Pandy was outwardly thrilled. But secretly, she was nervous. For she’d learned another thing about Jonny: He had far less money than she’d imagined. He had to take the money he earned and put it back into his restaurants. Adding another money-gobbling venture to what was already in the red didn’t seem like a good idea. But what did she know?
Instead of confronting him directly about it, she found herself pouting and then claiming to be angry that he’d “lied,” at least about PP. Hadn’t he sworn he was never going to talk to PP again?
Jonny pointed out that he’d never said he would never talk to PP again. He’d said Pandy didn’t have to if she didn’t want to. And there she went, being all emotional about business again. Which was the very reason he hadn’t told her about the one or two occasions when PP had been in New York and he and Jonny had gotten together.
While it disturbed her that her husband was having secret meetings with the head of the studio that produced Monica, she couldn’t exactly object. Especially when Jonny reminded her that she was the one who had introduced Jonny to PP in the first place.
On another night, a couple of weeks later, when they were again enjoying their enormous new kitchen, she once again tried to explain. “It’s just that…” She faltered, trying to find a way to express her feelings of dismay. “I guess I’m a little hurt. I thought we were a team. I thought we were supposed to be doing things together.”
“But we are!” Jonny beamed. He swung a stool around and motioned for her to sit. He took her hand. “I want you as my partner,” he exclaimed, as if they’d discussed this before.
“Your partner?” Pandy was confused.
“In the restaurant!” Jonny crowed proudly. “You’ve been a great partner in marriage, so I want to make you a partner in the business as well.”
“Really?” Pandy sat back, knowing Jonny expected her to be excited, but unable to push down a slight feeling of dread. “What does that even mean? What would I have to do?” At that point, she was up against her Monica deadline and desperately needed to finish. She didn’t have time to get involved in some restaurant in Vegas.
“That’s the beauty of it,” Jonny said, smiling. “You don’t have to do anything. All you have to do is write a check.”
“But—”
“You and I will be fifty-fifty partners. Together, we’ll own thirty percent. I have four other investors lined up for the other seventy percent; guys in Vegas that the LA guy hooked me up with. But you and I will be the majority. We’ll each get fifteen percent of the profits. Look,” he said, scribbling numbers on a piece of paper.
Pandy put her hand over his to stop him.
“It’s okay. I understand the numbers,” she said.
For days, she was horribly uneasy. She’d always had an anxious relationship with money. She loved beautiful things, but felt guilty every time she splurged, so she didn’t splurge often. When she was growing up in Wallis, money wasn’t mentioned, except in the negative and oft-repeated phrase, “We can’t afford it.” And the reality was, they couldn’t. So when money did happen to come along, it was supposed to be saved for the proverbial rainy day.
She wished she could have talked to Henry about her dilemma, but she already knew what he would say: Don’t do it.
But if she didn’t do it, what would Jonny do? Would he leave her?
She decided to put off her decision until she’d at least gone with Jonny to Vegas to look at the space.
And so, despite her Monica deadline, and without telling Henry, she snuck off with Jonny to Vegas three days later. The potential restaurant space was located in a major casino, where she and Jonny stayed in the Joker Suite, which contained a fountain that could be turned into a Jacuzzi. They met up with a couple of pasty-faced men in gray suits, one of whom had known Jonny for years.
This man revealed to Pandy that before he’d gotten married, Jonny had been known as a bit of a gambler.
Please, no, Pandy thought. Gambling made her want to cry.
She wanted to cry when she saw the same sad, chain-smoking women at the slot machines at midnight and then again at eight the next morning. The glitz and glamour and the celebrities were great, but it was on the backs of women like these that Vegas wealth was built. It was all those little dollars from those little old ladies who should have known better. And while Pandy would remind herself that every vice, including gambling, was considered a choice, it still somehow didn’t seem fair.
And it would turn out that, like those little old ladies at the slot machines, she, too, “should have known better.”
Instead, she wrote out a check for two hundred thousand dollars. Nevertheless, before she handed it to Jonny, she did scold him about how, at this rate, her advance would be gone before she’d even finished the third Monica book. This was a one-time thing, she insisted, and she wouldn’t be able to do it again. After all, she had only been paid a quarter of her advance so far, and wouldn’t get another quarter until she completed the book.
Jonny laughed this off, but pointedly tiptoed around her for the next three weeks so she could finish the manuscript.
Which she did. Receiving the check two weeks later.
And once again, Jonny was the loving, affectionate, caring man she thought she’d married, surprising her with a pair of one-carat diamond earrings to celebrate, along with a piece of astounding news: Architectural Digest wanted to photograph their loft. They wanted to do a ten-page spread, featuring Pandy and Jonny as the perfect example of a modern New York couple. The issue would come out on Valentine’s Day.
It was all so very Monica again, especially as the other Monica—SondraBeth Schnowzer—and the so-called love of her life, Doug Stone, had managed to become first engaged and then disengaged in the past nine months.
Pandy had barely noticed.
The shoot took two days. The photographer got playful photos of her and Jonny feeding each other in the kitchen, and even an adorable shot of the two of them in bed, peeking over the covers at each other. “When I first heard about you guys getting married, I didn’t believe it was real,” the photographer remarked. “But now that I’ve seen you together, it’s obvious you really are in love.”
“Yes,” Jonny said. And turning to Pandy, he gave her that special look.
“We’re lucky,” Pandy said with a confident sigh.
But she didn’t feel so lucky a few days later when her editor called with the corrections on Monica. Her editor suggested that since Pandy was married, maybe it was time for Monica to get married as well.
Pandy lost it.
“No. I will not allow Monica to get married!” she told her editor over the phone. “It makes Monica seem weak. Like she has to do what every other woman does. Like she has to give in to convention.”
Undeterred, her editor pointed out that she was now married.
“Yes, I suppose I am,” Pandy grumbled. “But Monica doesn’t have to do everything I do. Monica is not me. She’s a beacon of singlehood for all the women out there who will always be single, and who have fought honorably for their single lives. Meaning they have the right to be accepted and left alone, instead of being constantly hunted down and tortured with all this marriage crap.” She hung up in disgust to find Jonny standing behind her.