Killing Monica

  DOUG STONE FINDS LOVE WITH THE CREATOR OF MONICA, read one caption, while another proclaimed they were “hot and heavy.”

  The words, all so untrue, were like shards of glass piercing her heart.

  Pandy peered closely at the photographs, looking for clues to explain what had gone wrong, why the pictures and words showed one thing while the reality was so different. But no matter how hard she examined the photographs, she still felt like she was missing something.

  Her own life, perhaps?

  The next day, she called Henry. “I don’t want to write another Monica book. I need to move on,” she said bravely.

  Henry told her to quit acting silly and reminded her that even without Pandy, Monica could go on for as long as she liked. Unless, he added jokingly, Pandy were to die. In which case, the rights would revert to Hellenor. And Hellenor, of course, was in Amsterdam.

  * * *

  Two more weeks passed. Shooting for Monica wrapped, and SondraBeth went to Europe—“on business,” she said, being uncharacteristically vague. Another month passed without a word from either her or Doug. Doug had mentioned stopping off in New York for a few days when he finished his movie, but when Pandy didn’t hear from him, she figured he’d gone straight to LA. After all, it was only a fling. Why should she care?

  And then SondraBeth called.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  FINALLY, PANDY thought, seeing SondraBeth’s number at last. It was one of those blue Sunday evenings, one of those anxious nights in which the future looked inexplicably bleak, when it felt like nothing exciting or good would ever happen again.

  “Yarl?” Pandy answered slowly, with one of their silly made-up expressions.

  “Peege? It’s meeeeeeee,” SondraBeth squealed joyfully.

  “Where have you been?” Pandy scolded, as if she couldn’t live without her. “I’ve missed you.”

  “Me too. But now I’m back. How are you? You sound down.”

  “No. I’m just…” Pandy broke off. What was she? “Bored,” she said.

  “I am, too.” SondraBeth spoke into the phone with a salty languor. “I’m so fucking bored.”

  “Where are you?” Pandy asked.

  SondraBeth laughed, as if Pandy ought to know where she was. “I’m on ‘the island.’”

  “The island?” Pandy frowned. “What is that? Some kind of location?”

  “Silly!” SondraBeth squealed. “I’m on a secret vacation. At that private island I told you about. In the Turks and Caicos? Where my ex-boyfriend and I used to rent a house?”

  “Which one?” Pandy asked, rolling her eyes.

  “You’ve got to come down and stay with me,” SondraBeth insisted. Pandy could hear waves crashing in the background.

  “Really?” Pandy got up and looked out the window. It was March, and the weather was depressing: blustery one minute, rainy the next. She didn’t have anything on her schedule that couldn’t be moved. The thought of that lusciously warm Caribbean air was suddenly irresistible—and so, too, was the prospect of seeing SondraBeth.

  “I think I could come. But when?”

  “Tomorrow! You don’t have to stay long. Three days, maybe four.”

  “Tomorrow?” Pandy’s heart sank. She looked around. “I can’t get myself together by tomorrow.”

  “You don’t understand,” SondraBeth said, sounding like she was strangling a scream. “I can fly you back and forth by private jet.”

  “Are you kidding?” Pandy had to put her hand over her mouth to keep herself from screaming as well.

  “No. I mean, yes. I’m serious. Gotta go. My assistant will call you in two seconds to make the arrangements.”

  Like clockwork, SondraBeth’s new assistant, Molly, called right after SondraBeth hung up.

  In a voice as natural and sweet as the hay in the heartland itself, Molly informed her that a car would be picking her up at nine the next morning to take her to Teterboro, New Jersey, where she would fly directly to the island by private jet. The whole trip, including the ride to the airport, would take a mere three hours. “You’ll be there in time for lunch!” Molly exclaimed.

  Bliss, Pandy thought, looking out at the rain.

  She hung up the phone, happy again. Thank God for Monica, she thought. As she quickly began packing, she realized how foolish she’d been to get upset about that party. And how silly she was, telling Henry she wouldn’t write another Monica book. What was she thinking? Monica still had her golden touch.

  She could change rain into sunshine any old time.

