Killing Monica

  “We’re making an emergency exit.” SondraBeth looked around quickly, as if making sure she wasn’t leaving anything important behind.

  “What about the Warrior Woman?” Pandy asked.

  “She stays here. A PA will get it.” SondraBeth slid her feet into a pair of running shoes.

  “Knock knock,” Judy said urgently.

  “Coming,” SondraBeth said. She unlocked the door and Judy opened it, holding it just wide enough for the two of them to slip out.

  “Food court,” Judy said into her microphone. She walked briskly ahead of them, talking into her mike while beckoning them along. There were more people in the hallway now, and they looked worried. The way people look when something bad has happened and all they can think about is how not to get blamed for it.

  “Keep your head down and stay next to me,” SondraBeth whispered.

  Judy opened another door, and they were hit by the sweet smell of meat and dough and cheese. Suddenly they were in a bustle of humanity; paparazzi shoving food into their mouths while tapping their screens and hastily gathering up equipment for the next assault. A man shoved Pandy so hard, she nearly fell. “Out of the way, granny.”

  Next to her, SondraBeth was chugging along determinedly. “Keep moving,” she said, steering straight into the crowd massing toward the main entrance.

  Pandy heard the bellowing shouts of policemen trying to control the unruly crowd.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” one of them yelled, trying to get the crowd to turn away. “Monica has left the building!”

  “Monica collapsed,” she heard someone say. “Ambulance on its way.”

  “Missing, I heard—” said someone else.

  And then they were being pushed. Shoved and bumped and stepped on as the crowd spun them out the revolving doors and into another mass of angry, screaming fans, holding up their devices and craning their necks for a better view—of what, Pandy couldn’t say. But the crowd wanted something, and she was a mere impediment to their view.

  She was going to be crushed.

  Pandy felt her rib cage implode as her knees buckled beneath her. And then her face was pressed into an endless pillow of flesh; it was up over her ears, suffocating her—

  “Get off me. Off of me!” A terrified shriek, followed by the push of two greasy hands the size of small pizzas. Pandy rocked back, thrusting her own hands at SondraBeth, whose hands were right there to grab hers—her razor-sharp nails digging into Pandy’s flesh like a predatory bird.

  Pandy screamed. And then something came over her. She didn’t want to die. Not like this. Seizing SondraBeth’s arm, she lowered her head and twisted forward and out like a corkscrew, until, with a mighty push, she broke through the pack.

  They emerged into more chaos: sirens and the pounding whoop, whoop, whoop of emergency vehicles. “Step away from the entrance!” blasted through a loudspeaker. Cops and firemen were running into the crowd. The driveway was clogged with vans and town cars; the SUV that had brought them here was nowhere in sight. Up ahead, two men were trying to close the gate in the chain-link fence.

  “Run!” Pandy shouted.

  Her legs, supported only by the cruelly curved heels of the red booties, felt like she was running on matchsticks.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  WATER. I need water!” Pandy gasped minutes later, lurching after SondraBeth. They were in one of those new parks that had seemingly sprung up overnight on the Hudson River. “What the fuck?” Pandy said, slowing down to a laborious clop.

  She looked around. The grass was fresh and clean, as were the hard plastic forms molded into table and chair configurations. Lowering herself onto her hands and knees, she attempted to crawl across the grass to the chair forms, but gave up halfway and flopped down on her stomach instead.

  “I need water,” she groaned.

  SondraBeth was standing above her, the top of the burka pulled back from her head like a priestess’s robe. “We did it!” she shouted.

  “We did?” Pandy sat up.

  “We killed Monica!”

  “Are you sure?” Pandy asked. The knob of pain on the back of her head was pulsating again, as if it had a life of its own.

  “Give me my phone,” SondraBeth commanded.

  Pandy struggled to her feet and reached into her front pocket. “Water?” she asked, holding out the phone in exchange for information.

  “Drinking fountain—that way,” SondraBeth said, grabbing the device and pointing in the direction of the Hudson.

  “What the hell just happened back there?” Pandy asked, making her way to the fountain. “The audience was loving us. And then you said Monica was dead…and all of a sudden they went wild. We could have been killed back there.”

