Elimination Night (8 page)

      
HOUSTON, WE HAVE AN OFFER!

      
(A CHAZ CHIPFORD EXCLUSIVE)

      
BUNNY NET DANGLES FIVE-MILLION-DOLLAR CARROT IN FRONT OF YOUTUBE POOPER’S NOSE —

      
SEEN AS LEVERAGE, REHABILITATION FOR TROUBLED HONEYLOAD FRONTMAN

“I’m going down to meet Joey at the show tonight—if the rest of the band haven’t killed him before then,” said Mitch. “I’ll see what he thinks of the terms.”

“Great,” Len replied. “Bill will go with you.”

Actually, I was supposed to be having a video chat with Brock at seven o’clock.

Not anymore.

Mitch didn’t put up a fight—which was just as well, otherwise the three-hour Town Car ride that followed might have been a bit awkward. Maybe he wanted the company, I thought. Or a witness, in case things got nasty backstage.

When we finally got to the amphitheater, Blade Morgan was waiting just beyond the crew entrance, looking about as unhappy as it is possible for a human being to look. Holding up his BlackBerry—on which the headline from the
ShowBiz
website was displayed—he said, “Tell Joey to go fuck himself up the ass with a razor blade. Actually, don’t: He’d probably enjoy that. Tell him I hope he drops dead, so I can skullfuck his eye sockets.”

“One word, Blade,” Mitch replied, pushing the screen away from his face. “
Franjoopta.
”

“That was different,” Blade steamed. “That was fuckin’
different,
you asshole!”

Mitch just raised his eyebrows and walked away. Franjoopta was of course the worst contestant in
Project Icon
’s history. Indeed, when he was voted into the season eight finale as a result of an ironic “Save Franjoopta” campaign, the nation was so outraged, questions were raised in Congress. The point being: Franjoopta’s final song on the show (before Sir Harold ordered his elimination “by any means necessary”) was a spectacularly misguided light reggae affair, supposedly based upon The Beatles’ “Helter Skelter.” And Len, in a desperate effort to add credibility to the proceedings, had invited a “rock ’n’ roll icon” to play George Harrison’s riff as a special guest. Unfortunately for Blade, that icon was him. He’d never heard of Franjoopta. This changed soon enough. The ridicule from Honeyload’s fan base was so overwhelming, he couldn’t go out in public again for a year.

For the next three hours, I sat on a giraffe-skin couch in Joey’s trailer, listening to Mitch being subjected to a meandering, tearful lecture outlining the many, many ways in which he was a failure as a representative, and how,
if Joey Lovecraft were a manager
—“li’l old me, who doesn’t know shit and belongs in the crazy house”—he would never, ever have allowed his client to be humiliated with such a pathetic, insulting sum as five million dollars. For a moment I wondered if all this were for my benefit: a negotiating tactic. But no. I doubted Joey could remember my name, never mind who I worked for.

“Did you even do any research on these Rabbit clowns?” he asked Mitch, loading up a DVD of an old episode of
Cannon Jump.
It was a TV show from the eighties about a nine-year-old kid who takes a job as a human cannonball, only to find that every time he gets shot up in the air, he goes back in time. “I mean,
hello?
” he yelled, waving at the image paused on his giant flatscreen. “The kid.
Ring any bells?
”

“Not really,” shrugged Mitch.

“Look again.”

Mitch studied the child. There was, in fact, something oddly familiar about the shape of his—

“Holy shit!”

“Yeah,” nodded Joey. “Ed fuckin’ Rossitto! Guess how old he was when he got this part?”

“Eleven?” guessed Mitch.

“Thirty fuckin’ three!”

“Wow.”

“You shoulda WARNED me about this guy, man. He’s freakier than a cow who goes ‘quack’! And have you seen the… the
shit
he put on TV before
Icon?
” He passed Mitch an entry from Wikipedia that Mu or Sue must have printed out for him earlier.

“
When Sharks Eat Babies,
” Mitch read.

“Yeah. Dude belongs at a fuckin’
circus.
”

Awkwardly, Mitch then had to reveal that JD Coolz and Maria Herman-Bloch were on their way to that night’s show (Ed couldn’t make it, thank God) to help convince him to sign the contract that Ed had just e-mailed over. “Ain’t nothin’ to discuss,” Joey huffed. After another hour of complaining, he agreed to at least give them both backstage passes, so they could watch from the wings.

