Elimination Night (14 page)

The biggest problem, as far as I could tell, was the stop-start nature of the takes, which meant the panel never gained momentum. The interruptions came in three forms. First: Bibi’s makeup. It seemed that every other minute, she halted production to call in the so-called Glam Squad—i.e., her five stylists, who formed a silent, diligent circle around her, like surgeons preparing to remove an organ. And every time Bibi called in the Glam Squad, Joey felt obligated to do the same—only he had the Mojo Squad, which consisted basically of Mitch and a powder puff. The second cause of delays: Wardrobe changes. Bibi went through three in a day, a number exceeded only by Teddy, whose suits changed by the hour. Fortunately, Joey didn’t feel the need to compete in this regard. But Joey disrupted the proceedings in another, more serious way: Snake breaks.

As in, “Okay, folks, gotta shake the snake!”

I swear, Joey took a snake break between every contestant. Either his prostrate was shot, I concluded, or his bladder was the size of a peanut. And of course it didn’t help that he was getting through a gallon of Kangen water every other minute.

No one on the crew dared complain. After all, Bibi and Joey were saving all our jobs—or that was the idea, anyway. In reality, I can’t have been the only one to wonder how long it would take for Sir Harold to cancel the show when he saw our first day’s work.

It was Day Two when Len finally lost his patience. We were four hours behind schedule thanks to snake breaks, outfit changes, and the Glam/Mojo Squads, the contestants had been uniformly boring, and it was time for the judges to deliver their opinions on yet another depressingly
average rendition of “Rolling in the Deep.” Only Bibi wasn’t concentrating.
Again.
She was just staring blankly into the middle distance—which meant that if we ever used the footage, some poor editor in a darkened bunker would have to make sure she was cut out of the shot. Not an easy task, given her regal position at the center of the judges’ table.

“Bill,” said Len, over the headset. “Follow Bibi’s line of sight. Find out what the
fuck
she’s looking at. This is
ridiculous.
I’ve seen zombies make more eye contact.”

Len’s order wasn’t as straightforward as it sounded. To see where Bibi was looking meant standing directly behind her, but this was impossible because: a) there was barely any room between the back of her chair and the window, and b) I couldn’t appear on camera. So I crouched down and waddled along on my haunches to the far edge of the judges’ table, then backed up as much as I could—making sure I was well out of the shot—to see if I could approximate her viewing angle.

My leg muscles felt as though they were about to snap.

“Dude, for
me,
that was just okay for you,” JD was saying. “It’s wasn’t the full booya-ka-
ka.
”

“Please,” the contestant begged. “I
know
I can do this.”

“I thought it was all right, man,” countered Joey. “Good job. Over to you, Bibi. Your call.”

“Thank you, thank you, Mr. Lovecraft,” the contestant wept. “Ms. Vasquez—please! Oh,
please!
”

“NOW!!!” screamed Len into my headset, making me almost fall backward into a light reflector. “WHAT THE FUCK IS SHE LOOKING AT, BILL?”

I tried to follow Bibi’s gaze, but a light was blocking the way.

“Hold on,” I hissed.

“Now, Bill,
now.
”

“There’s something in the—”

“Jesus Christ. Can’t you do
anything?
”

“Arrgh!” I’d knelt awkwardly on something hard and spiked, and
pain was now coursing through my knee and into my leg, which was already sore from walking on my haunches. And then, in my agony, I glimpsed it: a clear path from Bibi’s eyes in the direction they were currently pointing. If I could just move… my other leg… yes, yes… watch out for the… good, good… a little more…

“I’ve got a lock,” I whispered. “Repeat, I’ve got a…”

“TELL ME WHAT SHE’S LOOKING AT.”

Bibi cleared her throat to deliver her verdict. Then—as always—she paused.

That blank stare again.

Now I was seeing
exactly
what she was seeing: the contestant trembling on the podium; the vast, glossy billboard of the sponsors’ wall behind him; the dense, tangled thicket of cameras, lights, mic stands, and monitors that loomed to either side; the black-T-shirted crew members, crouched down like me or flattened against the walls.
What the hell was she focused on?
I adjusted my angle by a tenth of a degree. Another tenth. C’mon, Bill, look.
Look harder.
There! Was that…? Yes, in the blackness beyond the cameras. Just to the left of the sponsors’ wall. A glint from a pair of eyeglasses. A figure on tiptoe. A man. Standing there, motionless. No… not motionless. Holding something up. He was holding up a—

“
Oh my God,
” I said, but I was drowned out by Bibi.