  Pandy pressed the button on the stand. The fact that water came out at all felt like a small miracle. She drank thirstily.

  Directly ahead was the Hudson: a sparkling expanse of greenish brown. On the other side were the gleaming high-rises of Hoboken. It was a warm enough day for a large sailboat to be making its way down the river, skimming over the wake of the clanging Circle Line ferry, its passengers arranged like wooden toy people in the top. Then one helicopter passed overhead, while another rose up from behind the George Washington Bridge. Tilting forward with mechanical determination, the second one began speeding its way down the Hudson.

  Pandy turned back to SondraBeth. “It’s a good thing we’re really not killing Monica. I don’t think either one of us could survive the bad news.” She patted her face with Mother Teresa’s head scarf. “Was that supposed to happen?”

  “What?” SondraBeth asked, not looking up from the device.

  “That mayhem,” Pandy said as the helicopter flitted down to Chelsea Piers and then turned around, heading back in their direction.

  “I hope you’re calling Judy,” Pandy said anxiously, hurrying to SondraBeth’s side.

  “Judy knows where we are,” SondraBeth said distractedly. “The phone has a tracking device.”

  “Then what are you doing?” Pandy demanded.

  “I’m checking the Instalife feed.” SondraBeth grinned wickedly as she read the headlines aloud: “‘Real-Life Monica Missing: Possibility of Foul Play’…‘Is Monica a Feminist?’…and wait for it…” She held up her hand. “Here it is: ‘Monica Declared Dead!’”

  She held the phone out to Pandy. There was the classic shot of Monica striding over the skyline of Manhattan, but someone had cleverly drawn a coffin around her. And for the first time in her life, Monica didn’t look so happy.

  “Ding-dong, the witch is dead! The wicked old witch. The Monica witch,” SondraBeth sang out.

  Pandy frowned and handed the device back to SondraBeth. “Do you have to be that happy about it?” she asked, sitting down to loosen the laces of the booties.

  “What do you mean?” SondraBeth asked.

  “I don’t know. Monica is dead. I sort of feel like we should be sadder.”

  “Oh, Peege,” SondraBeth said, sitting down next to her. “Monica isn’t dead. Or won’t be in a couple of hours, when she comes back to life at the leg. And in the meantime, we should be celebrating.”

  Monica’s shoe suddenly came away from her foot and Pandy smiled victoriously. “Because now the mob goes after Jonny!”

  “He’s gonna get his!” SondraBeth set the phone down and gave her a high five.

  “Excellent,” Pandy said, picking up the phone to check the headlines.

  And then all of a sudden, it was out of her hand and SondraBeth was running pell-mell toward the end of the pier, the phone banged into her splayed left hand like a ball in a catcher’s mitt. She came to an abrupt halt, and winding her arm behind her back, she hurled it into the river. It sliced through the air for a good forty feet before reaching its apex and plunging unceremoniously to its watery grave.

  “What the fuck?” Pandy shrieked.

  “The tracking device. How do you think the paparazzi followed me to Wallis?” SondraBeth shouted as the he
licopter roared overhead. “We’re too visible here. Come on.”

  SondraBeth pulled the hood of the burka over her head as she knelt to help Pandy get Monica’s boot back on.

  Pandy’s feet were screaming. “Are we going to have to run again? I should have changed back into my own shoes,” she shouted, glancing up at the helicopter. Apparently they hadn’t been recognized, as it began spinning away.

  “No. This time we walk,” SondraBeth said. “Keep your head down and don’t look anyone in the eye.”

  A cavalcade of police cars came racing down the West Side Highway toward Chelsea Piers, flashing blue, white, blue, white, blue, like a flag. Pandy froze. She had a vision of herself being arrested dressed as Mother Teresa. There would really be no explaining that one.

  “Are we going to be arrested?” she gasped, drawing back.

  “What are you talking about?” SondraBeth said as the police cars sped by. “I’m a very valuable asset. But I’d like to keep the paparazzi off our trail. So far no one is looking for Mother Teresa and her burka friend. Not yet, anyway.”

  And glancing quickly over her shoulder, she hustled Pandy across the West Side Highway.

