Killing Monica

“The mayor’s party? When I was invited and you weren’t?”

“I guess Doug told you,” Pandy said. “Well, so what? Maybe I was jealous. But that doesn’t mean you’re entitled to steal my guy.”

“Of course not,” SondraBeth sneered. “Because as usual, you, PJ Wallis, are a far better person than I am. Because you grew up with all the manners.”

“Not this again,” Pandy said warningly.

“Listen, I made a mistake,” SondraBeth said. “I honestly didn’t think you’d be that angry about it. You said that you were done with him. I thought you felt the way I did. Like he was kind of a PandaBeth toy.”

“What?” Pandy screeched.

“Oh, calm down, Peege,” SondraBeth said. “I’m joking. Haven’t you learned to stop being such an idealist? Surely you know that these kinds of things happen in life. You just hate it when they happen to you. Anyway, I was never in love with Doug.”

“I thought you two were supposed to be soul mates,” Pandy sneered.

“Well, I found out pretty quickly that we weren’t,” SondraBeth said, marching back into the bedroom as Pandy followed her. “Especially when I discovered that my so-called soul mate was fucking everything, everywhere, and everyone was covering up for him. And then, it was too late. It was all over the tabloids that we were together. And then you went and married Jonny.”

Pandy frowned. “What’s that got to do with it?”

“Nothing,” SondraBeth said, leaning back on the bed. “It’s just that when you and Jonny got married, the studio decided it would be a great idea if Monica got married as well.”

“Are you saying your getting engaged to Doug was the studio’s idea?”

“Did you think it was mine?” SondraBeth asked.

“Why didn’t you say no?”

“Because I liked having sex with him, and it was good publicity. For Monica. In fact, I almost went along with it—for Monica. But in the end, I couldn’t do it. I didn’t love him, and I couldn’t go through with that much of a lie.

“Why did Monica have to get married, anyway?” SondraBeth continued in exasperation. “What happened to the old PJ Wallis? The PJ who said Monica would never get married, because she’d never get married.”

Pandy winced. “I fell in love, I guess. And now, because of Jonny and his debts, I have to write another Monica book. And now that I’m divorced, Monica is going to have to get divorced, too. And then she’s going to have to try online dating.”

“Dating again? She’s forty-five, for Christ’s sake,” SondraBeth said. “How much more of her life does she have to devote to dating? The woman who plays her certainly doesn’t have time to date. She doesn’t even have time to pick her teeth with a toothpick.”

“I fucked up. Okay?” Pandy snapped.

“How?”

“I can’t say,” Pandy said between gritted teeth.

“What did you do?” SondraBeth demanded.

“Something incredibly stupid.” Pandy glared. “I never made Jonny sign a prenup, and then I gave him hundreds of thousands of dollars for his restaurant in Vegas. And now I’m broke and will probably have to sell my loft and write a million more Monica books.”

“Why did you give him all your money?” SondraBeth said as Pandy began to cry.

“I knew I shouldn’t have, but I felt guilty,” Pandy sobbed. “Because my career was going great, and Jonny’s…well, it should have been going great, and he was acting like it was going great, but it wasn’t. He was losing money. And then, when he couldn’t pay it back, I was forced to write another Monica book. And then Monica had to get married, and now she’ll have to get divorced…” She hiccuped as she glanced at the TV, which was running the news loop of PJ Wallis’s death again. “Or worse. Maybe now that I’m dead, Monica will have to die, too.”

“So this is all Jonny’s fault.”

“And now I still can’t do anything about Jonny. Because I’m not dead,” Pandy said, shaking her fist at the screen.

SondraBeth looked at the monitor and back at Pandy.

And then she got that look in her eye.

“Peege,” she said in that familiar wheedling tone of voice that had been the beginning of so many misadventures. “You don’t know how badly the union guys want to teach Jonny a lesson.”