“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.
“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 S
ondr
aBeth’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 moved to New York City, Pandy welcomed her real, live Monica with open arms.
T
HAT 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.
Besides her hardscrabble background, Pandy discovered a few more things about her real-life Monica. Interestingly, these were the kinds of things that Monica herself never would have experienced firsthand.
Such as: SondraBeth had dated a heroin addict. Her most recent ex, she explained, was a well-known actor with a nasty habit on the side. “I thought he was the love of my life, but then I found out he loved his heroin more than he loved me. You know your life is pretty bad when you can’t even compete with a bag of smack.”
Pandy laughed appreciatively. Encouraged, SondraBeth continued. “He said, ‘I love you, babe, but I love my horsie more.’ That’s what he called it: ‘my horsie.’ And even then, I didn’t want to leave him. That’s how stupid I was. But my agent and manager said I had to cut all ties.” She shrugged; despite claiming she would never be a slave to the business, it seemed her agent and her manager wielded more power than most people’s parents. “They told me to stay out of LA for a while. Take something in New York. That’s why I was so desperate to play Monica.”
“I thought you were desperate to play Monica because of me,” Pandy replied, feeling surprisingly hurt.
“Of
course
I wanted to play Monica because of you,” SondraBeth quickly countered, slinging her arm over Pandy’s shoulder. “But you already know that, Peege. Monica is about you and me. Not some stupid guy.”
This had made Pandy laugh. Because no matter how hard SondraBeth tried to ignore men, they simply could not tear their eyes away from her.
Pandy had had plenty of experience with the kind of electrical sexual attraction that women of great beauty exerted on men; a few of these great beauties were her closest friends. She had seen, all too often, how even the most accomplished and intelligent man could be easily reduced to his base animal desires when presented with a gorgeous woman—not to mention the self-serving fantasy that accompanied the prospect of sex. But even the seductive arts of a great beauty paled in comparison to what SondraBeth had. Her physical perfection was coupled with enormous charisma: she un-self-consciously managed to be wildly flirtatious while still remaining “one of the guys.” Pandy figured it must be due to some kind of survival mechanism. After all, unlike her own, the success or failure of SondraBeth’s career rested in the hands of men like PP.
“Who needs a man, anyway?” SondraBeth had nevertheless declared. “It’s not like we don’t have plenty of fun without them.”
This, Pandy did agree with. They
did
have plenty of fun. Too much fun in the eyes of some, as she would soon discover.
* * *
“Hey, hey, hey.” It was a Thursday afternoon in late July, hot as hell. Coming through the phone line, SondraBeth’s husky voice sent prickles of electricity down Pandy’s spine. “Whatcha doin’, sista?”
“I’m bored as hell, sista,” Pandy replied with giggle.
“Let’s get out of Dodge.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“How?” Pandy asked. “You wrangle some poor man’s limo?”
“Betta, Peege.” They’d spent enough time together to develop their own silly secret lingo. “I got wheels.”
“Pick me up.”
“You got it, baby.”
Half an hour later, there was a terrific honking on the street outside Pandy’s building. She leaned out the window to see SondraBeth getting out of a small, shiny black car, waving like a game show contestant.
Pandy grabbed her overnight bag and ran downstairs.
“What the hell?” she asked breathlessly, staring in awe at the brand-new car. It was only a Volkswagen Jetta, but to Pandy, who’d never owned a car, it might as well have been a Bentley.
“How’d you get it?”
SondraBeth tapped the palm of one hand with the back of the other. “Cold hard cash. I went to the dealership on Fifty-Seventh Street and bought this baby right off the floor. Thanks to
you
, baby.” She pointed at Pandy. “I just got my first check.”
“Nice.”
“Get in.” SondraBeth opened the passenger door for Pandy. “Inhale that new car smell.” SondraBeth got behind the wheel, adjusting the mirrors.
“Where are we headed?” Pandy asked.
“I’m sick of the Hamptons. Too many goddamned journalists, even on the beach. How about Martha’s Vineyard?”
“The Vineyard?” Pandy shrieked. “But it’s a five-hour drive to the ferry.”
“So?”
“Five hours in a
car
?”
“That’s nothing. Back in Montana, you have to drive five hours to get to a supermarket.” SondraBeth expertly steered the car into a tiny opening between a bus and a van. “Besides, it might be a good idea if we’re not seen together in public for a couple of days.”
“Are you breaking up with me?” Pandy chortled.
“Hardly.” SondraBeth reached into the backseat and dropped the
New York Post
onto Pandy’s lap. In the top corner was a blurry color photograph of Pandy, mouth wide open as she screamed into a mike.
PANDABETH STRIKES AGAIN
, read the caption.
“So?” Pandy said, pleased she’d made the cover.
“So read the story,” SondraBeth said ominously. “PP certainly did.”
“PP?” Pandy asked, aghast, as she quickly flipped the grimy pages to Page Six.
“The devilish duo known as PandaBeth caused Panda-monium at Joules on Tuesday night when they took to the stage to belt out their own rendition of ‘I Kissed a Girl,’” Pandy read aloud. She scanned the rest of the story, emitted a short, unimpressed laugh, and tossed the paper onto the backseat. “That’s nothing.”
“Of course it’s nothing. But…” SondraBeth frowned.
“What?” Pandy demanded.
SondraBeth shrugged. “It’s just that I got a call from my agent. According to him, PP says you’re in the papers too much. And not in a good way.”
“Me?” Pandy laughed, outraged. “What about
you
?”
