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“But in the meantime, he’s looking for you.”
“Now listen, if you need us, we’ll be at the Pool Club right after this.”
“Hellenor!” Judy screamed from the just-opened doorway.
“I’ll leave your name at the door,” Suzette hissed.
“I gotta go,” Pandy said desperately. Her friends! How she missed them. And yes, she would meet up with them at the Pool Club afterward. After the leg thing. Where she would come back to life.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
BY ENTERING this area, you agree to be photographed and recorded. You acknowledge that your image and likeness may be distributed throughout the universe into all eternity including, but not limited to, the past, present, and future. You also acknowledge that you have no privacy, at least not by any current definition of privacy.
A dark, velvety mist, lightly perfumed—sweet lily of the valley and white clover—wafted through the air. Standard party space reconfigured into a fantasyland where women ruled. Where they made the decisions. Always the good ones. Where they celebrated each other in the way the world—meaning the men—should celebrate them, but didn’t. Meaning for their strength and their courage and their hard work and their contributions. But not, goddammit, for what the world—meaning the men—tried to tell them was their only value; namely, their beauty and their ability to bear children.
“And now, it’s time for the Woman Warrior of the Year Awards,” the announcer said.
The rest was a blur. Pandy wasn’t sure how much time passed, but the next thing she knew, she was being pushed toward the stairs by two men, who helped her up. And then, somehow, she was on the stage. Except that this time, it actually was revolving. The lazy Susan. The crossing of which required every skill, it seemed, but laziness to survive.
Like balance.
Standing with her arms out and legs slightly apart, she tried to do what the stage manager had told her to do: focus solely on what was in front of her. Namely, SondraBeth. Or rather, Monica. Turning around and around on the center of the platform, like the pretty black bride on a black wedding cake.
A spotlight lit up the path to Monica, who was beckoning, Come with me. It was just like in her dream; she and Monica were going to be together again…
Pandy took a couple of tentative steps forward and heard a smattering of kindhearted laughter from the crowd. The sound brought her back to earth. She was on a revolving platform and she was about to receive an award for her sister, PJ Wallis, because she, PJ Wallis, was dead.
She must move toward the light. Focus on what was in front of her…
She heard the crowd laughing again. She lifted her head and looked around, taking in the neo-dark audience lit up with neon flashes from a thousand silent devices. And she remembered: She was funny onstage.
She—PJ Wallis—was funny. Even PP had said she was funny. And not only that, he’d said Hellenor Wallis was funny, too. Funny was the one thing Pandy and Hellenor had in common. Remembering that she was funny made Pandy feel more confident. She could do this. She took another few steps, and once again, the crowd chuckled in encouragement. Pandy gave up on the stately approach in favor of the comedic, and SondraBeth picked up on it. She was smiling down on Pandy with her most beatific Monica grin.
“Hello, Hellenor,” she said in her rich timbre. The audience exhaled a blast of approving applause.
“Hello,” Pandy said to the crowd, holding up her palm in a stiff wave. The platform lurched. “Wow. This is like being on one of those Japanese game shows. Takeshi’s Castle,” she said.
Titters of appreciation; not everyone understood the reference. She should have named one of those network shows instead.
“Yes, it is, Hellenor,” SondraBeth said. And taking a beat to absorb the positive energy in the room, she sang out to the audience, “Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Hellenor Wallis.”
A roar. Pandy’s first impression was of how different it was to be on the receiving end. The rush of love she felt. The happiness. And all of a sudden, the statuette was in her hands.
It was surprisingly cool. Smooth and cold, like a cube of ice. And heavy. A crystal sculpture of a woman wearing armor, bow and arrow raised above her head. As if leading the charge into the future.
And then she was standing in front of the lectern.
Two words came to her: “Non serviam.” She tried to look out into the audience, but between the camera flashes and the screens, the room was now a womb of darkness. She could see only the microphones. “I will not serve. Especially not a man. Thank you.”
“Speech!” came a cry from the audience.
She turned to look back at SondraBeth, who was beaming encouragement like sunshine. Suddenly, Pandy found her footing.
“This is so unexpected,” Pandy said into the mike. She held the statuette briefly against her cheek, then carefully placed the Woman Warrior on the Plexiglas podium. As she took a deep breath and looked out at the expectant audience, she realized what SondraBeth had meant in the car about playing Monica: She was the ultimate impostor.
But every woman feels like an impostor, she reminded herself, glancing down at the statuette. Probably even the original Warrior Woman herself had. Until someone showed her she wasn’t.
And suddenly Pandy knew what she was going to say: yes.
