Killing Monica (23 page)

Pandy winced. “I fell in love, I guess. And now, because of Jonny and his debts, I have to write
another
Monica book. And now that I’m divorced, Monica is going to have to get divorced, too. And then she’s going to have to try online dating.”

“Dating again? She’s forty-five, for Christ’s sake,” SondraBeth said. “How much more of her life does she have to devote to dating? The woman who
plays
her certainly doesn’t have time to date. She doesn’t even have time to pick her teeth with a toothpick.”

“I fucked up. Okay?” Pandy snapped.

“How?”

“I can’t say,” Pandy said between gritted teeth.

“What did you do?” SondraBeth demanded.

“Something incredibly stupid.” Pandy glared. “I never made Jonny sign a prenup, and then I gave him hundreds of thousands of dollars for his restaurant in Vegas. And now
I’m
broke and will probably have to sell my loft and write a million more Monica books.”

“Why did you give him all your money?” SondraBeth said as Pandy began to cry.

“I knew I shouldn’t have, but I felt guilty,” Pandy sobbed. “Because my career was going great, and Jonny’s…well, it
should
have been going great, and he was
acting
like it was going great, but it wasn’t. He was losing money. And then, when he couldn’t pay it back, I was forced to write another Monica book. And then Monica had to get married, and now she’ll have to get divorced…” She hiccuped as she glanced at the TV, which was running the news loop of PJ Wallis’s death again. “Or worse. Maybe now that
I’m
dead, Monica will have to die, too.”

“So this is all Jonny’s fault.”

“And now I still can’t do anything about Jonny. Because I’m
not dead
,” Pandy said, shaking her fist at the screen.

SondraBeth looked at the monitor and back at Pandy.

And then she got that look in her eye.

“Peege,” she said in that familiar wheedling tone of voice that had been the beginning of so many misadventures. “You don’t know how badly the union guys want to teach Jonny a lesson.”

“SondraBeth?” Judy’s voice came over the intercom. “I need you to get ready.”

“Thanks, Judy,” SondraBeth called out gaily as she pressed the button.

She picked up her phone and smiled. “I’m going to call Freddie. I think I know how you can still be Pandy
and
get back at Jonny.” And as she pressed his number, she gave her the old PandaBeth grin. “All you have to do is stay Hellenor for a few hours.”

Five minutes later, they were still arguing.

“No.” Pandy got up and stubbed out her cigarette. “It would never work,” she added sharply. “Besides the fact that it’s ka-ray-zee, I could never get away with being Hellenor.”

“But you already
have
,” SondraBeth pointed out. “Even
I
thought you were Hellenor, until you mentioned that snaky thing coming out of my head.” She paused and looked at Pandy sympathetically. “Sista, you’re bald. Do you know how different that makes people look? It totally changes the proportions of the face. Even the photographers didn’t recognize you.”

“Which was annoying,” Pandy admitted. She crossed her arms. “On the other hand, even if I
were
Hellenor—”

“Freddie said the union guys have a big surprise planned for Jonny at the leg.”

Pandy moaned and flopped into an armchair.
The leg.
In addition to the Woman Warrior of the Year Awards, which Pandy had forgotten about, given her rotten last few months, the unveiling of Monica’s shoe was also today. It was a new thing the studio was trying. According to SondraBeth, this was the reason Monica’s leg had been late:

It was getting its own day.

“SondraBeth.” Judy’s voice came through the intercom. “We need you to get ready.”

“We don’t have much time,” SondraBeth hissed. “All you have to do is go to the Woman Warrior of the Year Awards as Hellenor, accept the award, announce that you’re killing Monica, and then, while the mob grabs Jonny, we’ll go to the leg event, where you go back to being Pandy.”

Pandy groaned.

“You, PJ Wallis, have picked a very good day to die,” SondraBeth said, sounding as if Pandy were the one who had hatched up this plan in the first place.

“Can I at least call Henry?” Pandy asked.

“Sure.” SondraBeth tossed her the phone. And in her very best Wicked Witch of the West voice, she added, “Remember, you only have five minutes to decide.”

And then she was gone.

