Elimination Night (27 page)

      
T.S.

And guess what? By this measure,
any measure,
Mia’s dress was a triumph during that night’s broadcast. And not because of any malfunctions, thank God. (Taking my advice, she’d borrowed some adhesive strips from the Glam Squad, so nothing short of a magnitude 9.2 quake under the studio could have shaken loose the two ounces of fabric that stood between her and a public indecency fine.) No, the dress was enough on its own to turn Mia into an instant phenomenon.

“At Last! (But Too Late?)—
Icon
Finds the Power of Glamour, Buzz,” read the headline above Chaz Chipford’s as-it-happens blog on the
ShowBiz
website—next to a picture of Mia, taken from the balcony,
looking down. It was the probably the nicest thing
ShowBiz
had written about the show all season. But that wasn’t even the best part. No, the best part was the spontaneous Twitter meme that developed while Mia was still on stage, under the hashtag #mammarymia. I mean, okay, a lot of it was obscene. Really quite shockingly obscene. But still, by the time we cut to the second break, she was “trending.”

Or her boobs were, anyway.

Len was so happy, he high-fived me backstage—my first nonironic high five since fifth grade.

And Mia?

Still furious.

“Thanks to
you,
I’m a national fuckin’ punchline,” she raged, after hunting me down when the show was over. By then I was sitting cross-legged on a flightcase in the green room, wearing my super-ugly, emergency-backup pair of glasses—my right contact lens had fallen out earlier—and preparing scripts for the contestants to read during Michael Bolton Week. (Those quirky little backstories they tell about the songs they’re about to sing?
Always ghostwritten.
They’re also usually about as true as Tad Dunkel’s tale of Frankie the tragic dachshund.)

“You’re kidding, right?” I said, with genuine surprise. “You’re
trending
on Twitter.”

“You think I care about
Twitter?
” she yelled. She was livid. “If I’m
trending,
I want it to be for my work—not ’cause I’m ‘Mammary Mia.’ I’m an
artist,
not some… reality star.”

“Mia, I hate to break this to you,” I said, delicately. “But
Project Icon
is a reality show. And you’re one of its stars. As of tonight, in fact, I’d say you’re its biggest star.”

“No—I’m its biggest fuckin’
joke.
” She was about to cry.

“Oh, c’mon, Mia. You’re taking this way too—”

“You don’t give a shit about any of us, do you?” she yelped, now shivering from cold or misery, I couldn’t quite tell which. “We’re all just
expendable
to you. All you care about is kissing Len’s ass. Anything for the ratings, and your goddamn precious ‘career.’ God, it must really
suck to be such a heartless bitch. Well, I guess you got what you wanted tonight. I hope it makes you happy.”

She almost broke the door on the way out.

For a moment, I felt horrible. Worse than horrible. As much as Mia was becoming a pain in the ass of Bibi-esque proportions, it wasn’t a good feeling, being accused of deliberately turning someone into a walking punchline. (I knew from my years as the “freckled dorkworm” at Babylon High how painful it was to be the butt of everyone’s jokes.) At the same time, my patience with Mia was rapidly approaching its limit. I mean, was it just me, or was #mammarymia kind of brilliant—and funny? And surely it was ridiculous to suggest that caring about the ratings made me a “heartless bitch.”
Of course I cared about the ratings.
It wasn’t just about saving my job. It was about keeping the entire franchise on the air! Hadn’t Mia been reading
ShowBiz?
Didn’t she understand that if our numbers didn’t improve before Sir Harold’s return from Germany,
Project Icon
would be gone, for good?

The ratings were as much about
her
career as they were mine.

I must have sat there in the green room for ten minutes, going through all this in my head while sipping on a cup of instant coffee that managed to smell—and taste—like burning plastic. Still, at least it was keeping me awake, and it was the best I could get in the studio without having to bribe one of Teddy’s assistants to sneak into the invitation-only judges’ lounge and smuggle out a nonfat cappuccino made by Nico DeLuca,
Icon
’s implausibly accented in-house barista (“Dude sounds like a Euro retard, but
shit,
his coffee’s Grade A,” as Joey had announced a few days earlier. “One sip is like mainlining an eightball of coke into both fuckin’ eyeballs… and I say that as a guy who once mainlined an eightball of coke into both fuckin’ eyeballs.”)

