Free Amy Falls Down by Jincy Willett

she merged onto Torrey Pines, or now, as she slowed to read street signs in the dark and impatient natives honked and sped around her, or even now, pulling into Carla’s enormous circular driveway. Her heart could explode, her brain wink out, she could trip while focusing on the enormous salad bowl in her arms and die in a pool of blood and Waldorf salad. The earth could open up at her feet.
    Amy paused to look in the living room picture window: the room was too dark for her to make out details, but they were all there, no doubt, waiting for her, with candles and a goddamn birthday cake, because of course Carla had lied, but Amy stayed in the moment anyway. She was safe. She was happy to be anywhere.

 
    CHAPTER ELEVEN
    Retreat
    Amy hadn’t visited Carla’s place, the Birdhouse, for a full year. Her last visit had been on Boxing Day, a few weeks after the Workshop Sniper, a deranged class member who had terrorized everyone in the workshop, had been identified and locked up. On that occasion, the remaining class members had not been able to refrain from discussing the Sniper, speculating on motivations, going over and over ground that Amy had already buried deep and cemented over. For months, Carla harassed her about turning the incident into gold and jump-starting her career in the process, a suggestion Amy found offensive, even coming from Carla, who never meant harm even though she routinely offended everybody. “That story is not mine to tell,” she told Carla more than once, “especially in a form that will encourage readers to enjoy the deaths of innocent people.” Carla eventually took the hint, calling Amy now and then ostensibly to shoot the breeze but really to demonstrate that she could be trusted never again to bring up “the thing.” Still, Amy had dodged her until the following Christmas, when, in a moment of Yuletide sentimentality, she agreed to come to this small gathering. By now fewer than half of the original thirteen members remained: two had been murdered, one incarcerated, and five had sensibly returned to their lives.
    Carla shared ownership of the Birdhouse with her horrible mother, and the first thing Amy noticed was how radically the interior of Carla’s half had changed. Once a deep-red Aladdin -themed living area with keyhole-shaped alcoves and maroon velvet walls, the main room was now a jungle choked with gigantic potted plants, so that at first Amy couldn’t tell who was there. Eventually she discerned Dr. Surtees and Ricky Buzza standing and chatting behind a cluster of bamboo palms. As her eyes adjusted to the low light, she eventually saw Harry B on the other side of the conversation pit, nestled among some boisterous ferns. If there was furniture in here, and there must be unless he was sitting on a stump, it had evidently been chosen to blend in with the vegetation. The room was soporifically humid. Amy set her salad bowl down underneath a Norfolk pine, no doubt kin to the one that had contributed to her recent near-death experience, and advanced toward Harry. Behind her, Carla screamed.
    “No! Amy! Don’t move!”
    Amy obliged, not alarmed, as Carla was pretty high-strung, and this was probably her way of “surprising” the birthday girl. She braced herself against the onslaught of blazing cake and obnoxious song. Then Carla or somebody flicked a light switch, and the conversation pit lit up like a Disneyland lagoon, which essentially it was. The floor on which she had been about to step was an oval pool of black water, across which arched a narrow bamboo bridge, its rails entwined with ivy. “Check it out,” shouted Carla, flicking another switch, and the water’s surface began to roll in neat waves, uniformly spaced. “It’s my combination lap pool and hot tub!”
    “And lawsuit!” said Harry B, Esquire. Harry Blasbalg had once dreamed of writing horror fiction but now seemed content to offer free legal counsel to his workshop friends, especially Carla, who needed