Fucking Squeege
, Pandy thought, stomping back to the bedroom. This was perhaps the real reason they hadn’t seen each other for so many years: When they did, crazy things happened. Bad things. Embarrassing things. Things that almost made you glad you didn’t have a mother to tell.

She plopped down on the bed and looked at the packages. At least they hadn’t done any cocaine. So all in all, nothing was
that
bad, yet.

And then she quickly pawed through the packages, just to make sure SondraBeth hadn’t hidden a little “surprise” in the bag. After all, she had just seen Freddie the Rat, and it
was
the kind of thing…

But she was happy to see that the bags only contained more of those luxuriously soft workout clothes.

“Hellenor?” Judy sounded more urgent this time. “We need
you
upstairs in
three
.”

Right
, Pandy thought. She stripped off Hellenor’s clothes and pulled on a set of navy-blue workout gear with
MONICA
outlined in silver on the back.

And then she heard Jonny’s voice. It was coming from the TV. There he was,
again
, in front of her building. But this time he was talking to a reporter.

“Who is Hellenor Wallis?” he asked. “That’s what I want to know.” Turning to face the camera, his still-handsome face arranged into his trademark sneer, he added, “I know you’re out there, Hellenor. And I’m looking for you.”

Jonny was looking for Hellenor? Well, he was about to find out that some people were looking for him, too.

Pandy clicked off the TV. She was going to pocket the phone when she remembered Henry.

She
had
to call Henry. At least to let him know where she was. She tapped in his number, preparing to lie her ass off.

While the phone rang and rang, Pandy found herself praying that Henry wouldn’t answer. But he picked up just before it went to voice mail.

“SondraBeth?” he asked cautiously.

“Henry! It’s
me
,” Pandy squealed with, she realized, way too much enthusiasm.

“You’re kidding,” Henry said drily. “I thought you were dead.”

“So does everyone else,” Pandy chortled. “It’s all been a huge, huge mistake.”

“Yes. So I can see from the devastation at Wallis. No wonder you fled. As you’re calling from SondraBeth’s phone, I assume she’s in the vicinity?”

“Oh yes,” Pandy said reassuringly. “She’s upstairs. And I’m downstairs in the guest suite of her townhouse.”

“And does this mean you and SondraBeth are once again fast friends?”

“What makes you say that?” she asked casually.

“That misadventure the two of you had in the mud this morning? Just like two little pigs.”

“You saw that?” Pandy acted surprised.

“How could I
not
have seen it? It’s been broadcast all over Instalife. SondraBeth Schnowzer rolling in the mud with you standing behind her, dressed like the construction worker from the Village People.”

“I had to wear Hellenor’s clothes. Because I couldn’t fit in my own,” Pandy said, beginning to get annoyed. “Not to mention the fact that I am
bald
.” She took a breath and added contritely, “In any case, I did try to tell everyone I was Pandy. But no one believed me. It was like one of those really awful what-if games. Like what if e
ver
yone
thought
you were dead, but you
weren’t
?”

“This day just gets worse and worse, doesn’t it?” Henry said. “I have only
just
left Wallis. It took me an hour to get the paparazzi off the property. Can you imagine what it would be like if you really
had
died?”

“I’m beginning to have a very good idea.”

“Hellenor?” Judy’s voice came over the intercom.

“Sorry, Henry, but I have to go.”

“Sit tight,” Henry said. “And don’t do
anything
until I get there.”

“I won’t,” Pandy said as he clicked off. She felt bad about lying to him, but hopefully it would all work out and Henry wouldn’t have to know how foolish she’d been about Jonny.

She knew how disappointed he would be in her if he did find out.

“Judy?” she said. “It’s Hellenor. I’m ready.”

S
HE WAS
more than ready an hour and a half later, when the SUV was speeding down the West Side Highway on the way to the Woman Warrior of the Year Awards. Having put herself into the capable hands of the in-house Monica wardrobe and makeup team, she was now wearing a black leather jacket, black pants, and black patent leather loafers.

