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Pandy screamed. And then something came over her. She didn’t want to die. Not like this. Seizing SondraBeth’s arm, she lowered her head and twisted forward and out like a corkscrew, until, with a mighty push, she broke through the pack.
They emerged into more chaos: sirens and the pounding whoop, whoop, whoop of emergency vehicles. “Step away from the entrance!” blasted through a loudspeaker. Cops and firemen were running into the crowd. The driveway was clogged with vans and town cars; the SUV that had brought them here was nowhere in sight. Up ahead, two men were trying to close the gate in the chain-link fence.
“Run!” Pandy shouted.
Her legs, supported only by the cruelly curved heels of the red booties, felt like she was running on matchsticks.
CHAPTER TWENTY
WATER. I need water!” Pandy gasped minutes later, lurching after SondraBeth. They were in one of those new parks that had seemingly sprung up overnight on the Hudson River. “What the fuck?” Pandy said, slowing down to a laborious clop.
She looked around. The grass was fresh and clean, as were the hard plastic forms molded into table and chair configurations. Lowering herself onto her hands and knees, she attempted to crawl across the grass to the chair forms, but gave up halfway and flopped down on her stomach instead.
“I need water,” she groaned.
SondraBeth was standing above her, the top of the burka pulled back from her head like a priestess’s robe. “We did it!” she shouted.
“We did?” Pandy sat up.
“We killed Monica!”
“Are you sure?” Pandy asked. The knob of pain on the back of her head was pulsating again, as if it had a life of its own.
“Give me my phone,” SondraBeth commanded.
Pandy struggled to her feet and reached into her front pocket. “Water?” she asked, holding out the phone in exchange for information.
“Drinking fountain—that way,” SondraBeth said, grabbing the device and pointing in the direction of the Hudson.
“What the hell just happened back there?” Pandy asked, making her way to the fountain. “The audience was loving us. And then you said Monica was dead…and all of a sudden they went wild. We could have been killed back there.”
Pandy pressed the button on the stand. The fact that water came out at all felt like a small miracle. She drank thirstily.
Directly ahead was the Hudson: a sparkling expanse of greenish brown. On the other side were the gleaming high-rises of Hoboken. It was a warm enough day for a large sailboat to be making its way down the river, skimming over the wake of the clanging Circle Line ferry, its passengers arranged like wooden toy people in the top. Then one helicopter passed overhead, while another rose up from behind the George Washington Bridge. Tilting forward with mechanical determination, the second one began speeding its way down the Hudson.
Pandy turned back to SondraBeth. “It’s a good thing we’re really not killing Monica. I don’t think either one of us could survive the bad news.” She patted her face with Mother Teresa’s head scarf. “Was that supposed to happen?”
“What?” SondraBeth asked, not looking up from the device.
“That mayhem,” Pandy said as the helicopter flitted down to Chelsea Piers and then turned around, heading back in their direction.
“I hope you’re calling Judy,” Pandy said anxiously, hurrying to SondraBeth’s side.
“Judy knows where we are,” SondraBeth said distractedly. “The phone has a tracking device.”
“Then what are you doing?” Pandy demanded.
“I’m checking the Instalife feed.” SondraBeth grinned wickedly as she read the headlines aloud: “‘Real-Life Monica Missing: Possibility of Foul Play’…‘Is Monica a Feminist?’…and wait for it…” She held up her hand. “Here it is: ‘Monica Declared Dead!’”
She held the phone out to Pandy. There was the classic shot of Monica striding over the skyline of Manhattan, but someone had cleverly drawn a coffin around her. And for the first time in her life, Monica didn’t look so happy.
“Ding-dong, the witch is dead! The wicked old witch. The Monica witch,” SondraBeth sang out.
Pandy frowned and handed the device back to SondraBeth. “Do you have to be that happy about it?” she asked, sitting down to loosen the laces of the booties.
“What do you mean?” SondraBeth asked.
“I don’t know. Monica is dead. I sort of feel like we should be sadder.”
