“That’s not how these things work.” Jonny smiled at her like she was an adorable nitwit.
“How’s the book coming?” Henry asked again two weeks later.
“I’m thinking a change of scenery might help,” Pandy said, feeling guilty.
“Good idea. Why don’t you go to Wallis? Work undisturbed for a bit,” Henry said. Her childhood home was completely isolated.
“But then I couldn’t see Jonny every day!” she protested. “I was thinking more of LA. What do they call those pointy trees that are everywhere?”
“Cypress trees?”
“Yes. The cypress trees. I find them very inspiring. They always remind me of Joan Didion.”
Closing her ears to Henry’s protests, she flew off to LA with Jonny. They stayed at the Chateau Marmont, “in Monica’s new favorite room,” the desk clerk said, waving the key on its scarlet tassel as he led them down the brown-carpeted hallway to number 29. It held a white baby grand piano, and Jonny turned out to be a man who could play a little.
They had a ball, with Pandy staging intimate champagne evenings with her Hollywood pals during which Jonny played show tunes and everyone else sang.
And then, having heard they were in town, Peter Pepper himself called.
Pandy was shocked, but then pleasantly surprised when it turned out that PP was a huge fan of Jonny’s. A dinner for four was arranged on the terrace at the Chateau; PP was bringing his girlfriend. What was decidedly less pleasant was her identity: Lala Grinada.
Pandy couldn’t believe it. Lala, the very same actress who’d tried to steal Doug Stone to get even.
This, Pandy decided, was going to be interesting.
Naturally, Jonny and PP—who knew nothing of this history and would have dismissed it as stupid girl stuff if they had—got on like a house on fire. They had tennis, golf, and cigars in common. They had other men in common, guys with names like Sonny Bats and Tony Hammer. Pandy and Lala, meanwhile, had both nothing and too much in common.
SondraBeth was right about one thing, though: Lala was a snob. She and Pandy managed to studiously ignore each other throughout the entire dinner. It was an old British girls’ boarding school trick, and Pandy knew it well. Indeed, she might have managed to avoid talking to Lala at all if Jonny hadn’t gotten up to go to the bathroom, leaving her alone with the other two.
Since PP couldn’t be bothered to make conversation, he nudged Lala to speak. Lala wobbled her head on the stalk of her neck and said, “I’ve always thought Jonny was just gorgeous,” which meant something entirely different in British than it did in American.
Pandy smiled coldly. “Have you?”
And then, of course, she and Jonny ended up having their first fight.
Over Lala, naturally. Pandy was sure he’d begun flirting with Lala when he’d returned to the table. In the elevator going back to their room, she passionately informed him that if she ever saw him flirting with another woman again—well, he’d better watch out.
Then Jonny apologized and they had mind-blowing sex on the terrace, where it was just possible that other guests might have caught a peek.
And if they had? They would have been “envious,” Jonny said.
Afterward, back in bed and cuddled into the down pillows, Jonny kissed the top of her head. “We don’t ever have to see PP and Lala again if you don’t want to.” He yawned and rolled over. “They’re silly people anyway. They’re not real. Not like we are, babe.”
“No, they’re not,” she agreed, curving herself behind him and stroking the striated muscles of his shoulder.
She loved him so much then.
* * *
They returned to New York and got back to work. And this time, it really felt like they were partners on the same track. By nine a.m., they were both up and ready to go. She with her Earl Grey tea with lemon, seated in front of the computer, ready to begin another day with Monica; he with his protein drink and Nike warm-up pants, preparing to head to the gym.
Monica was rolling along at last. Nevertheless, Pandy felt a vague frustration. Marriage, she believed, had grounded and deepened her, and she wanted her work to reflect this as well.
“Of course I want this to be the best Monica book ever. But there’s so much else I can write,” she said one night when they were in the kitchen and Jonny was cooking.
“Is there?” Jonny asked as he rinsed some asparagus.
She explained how she’d always wanted to be taken seriously, to be considered a “literary writer.”