Killing Monica Read online

  “I have an announcement,” she repeated, scanning the room. Everyone was listening now. “I can’t tell you how much it means to me that you’re all here. You all know how much I love you!”

  “Awww.”

  “We love you, too, Goobers.”

  Pandy bowed her head in thanks, waiting for them to settle down.

  “I want to thank all of you for coming. Because this is a celebration. A celebration of not only moving forward, but also of letting go of the past.” Pandy glanced back at the billboard. The sun had set, and for the moment, Monica had disappeared.

  “One of the things I learned during this divorce,” Pandy continued, “is that I probably never should have gotten married in the first place. But then my insecurities got the better of me. No matter how stupid it is, if you’ve never been married, it’s all you can think about. It’s always there, in the back of your mind: ‘What’s wrong with me? How come no one’s ever wanted me?’ And it’s important not to get caught up in society’s expectations—”

  “Cock in the bedroom!” someone shouted.

  Pandy laughed. “In any case, what I’ve realized is that I have to grow up. Which means I can’t keep on being Monica.”

  “Oh, go on,” Nancy hooted. “You are Monica.”

  Pandy shook her head. “Not anymore. I don’t want to be. Partly because if I stay like Monica, I’m going to end up with another Jonny.”

  “Forget about Jonny. You were too good for him.”

  “Men will be lining up to meet you. You’ll see,” Suzette cackled.

  “No.” Pandy playfully pointed her finger at Suzette. “They line up to meet you. But that’s sort of the problem. If you have a man, great. But it shouldn’t have to be about men. And we already know this. But sometimes it takes getting divorced to learn that lesson all over again.”

  Pandy’s mouth was suddenly dry. She motioned to Angie for the bottle. While she drank, she heard Brittney ask, “Did Jonny really have fourteen suitcases full of knives?”

  “Shhhh,” Nancy said.

  “And so,” Pandy said quickly, “I will keep this short. I do have a new book coming out, and it is not about Monica. It’s what I’m calling a ‘me’ book. Meaning it’s the book I’ve always wanted to write, and I’ve finally taken the chance to write it. I hope you’re not disappointed. About Monica.” She paused. “And the fact that I definitely don’t have a new man—”

  “We’re almost out of champagne!” Portia screamed as if a nuclear bomb were about to go off.

  “Music!” Meghan shouted. “What happened to the music?”

  Pandy picked up her sequined top hat and placed it on her head. As she turned to step off the couch, the lights that bathed Monica’s image every evening at eight p.m. sharp suddenly flooded her face.

  Pandy took a step backward. The heel of her shoe caught in one of the tears in the cracked leather.

  She went down.

  CHAPTER TWO

  EYES FIRMLY shut, Pandy rolled over, determined not to face what she knew was out there: the light.

  The morning. Why, oh why couldn’t morning ever come when you wanted it to? Why were these things always out of one’s control?

  She felt around her face for her eye mask. Her fingers sensed padded foam covered in slick silk. But the straps felt wrong. For starters, there seemed to be too many. And the thing reeked. Of expensive perfume—

  Pandy gasped, hinged upright into a sitting position, and flung the offending garment to the floor. She caught her breath and moaned. A band of pain radiated from the top of one ear to the other, as if her head were caught in a vise. The pain was bad, but that was to be expected. She’d had too much to drink—everyone had had too much to drink—and she hadn’t thrown a party in ages. She’d known she would wake up with a Godzilla of a hangover—one that, as she liked to say, could destroy tall buildings in New York. Mysteriously, however, this expected pain was accompanied by a more sinister sensation: a spongy, pulsating throb on the back of her head.

  Like being tapped, again and again, by a small and very annoying elf wielding a tiny hammer.

  Pandy’s exploring fingers discovered a lump the size of a large marble. She grimaced. She remembered falling off the couch. And then what?

  She leaned over the side of the bed. What she’d thought was her eye mask was a hot pink bra with cups the size of cantaloupes. Suzette’s? Or Meghan’s? They’d both gone to the same plastic surgeon. Pandy dropped it back onto the floor. Damn friends. They’d gotten drunk, and all of a sudden they’d started trying on each other’s clothes.

