Killing Monica Read online

  But it isn’t just that, she realized, bending her head against the snow and pulling the hood closed in front of her face. It’s about not having the courage to have a relationship anymore.

  She battled forward into the storm, feeling inexplicably sad.

  And then she turned the corner and gasped. Life might disappoint, but nature did not, she thought as she stared at Washington Square Park in awe.

  The brownstones on the north side of the park were like gingerbread houses with peaked roofs of snowy meringue. Bowing down beneath a heavy frosting of snow, the trees created an entrance into what could be the magical village scene under her childhood Christmas tree.

  Pandy rushed forward joyously into the snow, picturing herself on skates, whirling around until she fell down, dizzy. She raised her head and looked at the fountain. The snow was coming down so hard that it appeared to be engulfed in sparkly white champagne bubbles.

  And then she couldn’t see anything at all.

  She was in the middle of a whiteout.

  * * *

  Luckily the whiteout only lasted half a minute, but still, it was a harbinger of the far worse weather to come.

  Forget Jonny, she thought, struggling to her feet. She might be a hopeless romantic, but she wasn’t brain-dead. At least, not brain-dead enough to waste another minute outside. Brushing the snow off her clothes, she realized that the tips of her fingers were numb and her nose was no doubt as red as Rudolph’s.

  She needed to get to Henry’s house, and fast. She knew he wouldn’t have anything to eat; he was awful about stocking up on supplies. But she could warm up for a few minutes and then convince Henry to come home with her, since her own fridge was full.

  But as quickly as her romantic fantasy about Jonny retreated, the real-life Jonny stepped in.

  She looked up and saw him trudging through the snow.

  She blinked.

  Her first thought was that this wasn’t possible. She hadn’t passed another person yet; it must only be someone who looked like Jonny.

  And yet it was Jonny. She recognized his movements.

  He was leaning into the snow bareheaded, the silly goose. He wasn’t even wearing a parka, but a canvas-type hunting jacket. And he was carrying groceries. Three bags in each hand.

  “Jonny!” she screamed, jumping up and down.

  Jonny lifted his head and stopped in his tracks. The smile that spread across his face made Pandy gasp. It was, she realized, the smile of a man who wanted to marry her.

  Ridiculous, she told herself. Nevertheless, she became childlike with the pure ecstasy of the moment, skidding clownishly across the snow to him. Jonny shook his head at her silliness, as if enchanted.

  He held up his bags. “I was just headed to your place. Thought you might be getting hungry.”

  “Oh, yes.” She nodded eagerly, her words blown away by the wind. Jonny dropped the bags, and then they were kissing. Pandy forgot about the snow and the wind and the cold, her entire being embodied in this ancient exchange. Soul recognized soul, and for a moment, she was sure she knew everything about him.

  The kiss might have gone on forever, if not for the wind. The air screamed as it roared down Fifth Avenue gathering energy, and then hit the open space of the park like a giant wave.

  “Fuck!” Jonny said as the wind tore them apart and sent them spinning backward.

  “Get down!” Pandy shouted, tugging him to his knees. “Put your back to it with your hands over your head.”

  There was another terrible blast, and then the air suddenly went still.

  Pandy and Jonny rose to their feet, staring up at the sky in astonishment. The sun was flickering behind a heavy black cloud, turning it shades of an eerily beautiful iridescent green.

  “Whoa!” Jonny said.

  “Incredible, isn’t it?”

  Their eyes widened as they took in each other’s appearance. They were both mortared in snow, covered head to toe like two plaster-of-Paris models.

  Pandy began laughing. In the next second, Jonny was laughing, too; once they started, they couldn’t stop.

  And then they both took a deep breath and came back to their senses.

  Exhaling a reassuring cloud of steam, Jonny began picking up his bags of groceries. “Let’s go, Wallis,” he exhorted, tossing her one of the bags. Pandy caught it in her arms like a baby. It was heavy; possibly a ham. Or even a whole prosciutto.