Judy was seated next to her in the third row. In the second row were SondraBeth and PP. In the first row, meaning the operational part of the operation, were a bodyguard and a chauffeur who could double as another bodyguard if necessary.

“Meaning he carries a gun,” PP had informed her.

Pandy had nodded solemnly. Normally, this sort of information would have upset her. She would have had to ask what sort of person she was, to allow herself to be transported around Manhattan with two men bearing arms. There seemed to be something ethically off about it. But she was in no position to ask questions. Indeed, she ought to be grateful she was around men with guns, after that threat Jonny had made on TV.

Which hadn’t gone unnoticed by the team. “Hellenor?” Judy asked, looking down worriedly at her device. “What’s this thing on Instalife about Pandy’s ex-husband looking for you?”

“Jonny is a real scumbag,” SondraBeth replied smoothly, jumping in before Pandy could answer. Ever since Pandy had gone up to wardrobe and makeup as Hellenor, SondraBeth had barely let her out of her sight. She seemed to have her ear tuned to any potential conversation in which Pandy might inadvertently reveal the truth.

“It’s just that he seems like a real crazy person. Like an actually insane, psychologically challenged kind of person,” Judy said.

“Well, he is. Wouldn’t you say so, PP? After all, you were friends with him,” SondraBeth said smugly.

“I wasn’t exactly friends with him,” PP said. “We were friendly. I was just doing business with him, that’s all. Trying to make some money.”

“And how’d that work out for you?” Pandy asked snidely.

SondraBeth snickered under her breath. “Exactly.”

“Frankly, if you were any kind of man at all, I’d think you’d want to punch the fucker,” Pandy said, just loud enough so that SondraBeth could hear and PP probably couldn’t.

“Har har har,” SondraBeth laughed loudly. Dressed in her full Monica regalia, she could barely turn her head. She was so decorated with hairpieces and layers of Spanx and silicone cutlets that she might as well have been a marquess in the court of Louis XIV. “Hellenor didn’t mean that,” she added. “She’s totally against violence. As we all are.”

She shot Pandy a warning look. “In any case, I’m sure karma will get Jonny. No one can escape from it.”

“Actually, it’s the tax man,” Pandy said. “No one can escape from the
tax man
.”

“Which reminds me,” PP said, scrolling through his device. “Thanks to that little stunt you two pulled this morning—that rolling-in-the-mud thing—you’re going to have to be sure to emphasize that Monica is very much alive.”

“Of course she’s alive,” SondraBeth tittered. “Why would anyone think she wasn’t?”

“The Instaverse is claiming that when you rolled in the mud, you said, ‘I buried Monica.’”

“What? Like John Lennon and the White Album?” Pandy snorted derisively.

“‘I buried Paul.’ Very
good
, Hellenor,” PP said approvingly. “Maybe you can be a studio head someday.” He turned back to SondraBeth. “When you give Hellenor the award, be sure to state specifically that Monica is alive.”

“She is
alive
. She lives!” SondraBeth called back to Pandy jokingly.

The light turned green and the car started forward with a jerk.

“Ow.” Pandy touched the bump on the back of her bald head and winced.

Twenty minutes later, the SUV was at last pulling in through the gates of Chelsea Piers. After being stopped by several guards, they were told to wait. The event didn’t begin for another hour, but there were already hundreds of photographers on the bleachers along the carpet, sitting like Hitchcock’s black crows on the telephone wires outside the children’s school. Cordoned off behind metal barricades was a bigger mob of fans, some, Pandy noted, with plastic champagne glasses strapped to their heads.

This was going to be interesting.

Eager for a glimpse of Monica, a splinter group had broken through the barricades and was now approaching the car.

Sensing danger, the bodyguard got out and stood with his arms crossed in front of SondraBeth’s door.

“What do we do now?” Pandy asked.

“Wait,” SondraBeth said.

“For what?”

“For someone to come and get us.”

Pandy looked out the window and grimaced. The group was now surrounding the car. A face was squished up against her window for a second before it was swept away by the bodyguard. Pandy almost thought she’d imagined it, but for the greasy smudge left on the glass.

The horizon began tilting as Pandy started to feel the beginnings of a panic attack. Big crowds scared her; she always imagined being trampled.