  The phone rang. The landline, not her device. Making it harder to ignore.

  Pandy stared at the phone. Its incessant ringing was incomprehensible. Why was it so loud? Who was calling? She groaned and gritted her teeth. There was only one person who could possibly be calling this early in the morning after a major party the night before.

  “Hello, Henry.” Her voice cracked on the first word, but by the time she got out “Henry,” she had managed to infuse his name with a passable imitation of the living.

  Henry wouldn’t be fooled; he was all too familiar with how she lost her voice when she’d had too much to drink. He’d warned her about it many times on book tours: “If you have a glass of wine with every blogger who wants to interview you, not only will you have consumed the equivalent of six bottles of wine, but you will also have no voice. Meaning you cannot talk. Meaning you cannot tell all these journalists how fabulous your new Monica book is. Meaning, what is the point of you being on a book tour at all?”

  “Funny, it never feels like six bottles,” she’d said musingly.

  Henry had thrown up his hands at such idiocy.

  “Good morning,” he said now. His greeting was surprisingly pleasant, but also, Pandy noted, slightly artificial.

  “Henry?” She shifted on the sheet. Tiny unidentifiable particles were pressing into her thighs. She wriggled around and extracted something that looked like a colorful shard of plastic. She examined it while gripping the phone tightly in her other hand.

  “What are you doing today?” he asked with unexpected cheer. “Are you busy?”

  “Why?” Pandy asked cautiously as she examined the particle between her fingers. It was a dried piece of cupcake frosting. She flicked it away.

  “I was thinking it might be nice to get together. Meet in my office for a change. We haven’t done that in a while.”

  “Today?” Pandy laughed. “But I just saw you last night.”

  “Indeed you did. Sadly, I wasn’t there to witness what happened after I departed, but I suppose it doesn’t matter. Someone and their party are all over Instalife today.”

  “You don’t say.” Pandy suppressed a hiccup.

  Photos, she suddenly recalled. That’s why everyone was exchanging clothes.

  A terrible possibility began to dawn as Pandy felt around the bed for her glasses. If what she feared were true, she would need to be upright for what Henry would no doubt tell her next. She found her glasses, untangled one leg from the sheet, and swung her foot off the bed.

  “The pictures,” she hissed. “How bad are they?”

  “Depends on what one calls ‘bad.’”

  Pandy lowered her other foot and stepped on Suzette’s bra. “Damn.” She took another step. Crunch. Another spot of cupcake frosting. Her goddamned friends! “There wasn’t—nobody was—”

  “Sober?” Henry chuckled nastily. “No. They certainly were not.”

  Pandy sighed. “Not sober. Naked. No one was naked, were they?” She took a step toward the window and saw a pair of black Spanx draped over a lamp. Why would anyone take those off? “Because there seems to be a lot of clothing left behind.” She continued to move around the bedroom, just like an object that “once in motion, stays in motion.” An aphorism learned from the arthritis ads on daytime television. She took a breath.

  “And really, Henry. What’s up with Suzette and that huge yellow diamond? Who needs ten ca
rats? What’s wrong with three? Honestly, what can seven extra carats do that three can’t?”

  Henry paused. Pandy gingerly lifted the edge of the Spanx between thumb and forefinger. “And don’t say ‘blow job,’” she added.

  “I wasn’t going to say anything at all.”

  “Good. I hope I’m not in these ridiculous pictures.” Picking up steam, she pulled on her plaid pajama pants. Catching a glimpse of herself in the mirror, she had a sudden new thought:

  “That’s why you called,” she said, recalling that comment about Botox. “I look old, don’t I?”

  “I didn’t call to talk about your wrinkles.”

  “Good. Whose wrinkles should we talk about instead?”

  Flames of sunlight were licking the edges of the blackout shades. “Listen to me,” Pandy groaned. “I’m a lousy human being.”

  “All human beings are lousy by definition,” Henry said patiently. Then he added, “Speaking of which, I wanted to talk to you about your new book.”

  “My book?” Pandy had barely closed her mouth when Henry dropped the bomb.

  “It’s all over Instalife.”

