Elimination Night (31 page)

I’d never thought about my job that way before. But it was true—I
did
ghostwrite for the contestants. I wrote those cheesy backstories to the songs they chose every week.

I remembered now what Dad had told me about his old band, Baja Babylonia: Stevie on bass, Jimbo on keys, Fitz on drums. They’d recorded this jazz album—three tracks, each lasting twenty minutes or so—and it had been reviewed by one of the underground listings magazines. A huge deal, in those days. All of a sudden, celebrities were turning up to their gigs. Within a month, they’d been picked up by the same label the Mahavishnu Orchestra were on. And a month after that, they’d been dumped. The album sold a few dozen copies. Stevie, Jimbo, and Fitz couldn’t take it. For them, it was a record deal or nothing. For Dad… well, he loved the trumpet too much to give up. That’s when he joined the wedding band, and gave music lessons at Babylon High when he wasn’t touring. He’d always hoped for another break.
But he still got to do what he loved for a living.

“I just wish I didn’t feel like we were taking advantage of the contestants so much,” I said. “I mean, that whole thing with Mia’s dress. And have you ever seen the contracts that Two Svens makes them sign? They don’t even get
paid.
”

“Oh,
honey,
” said Joey, as though my ignorance were endearing. “You ever heard of Brian Epstein?”

“Of course. The Beatles’ manager.”

“That’s right. And d’you know what Epstein told Ed Sullivan when he offered the Fab Four a mountain of fuckin’ cash to come on his show in sixty-four?”

“It wasn’t enough?”

“Try again.”

“I’ve no idea.”

“He didn’t
want
the money.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Swear to God, look it up on Googlepedia. Ed Sullivan was offerin’ a one-shot deal: one night, three songs, big fuckin’ payday. Same thing he’d given Elvis a few years earlier. But Epstein didn’t give a shit about the money. He didn’t want a one-shot deal—he wanted The Beatles on the show three times in a row, top billing each time And for that, he was happy to take almost nothin’ at all.
The Ed Sullivan Show
was a national ad campaign, as far as Brian Epstein was concerned.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“You’re ten years old,
how could you?
The point being: Brian Epstein was a smart motherfucker. The Beatles were lucky to have him. Just like those contestants are lucky to have Two Svens. If the greatest band in history was happy to give up a payday to get on prime-time TV, then why can’t those kids do the same? Trust me—for the ones with the talent, who can work hard and take the pressure—it’s the best deal they’ll ever make. And before you tell me
The Ed Sullivan Show
was cooler beans than
Project Icon,
think again, man. Ed Sullivan was a Grade A fuckin’ cheeseball. He had ventriloquists’ dummies and tapdancing farm animals and shit on his show. He damn near ruined the Beatles, too. Go watch the tape. He had ’em do a cover of a
show tune
—and
when John Lennon opened his mouth to sing, he put a caption up that said, ‘Sorry, girls, he’s married.’
Project Icon
is like Shakespeare compared with that goddamn corny bullshit.”

Joey slumped back on his pillows. The speech had left him exhausted. Then he leaned forward again. “Tell you what, Bill,” he said. “If you wanna write so bad—why don’t you write some lines for me in your spare time? I’m sick of that fuckhead Tad Dunkel putting words in Ghetto Barbie’s mouth. I’ll
pay
you. Whatever Len has got you on right now, I’ll give you the same. Double your salary.”

I thought I must have misheard. “You mean—”

“A payin’ gig. Ain’t that what all writers want?”

For the first time in what felt like months, I smiled—a
real
smile, the kind that just arrives on your face, without thought or planning, requiring the use of unfamiliar muscles and sinew. When Joey saw it, he couldn’t help but do the same.

“If you suck, though, your ass is fired,” he added quickly.

“Okay,” I agreed, still unable to stop myself grinning. “It’s a deal. Thank you, Joey.
Thank you.
”

So that was it: my future decided.

As long as
Project Icon
remained on the air, which now seemed more likely than not thanks to Sir Harold’s bingo problem, I had finally done it;
I had become a writer.