  * * *

  SondraBeth met Pandy’s plane at the airstrip, waving madly from a golf cart while pointing to a colored drink in a plastic cup. “Cheers!” SondraBeth shouted over the noise of the jet’s winding-down engines. She handed Pandy a cup. “The bartender here makes the best rum punch on the islands. It’s a requirement!” She stomped on the gas and the cart took off with a jolt, spilling Pandy’s drink down the front of her shirt.

  “Oops!” SondraBeth screamed as they took off bouncing along a rutted dirt road.

  Pandy laughed, guessing that this trip would probably end up like that crazy weekend in Martha’s Vineyard.

  The villa was right on the beach, on an isolated strip of land with views of the turquoise ocean stretching all the way to the horizon. A housekeeper took Pandy’s bags to her room: king-sized bed, giant-screen TV, French doors leading out to her own private balcony. It was glorious.

  SondraBeth hovered while Pandy unpacked, talking a mile a minute about how she’d gone to a spa in Switzerland and how Pandy should go, too. Pandy went into the bathroom to change into her bathing suit; when she came out, she found SondraBeth lounging by a small pool that was set into an incongruous patch of hardy green grass. SondraBeth had removed her blousy cover-up to reveal a string bikini. As Pandy went to lie down in the chaise next to her, she took a good look at SondraBeth and gasped.

  “You’ve lost weight!” Pandy exclaimed.

  “Can you tell?” SondraBeth asked proudly.

  “You’re so…skinny,” Pandy said cautiously. She snuck another look at SondraBeth’s slim physique and wondered if she’d had something done to her thighs and stomach; liposuction perhaps.

  “Come on, Peege,” SondraBeth said lightly. “You’d weigh exactly the same if you were a couple of inches taller.”

  “You know that’s not true—”

  SondraBeth shot Pandy a warning look. “I have to be thin. To play Monica. It’s part of the job. If I gain two pounds, the wardrobe people are all over me. They get really pissed off if they have to keep altering the clothes. They said I have to weigh myself every morning. If I gain a pound, it means I’m supposed to skip dinner.”

  “What?” Pandy screamed. “That’s outrageous. This is Monica, not Dickens. Maybe I can call someone.”

  “Who?” SondraBeth grinned playfully. “PP? He’s a man. All he cares about are the numbers. He’s probably the one who came up with the idea.”

  “That’s terrible, Squeege.”

  “That’s the business.” SondraBeth rolled onto her stomach, resting her chin on her hands. She turned her head and looked over at Pandy, her eyes a startling green. “Besides, it’s not that bad. Not for me, anyhow. I’m like a racehorse; I like being in shape, and I like winning.”

  “Ha!” Pandy said.

  “In any case, I’m not going to apologize for having a good body,” SondraBeth continued, pulling herself forward and leaning over the edge of the chaise. She stared down into the turf. “People are always telling women to lose weight, and then when they do, other women attack them for it. It isn’t fair.”

  SondraBeth picked at a short blade of grass. “This whole weight thing is like a conspiracy against women.”

  “Blah, blah, blah.” Pandy made her fingers into a talking puppet shape, then made the puppet try to bite SondraBeth’s nose.

  SondraBeth swept this aside like an annoying fly. She rolled onto her back and gazed at a cloud. “Seriously, Peege
. If every woman exercised, just a little, and ate healthy, there would be no need for diet products. And who do you think is getting rich from those diet products? Men.”

  SondraBeth suddenly sat up. “Ohmigod. Did I tell you about Doug Stone?”

  “What?” Pandy squeezed a tube of sunscreen too hard, causing a glob of lotion to shoot out and land on her thigh. “Did you see him? In Europe?”

  “No. But somebody else did.” SondraBeth’s eyes narrowed. “You remember that girl? That other girl.”

  Pandy shook her head.

  “You know, the actress? The one who wanted to play me? I mean, Monica. And then I got the part?”

  “Lala Grinada?” Pandy gasped.

  “That’s the bitch. Well, she must really hate you, because guess who’s been seen all over Paris with Drug Stoner?”

  “Lala Grinada?”

  “You got it, sista.”

