Killing Monica (24 page)

“I’m sorry,” Pandy said.

“I probably shouldn’t be standing in front of the door. Come in. Would you like a glass of champagne?”

“Well, sure.” Pandy took a glass and stepped to the side, nearly bumping into a mannequin dressed as Wonder Woman.

Pandy laughed as she straightened the dummy. She smiled fondly at the mannequin of Joan of Arc placed next to Marilyn Monroe. She was in the Woman Warrior Hall of Fame, a somewhat hokey display that was a traditional part of the awards. Attendees were meant to wander through the hall during the cocktail hour.

The crowd was beginning to trickle in. Pandy stopped to shake her head at poor old Mother Teresa’s ragged costume. She and SondraBeth had come to these awards together, years and years ago when they were still friends. They’d done a tiny line of cocaine in the bathroom, “for Dutch courage,” SondraBeth had said, and then they’d strolled into the display.

There was a tap on Pandy’s shoulder. Three young women were standing behind her.

“Sorry to bother you—”

“But are you Hellenor Wallis?”

“You are. We saw you on Instalife this morning!”

“Can we get a photo?”

“Well, sure.” Pandy smiled, and then remembered to wipe the smile from her face.

“Your sister meant everything to me,” the first girl murmured, tilting her head next to Pandy’s and holding out her device for a selfie. “She was my idol. I wanted to be just like her.”

“I need a picture, too!”

“Just one more? I’ll die if I don’t get a photo.”

A crowd of women was gathering around her. Two handlers broke through, trying to shoo them away. “Ladies, please.”

“But I came all the way from Philadelphia!”

“I don’t mind.” Pandy smiled reassuringly. For a brief moment, she was back in her element. Motion the woman closer, arm around the shoulders, heads cocked together,
smile!
Next.

And the ladies kept coming. “
I love
Monica. I love her
so much
.” Their eyes a little glazed. “I hope you love yourself just as much,” Pandy replied, wanting to shake them and tell them not to hold too tightly to a fantasy.

She imagined this was how SondraBeth must feel every day—literally heady—her head swelling from the attention, the frenzied excitement, the irresistible fawning. And in the middle of this bubble, the oddest feeling—the guilt of a hypocrite.

“Hellenor.” Judy was suddenly beside her, pulling at her arm. “We have to go. They need you in rehearsal, too.”

“Right this way,” said the PA, leading Pandy along a ridged mat secured with reflective green tape. She guided Pandy to a set of metal stairs and quickly ushered her to a small platform, in front of which was an enormous round disk covered in tape.

The dreaded lazy Susan.

“You’ll step here,” said the PA, hustling Pandy onto the disk.

“Hello,” SondraBeth called out. She was standing in the center of the disk, waving stiffly.

“Hi,” Pandy called back. SondraBeth looked like a bride on a wedding cake, save for the fact that she was dressed in black.

“You will walk to SondraBeth,” the PA said briskly, as if she was not in the mood for any nonsense. Urging Pandy along, she said, “And then you will stop and accept the award from her.”

Pandy halted in front of SondraBeth, who pantomimed giving her the statuette.

“And then,” the PA barked, “you will turn and walk forward to the podium—” She walked a few steps ahead to demonstrate where Pandy should go. “And you will stop. And you will say…”

“I am Hellenor Wallis…,” SondraBeth said from behind her.

“I am Hellenor Wallis,” Pandy repeated.

“And all the screens will be lit up in a circle around the room—”

“There are screens?” Pandy asked nervously.

“So we can take questions.” The tech producer’s voice came through a speaker that sounded like it was right above her head.

“There will be questions?” Pandy called out to this invisible man.

“Not for your segment. All you have to do is accept the award, and say thank you on behalf of your sister.”

“That’s it? I don’t get to say a few nice words about her?” Pandy asked.

“We’re on a tight schedule,” the PA said, taking her arm once again. She walked Pandy to the other side of the platform. “The stage will be revolving. You’ll stand here, so we can broadcast you on the screens, and then when you reach the platform where you got on, you’ll get off and head backstage through the Hall of Fame, which will be closed off to the public by then. Got it?” she asked sharply.

“Hellenor?” Judy said, motioning from the platform. “There’s someone here who needs to see you.”

“Jonny,” Pandy gasped, recalling how he’d threatened to find her. By now he must know she was with SondraBeth at the awards; it was all over Instalife.

Judy smiled. “It’s Pandy’s agent.”

And there he was: Henry. Standing at the bottom of the stairs.

“Well, well, well. What do we have here?” Henry asked, circling around her. Pandy grimaced and automatically put her hand over her bald head.

