Killing Monica

  “‘Alas, that love, so gentle in his view, should be so tyrannous and rough in proof!’” Henry quipped, quoting Shakespeare.

  “In other words, I’m doomed,” Pandy said.

  * * *

  By the time she was in the taxi heading for Jonny’s new restaurant, Pandy had recovered her equilibrium. The seesaw had tilted in the opposite direction, and she was now on top. As she’d signed her name to the contract and then smartly replaced the cap on the sterling silver pen she saved for these rare occasions, she felt quite sure that a new phase in her life had begun. How could it not? She was a woman in her prime: no longer young and foolish enough to put her career aside in hopes of securing a man; and after twenty years in her profession, experienced enough to finally be taken seriously. But mostly, she still had time. Time to truly make her mark in the world.

  But not enough time, she thought, glancing at her watch in annoyance, to sit in ridiculous theater traffic.

  Irritated, she called Suzette. “I don’t care what you guys say. I am not yet desperate enough to sit in traffic for forty-five minutes for a man. I haven’t even gotten there, and I already hate Jonny Balaga and his stupid restaurant.”

  Suzette laughed. “Stop complaining. I’ve heard it’s going to be the hottest place in town.”

  The taxi turned the corner. Once again, thanks to Jonny’s opening, the traffic was stopped.

  “Gotta go,” Pandy said, glaring at the huge crowd standing out in front.

  Apparently, Suzette was right. About the restaurant, anyway. The paparazzi were massed five-deep on either side of the red carpet. Pandy stopped and posed dutifully, meaning she stood stiffly with her hands at her sides and stretched her lips into her widest smile. SondraBeth had always been after her to work on her posing skills, but Pandy hadn’t listened.

  Two uniformed doormen swung open the doors to the restaurant and Pandy stepped inside.

  She gasped. It was like walking into a mouth.

  The walls were red lacquer. There were gilt mirrors and booths behind red-velvet curtains. Dark oak chairs with shiny silk cushions.

  It was, she realized, the ultimate expression of Jonny’s aesthetic: a plush French bordello.

  Pandy joined the crush at the bar. It didn’t take but a minute for her to start having a good time, as she immediately saw four people she knew. It wasn’t until half an hour had passed that she remembered Jonny. Ought she to go look for him? On the other hand, he should be the one looking for her. In any case, there was no rush; she was bound to see him eventually. In the meantime, she would use the bathroom.

  Turning the corner into the darkened hallway that led to the toilets, she nearly ran straight into him.

  “Hey!” he exclaimed. And with a proprietary intimacy, as if they were already a couple, he pulled her into him and squeezed her hard against him. Pandy felt an intense, girlish rush of joy.

  “I’m so sorry,” he exclaimed.

  “For what?” she asked, feeling a little tremble at the base of her throat.

  “For not finding you right away. I kept looking for you, and then someone told me they’d seen you go in this direction.”

  They stood for a second, smiling, staring into each other’s eyes.

  “Come on,” he said, taking Pandy by the hand. “I want you to meet my mother.”

  Jonny squeezed her palm. Pandy noted that the crowd parted as he guided her through them, their expressions lit up as if they were pleased by this potential coupling.

  And then he was escorting her across the floor to the head table. There, squatting behind two swags of red velvet like a gypsy in a fortune-teller’s booth, was Jonny’s mother.

  Pandy slid in next to her. It was one of those booths that once you got into, you couldn’t get out of easily.

  Jonny leaned over the table. “MJ, meet PJ,” he said loudly and with great affection. He gave Pandy a grateful smile. “She’s been pestering me all night to introduce you.”

  “How wonderful,” Pandy exclaimed. She turned her head to look directly at Jonny’s mother. This required some courage. Her first impression of MJ had been of bad face work topped by a blue silk turban coupled with enough bright gold jewelry to rival the Franklin Mint.

  Pandy forced herself to look beyond all that and right into MJ’s eyes. It was like looking into chocolate kisses, Pandy realized with a start. She was sure she saw kindness, along with something else—a mesmerizing dash of Jonny’s intangible allure.