Okay, so it wasn’t precisely the way I had expected my career to turn out. But it was a start. And in terms of subject matter, what could possibly beat The King of Sing, the Devil of Treble, the Holy Cow of Big Wow? Not much. Not much at all. I was delighted—and I guess
relieved.
Not just because of the extra money (which would solve a number of increasingly pressing financial issues), but also because it gave me a legitimate excuse to turn down Nigel Crowther’s two hundred thousand dollars a year. It also meant that I could see
Project Icon
through until at least the end of season thirteen, and as horrifically dysfunctional as my colleagues at Greenlit Studios might have been, I’d become fond of many of them: Mitch and Joey, Mu and Sue, the
crew guys I went drinking with every so often (all right, a lot). Even Nico DeLuca, the strange-voiced barista, who’d started to leave freshly brewed americanos inside my cubicle at Greenlit Studios every morning, thus sparing me from the green room’s 1998-vintage jar of instant coffee. And Len? Sure, he was an asshole, and yet… no, actually, he was just an asshole. But that didn’t stop me from feeling a certain loyalty to him.

Then I remembered something.

Oh, crap,
how could I have forgotten?
I looked at the time on my phone. Nigel Crowther’s deadline had passed, but another was approaching. “Joey,” I said, urgently. “
Your pee test.
”

“Huh?” he replied, sounding bored.

“Your pee test. It’s due back from the lab this morning.”

“Oh.”

“Joey, you took my pills. You took the whole bottle. That stuff doesn’t leave your system for
months.
You’re going to fail. What are you gonna tell Len? He doesn’t even know you’re here, does he? And what if
ShowBiz
—”

“Will you relax already?” said Joey. “First of all, Len will never know. Doc says I can leave here after lunch, before rehearsal. And the pee test? Seriously, man, not a problem. All you’ve got to worry about is getting on the phone to Brick or Brack, or whatever the fuck your invisible boyfriend is called, and tell him your plans have changed, and that he needs to get his ass over to LAX. And don’t be surprised if he pulls some bullshit excuse. In fact, if he ain’t already boning some hula-skirted surf princess with a snatch as tight as a bee’s fuckin’ asshole, I’ll eat my own underwear. No offence. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m gonna watch some TV here and play a game of five-knuckle shuffle under the covers. You’re welcome to stay for the main event—but if I were you, I’d go make that call.”

With that, Joey waved a remote at the TV, and the screen lit up like the scoreboard at the Super Bowl. It was tuned to one of the local Rabbit channels; the kind that employ young and invariably blonde female
anchors to wear lipstick and strapless dresses while reading the news at ten a.m. Just what Joey needed.

I grabbed my jacket and got up to leave.

“See you later, Joey,” I said. “Enjoy the ‘news.’”

I was halfway to the door when I heard the smash and clatter. Joey’s breakfast tray had slid off the bed, creating a slick of coffee and orange juice under my feet. A muffin rolled in the direction of BLT, who seemed baffled and yet duly grateful for this unrequested gift from above. When I looked over at Joey, he had the remains of an omelet in his lap and was half out of bed, pointing dementedly.

It was the TV.

The local Rabbit channel was showing live news footage from a helicopter. The camera was pointed at the side of a high-rise building somewhere—but the image wasn’t quite in focus. Then it zoomed slightly, and the clarity improved. Through the window—which must have spanned thirty or forty feet—it was now possible to make out the interior of some kind of upscale condominium. In the center of the main room was a huge bed, surrounded by wheeled cabinets of some kind, and a figure sitting up on the mattress, arms outretched. Behind him was another figure, near the door. She had…
red hair
and looked…

Oh, Jesus, we were on TV.

Joey was now stabbing furiously at the remote, trying to raise the volume.

      
“… infamously described as ‘Joey Dumbass’ by President Reagan for his parachute-less jump over Manhattan…”

Every phone in the room began to ring. I didn’t know which one to answer first, so I just stood there, uselessly, watching myself stand there, uselessly, on the giant screen.

      
“… troubled history of extreme behavior, resulting in a decade-long visit to the Betty Ford…”

Joey was out of bed now, heading for the window. His robe had
fallen away, leaving him completely naked—a vision of ruined human anatomy, like one of those cautionary photographs they put on cigarette packs in Europe and South America. Someone had started to bang on the door while at the same time holding down the buzzer. The phones were still ringing.

So much noise.

But I couldn’t move.