It wasn’t until Blade dropped to his knees for the guitar solo in “Hell on Wheels”—while staying within the contractually mandated No Lead Singer Zone drawn around him in chalk—that Joey even acknowledged their presence. He did this by running over to Maria, grabbing her hand, dragging her out on to the stage, and forcing her to dance. When the music stopped, he bent her over backward until she was about to fall. “
More, s’il-vous plaît,
” he whispered.

It was the last thing he said to anyone all night.

Eventually, revised offers were made to both Bibi and Joey: Twenty million dollars combined. To keep Joey happy, the basic salaries were exactly the same, but Rabbit came up with all kinds of other tricks to guarantee millions of dollars’ worth of publicity for Bibi’s various enterprises. Everything was ready to go.

And then came the weeks and weeks and weeks of arguing over
every subclause and footnote, right down to the number of Balance Bars in the minibar of Bibi’s trailer, versus the number of Ghirardelli chocolate squares in Joey’s. Finally, when all this had been agreed in writing—it took July, August, and some of September—Mitch and Teddy were loaned private jets from Big Corp and told to go find Bibi and Joey, wherever they happened to be in the world, and get their signatures within twenty-four hours. But Teddy couldn’t help himself: He leaked a story to
ShowBiz
bragging of how Bibi had gotten the better deal. Example: She’d been given a dressing room for The Reveal, when Joey had been told to show up “camera ready” with nowhere to sit but the backstage lounge area.

Mitch was so mad, he had to be strapped to a gurney and shot up with Xanax. By the time he’d calmed down, it looked like the whole thing was off. But then Ed got on the phone and convinced Mitch that Teddy had been bullshitting.

All
the judges had to turn up camera ready.

“If it makes you feel any better, I’ll give both of ’em
both
dressing rooms,” he said. “How about that? We’ve got an assistant producer down at The Roundhouse—Len will get you her name—who can sort it out. Tell her exactly what you need.”

Grudgingly, Mitch agreed. It didn’t change the fact that Bibi and Joey wouldn’t actually
need
the dressing rooms. But it was enough of a symbolic gesture to finally get some ink on the contracts. That’s why I had to spend eight days and fifty thousand dollars making sure every last detail was taken care of, right down to Bibi’s red iPads, which had to be custom-ordered from a store in Hong Kong. It never occurred to me the judges would never even see the result of all this work.

Clearly, when it came to celebrities, I still had a lot to learn.

The Run-Through

LEN’S PHONE WAS
ringing now.

The tone was broken and distorted, probably due to interference from the microwave trucks outside.

Still ringing.

My panic had now mutated into a kind of existential doubt: Was this even the
right day
for the press conference? Had I somehow completely misunderstood Len’s instructions? Was I about to wake up in my old bedroom at Mom’s house, soaked and trembling, from some horrendous anxiety dream? Nothing about this situation made any sense whatsoever. How could Bibi, Joey, and JD—even Wayne Shoreline—just
disappear,
at the exact moment they were all due on stage? And where the hell were Teddy and Mitch when I actually needed them?

I thought I might throw up. But then a strange kind of anger came over me. This job was taking decades off my life. And for what? My salary was a joke. My colleagues were psychotic. I’d never even wanted to work in TV. Certainly not
this kind
of TV. If it hadn’t been for that random call from Len, with this “dazzling opportunity,” I would never
have come all the way out here to LA. And, who knows, maybe I’d have found another way to write my novel, like I promised Dad I would.

Great: Now I was thinking about Dad. Or rather, I was thinking about our final conversation in that greasy-walled diner he used to like, the one so close to the Long Island Expressway, everything would rattle when an eighteen-wheeler drove past.

“I’m not gonna be around forever, Sash,” he’d announced, halfway through his standard midafternoon breakfast of coffee and buttered toast. Dad was skinny as hell. It was nerves, he said. Toast was the heaviest thing he could get into his stomach before a show—and he played two shows a night, every night of the week. That’s what it takes to make a living when you’re splitting the money among a fourteenpiece wedding band.

I’m pretty sure Dad knew about the cancer by then. No one else did, though. Not even Mom. I mean, how could she have? Dad was away most of the time, and he didn’t want her to worry. It took her months to find out that his “tour of Louisiana” was nothing of the kind. He’d booked himself in a hospice on Staten Island.

