Killing Monica Read online

  Roger shrugged and gave an exaggerated smirk. And in that moment, Pandy’s heart sank. She suddenly understood that this so-called meeting with SondraBeth Schnowzer was merely an indulgence, the studio’s way of making the author of the book feel special. When the meeting led nowhere—as they apparently suspected it would—the studio would go back to doing whatever it was they planned to do from the beginning. They would do it with impunity, and they wouldn’t think twice about doing it without her.

  As Pandy got into the elevator, she decided that wasn’t going to happen.

  * * *

  The salon was in a small shopping center on Sunset, a few blocks from the hotel. When the car pulled up, Pandy spotted SondraBeth on the sidewalk, head bent over cupped hands.

  She was lighting a cigarette.

  She was wearing a fringed suede jacket that looked expensive, possibly Ralph Lauren.

  She had on a pair of men’s pea-green trousers. She’d rolled the waist down to reveal the silver-gray lining and the tops of her hip bones.

  As Pandy got out of the car, SondraBeth glanced over hopefully. She was still looking hopeful as she took in Pandy’s appearance: her long, swinging hair, stylishly short yellow skirt, and fancy black-and-white patent leather heels. A front tooth pulled back the edge of SondraBeth’s lower lip as a look of dismay crossed her face. It was quickly replaced with a grin. “Hey,” SondraBeth said, as if she, too, were in on the joke. “I’ll bet you can’t even get me this job.” She tossed her head as if it didn’t matter.

  Pandy laughed. “I’ll bet I can.”

  SondraBeth got the cigarette lit. She exhaled a stream of smoke without taking those topaz-green eyes off Pandy. She shrugged. “If you can’t, it’s not your fault. I deal with this bullshit every day.”

  “Listen,” Pandy said quickly. “I hate salons—and my hotel’s right up the street.” Sensing a skittishness on the part of The Girl, she tried to make the invitation sound casual. “I’ve got a bottle of champagne in the fridge.”

  She needn’t have worried. At the word “champagne,” SondraBeth suddenly relaxed, dropping her cigarette and grinding it under a gray-and-white snakeskin cowboy boot.

  “Now, that sounds like a plan,” SondraBeth replied eagerly. “Champagne. It’s the best offer I’ve had all day.”

  “I’m at the Chateau.”

  SondraBeth smirked. “I figured.”

  “Bungalow One,” Pandy added.

  She got back into her car. When she went to close the door, her hands were shaking.

  * * *

  “D’you mind if I wash my face?” SondraBeth asked as she entered the bungalow a few minutes later.

  “Not at all.” Pandy went into the hallway that led to the kitchen and opened the door to the powder room. “In here.”

  “I just want to wash off my makeup.” SondraBeth stepped inside the bathroom.

  “No problem.” Pandy smiled broadly as if to reassure her. “I’ll open the champagne. PP sent the bottle last night.”

  “Why doesn’t that surprise me?” SondraBeth stuck her head out, emitted a loud “HA!” and slammed the door shut behind her.

  Pandy went into the kitchen. She took PP’s bottle from the refrigerator and carried it and two glasses out to the terrace, placing them on a filigreed metal table with an umbrella poking out of the top.

  “Hey!” SondraBeth reappeared, rubbing her face with a hand towel. She walked toward Pandy, a ray of sunlight illuminating the reddish freckles marching across the bridge of her nose like ants. “Sorry for using the bathroom. It’s just that I didn’t get a chance to take my makeup off.” She laughed and carelessly dropped the towel onto an empty seat. “I left a shoot early so I could get to meet you.”

  “Oh.” This, Pandy wasn’t expecting. “You didn’t have to do that.”

  “Oh, yes I did.” SondraBeth raised her glass of champagne. “To meeting you. Fuck Hollywood.”

  Pandy laughed and sat down. “Is it really that bad?”

  SondraBeth hooted, plopping into the chair next to Pandy and resting her boots on the table. “It’s just like in the movies,” she said with a sneer.

  “How do you know PP, anyway?” Pandy asked casually.

  “You mean…” SondraBeth leaned back in her chair, and suddenly she was PP, right down to the way he yawned ever so slightly before he dropped his arms from behind his head.

  “You mean that PP?” she asked.