“It’s a no from me, honey,” she blurted, at last. “I’m sorry. You’re just not ready.”

“You’ll never believe this,” I hissed into the headset. “
Teddy is holding up cue cards.
”

We broke for lunch in an adjoining room, where the hotel staff had set up a temporary canteen. I’d learned the previous day that these lunches were like the first day of high school all over again, with a rigid hierarchy of seating. The popular kids were the judges, who were allocated a table all of their own. Of secondary coolness was the table for Len and his “Lovelies,” which included two blonde Rabbit publicists,
and some of the better-looking assistants. Then there were the groupings of assistant producers and the like—i.e., me and my fellow underlings—followed by hair and makeup, lighting and sound, and then the rest of the crew.

Today, however, was different: Joey, Mitch, and Len were sitting together, and when I walked in the room, they called me over and invited me to join them.

This can’t be good news,
I thought.

“Before you ask, yes, I’m hungry,” said Joey, by way of explaining the spread in front of him. It included a dozen oysters, half a cheeseburger, some fries, a bento box of sushi, and a whole grilled salmon. At Joey’s table, I soon discovered, there was no menu. You just asked for whatever came to mind when you sat down.

“Where on earth do you
put
it all, Joey?” asked Len. “You’ve got a ten-inch waist.”

“Overactive thyroid,” Joey mumbled, through a mouthful of bun. “Plus ADD. I can eat
anything.
”

“Incredible,” Len marveled.

“You should have seen him on cocaine,” offered Mitch, glumly.

Joey stood up. “Don’t let them clear this,” he instructed, gesturing to his plate with one hand while using the other to push half a roll of sushi into his still bun-filled mouth. “I’m sooo fuckin’ hungry, man. But I gotta siphon the python. I’ll be right back.”

With that, he rose from the table and stumbled off in the direction of the bathroom, his twelfth visit of the day. (I knew this because the crew was now keeping an official tally.)

“That man has the smallest bladder of anyone I’ve ever met,” Len declared. “Can’t you get him a new one, Mitch? We have to stop every three fucking minutes for it.”

“Ha-ha,” sneered Mitch. “I think you’ve got a more urgent problem to deal with, don’t you?”

I looked at Len. He took a swig of water. “It’s okay,” he said, when he was done. “
Mitch knows.
”

“So what are we going to do?” I asked.

“
We?
” said Len, feigning shock. “Shouldn’t the question be ‘what are
you
going to do?’”

“Me?”

“Forgive me,” said Len, in his most condescending tone. “I must have mistaken you for Bibi’s newest little friend. You know, the one she sends for by dispatching the very lovely David in a white Rolls-Royce Phantom to her crappy little apartment in Little Russia. I could have sworn that was
you,
Bill. Clearly I was wrong.”

“How did you—”

“I know everything.”

“But it wasn’t
like
that. We’re not fri—”

“You need to talk to her,” said Len, pointing his fork at me. “I don’t care how you do it, just do it quick. And don’t fucking
upset
her, okay? But I want Teddy off the set, no excuses, and this bullshit with the cue cards has got to stop. I’ll be amazed if we can use a single contestant from Houston, based on what I saw today. It’s a joke. She’s your
mate
—have a quiet word. Oh, and this didn’t come from me. If you so much as mention my name, I’ll deny all knowledge. Understood?”

I stared back at Len numbly. I had no more appetite. I wanted to leave the room and never come back. Before I could mount any kind of protest, however, there was a commotion outside in the lobby. Loud male voices—possibly security guards. Sobbing. A walkie-talkie hissed and crackled. And then one of Len’s Lovelies—a publicist named Dana—entered the room in a state of obvious distress. Flushed from walking at top speed in heels, she made her way directly to our table. Sensing trouble, Len wiped his mouth and began to get to his feet.

Now I could hear sirens. Distant, but unmistakable.

Holy sh—

“It’s Joey,” announced Dana, breathlessly. “We just found him in the bathroom… with, uh…”

“SHIT!” yelled Mitch, jumping up with enough force to make his chair topple backward. “Did he have the crack pipe? That piece of—I
told
him, dammit, I
told
him!”

“He didn’t have a crack pipe,” said Dana, firmly.

The sirens were getting closer.

“Huh?” Mitch looked bewildered.

Pandemonium in the lobby.

“It’s worse than that, Mitch,” said Dana.

