Elimination Night (15 page)

The clock on the wall read 3:29 p.m.

Mitch and I looked at each other with here-goes-nothing faces, then pushed our way inside.

We emerged into a small yet plush auditorium with a low stage at the far end of the room and a dozen or so rows of fold-up seats, arranged in tiers. Suspended from the ceiling was a digital projector, and embedded in the walls were the yellow Kevlar cones of audiophilequality Bowers & Wilkins loudspeakers (blame Dad for my knowledge of such things). Behind us, meanwhile, was a generously stocked drinks and snack counter, the kind you might find in a business-class airline lounge. Knowing what was to come, I was tempted to pour myself a Maker’s Mark on ice. No one else was drinking, though, so I resisted.

Joey was already in a front-row aisle seat, next to Mu and Sue, both of whom had dressed for the occasion like soft-porn librarians. He was wearing high-top sneakers and a tweed suit with one pant leg cut off at the knee, all the better to display an actual-size tattoo of a tartan sock on his right calf. (He did this one himself while in London’s Pentonville prison for urinating on Buckingham Palace, because it made
him smile every morning in his cell.) The novelty sock tattoo wasn’t the first thing to catch my attention about Joey, however. Instead my eyes were drawn to his fly-goggle sunglasses, the kind that Manhattan Project scientists might have worn during atomic bomb testing in the New Mexico desert. They served to only partially disguise a black eye of such severity, its purple-yellow tendrils crept all the way out to his middle cheek. This had been a gift from Miss “I Da Hoe”’s father, an ex-U.S. Marine and, as it turned out, committed member of the Coeur D’Alene chapter of the Aryan Nations. Indeed, if it hadn’t been for
Icon
’s security detail, Joey’s record company might have already been enjoying the spoils of a posthumous album release.

By inflicting such a dramatic injury on Joey, however, the Idaho Klansman had actually done
Icon
a huge favor. Without the assault, the show would have been looking at a shut-up-and-go-away settlement on the scale of Bibi’s salary. But now they had leverage: the attempted murder of a celebrity judge. Plus, Miss “I Da Ho” herself—she had in fact only ever won a minor village pageant—apparently didn’t share her father’s politics, and had no interest in punishing Joey.

The matter was resolved privately, in a matter of days.

That wasn’t the end of Joey’s issues with young female contestants, however.

Oh, no.

It quickly emerged that Joey’s indiscretions hadn’t been limited to Miss “I Da Ho.” He had also been exchanging direct messages on Twitter with several other female contestants (had he
searched
for their accounts, or had they followed him first?), providing them with both his cell phone number and Twitpics of his bulging underwear, taken from under the judges’ desk. All had responded in kind, so Joey had scheduled each of them to visit his room, at fifteen-minute intervals, that very same night. It was hard not to be impressed by the man’s ambition. It was also hard not to wonder how he could manage such a back-to-back operation at the age of sixty-two, without either surgical or chemical assistance. This question was never answered, however, because someone in Rabbit’s human resources department (a.k.a. Team
Joeysitter) noticed what was going on—they were already in crisis mode after the whole beauty queen affair—and dispatched an emergency task force to the scene. Joey’s phone was confiscated, his Twitter account deleted, and he was ordered by Sir Harold Killoch to attend today’s “fraternization seminar” at The Lot. For good measure, the other judges and key members of
Icon
’s staff were ordered to go, too.

And now… well,
here we were.

Being the last to arrive, Mitch and I took seats at the rear. Bibi was to our left, a few rows forward, obscured partially by Teddy, and engrossed in her phone. Looking closely, I noticed that she had the Face-Time app running, and was actually examining herself in the screen. Len was visible only via his Merm, which was wobbling around somewhere near the front, next to Maria and Ed (or that’s what I assumed, as Ed’s head didn’t reach the top of his chair).

We waited.

And waited.

And—

At last, the house lights dimmed, the stage lights brightened, and in an unmistakable glow of smugness, our “fraternization coach” appeared. “My name’s Andy,” he announced unnecessarily (it was written in blue marker on his circular name tag). “And I know what y’all are thinking: I’m here to
judge.
Well, bad news, folks”—cheesy smile—“the only judges in this room are sitting right in front of me here. I’m here to inform. To guide. Think of me as a resource.”

Andy was unbearable, this much was already clear.

