“Have some water,” PP said, handing her a bottle.
“It’s all the fans,” SondraBeth said, turning a quarter of the way to address PP. “I used to feel that way, too, remember? Like a fraud. I’d be in the car, my heart pounding, sweat pouring from my underarms, and I’d think, what if I get out there and they see that I’m a fraud? That I’m not really Monica? What if the crowd thinks they’re getting Monica, and discover they’re getting SondraBeth Schnowzer instead? What if—”
“They tear you limb from limb?” Pandy asked, half jokingly. The question wasn’t necessarily facetious. Another group had squeezed between the metal barricades and was now approaching the car.
Plink! A plastic champagne glass hit the rear window.
Pandy screamed.
“Check your face. That’s what I always do,” SondraBeth advised, looking in the vanity mirror.
And then the police came and shooed the crowds away, directing the driver to a guardhouse where the backstage entrance was protected by a metal gate in a chain-link fence. Pandy breathed a sigh of relief as the SUV pulled up to a loading dock that led to the backstage area. The water she’d chugged had made its way to her bladder, and now she had to pee. She sat up in anticipation of bolting from the car.
The door to the SUV swung open. SondraBeth rose slightly on bent knees and, ratcheting herself around to face the open door, assessed the situation.
“I’m going to need a ramp,” she said.
“She needs a ramp. Someone get her a ramp,” came the sound of male voices shouting from below.
Pandy sighed deeply and pushed back into her seat, squeezing her thighs together. This was annoying. SondraBeth was blocking the door. Pandy couldn’t go forward or backward until someone got that damn ramp.
This was why she hated showbiz.
“Maybe you could change your shoes?” Pandy asked, wondering how much longer she could hold out for the bathroom. “Maybe if you had on different shoes, you could get the hell out, and then we could all get the hell out.”
“No,” SondraBeth hissed angrily. “This is it. This is the outfit. I can put it on once, and then it has to stay on as is until I take the whole thing off. Get it?”
At that moment, the ramp arrived.
“Got it!” shouted a voice, and slowly, helped on either side by two burly men with shaved heads, SondraBeth inched forward onto the loading dock.
And then she unfolded, snapping open black metallic panels on her long skirt. Pandy watched, mesmerized, as she slowly raised her arms, the fabric undraping to reveal what looked like two iridescent black wings.
“Christ,” PP said, coming up behind Pandy. “She looks like a giant fly.”
Judy spoke into her headset and in the next second they were surrounded by various crew and producers and assistants. SondraBeth was led to her dressing room.
Hellenor Wallis was shown to the green room.
Bypassing the spread of fruit, candy, and sandwiches, Pandy ran to the ladies’. Just as she was pulling up her pants, there was a knock on the door. “Hellenor? It’s Judy. They need you to do press. Are you ready?”
Pandy smiled.
“I’m ready,” she said.
* * *
“Do you think when your sister sat down to write Monica, she ever in a million years imagined it would be like this?” asked one of the journalists who were clustered around Pandy in the green room.
“No, I don’t think she did. I don’t think anyone could,” Pandy said, looking, she hoped, appropriately sad.
“She would have loved it, don’t you think?” the journalist asked.
“Yes, she really would have.” Pandy’s eyes slid over to the large-screen TV, on which there was a shot of the Monica billboard, now covered in cloth and a series of ropes and pulleys. MONICA SHOE UNVEILING, read the caption.
“And what did PJ Wallis have in store for Monica? Besides her new shoe?” the journalist asked.
Pandy tore her eyes away from the image of the billboard. “The truth is, Pandy had just finished a book that wasn’t about Monica.”