The sirens were right outside the hotel now. Car doors slamming. More walkie-talkies.

“He
didn’t
have the crack pipe?” Mitch had turned gray. He didn’t understand.

“No.”

“Then
what?
”

“He had…”

“
WHAT?
”

“He had Miss Idaho.”

Mitch doubled over, winded—as though he’d just been punched in the gut—and then tried to make a run for the door. With considerable effort, Len held him back.

“You mean… the contestant?” I asked. “The girl with the ‘I Da Hoe’ T-shirt?”

“Well, it turns out she is,” Dana confirmed. “Unfortunately, her dad doesn’t quite see it that way. He says she’s his little angel. There’s… there’s a lot of blood.”

Coach Andy

ONE WEEK LATER…

“How’s he doing?” I asked.

“Let me tell you something,” Mitch replied, his nose dotted with the foam of a triple-shot cappuccino. “Joey Lovecraft’s moods are like Martian weather. Little understood. Spectacular from afar. And basically unsurvivable by humankind.”

“Ah.” I tilted my head to catch more of the early afternoon sun. “So not good, then?”

“I’d say he was a nine today. Borderline ten.”

I stared blankly across the table.

“No one told you?” said Mitch, surprised. “We track Joey’s moods with a numbering system. Ten is the worst; one is the best. Mu sends out an e-mail to the staff every morning. Just a number in the subject line—that’s it. She’s never reported a one, as far as I’m aware. If you believe some of the older roadies, he came close during the summer of 1983, before that stupid fucking parachute jump. Typically, though, four is as good as it gets. Five means Mu and Sue go home in tears. Higher than a six, and Joey’s bodyguard has the okay to call his doctor
for a medical-marijuana prescription. An eight usually means hospital or incarceration.”

“And a ten?”

“Imagine an asteroid the size of Manhattan landing on Manhattan.”

We were back on The Lot in the San Fernando Valley. Only this time, we hadn’t gone anywhere near Ed Rossitto’s batcave in the sky. Instead we were seated in Rabbit’s garden commissary, which serves egglessegg scrambles and meatless-meat burritos to ageless movie executives with mortgaged dental work and two-rounds-of-golf-per-day tans. They seem so much slicker than the likes of Len and Ed, these movie people. But I guess when you strip away the gloss of their A-list casts and seven-figure budgets, they’re basically selling the same thing: stories of human conflict, with their highs and lows, tears and laughter, heroes and villains… only our stories cost a lot less to tell. Not that season thirteen of
Project Icon
was in any way
cheap,
of course. In fact, I’d seen our budget, and it had pretty much doubled since the previous season. That didn’t bode well, given everything that had gone down, both literally and figuratively, in Houston.
ShowBiz
was already printing vague rumors of “trouble in Texas.” Its latest story quoted David Gent as saying Rabbit was “ironing out issues with the new panel” but that the network still had “confidence in the show.”

Not
total
confidence, I noted. Just confidence—quantity unspecified.

“D’you think we’ll get cancelled before we even get to air?” I wondered aloud.

“Jesus Christ, Bill, keep it down,” Mitch hissed. “Never—
ever
—mention the C-word on The Lot.”

With that, his phone began to squirm its way across the metal table in a fit of groans and yelps, as if there were a small animal inside trying to break loose. He glanced at its screen and said, “Right, he’s
here.
” We both stood up. Mitch wiped his nose—at last—but only half-caught the foam, and there didn’t seem like a good moment to bring up the subject as we made our way to the narrow pathway outside. A longwheelbase golf cart—green canvas sunshade pitched over the three
rows of seats—was waiting. The driver, who looked barely old enough for sixth grade, proceeded to transport us at the maximum velocity allowed by the vehicle’s tiny electric motor through fake Brooklyn backstreets, a miniature Sahara desert, and the scene of a crashed Boeing 747 filled with half-melted alien corpses.

“Imagine coming to work here every day,” mused Mitch. “No wonder these people are so twisted.”

Eventually, we jerked to a halt outside a beige conference hall at the other end of the property. Beyond the jungle-landscaped entrance: a beige lobby with beige walls, beige carpet, and an air-conditioning system so powerful, the place felt like an industrial meat locker. It couldn’t have been more than forty degrees in there. Ahead of us was a set of double doors, upon which someone had taped a sheet of laserprinted paper. “
Project Icon:
Fraternization Seminar,” it read. “Attendance
COMPULSORY
for all cast/producers. Starts: 3:30 p.m.”