  Pandy yanked open the shades. The sun shot into her eyes, momentarily blinding her. “Fuck.” She dropped the phone. A piece broke off, exposing the batteries. Pandy clamped her hand over the wiring and brought the phone back to her ear.

  “It’s on Page Six. And People!” hollered Henry, who was given to random bursts of shouting.

  Pandy was suddenly annoyed. “That’s it? I thought you were calling because you’d had word.”

  Henry ignored this, continuing as he read the headlines aloud: “‘PJ Wallis: Uncoupled and Un-Monica’ed.’”

  “Hey. That’s good!” Pandy exclaimed. “Very good. Word of the book is already spreading.”

  She stuck her feet into a dusty pair of velvet loafers she hadn’t seen in ages. The loafers came from the far reaches of her closet—meaning the clothing exchange must have been more extensive than she’d imagined.

  “Anyway,” she continued, shuffling into the living room, “who cares? In fact,” she added, “I’m glad. Maybe when my publishers see that the book is all over Instalife, they’ll actually get off their asses and read it. Christ. The school year isn’t even over. Surely everyone in publishing can’t already be on summer vacation?”

  “They’re not on summer vacation,” Henry said ominously.

  “Good. Then they can read it. It’s been over a week.” She was tempted to add, And don’t call me until they have read it, but she caught herself. She pressed her thumb sharply into her right temple. She mustn’t let her hangover turn her into a demanding ogre.

  “Gotta go,” Pandy said quickly. She hung up and tossed the phone onto the couch, batteries dangling like viscera from the handset.

  * * *

  Moving slowly into the kitchen, Pandy encountered a telltale flat white box on the counter. It contained two slices of cold pepperoni pizza.

  The sight of the pizza made Pandy unaccountably happy. Balancing a slice on her open palm, she slid the floppy triangle onto the rack in Jonny’s pizza oven. She turned the control to five hundred degrees and made herself a cup of tea. Discovering a cache of neatly folded plastic grocery bags in the pantry, she tried to stuff the pizza box into a bag, but it wouldn’t fit. She gave up and went to work on cleaning up the living room instead.

  Plastic cups—some empty, others still containing fluid and floating cigarette butts—went into one empty grocery bag after another. Pandy discovered a couple of stray cigarettes behind one of the couch cushions. She lit a cigarette and leaned out the half-open window, trying to blow the smoke through the opening. The first rush of nicotine almost made her retch, but she fought the impulse and smoked it down to the filter. As she was lighting another, she smelled something burning. She raced to the kitchen and yanked open the pizza oven as black smoke billowed into her face. She coughed, slammed the door, turned the oven off, and ran the butt under the tap.

  She grabbed another plastic bag and headed into the bathroom.

  Several empty bottles of expensive pink champagne—both Pandy’s and, of course, Monica’s signature drink—were floating on a scrim of dirty water in what had been last night’s enormous ice bucket. Bobbing among the debris like a bad apple was a curious piece of cushioned green plastic. Pandy picked it up. It was a green cartoon frog with large yellow eyes and two flexible feet on either side.

  The frog was attached to something stiff and unyielding. Pandy turned it over. On the other side was a black screen. The frog was a child’s waterproof cell phone cover.

  But whose? Pandy frowned. Was it possible someone had brought a child to the party, and she hadn’t noticed?

  She tapped the screen. An image appeared: Portia on a tropical beach, holding the hands of two adorable towheaded children.

  Oh, right. Portia had children. Pandy suddenly pictured Portia at the beach with her kids. Portia was worried they might lose their cell phones in the water. And so she had bought them all these funny floating cell phone covers at the resort’s gift shop. Pandy could smell the fresh green scent of locally made straw hats hanging on a rack near the cash register; could feel the goose bumps rising on her upper arms as she walked from the stifling heat into the sharp cold of the shop’s air-conditioning.

  When was the last time she’d gone on a tropical vacation?

  Years ago. Six, to be exact. When she’d gone to that island with SondraBeth Schnowzer. And Doug Stone had turned up.

  Water under the bridge, Pandy thought as she opened the tub drain and watched the dirty water disappear.