“Excuse me, Ms.—” Henry turned to Judy.

“Judy,” Judy said. “I’m SondraBeth’s right hand.”

“Is there someplace”—Henry glared at Pandy—“that
Hellenor
and I can go to speak
privately
?”

“You can use SondraBeth’s dressing room. They need to keep her next to the stage until the show begins. It takes too long to move her,” Judy said over her shoulder as she led them back into the Hall of Fame.

This time the hall was packed. The high-pitched screeches of women who’d already had a bit too much champagne filled the room like the calls of exotic birds.

“Henry!” a voice shouted.

Pandy turned to find Suzette barreling toward them, with Meghan, Nancy, and Angie in tow. Judging from the way they were tottering on their heels, Pandy guessed they’d already had a couple of glasses of champagne. And then Suzette threw her arms around Henry as tears sprang from her eyes.

Within seconds, they were surrounded. Pandy was being pulled in all directions by her grieving friends.

“PJ Wallis’s sister!”

“Poor Pandy. She was so
alive
.”

“Impossible to think she’s gone.”

“How could this happen?”

“So young, too.”

“Literally the best woman—the
best
woman in New York—”

“Thank you. Thank you.”

The buzz in the hall grew louder.
PJ Wallis. Icon. Great loss.

Hellenor Wallis.
Pandy’s sister. Over there.
You can see the resemblance.

“Excuse me,” Henry said, yanking on Pandy’s arm, bringing her back to reality. Following Judy, he marched her through the exit door and into the backstage hallway.

“Here you go,” Judy said, unlocking the door to SondraBeth’s dressing room.

“Thank you,” Henry said. He pushed Pandy into the room, closed the door, and locked it. He crossed his arms. “Explain.”

“I don’t know where to begin.”

“Try.”

“SondraBeth convinced me. It’s only for a couple of hours. She said if I killed Monica, the mob would go after Jonny—”

Henry looked away, held up his hand, and gave a quick shake of his head. “You’re going to exercise the clause because of Jonny?”

“It’s only for a couple of hours,” she said pleadingly. “In between the Woman Warrior of the Year Awards and the leg event. Look,” she said, pointing at the red booties. “There they are. Monica’s shoes.”

“You are going to kill Monica at the Woman Warrior of the Year Awards and then bring her back to life at the Shoe Unveiling?” Henry’s voice was beginning to sound thunderous.

“Yes,” Pandy said quietly.

“Who is she, Tinker Bell?”

Pandy shrugged.

“You can’t just go around killing creations and then bringing them back to life,” Henry snapped.

“Why not?”

“Because it’s cheap. It’s soap opera—”

“It’s
drama
. Monica will die, Jonny will get a talking-to from the mob, and when all that is taken care of, PJ Wallis and Monica will rise up like two phoenixes from the ashes, and everyone will love them again!”

“You’re sacrificing Monica and risking everything you’ve ever achieved for a
man
?”

“I’m doing it for
me
.”

“No, you are not. You’re doing it to get
even
with a
man
. Meaning, once again, you have allowed your actions to be dictated by a man.”

Pandy had had enough. “You’re a fine one to talk.”

Henry paused. He inhaled, exhaled, and then glowered threateningly. “So you’re going to use
that
as an excuse.”

“Why not?” she said sharply.

“If that’s so, then you, my dear, are pitiful. You’re not the Pandemonia James Wallis I know.”

“Maybe that Pandemonia James Wallis doesn’t exist anymore. Maybe she’s been too beaten down to continue. Just like her sister, Hellenor.”

Henry drew himself up to his full height. Pandy’s heart sank. She and Henry hadn’t had a fight like this for years. Perhaps ever.

Henry held up his hand. “I can see you’ve made up your mind. In that case, I suppose congratulations are in order. Your publisher has agreed to publish
Lady Wallis,
but only because you are dead.”

“You were the one who told me to stay dead for a couple of hours.”

“I told you to do nothing. Now, because of this spectacle, your publishers will cry fraud. So if you don’t clear this up immediately, as far as I’m concerned, you
are
dead.”

“Fine,” Pandy said coldly, crossing her arms. “They weren’t going to publish the book anyway. Which gives me more of a reason to get even with Jonny.”

“And how do I fit into this scheme?”

“Just go along with it for a couple of hours. Remember—you owe me.”

“Very well,” Henry said. He turned his back and opened the door. He shot one more warning glance over his shoulder. “Don’t say I didn’t caution you. And when things don’t work out as you’ve planned, don’t come running to me!”

He went out, slamming the door behind him.

