“Why doesn’t that surprise me?” SondraBeth stuck her head out, emitted a loud “HA!” and slammed the door shut behind her.
Pandy went into the kitchen. She took PP’s bottle from the refrigerator and carried it and two glasses out to the terrace, placing them on a filigreed metal table with an umbrella poking out of the top.
“Hey!” SondraBeth reappeared, rubbing her face with a hand towel. She walked toward Pandy, a ray of sunlight illuminating the reddish freckles marching across the bridge of her nose like ants. “Sorry for using the bathroom. It’s just that I didn’t get a chance to take my makeup off.” She laughed and carelessly dropped the towel onto an empty seat. “I left a shoot early so I could get to meet you.”
“Oh.” This, Pandy wasn’t expecting. “You didn’t have to do that.”
“Oh, yes I did.” SondraBeth raised her glass of champagne. “To meeting you. Fuck Hollywood.”
Pandy laughed and sat down. “Is it really that bad?”
SondraBeth hooted, plopping into the chair next to Pandy and resting her boots on the table. “It’s just like in the movies,” she said with a sneer.
“How do you know PP, anyway?” Pandy asked casually.
“You mean…” SondraBeth leaned back in her chair, and suddenly she was PP, right down to the way he yawned ever so slightly before he dropped his arms from behind his head.
“You mean that PP?” she asked.
“How do you do that?” Pandy cooed with appropriate awe.
SondraBeth shrugged. “I can imitate anyone. Always could, ever since I was a kid. When you grow up on a cattle ranch in Montana—” She broke off and chuckled, waggling her fingers at Pandy. “For a while, I actually wanted to be a stand-up comic. Like Ellen. Can you believe it?” She raised her eyebrows, as if this idea was now impossible to contemplate. “But then I discovered it’s a helluva lot easier to stand in front of a camera, where all anyone wants you to do is look ‘purty.’ Besides, the first thing you learn as a woman when you come to Hollywood is that you’ve got to choose: pretty or funny. Because no one will let you be both.”
“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 SondraBeth’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.”