“You’re sacrificing Monica and risking everything you’ve ever achieved for a man?”
“I’m doing it for me.”
“No, you are not. You’re doing it to get even with a man. Meaning, once again, you have allowed your actions to be dictated by a man.”
Pandy had had enough. “You’re a fine one to talk.”
Henry paused. He inhaled, exhaled, and then glowered threateningly. “So you’re going to use that as an excuse.”
“Why not?” she said sharply.
“If that’s so, then you, my dear, are pitiful. You’re not the Pandemonia James Wallis I know.”
“Maybe that Pandemonia James Wallis doesn’t exist anymore. Maybe she’s been too beaten down to continue. Just like her sister, Hellenor.”
Henry drew himself up to his full height. Pandy’s heart sank. She and Henry hadn’t had a fight like this for years. Perhaps ever.
Henry held up his hand. “I can see you’ve made up your mind. In that case, I suppose congratulations are in order. Your publisher has agreed to publish Lady Wallis, but only because you are dead.”
“You were the one who told me to stay dead for a couple of hours.”
“I told you to do nothing. Now, because of this spectacle, your publishers will cry fraud. So if you don’t clear this up immediately, as far as I’m concerned, you are dead.”
“Fine,” Pandy said coldly, crossing her arms. “They weren’t going to publish the book anyway. Which gives me more of a reason to get even with Jonny.”
“And how do I fit into this scheme?”
“Just go along with it for a couple of hours. Remember—you owe me.”
“Very well,” Henry said. He turned his back and opened the door. He shot one more warning glance over his shoulder. “Don’t say I didn’t caution you. And when things don’t work out as you’ve planned, don’t come running to me!”
He went out, slamming the door behind him.
“Henry!” Pandy said. She opened the door and looked up and down the hallway, but he was gone.
Judy, on the other hand, was right there. “Hellenor?” she said. “We’re going to need you onstage in ten minutes.”
Pandy shrank back into the dressing room. She leaned over the makeup counter and stared at herself in the mirror. Who was she? Henry was right, she thought despondently. By killing Monica, she was once again making her life all about Jonny.
She glanced at Monica’s shoes.
Henry was wrong, she decided. And grabbing Monica’s shoes, she took off her own shoes and put them on.
She stood up. The curved heel was tricky, but the booties themselves were light, embracing the foot like a glove. Pandy turned to stare at herself in the mirror. Thanks to the six-inch heels, she was now towering.
Leaving the dressing room, she crossed the corridor and strode confidently into the Hall of Fame. She swung open the door, and was again surrounded by her friends.
“There’s Hellenor,” Nancy called out, pointing and sloshing champagne over her hand.
“Hellenor! Hellenor Wallis.” Suzette’s enormous yellow diamond was suddenly glittering in her face.
“We were Pandy’s best friends.”
“And we need to be best friends with you, Hellenor.”
“We need to talk to you.”
“You need to listen.”
“It’s about Jonny.”
“He called every single one of us this morning. Wanting to know if we’d seen you.”
“He kept saying he was going to find you, and that when he did…”
“He was going to make sure you spent time in jail.”
“He said you’d committed fraud.”
“But in the meantime, he’s looking for you.”
“Now listen, if you need us, we’ll be at the Pool Club right after this.”
“Hellenor!” Judy screamed from the just-opened doorway.
“I’ll leave your name at the door,” Suzette hissed.
“I gotta go,” Pandy said desperately. Her friends! How she missed them. And yes, she would meet up with them at the Pool Club afterward. After the leg thing. Where she would come back to life.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
BY ENTERING this area, you agree to be photographed and recorded. You acknowledge that your image and likeness may be distributed throughout the universe into all eternity including, but not limited to, the past, present, and future. You also acknowledge that you have no privacy, at least not by any current definition of privacy.
A dark, velvety mist, lightly perfumed—sweet lily of the valley and white clover—wafted through the air. Standard party space reconfigured into a fantasyland where women ruled. Where they made the decisions. Always the good ones. Where they celebrated each other in the way the world—meaning the men—should celebrate them, but didn’t. Meaning for their strength and their courage and their hard work and their contributions. But not, goddammit, for what the world—meaning the men—tried to tell them was their only value; namely, their beauty and their ability to bear children.
“And now, it’s time for the Woman Warrior of the Year Awards,” the announcer said.
The rest was a blur. Pandy wasn’t sure how much time passed, but the next thing she knew, she was being pushed toward the stairs by two men, who helped her up. And then, somehow, she was on the stage. Except that this time, it actually was revolving. The lazy Susan. The crossing of which required every skill, it seemed, but laziness to survive.
Like balance.
Standing with her arms out and legs slightly apart, she tried to do what the stage manager had told her to do: focus solely on what was in front of her. Namely, SondraBeth. Or rather, Monica. Turning around and around on the center of the platform, like the pretty black bride on a black wedding cake.
A spotlight lit up the path to Monica, who was beckoning, Come with me. It was just like in her dream; she and Monica were going to be together again…
Pandy took a couple of tentative steps forward and heard a smattering of kindhearted laughter from the crowd. The sound brought her back to earth. She was on a revolving platform and she was about to receive an award for her sister, PJ Wallis, because she, PJ Wallis, was dead.
She must move toward the light. Focus on what was in front of her…
She heard the crowd laughing again. She lifted her head and looked around, taking in the neo-dark audience lit up with neon flashes from a thousand silent devices. And she remembered: She was funny onstage.
She—PJ Wallis—was funny. Even PP had said she was funny. And not only that, he’d said Hellenor Wallis was funny, too. Funny was the one thing Pandy and Hellenor had in common. Remembering that she was funny made Pandy feel more confident. She could do this. She took another few steps, and once again, the crowd chuckled in encouragement. Pandy gave up on the stately approach in favor of the comedic, and SondraBeth picked up on it. She was smiling down on Pandy with her most beatific Monica grin.
“Hello, Hellenor,” she said in her rich timbre. The audience exhaled a blast of approving applause.
“Hello,” Pandy said to the crowd, holding up her palm in a stiff wave. The platform lurched. “Wow. This is like being on one of those Japanese game shows. Takeshi’s Castle,” she said.
Titters of appreciation; not everyone understood the reference. She should have named one of those network shows instead.
“Yes, it is, Hellenor,” SondraBeth said. And taking a beat to absorb the positive energy in the room, she sang out to the audience, “Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Hellenor Wallis.”