I was just about to get back to work when a voice made me jump. “Hey, why so glum? You okay?”

Looking up, I saw Mitch in the doorway, a nerdy little backpack in one hand, a stack of binders in the other. “No,” I replied, not bothering to lie. “I’m not okay.”

“What’s up? Is it the
coffee?
You didn’t use that instant crap, did you? It’s about ten years out of date. I can ask Joey to get you some of the good stuff if you want.”

“It’s not the coffee,” I sighed. “It’s the contestants.”

“Listen,” said Mitch. “Don’t worry about the contestants. They’re expendable. Oh, and it looks like we’ll get a big pickup in the ratings tonight.
Finally,
huh? Amazing what you can do with a slutty dress and all those filthy minds on Twitter.”

“Yeah, amazing.” I managed half a smile.

“See ya tomorrow. And, Bill?”

“Uh-huh?”

“Make sure to buy yourself a copy of
Cheer the Fuck Up
magazine on your way out.”

With that, he was gone for the night.

I couldn’t help but feel pleased about the ratings. Mia had no idea how lucky she was. Len would protect her now.
She was a star.
That dress had pretty much guaranteed her a place in the Final Three—if the season lasted that long. Better than that, of course, was the fact that I’d been partly responsible for it, and by extension, all the free publicity. Maybe this was leverage. Maybe I could use it to get a raise out of Len…
Jesus, Sash, listen to yourself,
I thought,
you’re becoming one of them.

There was no denying it: I’d changed so much since joining
Project Icon,
I sometimes hardly recognized the words that came out of my own mouth. Was I becoming a cynic? Or was I just seeing things a lot more clearly now? Another possibility: I was simply getting better at my job. Whatever the case, it was making me think about everything in a different way—even Hawaii. What Joey told me in Maison Chelsea had put doubt in my mind. It wasn’t that I no longer wanted to write. No, I wanted to write more than anything else—especially now, with all this
material
everywhere—but what if Joey had a point, what if I’d ruin paradise by making it my home?
What was it he’d said exactly?
“Beautiful place, man, don’t get me wrong. But live there? Try it, I dare ya. Relaxation is stagnation.”

Also—I didn’t even want to admit this—I was getting tired of Brock. Every time he called, he was high. Giggling pathetically. Then he’d start telling me some circular, thirty-minute anecdote about a practical joke he’d played on Pete that was, like,
so awesome,
and I’d have to invent an excuse to get off the phone. Then he’d call me again, and I’d put him through to voicemail.
What kind of person puts their boyfriend through to voicemail all the time?
His most recent message:

      
“Hey, sexy! [
Cue ten seconds of giggling.
] Look, Sash, I’ve been thinking. I’ve been thinking you should just quit
Project Icon.
I mean, you hate it in LA, right? Man, I can’t even believe you’ve lasted this long. And this is bullshit, us not being together. Come to Honolulu, Sash. Get on the next plane, like you said you were gonna do that one time. We’ll figure it out. I got some money from my dad. I got a place here. I mean, Pete is sleeping on the sofa, but you’re cool with that, right? He says hi, by the way. You’re gonna love this Afghan resin his buddy got him from the Navy. The other day, we spent all afternoon just sitting on the beach, smoking that stuff and looking for dick-shaped clouds. [
A full minute of giggling.
] I wish you could have been there, Sash. Some funny shit. Anyhow, call me, okay? No more
Project Icon. Call me back.
Love ya, babe.”

Why couldn’t I listen to this without cringing? Maybe it was because he was so high, he probably wouldn’t even remember having left the message by the time he woke up. And if all this was irritating me so much
now,
was it really such a great idea to go live with him on a distant tropical island? I didn’t know the answer to that question any more. I wasn’t sure of
anything.

It was getting late. Although
Project Icon
went out at five o’clock, local time (which meant eight on the East Coast) there’d been so many logistical issues this week—missing caterers, broken mixing desk, outbreak of the flu—I hadn’t been able to start work on Michael Bolton Week until seven. And now, thanks to Mia’s outburst, it was almost eight thirty. I was hungry and tired. And, I had to admit, a little depressed.

Sighing, I snapped my laptop shut. There was no way I could concentrate on work right now. I needed to go home. Have a glass of wine. Sleep.

