Elimination Night (9 page)

Unbelievable.

“Okay, everyone,” I announced as loudly as I could, to disguise the fear in my voice. “I’m going to give you the run-through, so follow me, please. Conference room five.”

I led the way confidently, phone in one hand, clipboard in the other. No one followed me. So I returned to the lounge area, repeated my instructions, and tried again. Still no luck. Then I noticed the reason
for the distraction: Mitch had cornered Len before he could leave the room and was chewing him out about something. “You’d better not fuck us today,” I heard him threaten. “I mean it. Joey still hasn’t forgotten about that dressing room bullshit you tried to pull on us.”

“No one’s fucking
anyone,
okay?” Len hissed, impatiently. “As we explained to you before, Mitch, the dressing room situation was all in Teddy’s imagination.”

Mitch didn’t look convinced—and for a moment, I found myself sharing Len’s frustration. Why did these celebrity managers have to be so…
angry
all the time? Couldn’t they put their trust in human nature for one second? I couldn’t imagine what it must be like to view the world through such a dark vortex of cynicism.

Like I said before: I still had a lot to learn.

As Len finally broke away (where the hell was he going, anyhow?) I tried yet again to marshal the panel. This time, they fell in line behind me. Conference room five turned out to be on the floor above, with a U-shaped table in the middle, some cheap plastic chairs, and an overhead projector that probably hadn’t been switched on since the Clinton administration. The place smelled vaguely of beer and ashtrays. Or maybe it was urine and ashtrays, it was hard to tell. Whatever the case: Joey couldn’t have looked more at home if he’d just been returned to his mother’s womb. Bibi, on the other hand, seemed disgusted. Fortunately, one of Teddy’s assistants had brought some plastic wrap for her to sit on.

“So, uh, hi everyone,” I began, excruciatingly. “How was breakfast?”

“We all held hands and sang
Kumbaya
,” replied Wayne, nastily. “Now can you give us the run-through—or is there something else you’d like to know? We had eggs, if that helps.”

Suddenly, heat in my face. “Okay, yes, right,” I said, between shallow breaths.

“She’s
sorry,
” Wayne snorted. “My God, where do they get ’em? Producer school?”

Titters.

Joey wasn’t laughing, though. He lifted his bare feet onto the table
and said, “Take your time, Bungalow Bill. Ain’t no hurry. Don’t listen to HAL fuckin’ 9000 over there.”

That’s the big joke about Wayne Shoreline, of course: That he’s not actually human. It’s a compliment, of sorts—an acknowledgment that his ability to host a live one-hour broadcast with such ruthless calm is beyond the realm of mere flesh and blood. But there’s another reason for Wayne’s heart-of-silicon reputation: The fact he’s never had any kind of public relationship—male or female—during his entire twenty-year show business career. Indeed, when he’s photographed at dinner, it’s usually with his mother. “The press thinks he’s gay,” as Mitch once told me. “But I doubt it. I don’t think he’s
anything.
If you pulled down the guy’s pants, the only thing swinging between his legs would be a USB stick.”

Everyone was now waiting for me to continue. So I cleared my throat and started again.

“Okay, so Wayne’s up first,” I said, consulting the script on my clipboard. “He’s going to do the intro, recap
Project Icon
’s backstory, et cetera, et cetera… then we’ll introduce JD. Lights will go down, there’ll be a two-minute video package—a kind of ‘best of’ thing, lots of booya-ka-
ka
s—and then Wayne will invite JD on stage, there’ll be cheering, flashbulbs, a bit of music, Wayne and JD will do a very short Q&A, thirty seconds maximum, lights will go back down, JD will leave the stage, and we’ll move on to Joey. Everyone good with that?”

“You mean Joey’s not
last?
” replied Mitch, as if this were some kind of huge, deal-breaking surprise.

Clearly, Bibi would be last. Mitch surely knew this already.

“We’re not thinking of it in terms of ‘first’ and ‘last,’ Mitch,” I said, surprised at my ability to bullshit without hesitation or shame when the occasion called for it.

“Don’t fucking bullshit me, Bill. You’re no good at it.”

“Look, the running order is JD, Joey, then Bibi,” I said. “It’s in the script. Sorry, Mitch.”

“Why can’t Joey and Bibi come out on stage at the same time?”

Mitch wasn’t letting this one go.

“
Mitch,
we’re running a video package and a separate Q&A for each panel member. We can’t do them
all
at the same time. It’s a ‘reveal.’ It’s supposed to be dramatic.”

“Okay, so why not do Bibi second? Ladies before gentlemen.”

