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stress. Particularly with Jonny. People couldn’t believe what he had put her through.
    So, yes, she would go to her house in Wallis to recover, especially after these last few months in New York. Henry would join her tomorrow morning at the latest .
    And so she went willingly into the town car Henry had hired to transport her to Wallis.
    She didn’t ask Henry how or why all this seemed to have been arranged in advance, being too confused to ask questions.
    “Goodbye!” She waved out the window to her friends.
    She raised the window and leaned back against the seat. The blast of cold air-conditioning in the car met the day’s heat, and a cloud of steam began to form. Pointing her finger, Pandy briefly held it to her temple. Then she lowered it. Aiming it at the foggy glass window instead, she wrote two words:
    HELP ME.
    Rescued by Suzette, her device came back to life and began vibrating, releasing those buoyant Monica notes into the air like happy-face balloons. Pandy put her hand over the machine to silence it. She looked past the angry line of cars on the other side of the West Side Highway. A sleek white boat, sails trimming the wind, raced across the spackled surface of the river.
    For a moment, she pretended she was in Miami.
    The fantasy was short-lived. Looming ahead was a second Monica billboard—another reminder of her disastrous failure.
    What no one knew was that without her new book, she couldn’t pay Jonny.
    Meaning she, PJ Wallis, was finished. Monica had won after all.
    And then she frowned. Like the first billboard, this Monica also lacked her leg.
    Despite the circumstances, the sight caused her to convulse with mad, wild laughter. She suddenly had a crazy urge to call SondraBeth Schnowzer to tell her that Monica’s leg was still missing.
    SondraBeth was the only person in the world who would have appreciated the hilarity of the situation.
    The car rounded the corner, and Pandy took one last look at the billboard as her laughter turned to tears. And for the first time in a long time, Pandy remembered how different it had once been, nine years ago when it was new and fresh and exciting…
    And how it had all started when she’d said those four fateful words:
    “I want that girl.”

C HAPTER F OUR
    I   WANT that girl!” Pandy had exclaimed.
    She was in Los Angeles, sitting in the backseat of a town car, when she’d seen the billboard. It was hanging over Sunset right near the Chateau Marmont, where Pandy was headed after another dispiriting round of auditions for the lead role of Monica.
    All of a sudden, the car had come around the curve after Doheny, and there she was: masses of hair fluttering behind her like the American flag; shining green-gold eyes looking out over the flattened landscape of the universe. In her arms was a golden wolf pup.
    Then the tagline: WHAT IF DOGS CAN SEE STARS, TOO ?
    “Her!” she screamed, pointing up at the billboard as they passed by. “That girl.”
    The driver laughed. “She’s a model.”
    “So what?”
    Handsome and genial, the driver laughed again. “It’s the same old story. Everyone who comes to Hollywood has the same dream. They think they’re going to discover some unknown talent. Some gorgeous model who turns out to be a movie star in disguise.”
    Pandy smiled. “And isn’t that your story, too? A movie star in a gorgeous male model’s body?”
    The driver glanced back at her in his rearview mirror. He laughed toothily, appreciating her humor. “I guess you could say that.”
    For a second she could see The Girl’s reflection in his mirrored shades.
    And then she was gone, and in the next moment, the driver was pulling into the driveway of the Chateau Marmont.
    The studio had flown Pandy out to Los Angeles for the casting of Monica, and Pandy had been given the star treatment: a car and driver at her disposal, and bungalow 1 at the Chateau. Bungalow 1 may or may not have been the room where John Belushi died; the staff was vague on the