  “How do you do that?” Pandy cooed with appropriate awe.

  SondraBeth shrugged. “I can imitate anyone. Always could, ever since I was a kid. When you grow up on a cattle ranch in Montana—” She broke off and chuckled, waggling her fingers at Pandy. “For a while, I actually wanted to be a stand-up comic. Like Ellen. Can you believe it?” She raised her eyebrows, as if this idea was now impossible to contemplate. “But then I discovered it’s a helluva lot easier to stand in front of a camera, where all anyone wants you to do is look ‘purty.’ Besides, the first thing you learn as a woman when you come to Hollywood is that you’ve got to choose: pretty or funny. Because no one will let you be both.”

  “Wow,” Pandy said.

  “I know,” SondraBeth replied, lifting one leg and tugging on the heel of her cowboy boot. “As a matter of fact, when my agent told me that PP himself had suggested the meeting, I almost said no. I mean, why bother? Lemme put it this way—every woman under a certain age in Hollywood knows PP. You could say he’s ‘dated’ a few friends of mine. But when my agent told me I was meeting you, that changed everything.”

  She yanked off the boot and expertly tossed it through the open door and right into the kitchen sink. “I was on the girls’ basketball team. And the baseball team. I probably would have been on the football team if they would’ve let me.”

  “You don’t say,” Pandy replied admiringly. It was no wonder, she decided, that SondraBeth was having a hard time in Hollywood. It was difficult to reconcile this gorgeous creature with the tomboy attitude.

  “Anyway,” SondraBeth continued, taking off her other boot. “I didn’t mean to imply that PP is a total asshole. Unlike most of these guys in LA. At least he’s interested in making projects that are good. At least he doesn’t have to wake up in the morning and say to someone, ‘Today you are playing a vampire.’”

  Pandy laughed. “So did you sleep with him or not? And if you did, how was he?”

  SondraBeth howled as she tossed her other boot. “D’you think I’d be sitting here if I had slept with him? ’Cause he’s one of those guys who only cares about the chase. That’s why I wasn’t going to bother to come. But when I found out it was about Monica—” She suddenly jumped up, hurried into the apartment, and returned carrying a battered copy of Monica. “When I told my friend Allie I was meeting you, she freaked out. She drove all the way to the shoot to get me your book; said if I didn’t get you to sign it, she’d never talk to me again.”

  “No danger of that.” Pandy held out her hand for the book. “Of course I’ll sign it.”

  “Damn,” SondraBeth said, shaking her empty cigarette box. “I’m outta smokes.”

  “There’s a brand-new pack in the kitchen.” Pandy opened the dog-eared paperback and flipped through the pages. She noted that several passages were underlined. She looked back at SondraBeth, who was leaning into the refrigerator, assessing the contents.

  “What’s your friend’s name again?” Pandy called out.

  “Oh.” SondraBeth stood up. “You don’t have to make it out to her. Just sign it.”

  “Sure.” Pandy smiled, guessing the book actually belonged to SondraBeth.

  SondraBeth returned with two lit cigarettes, and handed one to Pandy.

  “How would you play me, anyway?” Pandy asked, leaning back on one elbow as she raised the cigarette to her mouth. She took a puff, imagining herself as Spielberg.

  “You?” SondraBeth asked. “PJ Wallis-you, or Monica-you?”

  “I’m not sure.” Pandy blew the smoke out in a plume.<
br />
  “You’re easy,” SondraBeth said, springing to her feet. Jutting out her head and adopting Pandy’s slump—a result of all those hours hunched over a computer—she began waving her cigarette. “Now look here, PP,” she said, in a close approximation of Pandy’s voice. “I’ve had enough of you and your Hollywood bullshit. From now on, I’m in charge. And I’m telling you, I want SondraBeth Schnowzer!”

  And then the pièce de résistance: She stomped her foot.

  “Oooooh.” Pandy put her hands over her face and groaned in mock horror. “Do I really look like that?”

  SondraBeth sat down and contorted herself into a pretzel. “It’s all about posture,” she said, fluttering her right arm like a wing.

  “How would you play Monica, then?”

  SondraBeth lifted her head and suddenly, there it was: the smile. The delighted grin that made you momentarily forget the frustrations of your own life; made you want to be—or at least be with—this beautiful, happy creature instead.