“I’m not as famous as you are, Peege. Anyway,” she continued, honking her horn at a pedestrian trying to cross against the light, “don’t get huffy. He’s mad at me, too.”
“About what?” Pandy said, outraged.
“About my sticky fingers.”
“I see,” Pandy replied knowingly as she leaned back and crossed her arms. She was all too familiar with SondraBeth’s habit of picking up things that didn’t belong to her, with the sort of careless impunity that implied she simply didn’t know better.
“Come on, Peege,” SondraBeth whined. “You know how it is. I borrowed from the wardrobe department a couple of times. I
have
to. Everyone expects me to look a certain way, but no one seems to understand that I can’t actually
afford
to look that way. And, okay, maybe the clothes didn’t come back perfect. But it’s not my fault if I fall down every now and again. I’ve never had to walk in high heels on a goddamned sidewalk before.” She swerved sharply to avoid hitting a taxi that had suddenly stopped to disgorge a passenger.
“Fuck PP. He’s toast!” Pandy declared, slamming her hand on the dashboard for emphasis. “How dare a man who calls himself Pee-Pee tell
us
what to do?”
They laughed the whole way through the long, long drive up the coast, stopping for fried clams and Bloody Marys, screaming profanities out the windows at other drivers—“Asshat!” “Ass
wipe
!”—and even talking their way out of a speeding ticket.
They were drunk by the time they got on the ferry, and drunker and high when they got off. In the middle of the ferry ride, SondraBeth had pulled Pandy into the stinking stall in the ladies’ room. SondraBeth shoved her hand down her bra and pulled out a small envelope of cocaine. “Stole it from Joules himself the other night,” she said, handing Pandy the package and a set of keys. “It’s melting…it’s melting… ,” she opined, like the Wicked Witch of the West.
“It’s your goddamned body heat,” Pandy said, dipping the key into the powder and taking a hit. “You’re just tooooooooo hot!”
“And don’t I know it.”
Full of themselves, they strolled through the packs of tourists in the lounge. It was their first time together away from the axis of LA and New York, and Pandy discovered yet another thing about SondraBeth: She had a disconcerting way of getting friendly with strangers. Which she immediately began doing the moment they entered the bar at the front of the ferry.
“Hello,” she said brightly to the bartender as she plopped onto a stool. “What’s your name?”
“Huh?” The bartender’s head jerked up.
“I’m SondraBeth,” she said, leaning over the counter. “And this,” she added with a flourish, “is PJ Wallis.”
The bartender, an old guy with a creased face who looked like he couldn’t deal with one more drunk tourist, took a good look at SondraBeth. He wiped his hands on a cloth and suddenly beamed, causing the skin on his face to shatter into a million wrinkles.
“You don’t say,” he said, glancing quickly at Pandy and back to SondraBeth.
“PJ
Wallis
,” SondraBeth repeated. When the bartender only cocked his head in inquiry, she hissed, “She’s
famous
.”
Before Pandy could intervene, SondraBeth was telling the bartender—along with several other passengers, all of whom were men—about how Pandy had “discovered” her in a hair salon in LA and had brought her to New York to be the star of the movie version of
Monica
.
* * *
They got the last room at one of the big inns on the bay in Edgartown.
They spent the first night holed up in their room, sprawled on the king-sized bed, ordering vodka cranberries from the curious and yet seemingly amused staff. As the TV blared in the background, they snorted up the rest of the first gram, and then another that SondraBeth had hidden in her suitcase. “Did I ever tell you the story about the Little Chicken Ranch?” SondraBeth asked.
“No,” Pandy said, laughing. She figured SondraBeth was talking nonsense.
“I’m serious. And you can’t ever tell
anyone
. It could ruin my career.”
“I promise,” Pandy said.
“Well.” SondraBeth took a deep breath, got off the bed, and pulled back the curtain. The view was of the Dumpsters behind the kitchen, which was why the room had been available. “Remember how I told you I grew up on a cattle ranch? Well, I
did
, but I ran away when I was sixteen.”
“You did?” Pandy asked in awe. She’d never met anyone who had actually run away from home before.
“I
had
to,” SondraBeth said, nodding as she tipped more powder onto the top of the shiny wooden bureau. “Once my boobs came in—well, let’s just say those ranch hands got a little too grabby.” She looked at the coke, then picked up a cigarette instead. “My father didn’t do a thing—he’d always said he wished I’d been a boy—and my mother…” SondraBeth paused as she lit up the cigarette. “She was basically checked out.” She inhaled deeply and passed the cigarette over to Pandy. “So I split,” she said as she exhaled. “I’d heard about this place where they’d help you—but they were Jesus freaks, so I went and worked at this strip club called the Little Chicken Ranch instead.”
“What? You ran away
and
you were a stripper?”
SondraBeth looked back at the line of coke. “Hello? That’s what usually happens to runaway girls. They become strippers. Or worse.”
“Oh, jeez,” Pandy said as she picked up the straw, trying to digest this information. “I’m
sorry
,” she added, wiping the sticky residue from beneath her nostrils.
“Best way to make money in a pinch,” SondraBeth said, leaning over to take another line. “But it gave me an advantage, that’s for sure. It made me realize how incredibly stupid men are. They’re worse than animals—most animals have more respect for each other than most men have for women. But what the fuck, right? I didn’t make the world; I just have to live in it. And then I got lucky—some guy saw me and said I should be a model. But the fact is, if I had to sell my body to survive, I would,” she said fiercely, handing Pandy the straw.
And suddenly, Pandy understood. SondraBeth was an angry girl, too.