  “Oh.” Pandy listlessly rubbed the sun cream into her skin, trying to digest this information. She lay back and sighed. Doug had been too good to be true after all. “I guess that explains it, then. He’s with Lala Grinada.” She sighed dramatically and got up to pour herself another glass of rum punch from the pitcher in the refrigerator. “Meanwhile, I am once again alone. And fat. Because I was so upset when Drug Stoner dumped me, I ate ice cream with whipped cream five nights in a row. And that was after the pepperoni pizza!” she shouted through the kitchen island to SondraBeth.

  “I hate her!” SondraBeth shouted back. “I hate her for what she’s done to you.”

  “Her?” Pandy asked, strolling back outside. “What about him? He’s the one who swore he’d never be with another actress again.”

  SondraBeth raised one eyebrow. “Obviously, he lied. Fucker.” She held up her empty cup for a refill.

  “Dickwad,” Pandy seconded, taking the cup and returning to the kitchen for the pitcher. It felt good to swear; to be juvenile in the face of rejection. Indeed, it felt so good that she had to do it again. “Rotten rat bastard son of a pimp-nose!” she shouted.

  “Ha! What is that?” SondraBeth called back.

  “Joseph Heller. Catch-22. My sister and I memorized it when we were kids. I mean, come on!” Pandy poured more punch into SondraBeth’s glass. She looked at the pitcher, thought, Fuck it, and brought the glass and the pitcher back to the terrace. “Lala Grinada? Pleeeeeze. She literally has three hairs on her head. And she’s not even a good actress.” Pandy put down the pitcher and took a sip of SondraBeth’s drink before handing it over. “Even if she were okay, he still wouldn’t respect her. He basically told me he couldn’t stand to be around any actress.”

  “He said that?” SondraBeth’s eyes widened as her expression froze.

  “Oh, come on, Squeege. I’m sure he didn’t mean you.”

  “I wouldn’t care, except that you don’t know what it’s like. You really don’t know.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You never even come to the set.” SondraBeth sounded hurt. “I would think being the creator of Monica would be like being a parent. Going to the set would be like going to watch your kid’s baseball game.”

  “Except that going to a baseball game isn’t usually considered work.”

  “And writing is?” SondraBeth scoffed. “Of course, I understand that you have better things to do, but you never come at all.”

  “It makes me uncomfortable, okay?”

  “But why?”

  “It’s all those people. ‘People, touching other people. It’s the creepiest thing in the world,’” Pandy sang out goofily.

  SondraBeth pointed her finger. “Aha! I knew it! That’s the reason you never come to the set. You secretly want to be an actress.”

  “What?” Pandy laughed. Where the hell had SondraBeth gotten that idea?

  “That little thing you just did. That is what people do when they think they can maybe act. They try it out.”

  “No,” Pandy countered cautiously. “I only ever wanted to be a writer. I swear.”

  Even to her own ears, she didn’t sound convincing, probably because SondraBeth was right: She had fantasized about acting when she was a kid. Who hadn’t?

  “I’ll bet you practiced monologues. With your sister,” SondraBeth posited cleverly.

  “So?” Pandy said.

  “So, I want to see. Show me your monologue.”

  “Now?”

  SondraBeth parroted the island’s pet refrain: “Do you have something better to do?”

  Pandy scratched her arm. “You want me to perform? In front of you? I’d rather show you my vagina,” she joked.

  “Come on, Peege,” SondraBeth wheedled.

  Pandy sighed. SondraBeth knew her too well. Or at least knew her well enough to know that given the chance to show off, Pandy needed little encouragement.

  “All right,” Pandy said as she quickly cleared away some of the deck furniture to make a small stage.

  Getting into the spirit of things, SondraBeth took a seat behind a table as if they were at an actual audition. “We’ll pretend that you’re the actress and I’m the writer.” She cleared her throat and, squinting at an imaginary piece of paper, asked, “Pandemonia James Wallis?”

  “I go by PJ,” Pandy said.

  “And what are you going to do for us today?” SondraBeth gave her the sort of fake smile Pandy had no doubt worn when she was auditioning actresses for Monica.

  “Gwendolen’s monologue from The Importance of Being Earnest,” Pandy said.