  “I’ve got a great idea.” SondraBeth pounded the table in glee. “Let’s have a party.”

  And then, like the legions of guests before them, Pandy and SondraBeth went a little crazy.

  Leaving the hotel, SondraBeth nearly crashed her car in the intersection; when Pandy pointed to the Liquor Locker half a block away, SondraBeth made an illegal U-turn that left them both hysterical with relieved laughter. Then, when they got back to the Chateau and opened the trunk, they were even more hysterical about the amount of alcohol they’d bought. This led to the inevitable conclusion that they must invite everyone they knew in LA to drink it.

  For Pandy, this meant mostly displaced New Yorkers: writers working for comedians, sexy magazine girls in the midst of creating “an LA office,” and a couple of disgruntled literary writers who were determined to show New York, mostly by drinking too much, that they didn’t give a shit about it. They all came, along with SondraBeth’s friends: two bona fide up-and-coming movie stars, a hot young director, more models and actors, a musician who insisted on driving his motorcycle into the suite, and a very tall transvestite. And then, like those brave marines, they kept on coming: more showbiz folks who were staying in the hotel, a few acquaintances from New York who happened to be in LA, and several film executives who had heard about the party and decided to stop by.

  At some point, Pandy remembered SondraBeth coming toward her with PP himself in tow. “Here’s Pandy,” she said. And with a glance back at PP, she hissed delightedly, “For a minute, he thought I was you.”

  Pandy woke up the next morning dramatically hung over. Her contact lenses were glued to her eyeballs; she had to feel around for the saline solution and pour half the bottle into her eyes before she could see. Once she could, she was relieved to discover that the bedding, including the duvet and the six down pillows, was mostly untouched. At first she was annoyed—apparently no one had been interested in her enough to at least try to get her into bed. Then a freight train came roaring into the tunnel that was her head.

  When the train passed, she shook her head and heard music softly wafting up the stairs. The buzzer rang, and a voice called out, “Who ordered the poached eggs?”

  Grabbing a robe from the bathroom, Pandy proceeded cautiously down the stairs.

  “There you are,” SondraBeth said, coming out of the kitchen. “Your poached eggs have arrived. I guess you must have ordered them last night.”

  Pandy stared at her blankly, unable to process what she was seeing. SondraBeth was wearing one of her dresses, which was incomprehensible, as she had to be at least two sizes larger than Pandy. Nevertheless, she’d somehow managed to squeeze herself into Pandy’s best dress, a one-of-a-kind piece that Pandy had bought at an exclusive sample sale to which only ten women had been invited. The seams under the arms were straining against the silk fabric in an effort to contain SondraBeth’s breasts.

  “Hope you don’t mind,” SondraBeth said, giving Pandy a brilliant smile. “I crashed in the second bedroom. Didn’t want to drive. That was one helluva party, sista.”

  “Yes, it certainly was,” Pandy said carefully, eyeing her dress.

  “Want some coffee?” SondraBeth raised her arm to remove a mug from an upper shelf. Terrified the seam would rip, Pandy quickly brushed past her to grab the cup.

  SondraBeth poured out coffee, and then, barely able to contain her excitement, motioned Pandy into the front room. “Want to see something crazy?” she asked, pointing at the fuzzy caterpillar couch. “Look at that.”

  Pandy immediately forgot all about her dress.

  Lying facedown was a youngish man, tanned and shirtless, a flop of dark brown hair with blond roots brushing his shoulder. Pandy inhaled sharply.

  “Doug Stone.” SondraBeth giggled. “Now there’s a guy who really knows how to live up to his name. On the other hand, he’s gorgeous, so who cares?”

  Pandy took a step closer. “He’s so gorgeous, I can barely stand to look at him.” She sighed longingly.

  SondraBeth cocked her head in surprise. “You certainly looked at him plenty last night.”

  “I did?”

  “You were making out with him. For, like, an hour. Don’t you remember?”

  Pandy thought back through the hazy snippets she could recall. “No.”

  “How could you forget a thing like that?” SondraBeth scolded. “In any case, I wouldn’t get too upset about it. He probably doesn’t remember, either.”

  “Thanks a lot,” Pandy groaned. She took another look at Doug Stone and scratched her ear. “Do you think room service knows how to remove a body?”