  Unfortunately, Pandy wasn’t able to get far. She managed to make it half a block, to the loading dock of one of the storage joints, before she had to pull up short to catch her breath.

  “I don’t understand,” Pandy said, loosening the laces on the shoes again. “We have no money and no cell phone. And I cannot walk any farther in these goddamned Monica shoes. Can we please borrow a phone from someone and call Judy?”

  “Don’t worry. We will. Hey,” SondraBeth said. “Remember the Alamo? Remember Jonny? We should be painting the town red.”

  “Now?” Pandy asked, looking around. This part of Manhattan was so deserted, there wasn’t even a deli.

  “Not here.” SondraBeth laughed. She walked to the corner of Tenth Avenue and put her hands on her hips. “Someplace no one will know us. What about one of those Irish bars?”

  “You mean one of those places where they use that stinky rag to wipe the bar? And the peanuts contain traces of male urine?”

  “That’s the ticket, sista,” SondraBeth said, slinging her arm around Pandy’s shoulders. She looked down at Pandy’s feet. “But first, we need to get rid of those shoes.”

  And with Pandy wincing along, they passed through three long blocks of crumbly brown buildings standing stubborn against the sea of change. At last reaching Seventh Avenue, they headed south, hugging the storefronts that offered everything from homeopathic remedies to tandoori specialties. SondraBeth stopped suddenly in front of a store with two dusty mannequins in the window, one wearing a 1950s ball gown and the other a sagging silk peignoir.

  * * *

  Pandy held her breath as they entered the slightly humid air of the shop. She looked around cautiously, then exhaled. The place was largely unchanged from all those years ago, when she and SondraBeth used to shop there for vintage clothing that they could turn into party dresses. Pandy looked up at the shelf over the glass case that held the cash register. Even that old stuffed toy monkey was still there, dressed in his dusty red felt shorts.

  “Hey,” Pandy said, grabbing SondraBeth’s arm. “Look. The monkey in the moleskin.”

  “PandaBeth!” SondraBeth hissed, looking around for the proprietor. Dressed in a frayed Japanese robe and smelling strongly of cigarettes, he was the sort of New York City person who has seen better days, and yet continues on in a determined time warp.

  SondraBeth slipped past him, and motioning for Pandy to follow, began piling various items on her outstretched arms. A glittery skirt, a denim shirt. Two feather boas. “Whatever happened to PandaBeth, anyway?” she asked.

  “Well, I’m not the one to say,” Pandy said, frowning at the growing pile, especially when SondraBeth added a blue wig. “You were the one who ran off with Doug Stone. Who, by the way, had the temerity to inform me that you hated me.”

  “Ha!” SondraBeth snorted. “He told me you were trashing me all over town. He was more like a girl than I was. He was constantly in front of the mirror. He would go over his schedule every evening and plan his outfit for the next day!”

  “Asswipe,” Pandy exclaimed, yanking back the curtain to the dressing room. It contained two rusty folding chairs and an old mirror propped up against the wall.

  “When our engagement ended,” SondraBeth continued, lifting her arms and wriggling out of the burka, “there was so much bad press, I didn’t even know if I should play Monica anymore.”

  “I know,” Pandy said, completely distracted by the act of trying to squeeze herself into a tattered sequined party dress and a pair of ancient silver dancing shoes.

  “But of course, I knew that was never going to happen,” SondraBeth went on. “And I thought about calling you then, but you seemed to be so happy with Jonny.” SondraBeth slid her feet into a pair of cowboy boots. “I knew there was no way you’d ever want to be friends again—I mean, what girl wants to be friends with the girlfriend who told her that her husband was a shit?”

  Pandy frowned at the blue wig SondraBeth had tugged onto her head. “But why didn’t you call me after? When Jonny and I did split up?”

  SondraBeth clapped a cowboy hat onto her head. “Why didn’t you call me?” she asked. She met Pandy’s eyes in the mirror. Pandy suddenly felt guilty.

  “I didn’t think you’d want to hear from me.” Pandy frowned at the blue wig. “Because of the stupid way I’d acted with Doug. And then, according to the press, you and Doug were the ideal couple. And then after you guys split up, you were so busy. With Monica. And Doug said you hated me.”