“Hellenor? Are you all right?” SondraBeth’s voice seemed to be coming from too far away.

“Have some water,” PP said, handing her a bottle.

“It’s all the fans,” SondraBeth said, turning a quarter of the way to address PP. “I used to feel that way, too, remember? Like a fraud. I’d be in the car, my heart pounding, sweat pouring from my underarms, and I’d think, what if I get out there and they
see
that I’m a fraud? That I’m not
really
Monica? What if the crowd thinks they’re getting Monica, and discover they’re getting SondraBeth Schnowzer instead? What if—”

“They tear you limb from limb?” Pandy asked, half jokingly. The question wasn’t necessarily facetious. Another group had squeezed between the metal barricades and was now approaching the car.

Plink!
A plastic champagne glass hit the rear window.

Pandy screamed.

“Check your face. That’s what I always do,” SondraBeth advised, looking in the vanity mirror.

And then the police came and shooed the crowds away, directing the driver to a guardhouse where the backstage entrance was protected by a metal gate in a chain-link fence. Pandy breathed a sigh of relief as the SUV pulled up to a loading dock that led to the backstage area. The water she’d chugged had made its way to her bladder, and now she had to pee. She sat up in anticipation of bolting from the car.

The door to the SUV swung open. SondraBeth rose slightly on bent knees and, ratcheting herself around to face the open door, assessed the situation.

“I’m going to need a ramp,” she said.

“She needs a ramp. Someone get her a ramp,” came the sound of male voices shouting from below.

Pandy sighed deeply and pushed back into her seat, squeezing her thighs together. This
was
annoying. SondraBeth was blocking the door. Pandy couldn’t go forward or backward until someone got that damn ramp.

This was why she hated showbiz.

“Maybe you could change your shoes?” Pandy asked, wondering how much longer she could hold out for the bathroom. “Maybe if you had on different shoes, you could get the hell out, and then we could
all
get the hell out.”

“No,” SondraBeth hissed angrily. “This is it. This is
the outfit
. I can put it on once, and then it has to stay on
as is
until I take the whole thing off.
Get it?
”

At that moment, the ramp arrived.

“Got it!” shouted a voice, and slowly, helped on either side by two burly men with shaved heads, SondraBeth inched forward onto the loading dock.

And then she unfolded, snapping open black metallic panels on her long skirt. Pandy watched, mesmerized, as she slowly raised her arms, the fabric undraping to reveal what looked like two iridescent black wings.

“Christ,” PP said, coming up behind Pandy. “She looks like a giant fly.”

Judy spoke into her headset and in the next second they were surrounded by various crew and producers and assistants. SondraBeth was led to her dressing room.

Hellenor Wallis was shown to the green room.

Bypassing the spread of fruit, candy, and sandwiches, Pandy ran to the ladies’. Just as she was pulling up her pants, there was a knock on the door. “Hellenor? It’s Judy. They need you to do press. Are you ready?”

Pandy smiled.

“I’m ready,” she said.

“Do you think when your sister sat down to write
Monica
, she ever in a million years imagined it would be like this?” asked one of the journalists who were clustered around Pandy in the green room.

“No, I don’t think she did. I don’t think anyone could,” Pandy said, looking, she hoped, appropriately sad.

“She would have loved it, don’t you think?” the journalist asked.

“Yes, she really would have.” Pandy’s eyes slid over to the large-screen TV, on which there was a shot of the Monica billboard, now covered in cloth and a series of ropes and pulleys.
MONICA SHOE UNVEILING
, read the caption.

“And what did PJ Wallis have in store for Monica? Besides her new shoe?” the journalist asked.

Pandy tore her eyes away from the image of the billboard. “The truth is, Pandy had just finished a book that
wasn’t
about Monica.”

“I see. And what about this rumor that Pandy’s ex-husband, Jonny, thinks you’re not really Hellenor?”

Pandy cocked her head. She knew Jonny was looking for her, but this last piece of information was new. “I’ve heard he’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer.”

“If you had a message from PJ Wallis to all those Monica fans out there today, what do you think it would be?”