  Pandy smiled at the thought of the paper-thin pink flesh with its frosting of creamy fat. Jonny was a famous chef; he probably had whole prosciuttos lying around all over the place.

  “You got anyone else I need to feed besides you?” Jonny called out.

  “Henry,” Pandy said. “He probably doesn’t have a thing in his house.” Carefully she tucked the prosciutto—for it was a whole prosciutto after all—under her arm like a linebacker with a ball.

  “He’s on Gay Street. Let’s pick him up and then go back to my place.” She hurried to catch up with Jonny, leading him past a redbrick wall that led to a tiny, curved street.

  The snow was nearly to Pandy’s knees. Her feet felt the way up the small stoop of a three-story brick house with a shiny black door. She lifted the heavy brass knocker and banged three times.

  Henry opened the door. He hadn’t been lying about the smoking jacket, Pandy noted, suddenly annoyed.

  “Can I help you?” he asked drolly, eyeing Jonny, who was heaving behind her.

  “Oh, come on, Henry. Move aside,” Pandy said. She pushed past him into the tiny kitchen. “The internet’s gone out. And Jonny has a prosciutto.”

  “And lots of other food as well. We were going to go to Pandy’s place and I was going to cook. We came to pick you up,” Jonny said, in a voice that displayed his willingness to please.

  “We didn’t want you to be alone,” Pandy added coyly.

  “No. You didn’t want you to be alone.” Henry gave Jonny a strange look, as if he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing.

  “Come on, Henry,” Pandy said, grabbing Henry’s cashmere coat off the hook and handing it to him. “And you, too, Jonny. You need something on your head.”

  “I insist,” Henry said, handing Jonny an old wool cap. “I refuse to be the only man wearing a hat,” he added.

  Back at Pandy’s loft, they had a magnificent meal involving figs, tiny langoustines, and an herb-infused cheese soufflé that was so good, Pandy made Jonny promise to make it for her again.

  And after more wine, they began playing cards. Poker, Jonny’s favorite game. He took a hundred dollars off Henry, but graciously returned it. Henry, however, wouldn’t think of taking it back.

  The storm blew out to sea around midnight. Henry was still trying to clean up when Pandy was finally able to shoo him out.

  Pandy could tell that Henry wasn’t as enamored of Jonny as she was. And vice versa: At one point during the evening, Jonny had pulled her aside and confessed that Henry was the strangest man he’d ever met. “It’s like he’s from another era,” he said. “Like he learned how to be a man from watching old black-and-white movies.”

  Pandy had laughed.

  “You know what your problem is?” Jonny whispered in her ear as the door closed behind Henry.

  “What?”

  “You like everyone.”

  “Oh, Jonny,” Pandy said. She had a feeling he was referring to Henry, but she brushed it off. Besides, what Jonny said was true. She liked most kinds of people, although she didn’t often admit it. Jonny, she realized, was already making her see her best self.

  She had been wrong about him, she thought as he laid her down on the old leather couch and began removing her clothing. He was not an evil scumbag intent on hurting women. He was the opposite: a worshipper of women who lived only for the woman’s pleasure.

  And then she found out what that “never having a dissatisfied customer” comment was all about.

  It wasn’t about Jonny’s penis, which was perfectly adequate. It was about the vagina. And h
ow Jonny knew exactly what to do with one.

  When he stuck his tongue inside her, it felt like her soul had flown straight up into the universe.

  And after that, like a little slave girl, she’d willingly done whatever he requested.

  * * *

  Jonny spent the night, and basically never left.

  On their fourth evening, Pandy convinced him to skip out of Chou Chou early so she could make dinner for him.

  “Should I have brought a doggie bag?” he asked jokingly, eyeing the ingredients she’d put out on the counter.

  “Not unless you consider yourself a dog,” she replied, breaking the tips off a pile of French green beans.

  “What am I having? Besides you?” he asked, coming up behind her to wriggle his hands down the front of her jeans.

  She leaned back into him. “Lamb chops,” she moaned. “With mushrooms. In a heavy cream sauce.”