He went on: “Now, what I’m going to talk about today is what we at Rabbit call
fraternization.
”

“You mean screwin’?” interrupted Joey.

Oh, God. I closed my eyes.

“Ha-ha,” said Andy, nervously running a fleshy hand through his overly product-enhanced hair.

“Call it what it fuckin’
is,
man,” said Joey, disgust in his voice. “I fuckin’ hate—”

“We
call
it fraternization,” Andy reiterated, a little testily. “Now, what does fraternization mean, exactly?”

Joey snorted with contempt and began to shuffle boisterously in his seat.

“Well, folks, if you look it up in the ol’ dictionary,” Andy continued, reaching behind him to pick up a heavy black volume from the table behind him. “It says, ‘To associate or mingle as brothers with a hostile group, especially when directly against military orders.’”

Andy made a hokey face to illustrate confusion.

“Now, we’re not all brothers here, are we?” he continued, in the tone of a preschool teacher breaking up a fight over a jigsaw puzzle. “And we sure as heck ain’t running an ‘
army
’! Also, I wouldn’t suggest for one second that the wonderful, talented contestants on
Project Icon
are your enemy. No, sir! Nevertheless, you have to understand, if ANYTHING that could be deemed ‘inappropriate’ goes on between any of YOU and any of your subordinates—i.e.,
the contestants
—then you’re putting both yourself and the Rabbit network in DIRE JEOPARDY.”

Andy went on like this for three hours. He passed around leaflets featuring stock photographs of men and women in “uncomfortable” workplace situations. He used the digital protector to a show a graph of recent legal settlements in key sexual harassment cases. He even distributed Rabbit-branded key rings and notebooks featuring the slogan “Professionalism, Respect, Boundaries.”

Bibi didn’t look up once from her phone. Joey, on the other hand, seemed transfixed.

“Any questions?” asked Andy, when he was finally done.

At last, it was over.

Only it wasn’t.

“Yeah, actually,” declared Joey, to groans from the row behind him. “Let’s pretend for a moment, Andy, that you’re a
winner.
Let’s pretend that you don’t spend your life giving pious lectures to other people about their own private goddamn business. Let’s pretend that the no-fun-sized miniwiener in your sad-assed, beige fuckin’ kill-me-now
slacks has ever seen half a
second
of action—which, by the way, I personally guarantee it fuckin’ hasn’t. But let’s pretend all that, anyway…”

Mitch’s head was now in his hands.

“… so you’re a hot dude,” Joey went on. “Rockin’ your shit as a judge on
Project Icon.
And you’ve gotta drain the dragon.
Snake break.
So off you go to the bathroom, and on your way—BLAM!—you run straight into Little Miss Over Easy, Sunny-Side-Up Beauty Queen. Now, this chick ain’t no nun. She’s more into the Holy Molys than the Hail Marys, if you get my vibe. She’s wearing a fuckin’ T-shirt that says ‘I Da Ho’
for the love of sweet Jesus Christ!
So this little smokin’ firecracker of a pageant princess says to you, ‘Hey, my best friend says you’d never let me blow you in the
Icon
bathroom. Wanna help me win a hundred bucks?’”

Joey was now standing, leaning over the edge of the stage, inches from Andy, who was gripped with either panic or anger, it was hard to tell which. “What was I supposed to DO, huh?” Joey yelled, before turning incredulously to his audience. “Send the girl home, emptymouthed and a hundred bucks poorer?”

He grinned to prove his point. So many teeth. Such ludicrously proportioned lips.

Silence.

Beside me, Mitch looked as though he were in physical pain.

“HUH??” repeated Joey.

Then Andy spoke.

“
Yes,
” he began, quietly. “That’s what you were supposed to do, Joey. Send her home, without putting your sixty-two-year-old
dick
in her goddamn eighteen-year-old
mouth,
okay? Now is that too much to ask, to save yourself and your employer from years of depositions, a public trial, jail, and/or possible financial ruin? Is it really?”

Andy’s face now had the hot, lumpy texture of rage.

“Jesus,” said Joey, throwing up his hands. “Shoot me. Just fuckin’ shoot me, okay? I had some fun. This is America. You guys should go work for Tali-Qaeda.”

“You mean the Taliban,” Andy corrected.

“Whatever, man.”

“Or al-Qaeda.”

“Jesus, okay, Mr. Dictionary.”