  SondraBeth shrieked with laughter. “That old thing? That’s what every rookie chooses. Well, go ahead.”

  Pandy gave her a dirty look. She took a deep breath and began: “You have admired me? Yes, I am quite well aware of the fact. And I often wish that in public, at any rate, you had been more demonstrative. For me, you have always had an irresistible fascination—”

  “Stop!” SondraBeth howled. “It’s too awful. If you continue, I shall burst apart with laughter.”

  “I told you I couldn’t act,” Pandy grumbled good-naturedly.

  “Oh, Peege.” SondraBeth grinned. “You’re hilarious. I’ve never seen anyone be so squishy and so elbow-y at the same time.”

  “And what, exactly, is that supposed to mean?”

  “You keep wriggling around. Like a worm. Acting is all about being still.”

  * * *

  Pandy awoke early the next morning to find that SondraBeth had already left the house. Pandy hadn’t slept well, thanks to Doug Stone and Lala Grinada. She kept picturing them together, wondering what Lala had that she didn’t.

  Goddamned Squeege, she thought.

  Wondering vaguely where SondraBeth had gone, Pandy made tea and perused a guidebook to the island’s flora and fauna. There was a rare silver heron that could be found in one of the island’s marshy coves just after sunrise.

  Why not? Pandy thought, changing into a bathing suit. Why not chase down this elusive heron? After all, as SondraBeth kept pointing out last night before each shot of tequila, they didn’t have anything better to do.

  She winced slightly as she clapped a canvas safari hat onto her head. She picked up a towel from the floor, found her cell phone, and set off on the golf cart.

  The air was warm but soothingly dry. The golf cart kicked up a small cloud of sparkly white dust on the pretty manicured roads made of ground shells. She passed several iguanas, the island’s main residents, and a few wild chickens that had escaped from the workers who came to the island by small planes. The island felt blissfully deserted. This was twenty-first-century luxury, Pandy thought: no people.

  She sped quietly past the airstrip and through a low, thick forest of scrub bushes and cacti, which she’d been cautioned not to attempt to cross on foot. The road curved along a point of land that sheltered a shallow inlet, where the rare heron could supposedly be found. Pandy parked the golf cart and made her way along a small path to the rocky beach. The vegetation was sparse, and she situated herself between two bushes to wait.
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  She heard a crisp snap, like laundry flapping in a breeze, and looked up to see two enormous herons navigating a landing in the shallow water in front of her. Pandy picked up her cell phone and took a few hasty shots. The birds stood stock-still in the water, their heads slightly cocked, waiting for the bonefish fry on which they survived. Finding the pickings slim, they began to move around the rocky point.

  Determined to get a picture, Pandy crept along the path next to the shore. She peered through the tall grass and nearly gasped aloud. The herons weren’t alone. Standing nude in the middle of the inlet, balanced on one leg, arms stretched overhead and palms together in a classic yoga pose, was SondraBeth. She was now so slim and her skin so white, Pandy at first mistook her for some kind of large, exotic bird and nearly dropped her phone in excitement. But birds didn’t have mature female breasts.

  Pandy let out a long, slow breath and began to creep closer. SondraBeth continued to stare straight ahead, the pose rock-steady even as the herons began to approach. She was so still, the herons must have mistaken her for one of their own, for they hardly glanced in her direction. Moving one careful, silent inch at a time, Pandy slunk through the bushes until she was a mere twenty feet away.

  Staring at SondraBeth, Pandy suddenly understood what her friend had meant when she said that acting was about being still. Pandy wondered how it must feel to be able to stand perfectly motionless like a statue; so much a part of nature that even nature took you for granted. She considered making her presence known, but then thought better of it. This was obviously one of SondraBeth’s few private moments, and Pandy was encroaching. She’d back away slowly, and SondraBeth would never know she had been there. She’d file away the image as one of those unusual experiences that keep their power only when they remain secret.

  She was about to sneak back to the golf cart when suddenly SondraBeth turned her head and stared straight at her. Embarrassed, Pandy froze. Had SondraBeth actually seen her, or had she merely sensed a presence?

  “You look just like Margaret Mead,” SondraBeth said.