Elimination Night (10 page)

I could barely look at him. Not that I had much choice. As I approached, he stood up and walked straight at me. “Come here, babe, let’s cuddle through this muddle,” he rapped, with a concerned frown. “Let’s face the embrace, let’s
seize
the squeeze, honey.”

And then his arms formed a wall of crazy around me. I tried not to choke on his cologne.

“We’ll be better next time, okay?” Joey whispered, as my eyes began to water.

His
eyes were watering, too.

Not from the smell, though.

“Okay,” I nodded, too busy withholding a cough of lung-exploding force to be irritated by Joey’s use of the word “we” and its implicit suggestion that I was somehow
jointly
to blame for Len changing the format of the script, prompting a grown man to act like a toddler who’d just discovered the unfairness of gravity.

Joey clapped his hands as he pulled away from me.

“Showtime!” he announced, with another sniff. “Let’s get this baby on the air.” Then he ambled off, jewelry clanking, in the direction of his Kangen machine.

Mu and Sue followed.

There were more complications to come, naturally. As it turned out, someone on Team Bibi had been listening in to Len’s conversation with Joey (could it have been Teddy? Had he been hiding under the sofa?) and had informed Bibi that her Messiah-like entrance during the press conference was in fact a form of mockery, not celebration. Within minutes, the Beverly Hills attorney Karl Hurt—managing partner at Dammock, Hurt & Richardson (known in the industry as Damage, Hurt, and Retaliation)—had called Len, threatening a lawsuit for breach of contract. There was a “ridicule clause” in Bibi’s agreement with
Project Icon,
apparently. While Len dealt with the atomictempered lawyer, he shooed me back to the front line of conference room five to calm Bibi.

“
Don’t
fuck it up this time,” he mouthed.

Bibi was actually in the hallway, encircled by Teddy, Teddy’s four assistants, and five stylists.

I straightened my back (I’m five eight, so taller than Bibi by five inches) and exhaled.

“Ahem. Miss Vasquez?” I attempted.

“Miss Vasquez is busy,” said Teddy, appearing center frame. “Very busy.”

This was quite obviously untrue. Bibi wasn’t busy at all. The people
around her
were busy. One stylist was using a miniature spray bottle to apply toning liquid to her calves, giving them a warm, buttery texture. Another was using some kind of air gun to apply perfect distress to individual strands of hair. Meanwhile, an assistant held out an iPad upon which Bibi’s horoscope from a supermarket tabloid was displayed on the maximum zoom setting. Bibi was reading it with great interest. She’d clearly noted my arrival, yet nevertheless had enough plausible deniability to ignore me without risking any awkwardness.

“Look, Teddy,” I began, emotionally. “I just need you to know… we all
love
Bibi.”

“Everyone loves Bibi,” snipped Teddy, now distracted by an e-mail on his phone. As with Bibi, an assistant was holding it out for him.
Couldn’t these people do anything for themselves?

“Of course!” I fawned. “But we think she’s, y’know, really,
really
amazing. And, er, I just want to, er—”

“Hasn’t Len fucked you enough for one day, Bill?” Teddy interrupted, without looking up (the e-mail he was reading had come from Bibi, I could see, with Karl Hurt copied). “You really wanna get fucked again? Why not let the grown-ups handle this.”

Grown-ups?
Oh, that was rich.

“I mean, Len sent you over here, right?” Teddy continued, now offering me a full twenty-five percent of his attention. “And he thought you could talk to my client?” He laughed. “Len thought YOU could talk to one of the most famous, successful women alive today?
You?
With your…
boyfriend jeans
and
hiking shoes?
Oh, hilarious.”

That was it: screw these assholes. I was all set to give up and walk away when suddenly, the stylists around Bibi parted, giving me a direct view of the star herself.

Eye contact.

Holy crap:
Bibi Vasquez was looking at me.

“Honey,” she said, in a tone that suggested an attempt at warmth. “What is it you wanna talk to me about?”

Silence.

A crippling panic. Then irritation. What is
wrong
with wearing hiking shoes when you spend sixteen hours a day running around a set under hot studio lighting, especially if you have an abnormal big toe, like I do? Then I made a decision. If Len could bullshit Joey,
then I could bullshit Bibi.
When in hell, do as the devil does, as they say. Okay, so no one actually says that. But you know what I mean.

