Elimination Night (20 page)

Now sirens outside, as the fire department arrives—all of it, judging by the noise. The Las Vegas Police Department isn’t far behind. I no longer feel as though I’m on the set of a TV show. I feel as though I’m at the scene of a natural disaster. A steady beat of rotors above is making the walls vibrate. More sirens, at hearing-loss volume. As for Bibi—she’s no longer visible amid the uniformed personnel. They’ve picked her up and are carrying her down the stairs in a well-rehearsed sixteen-legged shuffle. People are yelling, pointing, running in all directions—with the exception of one man, who’s standing right across from me, surveying the chaos while talking calmly into his phone.

It’s… Teddy. Is he
dictating
something? I move closer but he hangs up, passes the phone to an assistant, and with a tiny smirk, thrusts his hands deep in his pockets.

He seems amused. No,
satisfied.

I look around for Bonnie, but she’s gone.

Vengeance Enough

THE SEASON THIRTEEN
premier of
Project Icon
was due to go out at eight o’clock on a Wednesday evening, near the end of the month. It was hard to believe it was
actually happening
—but with every day that passed, it seemed less and less likely that Sir Harold Killoch would order the preemptive cancellation that
ShowBi
z magazine kept predicting so confidently on its front page. Billboards went up. Listings were printed. And then the very first sneak-peeks began to air during Rabbit prime time—most of them featuring Joey being either pixelated or bleeped.

Seven months
it had taken us to get this far—thanks to the sanity checks, the contract negotiations, the audition tours, and then Las Vegas Week. It felt more like seven years.

My plan was to watch the show at home in my pajamas—a luxury I obviously wouldn’t have when the live episodes began. I’d even bought my very first TV for the purpose. Yeah, I know: How very nineties of me. But the show wasn’t going out live on the Internet, so I didn’t have any choice, and as much as I wasn’t exactly looking forward to seeing how the auditions had been edited together, there was no way I
was going to miss it. I had the whole evening all mapped out, in fact. At around seven, I’d open a bottle of wine from my super-special reserve—i.e., the stuff that cost more than two dollars a bottle—then I’d order a chicken tikka masala from The Gates of Eternal Destiny (Full Bar & Restaurant) on Sunset, and then, when my one-woman feast arrived, I’d sit on my bed with my plastic glass and disposable cutlery and cringe alone at Bibi’s distracted gazing, JD’s booya-ka-
kas,
and Joey’s… well, his general offensiveness. (“That performance was almost as crazy-ass hot as your daughter,” he remarked to one of the older contestants during the early auditions, apparently unaware that the girl in question had only just celebrated her twelfth birthday.)

My fantasy night in never happened, of course. Len wanted the judges and “a few key members of staff” to watch the season premier
together
—yet another effort to promote camaraderie. In reality, the only thing it promoted was an argument between Bibi and Joey over where the screening should be held. Joey, who was booked to play a gig with Honeyload in Kuala Lumpur the night before, said it should be at his house, because he was a sixty-two-year-old man, and he’d be exhausted from all the traveling. Bibi countered by saying that because she was looking after quadruplets (or rather, she and her
twelve nannies
were looking after quadruplets) the gathering should take place at her place. Joey then pointed out that he lived at the top of Sunset Plaza Drive in the Hollywood Hills, a more convenient location for pretty much all the executives and producers who’d been invited. Bibi responded with the observation that her house was bigger, more expensive, and had twice been featured prominently in
Architectural Digest
magazine. Plus, she had her own private movie theater.

And so it went on.

Bibi won, naturally. Which meant I had to take the hour-long journey to Secret Mountain, and then the hour-long journey back home again. Only this time—no surprise—Bibi didn’t send David to Little Russia in the Rolls-Royce to pick me up. Instead, I had to take a cab, which charged me four hundred dollars (thanks to an obviously rigged meter)
for the ride. Worse luck: The cab wasn’t allowed beyond the military-grade checkpoint at Secret Mountain’s entrance.

“That’s prohibitive, ma’am,” said the spectacularly obese woman who filled (quite literally) the gatehouse. “No taxicabs, buses, coaches, minicoaches, or multipassenger vans.”

“Prohibitive?”

“It’s on the sign, ma’am.”