  “Sounds French,” he murmured into her ear, turning her around to face him.

  “It is. I learned it from my French roommate.”

  “When did you have a French roommate?” he asked in between kisses.

  “When I was in school. In Paris,” she added, as if somehow he should have known this.

  “You went to school in Paris?” Jonny sounded impressed.

  “Only for a couple of months,” she said, pulling his shirt over his head. “My sister was in Amsterdam, so I went to France to be near her. I learned one recipe while I was there—”

  Jonny lifted her onto the counter and pushed her legs apart. Pandy fell back like a rag doll.

  Fifteen minutes later, legs still slightly shaky, Pandy went back to her cooking. She browned the lamb chops, then added butter and sliced fresh mushrooms to the juices in the pan. When the mushrooms were browned, she poured in half a cup of heavy cream. She stirred briskly and poured the mushroom cream sauce over the lamb chops.

  The meal was, as her Parisian roommate had guaranteed, what was known in France as “le closure.” Meaning it was the meal that closed the deal between you and your potential husband.

  Sure enough, the next morning Jonny shook Pandy awake.

  “What?” Pandy gasped, suddenly afraid. Jonny was glaring at her as if she’d committed some heinous crime.

  “I can’t keep doing this,” Jonny said, with real irritation or fake, Pandy couldn’t remember. Because all she could remember was what he said next: “I think I’m in love with you. We’re too old to live together, so we’re going to have to get married.”

  “My son is marrying Monica!” MJ proclaimed to everyone and anyone who would listen.

  * * *

  The next few months were a whirlwind of bliss.

  For once, the man in her life was saying and doing exactly the right things. Without her having to prompt him! It was a miracle, Pandy exclaimed.

  Indeed, she never tired of reminding people of the wondrous fact of Jonny. “I was convinced that since I’d been so lucky in my career, I didn’t deserve true love as well. I never dared to hope that I could have both; that true love could actually happen to me.” And on and on she went, proclaiming herself one of the converted. Love did conquer all, after all.

  Once again, Pandy was the toast of the town. And so, too, was Monica. “Monica” was finally getting married.

  There was only one person, it seemed, who disapproved. Henry was being a real Eeyore about the whole marriage, insisting that she and Jonny were sure to end up like Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

  Pandy brushed this away, reminded of Jonny’s comment regarding Henry’s being old-fashioned.

  And so, at ten o’clock on a cloudless morning in late September, Pandy and Jonny got married. The mayor performed the ceremony. Pandy wore a chic white lace suit with three-quarter-length sleeves and gorgeous white patent leather Mary Jane shoes. Then they all had a long, boozy lunch at Chou Chou.

  Only sixty people were invited.

  The wedding was exactly what MJ had promised it would be: small, discreet, intimate, and very meaningful.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  PEOPLE ALWAYS said the first year of marriage was the hardest, but for Pandy and Jonny, the opposite was true.

  There was the sex, of course. A wink, a stare, a nod of the head, and off they’d be, in the bathroom at a party or in the alley behind the restaurant. Once, they did it in the back of some billionaire’s car.

  Sometimes it was shameful and downright tawdry. Like when the taxi driver made them get out of the cab. Afterward, they’d gone home and made love contritely, unable to look each other in the eye.

  It was, as Pandy explained sheepishly to her friends, “One of those things. You try to stop, of course, because it’s so embarrassing. But then you can’t.”

  “Is it unseemly?” she’d ask Jonny.

  “Babe,” Jonny would reassure her, “they’re just jealous. We’ve got something they never will.”

  This went on for weeks. Once again, Henry was not a fan. “You’re not writing,” he reminded her sharply. “You’ve written no new Monica pages since you got married.”

  This was true, and Pandy didn’t know how to justify it. Jonny seemed to think he actually had married Monica, at least in the sense that he expected Pandy to stay out late with him several nights a week. He had yet to comprehend that in real life, “Monica” had to work. But it was too early in their marriage to disappoint him.

  So she disappointed Henry instead.