“Look, Bibi,” I began. “I just want to say, as both a producer
and
a fan”—yes, I was going all the way on this—“you’re the biggest thing that has ever happened to this show. Everyone at
Icon
feels that way, Bibi. And I know for a fact that Joey does, too. But he also feels… well, threatened. You’ve got to remember, he’s an alpha male, Bibi. A rock star. And that makes him want to compete with everyone—even when he’s not even in the same game. He just doesn’t know how to respond to your level of fame and success, Bibi. Or the fact that you’re a woman, a mother… an
icon.
That’s why we sometimes have to talk him down from the ledge. I mean, you saw what happened today, right? But he’s okay now. He’s ready to go. And all I want to say is—if you’re ready, so are we. We’re ready to go out there and
own
prime time, Bibi. This is so… amazingly… awesome.”

My bullshit generator had reached maximum capacity. If I didn’t stop talking immediately, it was gonna blow. So I wrapped up my speech with a fake little shudder of excitement, then looked over at Teddy, hoping for some support.

His lower jaw hung open.

“Okay, honey,” said Bibi, as a stylist dabbed at her face with a microscopic
lip gloss wand. “You didn’t have to say all that, but you’re sweet. I’m glad Joey is feeling better. He shouldn’t feel threatened. But I understand. Let’s get this over with.”

Back to my hangover:

My head felt like a busy market square after a car-bomb attack. Broken glass everywhere. A high-pitched ringing noise. Smoke damage. At least my phone had stopped playing that Blade Morgan riff. Instead it told me with two dying shudders that a voicemail had been left. Brock, probably.
I really needed to be better about returning his calls.

I released a long, tobacco-infused sigh—had I
eaten
the damn cigarette?—and stared up at the cracked stucco on the ceiling. Must tell Mr. Zglagovvcini about that, I thought.

Speaking of whom.

“
Meess Sasha?” Are you there, Meess Sasha?
”

More knocking.

“Jesus Christ!” I yelled, rolling out of bed furiously. “I’m coming!”

At least I didn’t have to bother getting dressed—one of the few yet undeniable benefits of falling asleep in your clothes. Another blessing: It took only three and a half paces to reach the front door. My apartment—if it deserved such a title—was basically one room, with a sink and microwave at one end, my bed at the other, and a folding door in the middle that led to a bathroom with no actual bath and a towel rack that forced me to lean forward at a forty-five degree angle while doing whatever it was that I had to do. Such luxurious accommodation came with a price tag of eleven hundred dollars a month. The sympathetic real estate broker had told me this was cheap for Hollywood.

“I thought we were in Little Russia?” I’d replied, dumbly.

“Little Russia is in Hollywood, dear,” she’d said.

“But—”

“I know, dear, I know. It’s not like it is on television, is it? You’ll get over that. Eventually.”

I’d taken the place largely because it was close to Greenlit Studios,
allowing me to cycle to work. The rent seemed more reasonable if it meant I didn’t have to buy a car.

“
Meess Sash
—”

To the sound of splintering plywood, I yanked open the termiteinfested front door. “What
is
it, Mr. Zglagovvcini?” I demanded, with more anger than I’d intended.

“Ah, Meess Sasha, you alive, good, good. Two things…”

It occurred to me that I’d never seen Mr. Zglagovvcini wearing anything other than tennis shorts, flip-flops (in lifeguard yellow), and an obviously counterfeited blue Ralph Lauren T-shirt (obvious because the horseman on the breast pocket is holding up an AK-47, not a polo stick). Presumably the favorable contrast between the LA weather and his native Siberian climate had convinced him to remain as close to naked as possible—within the local decency laws—at all times. I didn’t exactly blame him. Dad, who was raised on the drenched shore of the Irish Sea, had been exactly the same way when he’d taken me to LA as a kid. Except he hadn’t worn any kind of shirt. Just jeans and his old running shoes.

“Mr. Zglagovvcini,” I pleaded. “Can we do this some other—”

He raised both palms.

“Very quick,” he promised. “What would you say are the six things you could never live without?

I closed my eyes.
Please tell me I hadn’t gotten out of bed for this.

“Look, I—”

“Six things. Answer carefully.”

“What are you talking about, Mr. Zglagovvcini?”

“It’s question for eCupidMatch.com.”

I began massaging my temples, which seemed only to make my head feel even worse. “Mr. Zglagovvcini,” I began, “are you
seriously
creating a profile for me on a dating website?”

“Noooo! Mrs. Zglagovvcini say I not allowed to go on such thing. She think I might run off with stripper. Me! With wrinkly old dick! So she taking care of it, only I have to get information from you, as she very shy.” With a shaking hand, he lifted up his reading glasses and
studied a list. “Which you say describes you best: dreamer or schemer? If you eaten by cannibal, how you most like to be prepared?”