      
“… and comes just as
Project Icon
has finally seen the first sign of a turnaround in its ratings, after seeming for months to face certain cancellation. A spokesman for Mr. Lovecraft could not be reached for comment at this hour, although Honeyload bandmate Blade Morgan has taken to Twitter this morning, saying this doesn’t come as a…”

The news had now cut to a three-way shot. On the left: the anchor, all tight leather and gold jewelry, still talking. Below her, a scrolling caption: “
SHOWBIZ
WEBSITE CLAIMS
ICON
JUDGE HOSPITALIZED—FANS AND COLLEAGUES FEAR DEADLY OVERDOSE. STATEMENT IMMINENT.
” And to the right, the feed from the helicopter—which, if you looked carefully enough, displayed the outline of a sixty-two-year-old man, unclothed and in an unambiguous state of sexual arousal, screaming from behind tinted glass.

Chaz Chipford’s Greatest Hits

May

“
BILL, MEET DICK.
”

This was at Greenlit Studios, a few days before the season finale.

Len had just led me into his backstage office, where a tall, heavyset man with a look of barely suppressed rage in his eyes was sitting neatly at a circular table.

“Uh… hi, Dick,” I said.

Dick blinked twice. Cheap tie, I noticed. Collar too tight. A bull on a leash.

“Dick here is a licensed private investigator,” Len revealed. “And yes, before you point out the obvious—that
literally
makes him a private dick.” Len laughed at this for—oh—a full minute. Then, turning to Dick: “That
is
your real name, right?”

“Correct,” said Dick, unpleasantly.

“Please, Bill—make yourself comfortable,” Len resumed, pulling out chairs for both of us. (A worrying sign: Len never wanted me to be
comfortable.) “Dick is now going to tell you exactly what kind of
dicking
he’s been doing for us over the past few weeks.”

Dick stood up.

I’d already guessed the reason for his presence, of course: To investigate the source of all those “
Project Icon
exclusives” that had been appearing on the
ShowBiz
website recently. It had started with the news about Joey’s admission to Mount Cypress—resulting in the spectacle of a nude grandfather parading on live TV at ten o’clock in the morning (for which the news channel had been fined for both invasion of privacy and indecency)—and had just gotten worse from there. A new scandal was breaking every day, it seemed. Sometimes
twice
a day. It was a wonder Chaz Chipford’s tubby little fingers could type fast enough to keep up.

None of which had harmed us in the ratings, of course. Precisely the opposite. After the first two weeks of revelations, we were back in the top spot across all networks. The week after that, the numbers from the Jefferson Metrics Organization came in at over twenty million for the first time since the season twelve finale. The following week: Twenty-
five
million. And now, well, it was hard not to laugh: We were closing in on the big three-zero. People had even started to
vote
for the contestants again. I mean, okay, so the landline volume was still down. But if you counted text messages, Facebook “likes,” and the Rabbit website survey, more Americans had participated in season thirteen of
Project Icon
than in the last two presidential elections combined. It was incredible.

As for Sir Harold: still very much in Germany. Things weren’t looking too good over there. Big Corp had practically moved its entire HQ over to Berlin in an effort to get the bingo crisis under control. Meanwhile, all non-bingo-related issues were being left to the divisional chiefs to handle, which in our case meant David Gent and Ed Rossitto—who seemed delighted with the way things were going. They’d even stopped mentioning Nigel Crowther’s name every other sentence.

There was no doubt about it: Those “bingo betrügers” over at Rabbit Deutschland—each now facing twenty years in federal prison for
their epic scam—had bought
Project Icon
enough time to save the franchise. This wasn’t of much comfort to Sir Harold, however. Having caught the fraudsters, the German prosecutors were now going after Big Corp—relentlessly and with overwhelming popular support, thanks largely to the cheerleading of rival news organizations. It was beginning to look as though they wouldn’t stop until they’d driven the company out of business, or at least inflicted a lot more damage.

Thankfully, the scandals appearing in
ShowBiz
every day weren’t criminal in nature. They were mostly to do with the contestants’ personal lives—and, of course, Joey, who never did admit to that overdose. The official explanation was he’d been “overcome by tiredness and emotion” following his mother’s death, and therefore—as a precautionary measure—had checked himself into Mount Cypress to spend the night under observation. This spectacular untruth was made a lot easier to maintain when Joey’s pee test came back clean. I thought he must have just gotten lucky, or that he’d somehow managed to drown himself in enough Kangen water to fool the lab. It was only when he also sailed through the next test—in spite of having ingested a year’s supply of maximum-strength aspirin—that I started to get suspicious. And then of course came Chaz Chipford’s story (on which more later), which blew everything apart. By that point it was too late for Joey to get fired, however. Besides, he claimed that it had all been a practical joke, a publicity stunt in the spirit of Honeyload’s early days on the road.