“THAT’S AN OUTRAGE!” yelled Joey, so loud it almost made me lose my balance. Then, with a shriek of hilarity: “
Don’t ever accuse me of being a gentleman!”

Everyone laughed—anything to relieve the horrible tension in the room—but not Mitch. He crossed his arms and stared at me, eyes gleaming. Behind him, Teddy grinned.

I flipped through the pages of the script, noticing that Len had replaced the final section—this much was obvious from the spelling errors and formatting. He’d typed it himself, it seemed, and at speed. I wondered why he hadn’t mentioned that.

“So anyway,” I went on, shakily. “Next up: Joey. Same deal as JD, basically. First the video package, then Wayne will invite Joey on stage, there’ll be a Q&A, cheering, flashbulbs, bit of music—et cetera, et cetera—lights down again, then on to Bibi.”

“Ooh, me?” Bibi squealed.

Teddy’s smile grew wider.

I turned the page.

“Okay: so the lights will go down once more,” I read. “The darkness will last for ninety seconds. We’ll hear distant thunder. Then the thunder will get louder. Smoke will gather…”

“OH, FOR FUCK’S SAKE!” Mitch screamed.

“… and then, in a blinding flash, lightning will strike the stage…”

I had to take a breath. Len hadn’t warned me about any of this. This was exactly what Mitch had feared.
They’d fucked him.
There was simply no other way of putting it. Joey had been reduced to a sideshow, a supporting act—no more important than JD. Len and Teddy must have cut a deal, without telling anyone. And now
I
was the one having to deliver the news. No wonder Len hadn’t told me about the script
changes. No wonder he’d been so insistent that I do the run-through, even though
he
was supposed to be in charge.

“… at this point we’ll hear the first few bars of Bibi’s new single, ‘Gotta Disco,’ and as the music gets louder, images of Bibi Beautiful cosmetics products will be projected on to the auditorium walls…”—I found myself speaking faster, trying to get it over with—“… then fade out as we cut to Bibi’s fifteen-minute video package. When the package is over, Wayne will move to the wings. All lights out. More thunder. More lightning. Then a trapdoor in the stage floor will open, and Bibi will rise on a mechanical arm over the audience, as Wayne says, ‘Ladies and gentlemen: The legend, the movie star, the multiplatinumselling, Grammy-winning artist, also known to the residents of Planet Earth as a mother, thinker, philanthropist, businesswoman, dancer, style icon, and best-selling author… BIBI VASQUEZ. Then lights up, ‘Gotta Disco’ will resume, Bibi’s dancing troupe will run up the center aisle, and Bibi will perform a three-song set. Then cut to the prerecorded
Rabbit News Special
with Bibi featuring Sir Paul McCartney, the Dalai Lama, and the First Lady of the United States.”

Finally.
It was over.

The only sound in the room now was Teddy giving his own heartfelt personal round of applause.

Mitch was under the table, making a noise I’d never heard anyone make before.

Then it began. Joey stood up, loosened his belt, and began to adjust his leather chaps.

“Get the pee cup, Mitch,” he ordered.

A few seconds earlier, I wouldn’t have believed it possible for Mitch to sound any unhappier.

He was now proving me wrong.

“The pee cup,” Joey repeated. “It’s in the contract, right? These guys want me to take a pee test every week, to make sure I ain’t gonna do any crazy shit on prime-time TV?”

A muffled voice from under the table: “Joey… please… this isn’t the time or the—”

“Mitch: SHUT UP. I need the pee cup, and I need it now, ’cause trust me, I’m gonna take so many pills and drink so much booze, my pee ain’t gonna be clean again for a thousand fuckin’ years. You promised me equal treatment, you motherfuckers. And now Little Miss Perfect over there is getting a royal coronation? Mitch, you suck. Teddy, you suck
cock.
That’s cool, but you fuckin’ ain’t.”

He turned to me. “And
you,
girl-called-Bill,” he said. “I thought you were okay, man. What happened? You’re all the same, you people. You’ve all got the same poison in your soul. Fuckin’ TV producers. And to think I fell for it. Well, I hope you’re happy now, ’cause I ain’t doing this bullshit anymore. Show over. Go fuck yourselves.”

“Joey,” I said. “This is isn’t how it—”

Too late. He was out of the door. “
Th- Th- Th- That’s all, folks!
” he yelled, as it jerked shut behind him.

Six Things

I AWOKE IN MY
clothes—again—to the sound of knocking. With great effort, I opened my eyes. It was almost noon, judging by the patterns of sunlight on the ceiling.

God, my head hurt.