  So that’s where he got it from, Pandy thought. She tore her eyes away and smiled up at Jonny.

  “Now listen,” MJ said, commanding Pandy’s attention again. “I’ve read everything you’ve written, and I’ve watched both the movies. I’m your biggest fan.”

  “Now, MJ,” Jonny said warningly.

  MJ turned back to Pandy and spoke conspiratorially. “He told me I wasn’t supposed to embarrass you.” She glanced at Jonny and inhaled sharply. “But I told him I don’t care who knows, and I’m not ashamed to say it.

  “I absolutely love Monica.”

  * * *

  Two hours later, Pandy and MJ were still talking.

  “How come a girl like you isn’t married?” MJ asked.

  “There are a million girls like me who aren’t married,” Pandy said.

  “But smart women usually can get married if they want to,” MJ countered. “When I see a smart woman who isn’t married, I think to myself, there’s someone who doesn’t want to get married.”

  Pandy leaned back in the booth, staring at MJ in awe. She could hardly believe it. Here was someone who might finally understand her own feelings about marriage.

  “Why did you never marry?” she asked MJ cautiously.

  “Because I’ve already got my man. Jonny,” she said. “He came into my life and saved my life. And I don’t want to be greedy. If a woman gets one good man in her life, she’s lucky. She should be happy. Asking for two good men is tempting fate.”

  Pandy agreed with spirited enthusiasm. Henry, she thought, was her good man. On the other hand, Henry was her agent, and probably not exactly the sort of man MJ was talking about.

  The name Henry, however, reminded her of the million bucks.

  “Well, I, for one, am perfectly happy by myself,” Pandy said. She leaned toward MJ and hissed quickly, “I just made a million dollars.”

  MJ looked at Pandy in astonishment, and then, in a motherly gesture, clapped her hands on either side of Pandy’s cheeks and squeezed affectionately.

  “Now that’s my kind of girl,” she said in a comforting baby voice. “Money,” MJ confirmed, nodding her turbaned head. “That’s what life is about. You know how they say that if you don’t have your health, you don’t have anything? Well, I say that if you don’t have your money, you don’t have anything.”

  “I couldn’t agree more,” Pandy said. MJ, she decided, was a true feminist. It was shocking that Jonny had turned out to be the enemy of feminists everywhere—but perhaps this wasn’t MJ’s fault.

  “Tell me the truth,” MJ said in a kindly tone of voice. “Why haven’t you been married?”

  “Just haven’t met the right guy, I guess.” Pandy shrugged.

  MJ peered at her closely, and then, like a soothsayer, said, “I’m a bit of a psychic. I sense things. And what I’m sensing is that this doesn’t have anything to do with a man. It has something to do with a woman. A woman you were very close to, but”—she sniffed the air, as if sensing an unpleasant odor—“there’s something sad there. You lost someone you were close to?”

  “My mother,” Pandy gasped.

  “Is she alive?”

  Pandy shook her head. She usually tried to brush off the lingering sadness of the tragedy that had happened twenty years ago, but with MJ, she suddenly felt like she didn’t need to pretend.

  “She and my father died in a car accident. When I was twenty and my sister was eighteen. For a while, when I was in my twenties and some of my friends started getting married, I thought maybe
I might get married, too. But every time I tried to imagine my wedding, I couldn’t. Can you imagine a woman who can’t even picture her own wedding? And then I realized it’s because weddings are about family. And tradition. You need your mother. How could I pick out the china pattern? Or the dress? Or remember the traditions? And on top of it, I didn’t even have my father to walk me down the aisle. Because he’s dead, too—”

  Pandy sat back, stunned at this revelation. She couldn’t believe how quickly she’d revealed feelings to MJ that she wouldn’t even admit to herself. Feelings she’d never even known she’d had until MJ had drawn them out of her.

  “This is good,” MJ said approvingly. “You’ve acknowledged your fears. Perhaps your parents’ deaths make you feel like you don’t deserve happiness in love.”

  “Perhaps you’re right,” Pandy said in wide-eyed wonder.

  She smiled. And for some mysterious reason, she felt happy.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  PANDY WAS still unaccountably happy the next morning when she awoke.