“Henry!” Pandy said. She opened the door and looked up and down the hallway, but he was gone.

Judy, on the other hand, was right there. “Hellenor?” she said. “We’re going to need you onstage in ten minutes.”

Pandy shrank back into the dressing room. She leaned over the makeup counter and stared at herself in the mirror. Who was she? Henry was right, she thought despondently. By killing Monica, she was once again making her life all about Jonny.

She glanced at Monica’s shoes.

Henry was wrong, she decided. And grabbing Monica’s shoes, she took off her own shoes and put them on.

She stood up. The curved heel was tricky, but the booties themselves were light, embracing the foot like a glove. Pandy turned to stare at herself in the mirror. Thanks to the six-inch heels, she was now towering.

Leaving the dressing room, she crossed the corridor and strode confidently into the Hall of Fame. She swung open the door, and was again surrounded by her friends.

“There’s Hellenor,” Nancy called out, pointing and sloshing champagne over her hand.

“Hellenor! Hellenor Wallis.” Suzette’s enormous yellow diamond was suddenly glittering in her face.

“We were Pandy’s best friends.”

“And we need to be best friends with you, Hellenor.”

“We need to talk to you.”

“You need to listen.”

“It’s about Jonny.”

“He called every single one of us this morning. Wanting to know if we’d seen you.”

“He kept saying he was going to find you, and that when he did…”

“He was going to make sure you spent time in jail.”

“He said you’d committed
fraud
.”

“But in the meantime, he’s looking for you.”

“Now listen, if you need us, we’ll be at the Pool Club right after this.”

“Hellenor!” Judy screamed from the just-opened doorway.

“I’ll leave your name at the door,” Suzette hissed.

“I gotta go,” Pandy said desperately. Her friends! How she missed them. And yes, she
would
meet up with them at the Pool Club afterward. After the leg thing. Where she would come back to life.

A dark, velvety mist, lightly perfumed—sweet lily of the valley and white clover—wafted through the air. Standard party space reconfigured into a fantasyland where women ruled. Where they made the decisions. Always the good ones. Where they celebrated each other in the way the world—meaning the men—should celebrate them, but didn’t. Meaning for their strength and their courage and their hard work and their contributions. But not, goddammit, for what the world—meaning the men—tried to tell them was their only value; namely, their beauty and their ability to bear children.

“And now, it’s time for the Woman Warrior of the Year Awards,” the announcer said.

The rest was a blur. Pandy wasn’t sure how much time passed, but the next thing she knew, she was being pushed toward the stairs by two men, who helped her up. And then, somehow, she was on the stage. Except that this time, it actually was revolving. The lazy Susan. The crossing of which required every skill, it seemed, but laziness to survive.

Like balance.

Standing with her arms out and legs slightly apart, she tried to do what the stage manager had told her to do: focus solely on what was in front of her. Namely, SondraBeth. Or rather, Monica. Turning around and around on the center of the platform, like the pretty black bride on a black wedding cake.

A spotlight lit up the path to Monica, who was beckoning,
Come with me
. It was just like in her dream; she and Monica were going to be together again…

Pandy took a couple of tentative steps forward and heard a smattering of kindhearted laughter from the crowd. The sound brought her back to earth. She was on a revolving platform and she was about to receive an award for her sister, PJ Wallis, because she, PJ Wallis, was dead.

She must move toward the light. Focus on what was in front of her…

She heard the crowd laughing again. She lifted her head and looked around, taking in the neo-dark audience lit up with neon flashes from a thousand silent devices. And she remembered: She was funny onstage.

She—PJ Wallis—was
funny
. Even PP had said she was funny. And not only that, he’d said Hellenor Wallis was funny, too. Funny was the one thing Pandy and Hellenor had in common. Remembering that she was funny made Pandy feel more confident. She could do this. She took another few steps, and once again, the crowd chuckled in encouragement. Pandy gave up on the stately approach in favor of the comedic, and SondraBeth picked up on it. She was smiling down on Pandy with her most beatific Monica grin.

“Hello, Hellenor,” she said in her rich timbre. The audience exhaled a blast of approving applause.

“Hello,” Pandy said to the crowd, holding up her palm in a stiff wave. The platform lurched. “Wow. This is like being on one of those Japanese game shows.
Takeshi’s Castle
,” she said.

Titters of appreciation; not everyone understood the reference. She should have named one of those network shows instead.

“Yes, it
is
, Hellenor,” SondraBeth said. And taking a beat to absorb the positive energy in the room, she sang out to the audience, “Ladies and gentlemen, I give you
Hellenor Wallis
.”