  “Monica, Monica, Monica,” she’d say with a sigh. “I’m so sick of Monica. Can’t I live my life as me for a moment?”

  “Just give me twenty pages of Monica. Please,” Henry would beg.

  And, feeling guilty, Pandy would promise to deliver pages by the end of the week.

  But then her love for Jonny would once again get in the way, and forgetting about her promises to Henry, she’d put her energies into her husband instead.

  For at last, just like in a fairy tale, after all those long years of uncertainty about marriage, career, and money, it seemed her life had actually worked out. Gone were the nights when she would wake at four a.m., tossing and turning and fretting about her future. Now, if she awoke at all, she’d feel the glorious heat from Jonny’s naked body and remember that all was well.

  Indeed, even when they weren’t together, Jonny was like Peter Pan’s shadow, sewn onto her shoe by Wendy. She couldn’t shake him; at times it felt as if she had truly absorbed some of his molecules. She couldn’t pick up a lemon in the supermarket without wondering what Jonny would think of it; couldn’t pass a cute puppy on the street without wishing Jonny were there to admire it with her.

  Of course, it wasn’t completely perfect.

  There were some things they’d never be able to do together—like swim in the ocean. Jonny, it turned out, had never learned to swim, which seemed inexplicable to Pandy but perfectly reasonable to him. Lots of the kids he’d grown up with couldn’t swim—he hadn’t even seen a real pool until he was sixteen, when a hot older waitress had invited him for the weekend to her house in Hampton Bays.

  Nor did they share similar tastes.

  Jonny had come with a storage locker full of contemporary furniture, along with twenty or so plastic containers of his junk. The furniture was the kind of cheapish high-end box store stuff that a bachelor would buy, perhaps anticipating that when he married, he would get rid of it in deference to his wife’s tastes.

  But Jonny didn’t want to part with one piece of it, and when Pandy asked him to and he refused, she realized she was already beginning to take on the dreaded “nagging wife” role. Vowing not to become a fishwife, she turned a blind eye to the furniture.

  Unfortunately, what couldn’t be ignored were some of the matters of basic housekeeping. It turned out that along with his other masculine qualities, Jonny possessed that male propensity to completely overlook his own mess. You’d think with all the space in her loft, Jonny could have chosen one corner in which to dump his
dirty laundry. But he couldn’t. Instead, he spread it all around like a dog marking his territory.

  She’d tried scolding him, and once even picked up all his laundry and dumped it on his side of the bed. But Jonny feigned ignorance and lay down on top of it, making her feel that she was being petty. And so, instead of complaining, she reminded herself that love was about how you framed your partner in words. She decided that the words “Jonny” and “flaw” would never appear in the same sentence—even if that sentence was only in her mind. And so, when married friends expressed dismay with their husbands, Pandy affected a sort of astonishment, followed by the sentiment that she must be incredibly lucky, because Jonny was not like that at all.

  This didn’t stop her from complaining to Henry, however.

  “Does that dirty sock stuff still go on in marriages?” Henry asked over the phone. “How incredibly dull. How’s Monica coming?”

  “I’m feeling a little boxed in,” Pandy said, eyeing a stack of plastic containers.

  “Boxed in? How is that possible? You have nothing but space in that loft.”

  “You know how men are. They come with stuff,” Pandy whined.

  “Perhaps you should have considered that before you married him,” Henry said sharply.

  “That’s not how a woman thinks when a man—a man like Jonny, by the way—says he’s in love with her and wants to get married,” Pandy replied.

  Henry laughed. “My god, girl. What has happened to your brain?”

  Little did Pandy know that she would soon be asking herself this very question.

  * * *

  Jonny wanted a restaurant-quality kitchen in the apartment, and Pandy agreed. She wanted him to be happy; after all, he was Jonny Balaga, the world-famous chef. Of course they must have one.

  She assumed that the term meant high-end appliances. Only when the plans were drawn did she understand that for Jonny, “restaurant-quality kitchen” meant the kind of kitchen you would find in an actual restaurant.