  SondraBeth laughed. “I’d try housekeeping instead.”

  * * *

  The next day, SondraBeth auditioned for the part of Monica in front of several people from the studio, including PP and Roger.

  Pandy didn’t go. She was nervous for SondraBeth, but mostly, she was embarrassed. During the full day it had taken her to recover, Pandy realized that no doubt everyone else would turn out to be right, and SondraBeth wouldn’t be able to act at all. And then PP would be annoyed with her for wasting his time, and SondraBeth would be devastated. Pandy would have to deal with that startled, hopeless, beaten-down expression she saw on the faces of all the actresses who’d auditioned and knew they weren’t getting the part. Pandy would have to walk SondraBeth to the door, where they would say their goodbyes and never see each other again.

  And that would be that. Recovering from the party and its aftermath—four hours of housekeeping’s cleaning the room, Doug Stone’s insistence on staying for breakfast and ordering enough room service for three people, SondraBeth asking if she could borrow Pandy’s dress for the audition, and Pandy having to come up with an excuse as to why she couldn’t—had left her feeling slightly unhinged. As if she’d inadvertently stumbled onto the set of someone else’s porn movie.

  But maybe that was just an excuse for her own nerves.

  At three o’clock, her phone bleated. It was Roger calling to let her know that SondraBeth had aced the audition, and that PP himself would be calling shortly. “She did great,” Roger informed her. “She was Monica—or rather, PJ Wallis. It was uncanny. She was exactly like you.”

  Two long minutes passed before the phone rang again.

  “PP for PJ Wallis, please,” the hushed girl-woman voice said as PP himself came on the line.

  “Congratulations,” he said briskly, as if he barely had time for the call. “I’ll see you and SondraBeth tomorrow for lunch. Jessica,” he added to his assistant, “make the arrangements.”

  Pandy hung up and sank to her knees in triumph.

  She had won.

  * * *

  She and SondraBeth had a stiff, civilized lunch with PP on the terrace under the pink-and-white striped awnings at the Hotel Bel-Air. Pandy admired the swans, and everyone behaved like adults. Pandy limited herself to one glass of champagne, and SondraBeth didn’t drink at all.

  One month later, when SondraBeth Schnowzer mov
ed to New York City, Pandy welcomed her real, live Monica with open arms.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THAT FIRST summer, Pandy and SondraBeth were inseparable. Monica was in preproduction, and Pandy was consulted on locations and costumes and a variety of surprising details she’d never considered—but mostly she was tasked with instructing SondraBeth in the ways of becoming herself, and therefore Monica.

  And so the transformation began: SondraBeth’s hair was colored to match Pandy’s by the very same stylist who did Pandy’s hair; she was given replicas of Pandy’s jewelry; she was even instructed to buy the exact same shoes that Pandy wore, in order to learn how to walk in them.

  And because pink champagne was Pandy’s, and therefore Monica’s, favorite drink, it had to become SondraBeth’s as well. Along with Pandy’s social life. And so wherever Pandy went, SondraBeth went, too. This meant going to Joules almost every night, and to basically every other kind of social event imaginable, including the Polo in Bridgehampton, where SondraBeth eagerly stomped the divots and acquired a bevy of handsome new polo-player friends.

  In general, SondraBeth was wonderfully game. She’d call Pandy into her room to solicit her opinion on what to wear, and would listen with great interest to Pandy’s precise briefings on who would be at what event and how they fit into the social strata, as if they were colored data points on a graph.

  Unlike Pandy herself, however, back then, SondraBeth never wanted to stay Monica for long.

  “I’m a country girl,” she’d say, scrubbing off her makeup with soap and changing into the loose, baggy clothing she favored when she didn’t have to be “on.” “I grew up helping the vet pull calves out of some cow’s butt. I’ve seen it all, sista, and let me tell you, it’s not all pretty.” And then she’d give Pandy a shit-eating grin, and in a voice reminiscent of Glinda the Good Witch in The Wizard of Oz, she would add, “Not like here. Not like in Monica Land.”

  Pandy had to laugh. SondraBeth wasn’t far wrong—and instead of the yellow brick road, they had miles of sidewalks, filled with glittering displays of the most glamorous life New York City had to offer.