A roar. Pandy’s first impression was of how different it was to be on the receiving end. The rush of love she felt. The happiness. And all of a sudden, the statuette was in her hands.

It was surprisingly cool. Smooth and cold, like a cube of ice. And heavy. A crystal sculpture of a woman wearing armor, bow and arrow raised above her head. As if leading the charge into the future.

And then she was standing in front of the lectern.

Two words came to her: “
Non serviam
.” She tried to look out into the audience, but between the camera flashes and the screens, the room was now a womb of darkness. She could see only the microphones. “I will not serve. Especially not a man. Thank you.”

“Speech!” came a cry from the audience.

She turned to look back at SondraBeth, who was beaming encouragement like sunshine. Suddenly, Pandy found her footing.

“This is so unexpected,” Pandy said into the mike. She held the statuette briefly against her cheek, then carefully placed the Woman Warrior on the Plexiglas podium. As she took a deep breath and looked out at the expectant audience, she realized what SondraBeth had meant in the car about playing Monica: She was the ultimate impostor.

But every woman feels like an impostor
, she reminded herself, glancing down at the statuette. Probably even the original Warrior W
oma
n herself had. Until someone showed her she wasn’t.

And suddenly Pandy knew what she was going to say: yes.

Yes
to the accolades:

“Thank you for this award.”

Yes
to the acclaim:

“My sister really deserved this.”

And
yes
to seizing the moment:

“I wish—” She looked up, her eyes beginning to adjust, seeing forms and faces. “I wish my sister, PJ Wallis, were here to accept this. This award would have meant everything to her.”

Would have? Did.
Does
mean everything. She was giving her own eulogy. She didn’t have to guess how she might feel. She
knew
.

“Most of you knew my sister as the creator of Monica. Or even as the real-life Monica. And while she was that, she was so much more. An artist. A writer. A person who lived and died by her work. A person who gave everything to her work. And, like so many of you who give it your all, she also knew about the struggles. And the disappointments.”

She took a breath and hearing murmurs of approval from the audience, she continued.

“But PJ Wallis never gave up. And that is why this award would have meant so much to her.”

On the screens around the room, a close-up of the statuette, the Warrior Woman’s bow and arrow raised high, followed by a shuffling of images of herself—PJ Wallis—through the years. Followed by that iconic image of Monica.

“Monica!” someone cried out.

Pandy sighed. “Good old Monica,” she said as she looked at Monica—hair flowing, striding across the top of the New York City skyline. “Monica meant everything to Pandy.” Pandy paused, allowing for the smattering of applause to die down, and continued.

“Sometimes, Pandy wondered who she would be without Monica. But then she realized, when you ask yourself that question, what you’re really asking is: Who would you be without a
label
? And we all have them: Mother. Wife. Single Girl. Career Woman. Soccer Mom. But what do we do when we find that our label no longer applies? Who do we become when our label expires?”

A gasp swept through the audience like a fresh breeze.

“Well, ladies, it’s time to let go. It’s time to let go of those labels. It’s time to let go and let grow.”

“Let go and let grow!” came several shouts from the audience, as the words “Let go and let grow” appeared on the screens.

“Let go and let grow,” Pandy repeated, her hand resting on the top of the statuette. “And while Monica isn’t real, PJ Wallis
was
. A real woman with real aspirations. A real woman who aspired to what women aren’t supposed to aspire to: to be the best. And to be recognized for her talents. And not by the standards of male hubris, but by the standards of excellence. To be free from the confines of what society and culture say a woman may or may not be. Can a woman be ambitious without apology? Can a woman dedicate her life to her work without apology?”

“And can a woman say thank you?”

SondraBeth’s voice was right in her ear.

Pandy turned her head. Glaring into a white-hot spotlight, she realized the black chess piece that was Monica had moved across the board and was now leaning next to her, clapping.

The audience, Pandy noted, was also clapping, politely, with a sense of relief.

Pandy took a step back. She understood: Her fifteen seconds were over. She turned to look for the steps.

“Hold on,” SondraBeth said, coming forward and taking Pandy’s arm. And then cocking her head as if she had a hidden earpiece, she said into the crowd, “Mira from Mumbai would like to comment.”

Mira’s face appeared on all the screens. “Hello, ladies.”

“Hello, Mira,” the audience called back.

“I am the head of the international feminist organization Women for Women. And I would like to say that after a while, Monica no longer belonged to PJ Wallis. Nor does she belong to SondraBeth Schnowzer. Nor does she belong to even the audience, which is mostly women.”

“What do you mean by that, Mira?” SondraBeth asked.