“Mr. Zglagovvcini, I really,
really
don’t want you to—”

A car horn sounded outside.

“Oh, that reminds me,” said Mr. Zglagovvcini. “The other thing I need to tell you: Your car has arrived. Driver says he was sent here by Meess, er… Gee Gee? Dee Dee? Maybe
Zee Zee?
Anyhow, whatever her name is, she didn’t want you turning up to her house on bicycle. She obviously knows you crazy woman.”

I couldn’t process what he was saying. My brain, like the CPU of an aging computer, had maxed out with the stress of running other applications (talking, standing up, keeping my eyes open) leaving me with a spinning wheel-of-death where thoughts should have been. “
Whose car? Where? What?
” I said, uselessly.

“Your car,” he repeated. “It’s here.”

He pointed to the window of the lobby, beyond which a white Rolls-Royce was waiting. It was gleaming in the sun. The driver waved as I squinted at him.

I thought I might black out.

“I Hope You Like Celery”

TEN MINUTES LATER,
I was in a teak and leather capsule, being swept along the 101 freeway in total silence at eighty-five miles per hour. Yes, that’s correct:
Teak.
Being inside that car was like being aboard a transatlantic steamship from an alternative, retro-futuristic universe. There was even a pull-down picnic table in front of me, the clasp as heavy and stiff as the stops on a cathedral organ. When I pushed open the sliding lid on the surface, it revealed a tiny computer keyboard in matte steel. Tapping on a key activated the iPad embedded in the headrest in front of me. There was another screen in the door pillar to my left: This served as a vanity mirror—a camera was hidden in the frame—with honey-toned backlighting that gave even my reflection the luster of good health. Impressive, given how close I felt to
death.
Or at least as close to death as it was possible to feel in the embrace of such a ludicrously overstuffed chair, beneath the constellation of fiber optic stars that had been woven into the padded suede above me.

“Hey—you comfortable?” asked the driver (twentyish, stubbled, his jaw so perfectly set that I had been forced to swallow an involuntary gasp upon first sight).

“Well, if I’m not comfortable now,” I replied, cheesily, “then I don’t think I ever will be. Ha!”

I swear I could win gold at the Nerd Olympics.

“Alright,” he said, nodding slowly in a way that involved his entire upper body, as athletic, overconfident young American men often do. “If you need anything…”

The car surged on, without effort.

It had taken me all of seven minutes to change out of the previous night’s clothes, shower, apply makeup (and by that I mean lipstick), and locate my least-unimpressive dress. I was actually surprised by how little thought it required to select the outfit. I mean, what are you
supposed
to wear when going over to Bibi Vasquez’s house for a lunch appointment? It’s not like I owned any velvet Dior jumpsuits or feathered Alexander McQueen stilettos. So my only black dress, purchased at a chain store whose name I am too ashamed to reveal, would have to suffice, as would my leopard print kitten heels, which had seemed like a good idea on the slightly tipsy (okay, totally wasted) afternoon when I’d bought them. Unsurprisingly, they weren’t standing up very well to examination in the illuminated shag pile footwell of a half-a-million-dollar automobile.

In all honesty, I couldn’t even remember Bibi inviting me over to her house. It was possible, I suppose, that the message hadn’t directly come from her. Perhaps Teddy had passed it on. Or (more likely) one of his many assistants. There was, however, another explanation: That my hangover—or rather, the alcohol that caused it—had erased a crucial section of my memory between the end of The Reveal and whenever it was that I had made it back to Little Russia.

I hadn’t planned to get wasted, FYI. I was just so relieved when the day was over, I agreed to go for a postwork drink with the crew. And the crew being the crew, they wanted to go to Timmy Dergen’s, a poorly lit, sticky-floored Irish dive over on Fairfax and Wilshire. That was fine by me: Dad pretty much raised me in sticky-floored Irish dives. Indeed, one of my first memories—I must have been five or six—is of his taking me to Billy McQuiffy’s in Long Island City for one of his wedding
gigs, and then sending me out, across an eight-lane highway,
at night,
to buy him a pack of smokes from a gas station half a mile away. (We lived in a high-rise a few blocks away at the time.) Mom gave Dad a black eye when she found out. As far as I was concerned, of course, it had all been an incredible adventure. Dad was a hero. Mom was a bore. Parenting can be unfair like that sometimes.