  “I never said I hated you.”

  “Then what did you say?” Pandy asked, thinking about what Doug had told her about how without Monica, SondraBeth would have been nothing. “After all, if it was only about Doug, why didn’t you get back in touch?”

  “Because I guessed Doug had said something about what I said about you.”

  “Which was?”

  “Nothing,” SondraBeth snapped. “But you have to remember, I was the one who was working her ass off for Monica. And meanwhile, you never even came to the set. You had Monica, but you still had a life. Even if Jonny was a scumbag, at least you had the chance to act like you were in love with him.”

  “Act like it?” Pandy asked.

  “Don’t you understand?” SondraBeth glared at her. “Because of Monica, you were the last girlfriend I had. The last girlfriend I had time to make. And after that…” She shrugged. “I had no time. I was scheduled. Am scheduled.”

  She tossed Pandy a couple of feather boas as she yanked open the curtain and went out.

  Pandy took one last glance at herself in the mirror before she hurried after her.

  The proprietor was standing behind the glass counter, his gaze focused on the small TV above his head. “And how are you going to pay?” he asked, briefly tearing his eyes away from the screen.

  “With these,” Pandy said, heaving Monica’s shoes onto the counter.

  The proprietor glanced at the shoes and looked back to the news loop. He picked up one of the shoes and asked casually, “Is Monica dead?”

  Pandy could barely glance at SondraBeth, who gave her a warning look as she held out her hand for the pile of twenties the proprietor was counting out.

  Pandy tried to hold it, but a terrible eruption, an explosion, was rising up through her insides…She fell onto the glass door and swung out onto the sidewalk, convulsing with laughter.

  * * *

  Five minutes later, they were sliding up to the bar at McWiggins’s. The interior was shaded and, as most of these places were, somewhat gloomy.

  Pandy looked around and wondered if this was indeed the best place to kill a couple of hours. The Pool Club would definitely be better. On the other hand, she was tired and thirsty. “I’ll have a beer,” she said to the bartender.

  “What kind?” The bartender looked at her challengingl
y. Pandy wasn’t sure if it was because she was a bald middle-aged woman, or because she was a bald middle-aged woman wearing a blue wig and a tattered sequined dress.

  “Two Heinies, draft,” SondraBeth said. “And two shots of Patrón. Silver.”

  “Coming right up,” the bartender said in a surly tone of voice.

  “What would you do if there were no more Monica, anyway?” SondraBeth asked, leaning over the bar to rest her head in her hand. “With that speech you gave at the Woman Warrior Awards, it sounds like you’re ready to move on.”

  The bartender slid two shots and two beers in front of them. SondraBeth lifted one to her lips and, giving Pandy a thumbs-up, sent it down the hatch.

  Pandy sighed as she held her own shot up to her lips. “I love Monica as much as you do, but while Jonny was trying to take me for every penny I’d ever made from her, I did create a new character.” She frowned, thought of Lady Wallis, and downed the shot, which caused her to cough into her napkin. “But because of Monica, no one wants her. And the weird thing is, she’s sort of like Monica. I mean, she’s pretty glamorous. She was friends with Marie Antoinette. Can you imagine what it would be like to find out that your best friend had her head chopped off?”

  Pandy grimaced and motioned for another shot.

  “I think it sounds fabulous,” SondraBeth said as the bartender gave them refills.

  Pandy laughed. “In any case, Henry said that they would only publish it if I were dead. And since I’m not—” Pandy shrugged. “Having a book rejected is horrible. It’s like having a baby and when you show it to people, they tell you to stick it back in your uterus.” She snorted, realizing she must be feeling the effects of the shot. “What would you do if there were no more Monica?”

  “I’d go live on my ranch in Montana.”

  “Wha—?” Pandy said into her beer.

  “That’s right.” SondraBeth nodded. “I wouldn’t even be an actress anymore.”

  Pandy wrinkled her nose. “You wouldn’t?”

  “Nah,” SondraBeth said, motioning for another round of shots. She emitted an ironic laugh. “Thanks to Monica, I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up.”