“Hello, Henry.” Her voice cracked on the first word, but by the time she got out “Henry,” she had managed to infuse his name with a passable imitation of the living.
Henry wouldn’t be fooled; he was all too familiar with how she lost her voice when she’d had too much to drink. He’d warned her about it many times on book tours: “If you have a glass of wine with every blogger who wants to interview you, not only will you have consumed the equivalent of six bottles of wine, but you will also have no voice. Meaning you cannot talk. Meaning you cannot tell all these journalists how fabulous your new Monica book is. Meaning, what is the point of you being on a book tour at all?”
“Funny, it never feels like six bottles,” she’d said musingly.
Henry had thrown up his hands at such idiocy.
“Good morning,” he said now. His greeting was surprisingly pleasant, but also, Pandy noted, slightly artificial.
“Henry?” She shifted on the sheet. Tiny unidentifiable particles were pressing into her thighs. She wriggled around and extracted something that looked like a colorful shard of plastic. She examined it while gripping the phone tightly in her other hand.
“What are you doing today?” he asked with unexpected cheer. “Are you busy?”
“Why?” Pandy asked cautiously as she examined the particle between her fingers. It was a dried piece of cupcake frosting. She flicked it away.
“I was thinking it might be nice to get together. Meet in my office for a change. We haven’t done that in a while.”
“Today?” Pandy laughed. “But I just saw you last night.”
“Indeed you did. Sadly, I wasn’t there to witness what happened after I departed, but I suppose it doesn’t matter. Someone and their party are all over Instalife today.”
“You don’t say.” Pandy suppressed a hiccup.
Photos, she suddenly recalled. That’s why everyone was exchanging clothes.
A terrible possibility began to dawn as Pandy felt around the bed for her glasses. If what she feared were true, she would need to be upright for what Henry would no doubt tell her next. She found her glasses, untangled one leg from the sheet, and swung her foot off the bed.
“The pictures,” she hissed. “How bad are they?”
“Depends on what one calls ‘bad.’”
Pandy lowered her other foot and stepped on Suzette’s bra. “Damn.” She took another step. Crunch. Another spot of cupcake frosting. Her goddamned friends! “There wasn’t—nobody was—”
“Sober?” Henry chuckled nastily. “No. They certainly were not.”
Pandy sighed. “Not sober. Naked. No one was naked, were they?” She took a step toward the window and saw a pair of black Spanx draped over a lamp. Why would anyone take those off? “Because there seems to be a lot of clothing left behind.” She continued to move around the bedroom, just like an object that “once in motion, stays in motion.” An aphorism learned from the arthritis ads on daytime television. She took a breath.
“And really, Henry. What’s up with Suzette and that huge yellow diamond? Who needs ten carats? What’s wrong with three? Honestly, what can seven extra carats do that three can’t?”
Henry paused. Pandy gingerly lifted the edge of the Spanx between thumb and forefinger. “And don’t say ‘blow job,’” she added.
“I wasn’t going to say anything at all.”
“Good. I hope I’m not in these ridiculous pictures.” Picking up steam, she pulled on her plaid pajama pants. Catching a glimpse of herself in the mirror, she had a sudden new thought:
“That’s why you called,” she said, recalling that comment about Botox. “I look old, don’t I?”
“I didn’t call to talk about your wrinkles.”
“Good. Whose wrinkles should we talk about instead?”
Flames of sunlight were licking the edges of the blackout shades. “Listen to me,” Pandy groaned. “I’m a lousy human being.”
“All human beings are lousy by definition,” Henry said patiently. Then he added, “Speaking of which, I wanted to talk to you about your new book.”
“My book?” Pandy had barely closed her mouth when Henry dropped the bomb.
“It’s all over Instalife.”
Pandy yanked open the shades. The sun shot into her eyes, momentarily blinding her. “Fuck.” She dropped the phone. A piece broke off, exposing the batteries. Pandy clamped her hand over the wiring and brought the phone back to her ear.
“It’s on Page Six. And People!” hollered Henry, who was given to random bursts of shouting.
Pandy was suddenly annoyed. “That’s it? I thought you were calling because you’d had word.”
Henry ignored this, continuing as he read the headlines aloud: “‘PJ Wallis: Uncoupled and Un-Monica’ed.’”
“Hey. That’s good!” Pandy exclaimed. “Very good. Word of the book is already spreading.”
She stuck her feet into a dusty pair of velvet loafers she hadn’t seen in ages. The loafers came from the far reaches of her closet—meaning the clothing exchange must have been more extensive than she’d imagined.
“Anyway,” she continued, shuffling into the living room, “who cares? In fact,” she added, “I’m glad. Maybe when my publishers see that the book is all over Instalife, they’ll actually get off their asses and read it. Christ. The school year isn’t even over. Surely everyone in publishing can’t already be on summer vacation?”
“They’re not on summer vacation,” Henry said ominously.
“Good. Then they can read it. It’s been over a week.” She was tempted to add, And don’t call me until they have read it, but she caught herself. She pressed her thumb sharply into her right temple. She mustn’t let her hangover turn her into a demanding ogre.
“Gotta go,” Pandy said quickly. She hung up and tossed the phone onto the couch, batteries dangling like viscera from the handset.
Moving slowly into the kitchen, Pandy encountered a telltale flat white box on the counter. It contained two slices of cold pepperoni pizza.
The sight of the pizza made Pandy unaccountably happy. Balancing a slice on her open palm, she slid the floppy triangle onto the rack in Jonny’s pizza oven. She turned the control to five hundred degrees and made herself a cup of tea. Discovering a cache of neatly folded plastic grocery bags in the pantry, she tried to stuff the pizza box into a bag, but it wouldn’t fit. She gave up and went to work on cleaning up the living room instead.
Plastic cups—some empty, others still containing fluid and floating cigarette butts—went into one empty grocery bag after another. Pandy discovered a couple of stray cigarettes behind one of the couch cushions. She lit a cigarette and leaned out the half-open window, trying to blow the smoke through the opening. The first rush of nicotine almost made her retch, but she fought the impulse and smoked it down to the filter. As she was lighting another, she smelled something burning. She raced to the kitchen and yanked open the pizza oven as black smoke billowed into her face. She coughed, slammed the door, turned the oven off, and ran the butt under the tap.
She grabbed another plastic bag and headed into the bathroom.
Several empty bottles of expensive pink champagne—both Pandy’s and, of course, Monica’s signature drink—were floating on a scrim of dirty water in what had been last night’s enormous ice bucket. Bobbing among the debris like a bad apple was a curious piece of cushioned green plastic. Pandy picked it up. It was a green cartoon frog with large yellow eyes and two flexible feet on either side.