“Don’t you mean
prohibit-ed?
”

“Read the sign, ma’am.”

This wasn’t going anywhere. “Okay,” I said, changing tactics. “I’m here for the Vasquez residence.”

“Name?”

“Sasha King.”

“… I only have a Bill King, ma’am.”

“Yeah, that’s me.”

“You just said your name was Sasha, ma’am.”

We went back and forth like this for—oh, forever. Eventually, it was established that,
yes,
I was indeed Bill King, and
no,
this did not mean an exception to the no-cabs rule could be made. So my unshaven driver with his jerry-rigged meter performed a U-turn in the fire lane and declared that I now owed him an extra eighty-five dollars for waiting time. I paid him and climbed out onto the street. There was no alternative: I was going to have to walk to Bibi’s. Uphill, in the dark. With no sidewalks. The woman in the gatehouse told me it was “probably less than a mile” but given that she looked as though she’d never walked farther than a few yards in her life, I wasn’t about to take her word for it. In fact, the Google Maps app on my phone informed me that it was
two
miles.

At least I’d worn jeans and flats.

This no longer seemed like such a good thing when I reached the house, however. I’d underestimated—by some degree—the grandness of the occasion. This wasn’t going to be a bunch of us sitting around in wearable blankets, chugging domestic beer, and laughing at inside
jokes, as the e-mailed invitation had suggested. Oh, no. By the looks of things, it was going to be something more closely resembling an awards-season aftershow party. Bibi’s driveway already resembled a Concours d’Elegance, what with the vintage gull-wing Mercedes, next to three black Range Rovers, next to a glowering Aston Martin. And more cars were arriving by the minute, greeted by a line of valets in red “BV” monogrammed jumpsuits. They ignored me as I crunched wearily through the gravel between them.

At the door, I was met by the same housekeeper as before. If she knew who I was, she didn’t acknowledge it. This time, she led me in the opposite direction to the kitchen, to a separate wing of the house. We walked all the way through it to the other side, exited into an rose garden, and followed a stone pathway to an outhouse, which I assumed from the vintage
Gone with the Wind
billboard at the entrance was Bibi’s private movie theater. Tuxedoed waiters greeted me there, holding aloft trays of champagne and mini lobster rolls. I inhaled three of the latter before getting through the door. And then… well, there I was, feeling catastrophically underdressed. Bibi was wearing some kind of orange-plumed minidress with matching plastic go-go boots and a necklace with enough diamonds on it to fund a minor African civil war. Edouard was in a three-piece suit, as were the couple’s five pit bull puppies. Len had turned up in his chalk-stripes. Joey sported a kilt. And just when I thought things couldn’t get any more uncomfortable, I noticed a terrifyingly familiar outline across the room: a jagged edge, almost like a royal crown. White-silver in color. Yes, there was only one man on earth who could be identified with such ease by the mere
shape
of his hair.

Sir Harold Killoch.

I felt as though my soul had just frozen over.

Surprisingly, however, the evening turned out to be a relaxing affair—at first, anyway. The wide red armchairs in the theater were the softest things I had ever sat on. The champagne was delicious. And after the lobster rolls, we were each presented with a single, luxuriously battered french fry, followed by a buffet of candy served in little
paper bags. And the show? Well, it was better than expected. I even teared up for a moment during the bit when Mia Pelosi walked onto the podium in a purple ball gown and sang “The Prayer.” The editors had earned their wages, that was for sure. Especially when it came to Bibi. One or two moments notwithstanding, they’d managed to cut the tape in a way that made her seem entirely focused on the contestants throughout, rather than gazing beyond the set at Teddy’s cue cards, as she’d done throughout most of the Houston and Milwaukee auditions. What surprised me more, however, was her
presence.
You didn’t feel it in person, when she was just this tiny, glittery…
pain in the ass.
But up there on screen, no matter
where
she was in the frame, it was extraordinary. She was—for want of a better way of putting it—a
star.
When the cameras were on her,
Icon
wasn’t a reality show any more: It was a blockbuster. Amazingly, Joey didn’t have this same effect. He was more entertaining, no doubt whatsoever. But he wasn’t an event in his own right.

