«Belle! «
«You see I'm not lying!» said Bella.
«I see!»
«Keep your voice down, Zelda. Oh, it's scary and strange, terrible and nice. So come on.»
And the two women edged along the walk to the rim of the old hill near the old steps in old Hollywood, and suddenly as they moved they felt time take a half turn around them and it was another year, because nothing had changed all the buildings were the way they were in 1928 and the hills beyond like they were in 1926 and the steps, just the, way they were when the cement was poured in 1921.
«Listen, Zelda. There!»
And Zelda listened and at first there was only a creaking of wheels down in the dark, like crickets, and then a moan of wood and a hum of piano strings, and then one voice lamenting about this job, and the other voice claiming he had nothing to do with it, and then the thumps as two derby hats fell, and an exasperated voice announced:
«Here's another fine mess you've got us in.»
Zelda, stunned, almost toppled off the hill. She held tight to Bella's arm as tears brimmed in her eyes.
«It's a trick. Someone's got a tape recorder or-«
«No, I checked. Nothing but the steps, Zelda, the steps!»
Tears rolled down Zelda's plump cheeks.
«Oh, God, that is his voice! I'm the expert, I'm the mad, fanatic, Bella. That's Ollie. And that other voice, Stan! And you're not nuts after all!»
The voices below rose and fell and one cried: «Why don't you do something to help me?»
Zelda moaned. «Oh, God, it's so beautiful.»
«What does it mean?» asked Bella. «Why are they here? Are they really ghosts, and why would ghosts climb this hill every night, pushing that music box, night after night, tell me, Zelda, why?»
Zelda peered down the hill and shut her eyes for a moment to think. «Why do any ghosts go anywhere? Retribution? Revenge? No, not those two. Love maybe's the reason, lost loves or something Yes?»
Bella let her heart pound once or twice and then said, «Maybe nobody told them.»
«Told them what?»
«Or maybe they were told a lot but still didn't believe, because maybe in their old years things got bad, I mean they were sick, and sometimes when you're sick you forget.»
«Forget what!?»
«How much we loved them.»
«They knew!»
«Did they? Sure, we told each other, but maybe not enough of us ever wrote or waved when they passed and just yelled 'Love!' you think?»
«Hell, Bella, they're on TV every night!»
«Yeah, but that don't count. Has anyone, since they left us, come here to these steps and said? Maybe those voices down there, ghosts or whatever, have been here every night for years, pushing that music box, and nobody thought, or tried, to just whisper or yell all the love we had all the years. Why not?»
'Why not?» Zelda stared down into the long darkness where perhaps shadows moved and maybe a piano lurched clumsily among the shadows. «You're right.»
If I'm right,» said Bella, «and you say so, there's only one thing to do-«
«You mean you and me?»
«Who else? Quiet. Come on.»
They moved down a step. In the same instant lights came
on around them, in a window here, another there. A screen door opened somewhere and angry words shot out into the night:
«Hey, what's going on?»
«Pipe down!»
«You know what time it is?» «My God,» Bella whispered, «everyone else hears now!»
«No, no.» Zelda looked around wildly. «They'll spoil everything!»
«I'm calling the cops!» A window slammed.
«God,» said Bella, «if the cops come-«
«What?»
«It'll be all wrong. If anyone's going to tell them to take it easy, pipe down, it's gotta be us. We care, don't we?»
«God, yes, but-«
«No buts. Grab on. Here we go.»
The two voices murmured below and the piano tuned itself with hiccups of sound as they edged down another step and another, their mouths dry, hearts hammering, and the night so dark they could see only the faint streetlight at the stair bottom, the single street illumination so far away it was sad being there all by itself, waiting for shadows to move.
More windows slammed up, more screen doors opened. At any moment there would be an avalanche of protest, incredible outcries, perhaps shots fired, and all this gone forever.
Thinking this, the women trembled and held tight, as if to pummel each other to speak against the rage.
«Say something, Zelda, quick.»
«What?»
«Anything! They'll get hurt if we don't-«
» They?»
«You know what I mean. Save them.»
«Okay. Jesus!» Zelda froze, clamped her eyes shut to find the words, then opened her eyes and said, «Hello.»
«Louder. «
`'Hello,» Zelda called softly, then loudly.
Shapes rustled in the dark below. One of the voices rose while the other fell and the piano strummed its hidden harp strings.
«Don't be afraid,» Zelda called
«That's good. Go on.»
«Don't be afraid,» Zelda called, braver now. «Don't listen to those others yelling. We won't hurt you. It's just us. I'm Zelda, you wouldn't remember, and this here is Bella, and we've known you forever, or since we were kids, and we love you. It's late, but we thought you should know. We've loved you ever since you were in the desert or on that boat with ghosts or trying to sell Christmas trees door-to-door or in that traffic where you tore the headlights off cars, and we still love you, right, Bella?»
The night below was darkness, waiting.
Zelda punched Bella's arm.
«Yes!» Bella cried, «what she said. We love you.»
«We can't think of anything else to say.»
«But it's enough, yes?» Bella leaned forward anxiously. «It's enough?»
A night wind stirred the leaves and grass around the stairs and the shadows below that had stopped moving with the music box suspended between them as they looked up and up at the two women, who suddenly began to cry. First tears fell from Bella's cheeks, and when Zelda sensed them, she let fall her own.
So now,'' said Zelda, amazed that she could form words but managed to speak anyway, «we want you to know, you don t have to come back anymore. You don't have to climb
the hill every night, waiting. For what we said just now is it, isn't it? I mean you wanted to hear it here on this hill, with those steps, and that piano, yes, that's the whole thing, it had to be that, didn't it? So now here we are and there you are and it's said. So rest, dear friends.»
«Oh, there, Ollie,»,» added Bella in a sad, sad whisper. «Oh, Stan, Stanley.»
The piano, hidden in the dark, softly hummed its wires and creaked its ancient wood.
And then the most incredible thing happened. There was: a series of shouts and then a huge banging crash as the music box, in the dark, rocketed down the hill, skittering on the steps, playing chords where it hit, swerving, rushing, and ahead of it, running, the two shapes pursued by the musical beast, yelling, tripping, shouting, warning the Fates, crying out to the gods, down and down, forty, sixty, eighty, one hundred steps.
And half down the steps, hearing, feeling, shouting, crying themselves, and now laughing and holding to each other, the two women alone in the night wildly clutching, grasping, trying to see, almost sure that they did see, the three things ricocheting off and away, the two shadows rushing, one fat,, one thin, and the piano blundering after, discordant and mindless, until they reached the street, where, instantly, the one overhead streetlamp died as if struck, and the shadows floundered on, pursued by the musical beast.
And the two women, abandoned, looked down, exhausted with laughing until they wept and weeping until they laughed, until suddenly Zelda got a terrible look on her face as if shot.