“I am saying that Monica now belongs to a corporation. She is owned and controlled by an entertainment corporation that decides whether or not and how to make money off this entity that was created by PJ Wallis. I hope PJ Wallis made a lot of money from her own creation, but I suspect she did not.”

Knowing murmurs from the audience.

Mira continued. “We have done many studies that show us that when a woman contributes in the entertainment industry, she is not rewarded justly. Because women may do what they do and be geniuses, but it is still men at the top who make the decisions, including how much money the women will be paid. It is the men who are lining their pockets with the efforts of women. It is men who have made millions, maybe billions, from Monica.”

Close-up on SondraBeth, face as still and proud as the features on the Warrior Woman statuette.

“Wow,” SondraBeth said. “That’s a very interesting take. And here is Juanita from South America.”

“I would like us to consider what men do with that money. Here, they use money to make war.”

“Thank you, ladies,” SondraBeth said emphatically. “It takes a very brave woman to point out how the system really works. Money is to men as cheese is to mice. If you’re missing some cheese, you’ll usually discover a man’s been eating it.”

The screens were now blinking like Christmas lights: women from all over the world eager to weigh in.

“And let’s remind the audience that even though PJ Wallis is dead, it’s still a
man
who will continue to profit,” SondraBeth said scoldingly. She turned to Pandy.

Every eye was now on Pandy, and the attention was like a blow. And then she felt a rush. Like her soul had literally drained out of the soles of her feet and she was now merely a thin, hardened shell.

“And that is why Hellenor has something very important to announce,” she heard SondraBeth say.

Pandy tried to open her mouth and found that she couldn’t. She realized she was in the throes of a particularly bad case of stage fright, and now all she wanted to do was get off the stage. Somehow, she managed to lean into the microphone and whisper, “Due to the death of PJ Wallis and to unfortunate circumstances, there will be no more Monica.”

“In other words,” SondraBeth said, leaning into the microphone next to her, “Monica is dead.”

“We have to…” Pandy’s chest squeezed tight. She couldn’t breathe. “Kill Monica, please…” She was having a heart attack. No, she was having a panic attack.

The frenzied roar of the crowd spun away into silence as a time balloon inflated inside Pandy’s head. She saw lips moving in slow motion, a pink plastic champagne glass suspended in the air above the stage. Her own arms raised in triumph, clutching the Warrior Woman statuette in her hands. Around and around she went. Monica. Finished. Jonny. Ruined. And for one brief moment, she actually believed she had won.

And suddenly—
pop
. The balloon in her head exploded and the noise and reality came thundering back, engulfing her in an enormous wave of rage.

“Let Monica live!”

The pink plastic champagne glass landed on the stage. Then another. And another. One hit the back of SondraBeth’s head. She didn’t move. Her always-perfect Monica smile was now slightly lopsided, as if arranged by the hand of a mortician who couldn’t quite get the expression right.

Pandy took a step back in confusion as the roar of the crowd came racing toward her like a tsunami. “Long live Monica!”

“Let Monica
live
!”

Pandy looked again to SondraBeth. Her Monica smile was back in place, but her eyes had a life of their own, darting from screen to screen.

And suddenly, Pandy
did
understand.

The crowd was going to kill them. Tear them both limb from limb. Which meant—she was going to die twice? In one day? Was that even possible?

Another champagne glass whizzed by her head and landed on the stage behind her. SondraBeth caught Pandy’s eye.

“Run, Doug, run!” she hissed.

And they did.

Or tried to, anyway. They shuffled to the edge of the platform, where, thank God, Judy and a posse of men were waiting. People were moving rapidly, the way they do when they sense a storm is coming but have yet to discover how bad it’s going to be.

“Now listen,” SondraBeth whispered into Pandy’s ear as the posse moved to get them out of the theater and back to the dressing room. “Make a stop in the Hall of Fame. Grab two costumes, and meet me back in my dressing room.”

“But—” Pandy broke off as the heel of a man’s shoe ground into her ankle. She was being trampled.

“My dressing room. In five,” SondraBeth said as she went through the door.

Pandy ran toward Mother Teresa, grabbed the head scarf, and put it over her own head. She lifted the robes of the old mannequin, and they came off in a swirl of loosened threads. She spied a burka on another mannequin. She tugged on the headpiece and the garment flew off in a single stroke. Clutching the fabric, she ran down the hallway and into SondraBeth’s dressing room.

SondraBeth was standing with one bare leg up on the counter. Following her gaze to the end of SondraBeth’s leg, Pandy suddenly understood why SondraBeth could barely walk: her boots were taped to her ankles with electrical tape.