When the hour was over, the lights came on to the double-
ting
of silver on glass. The screen went black. And then Sir Harold appeared in front of it—spoon and champagne flute in hand—grinning in a way that could have been taken as either sinister or paternal. I decided on the latter. It might have been the booze.

“Well, well, well,” he began. “And to think they said you’d never make it this far.”

Nervous laughter.

Sir Harold looked slowly around the room, as if mentally identifying each employee in turn, calculating their value, their cost… their
usefuless
to the whole Big Corp operation.

“Seriously, everyone,” he continued. “Very well done. Really, I really mean that.” With his hands still full, he mimed applause. “I know you’ve all been reading about yourselves a lot in the press lately. And if you believe
ShowBiz
magazine, which I don’t, by the way”—this prompted more laughter, and mutters of “Chaz fucking Chipford”—“you guys are facing an either/or situation with
The Talent Machine.
Nonsense! I truly believe that
both
shows can thrive.”

Silence.

“Well, don’t
you?
”

A desperate cheer filled the room, led by Len, who sounded almost hysterical.

“And the proof of that I’m certain will come tomorrow morning,” Sir Harold went on, his tone unexpectedly hardening. “With all the hype around season thirteen, and our greatly increased budget to attract the very best in talent”—he pointed in turn at Joey and Bibi—“I’m very,
very
excited to see where the ratings come in. Even a
modest
ten percent gain in the metrics will really prove to the world the ongoing strength of this franchise. And anything more than that—well, that’s just
gravy!
” He paused for a moment, resuming in a more contemplative tone. “Y’know” he said, “In the village of Nbdala, South Africa, where my dear mother was born, they have a saying, and it translates something like this: ‘For the wise farmer, a good harvest is vengeance enough.’ So here’s to silencing our critics with a good harvest, eh? And to some
gravy
on the top, heh-heh-heh.”

Up went his glass.

This time, no cheering. Just a roomful of sweaty, quickly sobering faces. A
modest
ten percent gain?
Was the man out of his fucking mind?
We’d be lucky if the ratings didn’t fall by that much! What the hell was he talking about?
Was he thinking of a different show?

“Hmm,” said Sir Harold, answering the silence. “Well, it’s late, and I’ve got to be on a plane to Germany tomorrow morning—a few local difficulties. So a good night to you all.”

Then he left through the wrong door, tripping Bibi’s fire alarm.

In spite of the noise and the flashing lights, no one spoke or moved for a very long time.

Fallen Icon

THE NEXT MORNING,
I avoided the news: no Twitter, no Facebook, no TV… nothing. I didn’t even switch on my phone. If
Project Icon
had made the morning headlines for any other reason than an unprecedented jump in the ratings (
Breaking:
“Every Man, Woman, and Child in America Watches Season Premiere of Singing Competition!”), I didn’t want to know. I mean, what good would it do? The number of people who’d tuned in the previous night was now beyond anyone’s control.

In reality, of course, the curiosity was just about killing me. After all, my future life with Brock—not to mention my writing career—depended on the show’s success.

A new season of
Icon
wouldn’t make the news all by itself, of course. (Other than on Rabbit News, which had been running shameless puff pieces since early December.) But if the daily network rankings published overnight by the Jefferson Metrics Organization moved in any way that could support
ShowBiz
magazine’s predictions about the show’s imminent death, no TV anchor in the country would be able to
resist the opportunity to run a clip of Bibi Vasquez and Joey Lovecraft instead of reading aloud the latest minutes from the Federal Reserve.

I suppose it was the unreasonable pressure from Sir Harold—a.k.a. Mr. “Modest Ten Percent Gain”—that made me want to pretend the Jefferson Metrics Organization didn’t even exist. There was just no plausible reason to believe we could hold on to twenty million viewers
and then add another two million
—as he’d suggested—and all in the first night of the season. And if missing the numbers was a certainty, then why bother going through the whole demoralizing process of hearing it on the news, along with all the inevitable talk about our cancellation?

So, that morning, with a champagne hangover, I took my usual shower, drank my usual three cups of coffee, left my apartment at the usual time of just after nine o’clock, but in a total information vacuum. NASA could have accidentally blown up Canada a few hours earlier, and I wouldn’t have known any better.