  Indeed, for the first time in a long time, the usual nagging voice in her head was quiet.

  You should be doing more. You should be doing better. Look at you! You’re a loser! the voice would exhort, and she’d want to pull the covers over her head.

  But on this particular day, the nasty voice appeared to have taken a vacation.

  At first, all she noticed was the silence. But then she observed a heaviness to the silence; a blanket of white noise muffling the usual sounds of the day.

  Snow!

  She hopped out of bed, rushed to the window, and yanked up the blind like a pirate ratcheting up a black flag. Snowflakes the size of daisies were steadily falling. The street outside her window had yet to be plowed; there were tire indentations swerving from one side of the road to the other, ending in a snow-covered lump where it appeared someone had abandoned their car.

  A snow day! she thought ecstatically.

  She clicked on the television. There it was: Manhattan as snow globe, engulfed in a rare spring’easter. Everyone was totally freaking out.

  She called Henry. “Hello?” he said briskly.

  “Do you know about this?” she demanded. She glanced back at the TV. “This spring’easter?”

  “Ah, yes. This recent snowstorm caused by global warming. A nor’easter that comes in April. Around Easter.”

  “So what are you going to do today?” Pandy asked.

  “I’m going to lounge around in my velvet smoking jacket reading manuscripts like an old-fashioned person,” Henry said with his usual sarcasm. “I could really use the time to catch up,” he added firmly.

  “Oh, me too,” Pandy said. “I’m just going to stay in my house and work on the next Monica book.”

  “Good idea,” Henry said. “Oh, by the way, how was Jonny?”

  Jonny?

  Pandy had to suddenly sit back down on the bed. The sound of Jonny’s name caused an uncontrollable physical reaction. A sort of melting sensation between her legs, as if the next time she saw Jonny, she wouldn’t be able to walk.

  She’d be like ice cream puddled in his hands.

  “Hello? Are you there?” Henry cracked.

  Pandy coughed. “He was fine. It was nothing.”

  “Good,” Henry said. “Check me later.”

  “You too, bro,” Pandy replied casually.

  After she hung up, she ran back to the window and looked out. It was bad out there, but not terrible. Not bad enough to deter someone like her. Growing up in Wallis, she’d been through huge snowstorms. She knew how to navigate difficult weather.

  And maybe even difficult men, she thought dreamily, thinking of Jonny. And that’s when she decided: Somewhere, somehow, on this magical snow day, she was going to see Jonny.

  * * *

  She made a large pot of coffee and turned back to the TV.

  The mayor was speaking at an emergency press conference, exhorting everyone who was not emergency personnel to remain inside.

  Then the storm expert spoke. The snow would continue for the next hour, followed by a brief moment of calm, when the eye of the storm would reach the city. Residents shouldn’t be fooled: When the eye passed over, the winds would pick up another blast of cold air, and—blah, blah, blah, Pandy thought dismissively. The expert described what would come next as a storm of biblical proportions: ice, sleeting rain, snowballs the size of baseballs—perhaps even a plague of frozen locusts—but Pandy wasn’t concerned.

  Nor was she worried about the mayor’s insistence that residents stay inside. Those kinds of warnings were only for people who hadn’t grown up with nor’easters.

  A satellite map came up on the TV screen. The eye of the storm, shown in pink, was inching straight for the center of Manhattan like a large frosted cupcake.

  Pandy became efficient. She did some calculations and checked her watch. The eye would reach Manhattan in fifty-two minutes. After that, everyone would have another fifteen minutes to get where they were going before the next blast hit.

  She would need to be inside by then. Someplace safe where she could wait out the storm.

  Like Jonny’s house, she thought wickedly, recalling how he’d mentioned that he still lived in the same apartment building he’d grown up in on Second Avenue.

  She would have to come up with a very good reason for showing up at his door, but no doubt she’d think of something along the way.

