“You know why.” SondraBeth laughed harshly. “It’s in my contract. The studio can fire me, but I can’t quit. My contract with Monica is like the worst marriage ever. Monica can get rid of me anytime she likes, but I can’t leave her. Ever.”
“Welcome to the first annual Monica Shoe Unveiling!” Pandy heard the announcer’s voice boom out into the open crowd.
And then Pandy was on the stage. She took one look back at SondraBeth as she was drowned out by the shouts, whistles, and cheers from the audience below. The roar of the crowd was like an animal demanding attention.
And Pandy was happy to give it to them. Buoyed by the crowd’s rush of expectation, their desire to witness a miracle, Pandy raised one arm like the Warrior Woman herself. Holding the mike to her lips, she screamed, “Kill Monica. Please!”
And just as promised, Monica’s leg began to rise. First the hard shiny toe, and then the cruelly curved heel, and then there it came: yards and yards of red fringe waving like triumphant streamers in the air. And as the leg rose, so, too, did Jonny. For suddenly, there he was, dangling from a harness attached to several pieces of fringe.
The crowd began to laugh. And laugh. Suddenly, Pandy was laughing, too. The leg rose up another five feet, and jerked Jonny like a puppet, his arms and legs flailing.
SondraBeth came to stand next to Pandy, and the crowd went crazy, hooting and cheering as she clapped, the microphone between her hands. Eventually, when the noise died down, she walked to the edge of the stage. Taking a wide stance in her cowboy boots, she said, “Ladies and gentlemen. Let me introduce you to Jonny Balaga. Resident scumbag!”
Deafening boos. Pink plastic champagne glasses were tossed in Jonny’s direction.
“And just to make the event even more special, this, by the way, is not Hellenor Wallis,” SondraBeth said, turning to Pandy. Raising her arms in triumph, she shouted, “This is PJ Wallis—the creator of Monica—in disguise!”
Another huge roar of approval, like the crowd was about to witness a boxing match. SondraBeth paused to let the rustling die down to a hush. She put her arm around Pandy’s shoulder. Looking out over the crowd, Pandy followed her gaze, right across the rooftops to a huge screen that had been set up to project their images.
On the screen, Pandy saw SondraBeth lift the microphone to her mouth. “My best friend PJ Wallis and I cooked up this little plot to get even with Jonny, who is Pandy’s ex-husband.”
“Ooooooh.” Wide panning shot of the vengeful crowd. Then another close-up of SondraBeth. And in her very best, naughtiest Monica voice, she said, “Because Jonny has been a very, very bad boy. Isn’t that right, Jonny?”
Spotlight on Jonny. And there he was, up on the screen, dangling like a marionette. What could he do? He waved.
“I think Pandy has some things she’d like to say to him,” SondraBeth said, her voice echoing against the tall buildings. Before Pandy could refuse, SondraBeth passed the microphone off to her and returned to stage left.
And once again, Pandy was all by herself. Staring out into the hot, salty lights.
As if in encouragement for what she was preparing to say, the leg jerked, and Jonny bounced and swung, holding on to the straps. The crowd laughed again as Pandy looked at Jonny and thought:
There’s your happy ending.
“Hey!” Jonny shouted, waving.
“Boooo!” the crowd shouted back. Pandy looked at Jonny, dangling like the fool in the failed deus ex machina, and realized that once again, Henry was right. This was all about Jonny.
And then the strangest thing happened. She looked again at Jonny and felt absolutely nothing. Like she’d never even known him. Like they’d never been married. Like he simply didn’t belong. Not in her life, anyway.
And then, like water rushing in to fill an empty space, she felt sorry for him.
She looked at SondraBeth, smiling out at the crowd, dressed in her cowgirl spangles, and felt sorry for her, too. And then, gazing across the rooftops, she caught sight of herself on-screen, and felt most of all sorry for herself.
She walked to the end of the platform and leaned over the edge, toward Jonny, the height causing her stomach to clench in terror. “The truth is, I did disguise myself as Hellenor. And I did try to kill Monica. And I did do it for revenge. On that man.”
A large burst of applause. Pandy nodded in acknowledgment. “I was weak, and I fell in love. I knew I shouldn’t have, but I did. Because even though I knew better, some part of me felt that I deserved that happy ending.” She pointed to Jonny. “And for a short time, I thought I had found it. Until I realized that that man could never give it to me.”
“Boooo,” the crowd said, throwing pink plastic champagne glasses at Jonny. The leg jerked higher, and Jonny grabbed at the straps.
“And when that man didn’t give me my happy ending, I thought the right answer was revenge.”
An intake of breath, like the dry rustling of leaves as the crowd considered this information.
Pandy continued, strolling to the other side of the platform, grateful to be away from the sight of Jonny. “And while revenge might seem like the right answer, at some point during the past forty-eight hours—in which I’ve been involved in an explosion, suffered a case of mistaken identity, and accepted an award for being dead—somewhere along that journey, I realized that revenge against a man because he didn’t give me my happy ending wasn’t the answer. Because a happy ending with a man is never going to be my happy ending. Nor is it going to be Monica’s happy ending. But that’s okay, because every woman’s happy ending doesn’t have to be the same. And it doesn’t have to involve a man.”
Heart pumping in her chest, Pandy looked across the stage at SondraBeth. SondraBeth caught her glance and threw it back to her with that old PandaBeth smile.
“Because there are some things that matter more than a man,” Pandy said, gaining momentum as she walked across what felt like miles and miles of stage to reach SondraBeth’s side. “And those things are friendship—and being true to yourself.”
Gazing out past the shimmering screens and into the bright lights of the city, she saw herself as an eager young woman taking it all in, her heart and soul aching to belong, believing she could conquer all obstacles. It had been a long struggle, but she had painted the town every color of the rainbow.
And then she knew what she had to do.
Pandy looked up at the giant image of Monica and smiled ruefully.
“And so, as much as we both love Monica, we’ve allowed ourselves to be Monica for too long,” she continued. “Maybe it was because we wanted too much. Or maybe it was because we were scared. Or maybe it was because we fell in love with the wrong men.”
Pandy shook her head at Jonny, who was still dangling from his straps as a fireman on a ladder tried to grab his ankle.
“But none of those reasons matter,” she said, slinging her arm around SondraBeth’s shoulder. “Because the truth is that this woman—SondraBeth Schnowzer, whom most of you know only as Monica—doesn’t want to play Monica anymore. And I don’t want her to, either.”
The crowd, at last, went silent.
Into the silence came a lone voice. Perhaps it was the voice of a Hellenor, or even of a SondraBeth or perhaps of a Pandy herself—the voice of any woman who was sure she didn’t belong and was sick of trying: “Kill Monica. Please.”
And then, like the fresh breeze that presages the arrival of better weather, a tinkle of laughter came from the audience. It grew and grew until it was rushing like the gathering waters of spring, racing downriver from the mountains to the sea. The noise of laughter commingled with those cheery notes from the Monica theme song, and SondraBeth and Pandy began singing along. And for one last moment, it was all a blur…