Surveying the floor by my bed, I glimpsed the silver foil of a half-eaten chicken shawarma, three tubes of lip balm, my college-era laptop, and a pair of white earbuds (of the please-go-right-ahead-and-mug-me variety), still vibrating to the tinny frequencies of a Nick Cave album that had seemed a lot more profound at three o’clock in the morning. What had I
done
last night? Whatever it was, I suspected it had involved breaking my promise to never smoke another cigarette for as long as I lived. Every time I swallowed, I could taste the ash.
Disgusting.

There it was again—that awful noise. And a voice. “
Meesash,
” it seemed to be saying.

More knocking.

Ah,
now
I could make out the words: “
Meess Sasha? Meess Sasha?
”

I buried my head in the pillow. Then my cell phone began to ring.
Well, not
ring
exactly—before Brock left for Hawaii, he’d set it to play the opening riff of “Hell on Wheels” whenever it received a call. This had seemed pretty funny at the time. It didn’t now.

Dn.

Dn-nn-nah.

Dn-nn-
nah
-nh! Bleeeowww-neow-newo…

“
Meess Sasha? Hello? Meess Sasha?
”

“Please… make it stop,” I moaned, yanking the comforter up and over my head.

Unfortunately, “Hell on Wheels” reminded me why my brain felt as though it had been removed from my skull, beaten repeatedly with a nine iron, then reinserted upside down:
Joey Lovecraft.
The very thought of his name was enough to make me curl up and cover my ears, as if that might shut out the memory of the previous day.

Bursting into tears after Joey’s little speech in conference room five certainly hadn’t been a good idea. I mean, sure, I’d made it into the ladies’ room before the snot storm began—thus saving myself from
abject
humiliation—but it’s not exactly hard to tell when a redhead has just given a box of Kleenex the workout of its life. When I finally emerged from the bathroom with a face like a thousand bee stings, Len had already returned from wherever the hell it was he’d been, and was trying to save The Reveal from a disaster of show-destroying proportions. To that end, he’d located Joey (who’d mercifully been unable to find an open bar anywhere in the building), sat him down with Mitch in the judges’ lounge—Mu and Sue providing additional comfort—and was busy explaining that there’d been a
horrible
misunderstanding. Or rather, that I had failed to give him the “full context” of the last-minute changes to the run-through, thus creating the
absurd
impression that he had been relegated to Bibi Vasquez’s supporting act.

“What Bill should have told you, Joey—and I don’t for the life of me know
why
she didn’t—is that Bibi’s entrance, with the mechanical arm and the dancers and so on, is designed to, well…
poke fun
at her,” he said. “She’s a diva, Joey.
You
know that. We were just trying to
make some mischief, without crossing a line. To be honest with you, Joey—and this goes no further, I hope—we were worried about
Bibi
’s reaction. I mean, Teddy’s been trying very hard to position her as ‘recession-sensitive’ lately, what with the ad for the Chevy Frugal and everything.”

The Frugal ad, by the way, was another disaster—largely due to Bibi’s refusal to visit downtown Detroit for the filming. A body double was therefore hired in her place, this fact being leaked to the press by a furious Madison Avenue executive a few hours before the commercial aired. Things only got worse when a viewer noticed that the greenscreened interior shots of Bibi in the Frugal featured a suede-upholstered steering wheel that clearly didn’t fit in a seven-thousand-dollar car. After some cursory Internet research, it was discovered that the wheel in fact belonged to Bibi’s Bentley Mulsanne. Not only had Bibi refused to go to Detroit for the filming, she’d also declined to
sit in the car.

“It’s all about dramatic narrative, Joey,” Len pressed on. “And we get that with
contrast.
I mean, look: there’s JD, everyone’s friendly uncle; Bibi, the stuck-up, out-of-control ego; and you, the musical genius… the, uh… the icon of a generation.”

Joey nodded seriously. “Makes sense,” he said, sniffing.

“It does, Joey,” agreed Len, gripping Joey’s arm. (What an unbelievable toad.) “It really,
really
does.”

That was when I emerged, only half recomposed, from my sob session. Joey’s comment had really gotten to me. I mean, maybe I
was
“poison,” as he’d suggested. Maybe all this—Len, Sir Harold Killoch, the whole Two Svens-versus-Crowther thing going on between
Project Icon
and
The Talent Machine
—had already damaged my soul in some profound yet intangible way. Maybe I’d become one of those “Hollywood people” you hear about. After all, I was only there for the money, wasn’t I? Okay, not a
lot
of money—barely more than I could have made serving eggs at Mel’s Diner on the Sunset Strip—but my job was still a means to an end. Which made me a phony: a fact that Joey had recognized so clearly.