I drained my coffee and threw the cup at the trash, missing by about twelve feet. Pathetic. I was about to try again when my phone broke into the chorus of “Whatta Man.”

I stared at the vibrating plastic for a moment, baffled.

What the…?

Then I looked at the screen, and burst out laughing. “
BORIS
” said the caller ID. He must have put his name into my contacts book—and programmed that ringtone—while he was showing me his friend’s translation app at Soba Kitchen.

“You’re
unbelievable,
” I said, accepting the call.

“I had a feeling you might be a Salt-N-Pepa girl,” he replied. “I mean, I know you
say
you’re into all that ‘smart-people’ music—like that growly voiced dude Tim Watts or whatever—but I’m not buying it. I think you have some hidden shallows, Sasha King.”

It was hard to believe I hadn’t seen him since the night of Maison Chelsea, which was—what?—a month ago now. He’d tried to rearrange our date several times, of course, but things had just been too crazy. Besides, I had a boyfriend.

“So hey,” Boris went on. “I got your message on eCupidMatch.”

I was confused: I hadn’t sent him a message. Then a terrible image came to mind:
Mrs. Zglagovvcini.
Or rather, Mrs. Zglagovvcini—halfblind even with her reading glasses on—bent over the yellowing keys of her ancient, wheezing PC. Oh, no.

“You didn’t need to be so hard on yourself,” said Boris, as I crouched down and bit into my fist.

“What do you mean?” I groaned, eyes closed.
Oh, what did you say, Mrs. Zglagovvcini?

“Look, I admire that level of… honesty,” Boris continued. “But you’ve gotta give yourself a break.”

“Thank you, Boris,” I said, deciding not to probe any further. I just didn’t want to know.

“No—thank
you,
” he said.

“… for what?”

“For what you said about me. I mean, heh-heh—it’s not every day a girl calls you—”

“Please don’t mention it.”

“I mean—”

“Seriously, Boris. Whatever it was.
Don’t mention it.
”

Boris coughed, awkwardly.

“So, anyway,” I said, ending the brief silence on the line. “I tried out your friend’s new phone app the other day. I had no idea the Russian dry cleaner around the corner from me was offering happy-ending massages in its alterations department.”

“Guess most cops don’t speak Russian.”

“Guess.”

“By the way,” said Boris. “I meant to say I’m sorry about what happened with your boyfriend.”

I wanted to throw the phone on the floor and jump on it.

“I mean, what a
douche,
” he went on. “He gets a cushy bar job at some tiny hotel
in Hawaii
and you’re the one who has to save up all the money, working day and night, only ever coming home to eat takeout food alone in front of the TV, even though what you
really
want is just to find a good guy, settle down in the country, and have kids. Wow, Sash. That dude sucks ass. And he’s never even been over to visit you?
Not once?
Some guys have no idea how lucky… anyway, I’m glad you dumped him. I’m sorry. But I’m glad.”

“I don’t know what to say, Boris.”

“You don’t always have to contact me through eCupidMatch, y’know,” he replied. “You’ve got my e-mail, right? And you can call. Anytime. My number’s in your phone.”

“I’m actually gonna shut down that eCupidMatch account,” I said, my voice hardening. “As soon as I get home, trust me. I’m going to talk to my, uh, service provider, and I’m going to tell her to
mind her own goddamn business
from now on. I mean, uh, I’m going to, y’know, terminate my profile. I’m over it, to be honest with you.”

“Hey,” said Boris, “how’d you like to come over this Saturday and taste my granddad’s—”

“Don’t say it.”

“
Meatballs.
He was Polish: left me some great recipes. I’m having some friends over at noon.”

“I’d love that, Boris. But I gotta go. Sorry. My boss is calling me over. Speak later.”

“Okay, talk to you—”

Click.

Truth was, Len wasn’t anywhere to be seen. I was just out of breath.

I
liked
Boris.

Way too much.

The Talent and the Glory

IT WAS DARK BY
the time I left Greenlit Studios. One of those surprisingly cold LA nights—with a huge, bright moon, the kind that follows you around so much, you feel like taking out a restraining order. The coyotes would be out later, I suspected, howling down from the hills. I wondered if Joey would do what he usually did on such occasions, and climb onto the roof of his house to howl right back at them.