reminding her that they hadn’t had sex for a while.
This was true. She discovered that now when he touched her, she froze. She could feel her vagina shut up tight, like the door of a safe slamming closed.
Jonny had finally managed to render her impotent over her own life. And being involved with Jonny meant that she had no control over her future.
* * *
The restaurant still hadn’t opened four months later, when Jonny began to be gone for two weeks at a time. To Vegas, he said. When Pandy found a plane ticket that showed he’d actually gone to LA instead, he laughed it off. “What’s the difference? I go to LA for meetings, and then I take a private plane to Vegas.”
“Whose plane?” Pandy asked, unable to believe that while he was jetting back and forth, she was stuck in the loft, trying to crank out a book in which she had absolutely no belief. To her, Monica’s getting married was a lie—just like her own marriage was a lie. And one to which she couldn’t seem to admit. When friends asked how things were going with Jonny, Pandy still told them they were going “great.”
Jonny asked for another hundred thousand dollars to finish construction.
Pandy told him that she couldn’t even think about it until she finished the fourth Monica book.
And then they had a terrible fight that ended with Jonny shouting, “The difference between you and me, babe, is that I’m a man. I don’t need anyone to hold my hand!” He stormed out to stay with another one of his seemingly endless string of “buddies”—who Pandy now suspected were other women.
It wasn’t until the week before Pandy’s birthday, when Jonny carelessly informed her that he’d be in Vegas, that she finally broke down and called Suzette.
Suzette told Pandy to get Jonny to a marriage counselor ASAP, and gave her a number.
* * *
Pandy agreed to give the shrink a try, but she had to admit she was terrified. She hated confrontation, especially when it meant she might be told a truth she wasn’t going to like. She was pretty sure if she asked Jonny to go to a counselor, he would ask for a divorce.
The thought made her feel sick. It was like the mirror under the Christmas tree had finally broken. And now it was in her stomach, the shards stabbing her insides like tiny butcher knives.
Jonny came home two days later from another trip to Vegas. Pandy tried to pretend that everything was the same: greeting him with enthusiasm, opening a bottle of wine and pouring out glasses. She tried not to react when, as usual, Jonny kissed her absentmindedly on the forehead. Mumbling something about work, he sat down in front of the TV with his laptop on his thighs. It wasn’t long before he got the inevitable phone call, the one that he always took in the bathroom because it was “business.”
Pandy realized Suzette was right: She couldn’t go on like this. “Jonny?” she asked, knocking on the bathroom door, and then angrily trying the knob when she heard him laughing inside. The door was locked; she pounded on it until he blithely opened it, still wearing a smile for whoever it was on the other end of the phone. Then his eyes focused on her, and his face twisted into that old puppy-dog expression that now made her sick. As he closed the door again, Pandy heard him hiss, “I don’t have much time.”
She stood there for a second, feeling too insulted to knock again.
Instead, she went into the kitchen and opened one of Jonny’s most expensive bottles of white wine. She tipped the bottle and poured herself a big, tall glass. She planned to sip in style while she girded herself for the inevitable confrontation. For surely it was coming. Just like that big fat pink cupcake of a storm that had brought them together in the first place.
That was only four years ago. And it was all so perfect at the beginning. Why had Jonny ruined it?
She took a gulp of wine, and hearing Jonny’s footsteps in the hall, braced herself.
He came around the corner and gave her what was now his usual look, the one she hated—a tight grimace of annoyance and incomprehension. Pandy had a nearly uncontrollable urge to throw her glass of wine in his face. Only some ancient code of propriety prevented her.
“I’ve had it!” she shouted. Taking a threatening step toward him, she spat,