  What wasn’t disappearing, however, was her hangover. She searched for aspirin and, finding none, realized she was going to have to venture outside.

  * * *

  Exiting her building, Pandy stood on the sidewalk looking up and down the street. She caught a whiff of cotton candy, meaning the San Geronimo festival was in full swing. Continuing down Mercer Street, Pandy skirted a large patch of dirt from the never-ending construction of a nearby building. It had been under construction for so long, Pandy could remember making out with a guy in front of it when she’d first bought her loft and had yet to meet Jonny.

  Belascue. That was the guy’s name. He was an artist; a painter. He’d been really good, too.

  If only she’d ended up with Belascue instead of Jonny, she thought. But this fantasy was short-lived. When she’d finally had sex with Belascue, he’d freaked out and said he didn’t want to have a relationship. Now, at age forty-nine, she’d heard he still didn’t have a proper girlfriend.

  Thank God she’d never gotten too involved with Belascue. This reminder—of having dodged at least one bullet from her past—gave Pandy renewed hope. Enough to encourage her to head down the deserted street.

  Wandering past the still-darkened shop windows, Pandy realized it was not yet ten a.m. If she were still writing, the hour wouldn’t have mattered. Other than the fact that she always felt like there wasn’t enough of it, when she was writing, time wasn’t relevant.

  But now that she’d finished her book, once again, time mattered. And the problem with time was that you had to do things with it.

  She went into the pharmacy, bought a large bottle of Advil, and wondered if she ought to stop by her bank to begin the process of getting Jonny his check. How did that even work? Could you write out a personal check for such a large amount?

  At the thought of the amount—seven figures—her stomach heaved, bringing up a rancid trickle of bile. What she could do with that money! The divorce settlement was twice the cost of Suzette’s ring; enough to buy a twenty-carat diamond instead. Possibly even a pink one. She could have the biggest pink diamond ring in all of New York City for the amount she was going to have to pay Jonny to be rid of him at last.

  Pandy grimaced. Best not to think about it.

  She strolled to the newsstand, where Kenny, the proprietor, was counting money behind a Plexiglas barrier. He grinned, exp
osing a gold tooth. “You’re back,” he said.

  “Oh. I’ve been—” Pandy broke off, not sure how to explain the months that had disappeared while she’d been writing.

  “I got the brand-new magazines. Hot gossip. Just came in this morning.”

  Pandy nodded automatically. “That’s great.” And then remembering why she was at the newsstand in the first place—Jonny, his check, a massive hangover, all adding up to stress—she mumbled, “I’ll take a pack of Marlboro Lights.”

  “You smoking again?” Kenny exclaimed.

  “Only today.”

  “One of those days, huh?” he asked.

  Pandy nodded again, feeling an ache from the nasty bump on the back of her head. When Kenny turned away to get the cigarettes, she glanced down at the magazines. Besides Vogue and Elle, SondraBeth Schnowzer had made the covers of three tabloids. They were all proclaiming she’d been dumped again, this time by her latest love interest, a handsome French model. SondraBeth’s romantic transgressions were listed in bullet points on the side of her head: Spends all her time working; obsessed with her strict schedule; and worst of all: Has no friends. “Here you go,” Kenny said, beaming, as he handed her the cigarettes.

  Pandy walked half a block before she stopped to light one. She looked up to find that she was standing smack in front of the former entrance to Joules. There was the bamboo curtain, now reduced to a few pieces of dirty string; behind it, the long and treacherous walk down the narrow alley and then down damp cellar stairs into what had once been the most fabulous nightclub in the world.

  For a moment, Pandy could literally smell it.

  That smell. It hit you as soon as you entered Joules Place. The odor of money. And drugs. The harsh metallic scent of a million chemicals in a million deals in a million grams of cocaine. The sweet-sour stink of tobacco and marijuana smoke absorbed into the walls and the carpets. The aroma that brought back a million memories, a million conversations, a million hopes and desires; the belief that maybe this time the meaning of life would be found at the end of a straw.

  And flash: There was Joules himself to welcome you in his navy-blue blazer and cravat. Genuine Eurotrash, a true aristocrat whose father had left Joules his title and his pile of debts.