“I’m sorry I never had much money to give you,” he said, between gulps of weak, sugary coffee. “But at least your old man did what he loved, right? I mean, look at Stevie, Jimbo… Fitz. You think those guys wake up every morning, happy to put on their shirts and ties and get in their goddamn
cars
and drive to an office? No way. They’re always calling me up, wanting to know how it’s going on the road. They want me to tell ’em how
hard
it is, that I’ve grown out of it. But I haven’t, Sash. I still love this life.
It’s who I am.
I made my choice, and I’ve never regretted it.”

“Jesus, Dad,” I said. “Enough with the obituary already. You’re only forty-three.”

“I just wanna prepare you, Sash. You’ve got some big choices ahead. You finish college this year. And I know you wanna write that novel of yours, whatever it ends up being about. But that’s not gonna be easy. There’ll be bills to pay. Mom’s gonna want you to get a
real
job. You might even want to take a real job yourself, when you see your friends
buying apartments and cars and clothes and all that bullshit they think they need. But write your book, Sash. Find a way—’cause if you don’t, you’ll never forgive yourself. Trust me.
Do what you love.
”

Back then, of course, I hadn’t written a word. The knobbled, weary old man of my imagination had yet to set off on his unwise journey across the Black Lake of Sorrow on a night when the shutters of the Old House were closed.

Next time I saw Dad, it was in Mom’s living room. They’d put him in his favorite tux, trumpet by his side. Open casket. The cancer had been genetic, apparently—no avoiding it. Everyone got drunk, then the band played him out:
A Taste of Honey,
of all things. The Herb Alpert version. I was a mess. Angry, too: why hadn’t he gone to a doctor earlier?
Why hadn’t he told any of us?
Stevie, Jimbo, and Fitz were there, all in shirts and ties, all still very much alive. My God, the stories they told.

Of course, if I’d known that Dad was giving me his last words in the diner, I would have stayed for dessert. Or at least some coffee. I would also have taken the opportunity to ask for some clarification: Like, how can you do what you love if the thing you love isn’t a job that anyone will pay you to do? What then, Dad?
What then?

I tried calling Len a second time.

Stabbing at the digits on the screen, I noticed three unplayed voicemails from a number with a Honolulu area code. Brock. What with the chaos of the press conference, I still hadn’t gotten around to calling him back. I hadn’t spoken to him since… wow, last week. But he’d understand. He always did. I liked that about Brock: His laid-back personality. The fact that he let me do my own thing.

Now Len’s phone was ringing again in long, ragged tones.

Ringing.

Ringing.

Hang on a minute… it was actually
ringing.
As in: Ringing here in the room, somewhere behind—

I turned, and there was Len, walking toward me, his face so paralyzed by preshow Botox injections, he might as well have spent the
night in a cryogenic chamber. Behind him: Bibi, Joey, JD, and Wayne—four across, like a slo-mo credits sequence. Teddy and Mitch lingered behind, each trying not to acknowledge the other’s presence, but failing conspicuously. I felt light-headed with relief.

Oh, thank you, God.
Thank you.

Joey had out-crazied himself this time: He was barefoot, with a feathered scarf around his neck and what appeared to be a shark’s tooth lodged in his hair. Still, he had nothing on Bibi. For this important occasion, Teddy had selected for her a golden chain mail dress, crotch-high plastic boots, and detachable cape. She looked like a visiting extraterrestrial queen from the forty-second century. As for JD and Wayne, they’d both chosen dark gray business suits, in two very different sizes.

“You ready now?” asked Len, pointing in my direction.

I was aware of some kind of movement in my jaw, but no sound was coming out.

Sensing my confusion, Len said, “Oh, these guys all had a little breakfast together at Wayne’s place—a camaraderie-building exercise. Then we decided to do some prerecorded press stuff outside before we got going. New start time is 11:30 a.m. Doesn’t give you long for the run-through, so chop-bloody-chop, Bill. Take them up to conference room five. I’ll meet you back here when you’re done.”

Classic Len: I was too unimportant to be told about the change of plan, so he’d let me flap around up here, questioning my own sanity, until I figured it out for myself. What an ass—

“C’mon, Bill, cock-a-doodle-doo!” yelled Len, clapping his hands. “We’re on in ten.”