“Not Tali-Qaeda.”

“Suck on it, fat boy.”

Ignoring this, Andy leaned down and got closer to Joey, until their faces were almost touching. “Now answer my question, Mr. Lovecraft,” he snarled. “Will you restrain yourself? Or do you want to lose this lucrative day job of yours?”

Joey crossed his arms and tried to outstare his adversary. But Andy wasn’t intimidated. He’d clearly been given orders by Sir Harold to deliver an unambiguous message.

“Well?” demanded Andy.

“Okay—you fuckin’ win!” Joey huffed, sitting back down heavily. “Now why don’t you give me your goddamn address, so I can FedEx my fuckin’ balls to you overnight.”

Little Green Pills

December

AS IF JOEY’S LIBIDO
weren’t enough to contend with, there was still the unresolved matter of Bibi and her cue cards—a problem that was apparently all mine to handle, thanks to Len’s shameless ass-covering. I suppose it shouldn’t have come as a surprise that Len had pulled such a weasel move on me, given his long history of weaseldom. And yet… it kind of did. How did he expect me to take Bibi aside and have a “quiet word” when even Teddy often had to make appointments to speak to her? More to the point: How did Len think this notoriously imperious businesswoman—
worth half a billion dollars!
—was going to react when the most junior producer on
Icon
accused her of behavior that amounted to cheating?

My first tactic—inspired by Dad’s tried-and-true approach to conflict resolution—was to simply ignore the issue and hope it went away by itself.

And in this, I had a useful ally: Joey. After all, his unhappy encounter with Miss “I Da Ho” ’s father had left Len with no option but to halt
the filming in Houston. The thirty or so contestants who had yet to audition were given flight and hotel vouchers and told to come to Milwaukee, the next stop on our tour—which of course had to be delayed by a week to give Joey some additional recovery time. His black eye wouldn’t have entirely disappeared by then, but we figured the Mojo Squad could disguise its severity, and that he could invent an excuse that wouldn’t make the press think he’d suffered another major drug relapse.

All this bought me some valuable time on the Bibi front, which was great—while it lasted. But Milwaukee came around soon enough, as inevitably did the problem with the cue cards. My only lucky break was that Len had to remain in Los Angeles for meetings (which I suspected meant an urgent Merm-maintenance appointment), giving me yet more time to come up with a plan, which I did on the second day of filming. And if I may say so myself, it was a pretty genius idea: Instead of confronting Bibi directly, with all the unpleasantness that that would involve, I would simply notify the crew of Teddy’s presence at the back of the room and tell them to keep “accidentally” bumping into him with heavy (or better yet, greasy) equipment, until it become impossible for him to remain on the set without lodging a complaint,
which of course he wouldn’t do.

And guess what?

It worked. It worked
perfectly
… until Edouard turned up and took Teddy’s place.

Awesome. Now I had an even bigger problem.

To his credit, Edouard was at least more subtle about his signals to Bibi (as I suppose you’d expect from an Oscar-nominated actor), moving constantly around the set, never looking directly at his wife, and relaying his yeses and nos via a system of casually handsome facial gestures that took me a few minutes to decode, primarily because of the unlit cigarette in his mouth. Basically, a one-finger rub of the nose was positive. Two fingers meant the opposite. The effect on Bibi was the same, regardless, however: She became noticeably distracted while peering beyond the set for her cues. It threw off the rhythm of
the show completely. Where there should have been drama, there was just… Bibi squinting, followed by a half-hearted verdict, followed by more squinting to make sure she’d translated the code correctly. Heightening the problem: We had only a single take for the judges’ decisions—otherwise, the contestant would know what was coming, ruining everything—so whatever footage we got, we were stuck with.

I couldn’t understand why Bibi was so unsure of herself. I mean, there she was, this fantastically wealthy, exquisitely beautiful, worldfamous megacelebrity—and yet she needed the approval of her husband before voting a contestant on or off
Project Icon.
I couldn’t imagine ever taking instructions from Brock when it came to my job, or anything else, for that matter. I wondered if Edouard had the same influence over all the decisions in Bibi’s life. Was their marriage basically a father-child relationship? It just didn’t add up. I wanted to grab Bibi by the shoulders and say, “Who cares if Edouard is jealous of your career?
He’s
not the reason you’re here.
You
are!
Don’t let him control you!
”