  She quickly got dressed in several layers, including stretchy high-tech long underwear, an eight-ply cashmere sweater, bright orange ski pants with zippered pockets, and then the pièce de résistance: a hooded Bogner ski coat with an embroidered dragon on the back. Admiring the coat, she was reminded of how her interest in fashion was merely an outgrowth of her love of sports gear. She had grown up in it: horse gear, skiing gear, skating gear, fishing gear, hunting gear—just about any activity that required its own special outfit.

  It was twenty-two degrees outside, but Pandy figured she was wearing enough high-tech snow gear to cross an ice floe.

  She got into the elevator, pressed the button for the ground floor, and smiled, thinking of Jonny.

  After giving each other goo-goo eyes all night, she and Jonny had finally gotten a moment alone. They were about to have their first kiss when the manager appeared, breathless and worried.

  “I think you’d better take MJ home,” he’d insisted to Jonny.

  MJ did indeed look quite green around the gills. Her turban had come loose from its moorings and was hanging by an elastic strap, resting on the side of her face like a deflating balloon.

  Poor MJ! Jonny said she had recurrent Lyme disease.

  MJ was so different from the other mothers Pandy had known. And when you had a mother like MJ…

  You get a son like Jonny, Pandy thought as a silly grin froze on her face.

  Still fixated on Jonny, she pulled open the door and stepped into a winter wonderland.

  The snowflakes on her cheeks were like little kisses. Pandy laughed aloud and began running. She ran the block and a half to Houston Street, where she stopped, panting. The run had raised her temperature and she no longer felt cold.

  The snow, on the other hand, was deceptive. It was heavier than it looked. It was the kind of snow that caused heart attacks when men tried to shovel their driveways.

  The light changed, and she walked briskly across the six lanes of Houston Street. At least the power was still on. Reaching the other side, Pandy realized that she should call Henry, who lived only a few blocks away. She ought to at least inform him that she was heading uptown in the storm. She might be adventurous, but she wasn’t stupid.

  Taking off one glove, she tried to call him. The phone wasn’t dead, but she couldn’t get a signal. The satellite must have just gone out. She zipped the phone back into her pocket and plowed up MacDougal Street in the direction of Henry’s apartment until she was forced to stop and catch her breath. With a laugh, she realized she was standing in front of
a psychic shop—which reminded her of MJ, which naturally reminded her of Jonny. Pandy peered into the shop. It was empty, save for the smattering of tarot cards taped to the window.

  The dark handsome man in the middle—he was the Sword Prince, and therefore, Jonny, Pandy decided. Above Jonny was a Coins card. Pandy smiled; that would be the million dollars. Jonny’s mother would be the High Priestess. And the Empress, that beguiling woman in white who represented sex, would be SondraBeth Schnowzer, Pandy thought with a start.

  Pandy stomped her feet to knock the snow off her boots. Why should she care about SondraBeth Schnowzer? She didn’t need SondraBeth or Doug—whom the tabloids were declaring “soul mates.”

  Not only did she have a huge contract for a new book, but she potentially had one of New York’s most eligible bachelors on the line. “Take that, my little friend!” Pandy said aloud in a witchy voice, wiggling her gloved fingers at the card. She was becoming giddy. She remembered how she and Hellenor used to warn each other of the dangers of too much time spent in a snowstorm: You started laughing, and then you lay down and went to sleep.

  And then you froze to death.

  A gust of wind whipped around the corner, sending shards of ice into her face. Pandy came to her senses with a start. What the hell was she doing? She looked up MacDougal. It was a picture-perfect snow scene, save for one thing that was missing: people. Was she truly the only person in Manhattan who was crazy enough to be out in this storm? And for what? Jonny Balaga?

  No, she thought, grabbing on to the nearest lamppost to steady herself against another gust. She could not be the woman who went out in a blizzard to stalk Jonny. What if something actually did happen? What if she broke her leg? She’d be all over the news. People would claim she was crazy.

  On the other hand, what would really happen next was so predictable: She would go to Henry’s, and she wouldn’t see Jonny after all. By the time the storm had passed and the city was up and running, she and Jonny would be swallowed by the demands of their regular lives. They might remember to call each other, but wouldn’t find the time to get together, and then years would pass. Someday they would run into each other and laugh about how they had almost kissed one night.