their heads and out of sight.
Remmi didn’t listen to any more speculation. Heart pounding, fear driving her, she pushed her way through the ever-growing crowd, past a businessman in a raincoat who, like so many others, was filming the macabre scene with his phone, while people around her murmured or gasped, but all were transfixed by the horror unfolding right before their eyes. Traffic had been halted, headlights of the stalled cars glowing in the fog, horns honking, emergency workers barking orders.
Don’t do it, Remmi thought desperately as she forced her way through a knot of women with umbrellas. Throat tight, she glanced up at the ledge. Please, Mom, don’t jump!
To Remmi’s horror, as if the would-be leaper could hear her, the woman moved suddenly, a high heel slipping over the edge. The crowd gave up a collective gasp, then screamed as she plummeted, her arms flailing wildly, her hair a shimmering, moving cloud in those horrifying seconds as she tumbled in free fall through the thick San Francisco night.