Pandy stared straight into the camera and glared. “That’s easy: Don’t ever get married.”

“Thank you, Hellenor.”

“Hellenor?” someone else said. “Can we get a shot of you with the Monica shoe?”

“The Monica shoe is here?” Pandy asked.

“From now on, those shoes go everyplace SondraBeth goes. She’s got to wear them to the unveiling,” Judy explained. She spoke into her mike. “Can someone bring me the Monica shoes, please?”

In the next moment, the stylist’s assistant appeared, holding a pair of fringed red suede spike-heeled booties stuffed with tissue paper. Pandy held the booties up on either side of her face and smiled into the flashes.

“What do you think about the big memorial service SondraBeth is planning for your sister’s funeral?” another journalist asked.

Pandy’s smile stiffened.

The photographers shot off a few obligatory snaps and turned away.

“A memorial service?” Pandy said to Judy. She spun on her heel and began marching down the hall to SondraBeth’s dressing room.

“Hellenor?” Judy said, hurrying after Pandy. “You can put down the booties. I need to return them to wardrobe.”

Pandy ignored her, rapping on the door with the cruelly sharp heel of one of the booties. “SondraBeth? I need to talk to you.”

“Come in,” SondraBeth purred.

“Hellenor?” Judy said, catching up to her. “Is everything okay?”

“I need to talk to SondraBeth alone. It’s about my sister, and her
death
.” She turned the knob, pushed inside, and shut the door firmly behind her.

SondraBeth was standing in the middle of the room. The hinged skirt was attached to a stiff black bodice covered with tiny rhinestone M’s.

“Oh, good.” SondraBeth reached out her arms for the booties. “You’ve brought me my shoes.”

“Monica’s shoes,” Pandy said. SondraBeth took the shoes and toddled the few steps to the makeup counter to deposit them. She turned stiffly and swayed back toward Pandy, slowly lowering her arms. “So talk,” she said as she held up her nails and examined them.

The sight made Pandy gasp. Each of SondraBeth’s fingers sprouted a different miniature masterpiece of a famous building. Pandy picked out the Chrysler Building, the Eiffel Tower, and the Space Needle. She tore her eyes away and plopped herself onto a folding chair. “What’s this I’ve just heard about you planning a memorial service for Pandy?”

“Oh, that.” SondraBeth smiled and pointed the Empire State Building at her. “It was just something that popped into my head.”

“When?” Pandy glared.

“Just at that moment. The journalist asked me if I knew anything about a memorial service, and I—”

“Well, pop that idea right back
out of
your head. Because at the end of the day, I will once again be alive. Meaning there isn’t going to be any memorial service.”

“Of course there isn’t. But if I told the journalist that, it would look fairly suspicious, don’t you think? PJ Wallis dies, and there’s no
funeral
?”

“I guess.” Pandy narrowed her eyes. “I just want to make sure that we’re both on the same page. Right after the Woman Warrior of the Year Awards, I go back to being Pandy.”

“SondraBeth?” Judy knocked on the door, then opened it an inch and stuck her nose in the crack. “They need you in rehearsal.”

SondraBeth slowly made her way out into the hallway.

“How’s she going to walk across the stage in that getup?” Pandy hissed to Judy.

“She doesn’t have to. The stage is revolving.”

“Like a turntable?” Pandy was aghast.

“They call it a lazy Susan. Don’t worry, you’ll be fine. You only have to be onstage for a minute or two,” she said over her shoulder. Quickly she walked away to where SondraBeth was being lifted onto a trolley to be driven to the stage. Judy hopped into the seat next to the driver. “Don’t go far, Hellenor. We may need you as well.”

“Okay,” Pandy agreed.

She inhaled deeply, trying to calm herself as Judy and SondraBeth sped around the corner. She took a step to follow, but her legs felt as if they were made of rubber. How big was this production going to be? It had to be large if there was a revolving stage. Heart pounding at the thought of having to get up in front of all those people, Pandy decided she’d better have a cigarette to relax. Stumbling through the nearest exit, she nearly knocked over a girl holding a tray of champagne.