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“It’s just that he seems like a real crazy person. Like an actually insane, psychologically challenged kind of person,” Judy said.
“Well, he is. Wouldn’t you say so, PP? After all, you were friends with him,” SondraBeth said smugly.
“I wasn’t exactly friends with him,” PP said. “We were friendly. I was just doing business with him, that’s all. Trying to make some money.”
“And how’d that work out for you?” Pandy asked snidely.
SondraBeth snickered under her breath. “Exactly.”
“Frankly, if you were any kind of man at all, I’d think you’d want to punch the fucker,” Pandy said, just loud enough so that SondraBeth could hear and PP probably couldn’t.
“Har har har,” SondraBeth laughed loudly. Dressed in her full Monica regalia, she could barely turn her head. She was so decorated with hairpieces and layers of Spanx and silicone cutlets that she might as well have been a marquess in the court of Louis XIV. “Hellenor didn’t mean that,” she added. “She’s totally against violence. As we all are.”
She shot Pandy a warning look. “In any case, I’m sure karma will get Jonny. No one can escape from it.”
“Actually, it’s the tax man,” Pandy said. “No one can escape from the tax man.”
“Which reminds me,” PP said, scrolling through his device. “Thanks to that little stunt you two pulled this morning—that rolling-in-the-mud thing—you’re going to have to be sure to emphasize that Monica is very much alive.”
“Of course she’s alive,” SondraBeth tittered. “Why would anyone think she wasn’t?”
“The Instaverse is claiming that when you rolled in the mud, you said, ‘I buried Monica.’”
“What? Like John Lennon and the White Album?” Pandy snorted derisively.
“‘I buried Paul.’ Very good, Hellenor,” PP said approvingly. “Maybe you can be a studio head someday.” He turned back to SondraBeth. “When you give Hellenor the award, be sure to state specifically that Monica is alive.”
“She is alive. She lives!” SondraBeth called back to Pandy jokingly.
The light turned green and the car starte
d forward with a jerk.
“Ow.” Pandy touched the bump on the back of her bald head and winced.
* * *
Twenty minutes later, the SUV was at last pulling in through the gates of Chelsea Piers. After being stopped by several guards, they were told to wait. The event didn’t begin for another hour, but there were already hundreds of photographers on the bleachers along the carpet, sitting like Hitchcock’s black crows on the telephone wires outside the children’s school. Cordoned off behind metal barricades was a bigger mob of fans, some, Pandy noted, with plastic champagne glasses strapped to their heads.
This was going to be interesting.
Eager for a glimpse of Monica, a splinter group had broken through the barricades and was now approaching the car.
Sensing danger, the bodyguard got out and stood with his arms crossed in front of SondraBeth’s door.
“What do we do now?” Pandy asked.
“Wait,” SondraBeth said.
“For what?”
“For someone to come and get us.”
Pandy looked out the window and grimaced. The group was now surrounding the car. A face was squished up against her window for a second before it was swept away by the bodyguard. Pandy almost thought she’d imagined it, but for the greasy smudge left on the glass.
The horizon began tilting as Pandy started to feel the beginnings of a panic attack. Big crowds scared her; she always imagined being trampled.
“Hellenor? Are you all right?” SondraBeth’s voice seemed to be coming from too far away.
