Reality Check in Detroit (10 page)

The cameras had been filming for nearly two hours at Marvin’s Marvelous Mechanical Museum when Brian and Inez suddenly announced they had enough “footage” for the day and the bus would be leaving shortly to head back to the hotel.

Sam and Sarah wanted to have their fortunes told by the Brain – a bizarre, bald-headed, hook-nosed professor in a glass booth, with a huge, staring eye behind a monocle. The Brain looked insane. They were about to put their coins in when the Brain started taking verbal shots at them.

“
Why are you still standing here?
” he barked. “
I have other customers, you know
!”

Nish heard the Brain’s strange, cackling voice and came hurrying over from the pinball machine he was playing. The camera moved with him.

“What’s that wacko do?” he asked Sam.

“It’s the Brain,” Sam told him. “It’s a fortunetelling machine.”

“
Yes!
” Nish shouted. “I’m gonna ask him if I get MVP this tournament.”

“We thought you already had that,” Sam shot back.

A raspberry in her direction and Nish was digging in his pockets for a coin. He pushed his way in front and, with the camera right behind him, began feeding the cackling Brain.

For once careful to not be heard by the microphones, Nish whispered his question to the Brain. The Brain seemed to think about it a while and then shot out an answer on a piece of paper.

Nish grabbed it and began reading. The camera moved tighter, anxious to see Nish’s fortune.

Nish quickly folded it and stuffed it into his pocket.

“What’s it say?” Sarah asked.

“None of your business,” Nish muttered, looking embarrassed. “It’s my secret to figure out. The Brain is trying to tell
me
something – not you. You’re not supposed to tell other people your fortune, anyhow.”

Knowing Nish, Travis decided that “Money” probably had no idea what the fortune meant. Even if he wasn’t superstitious, he wouldn’t be able to admit that in front of the cameras.

“At least tell us what it’s about – the topic,” Sarah said, toying with Nish, letting him squirm a little in the spotlight. “Love? Money? Your future career?”

Nish, trying hard to regain his cool – to regain control – inhaled a deep breath and then let it out.

He’s stalling, Travis thought, mentally rolling his eyes. He’s searching that screwed-up brain of his for another awful one-liner.

Nish slipped his sunglasses down over his eyes and straightened his bow tie.

“You wouldn’t get it, Sarah,” he smiled. Then, to Roger’s camera lens, he said, “Let’s just say I’ll
show
you on the ice tomorrow.”

A
lex had passed Travis a note over the roasted pork platter at the hotel buffet table. He read it twice, trying to figure out what it was all about: “Get off on the 63rd floor, turn left. Wait for us. 10 p.m.”

He would have guessed it was a response to Data’s message, but Sarah had already run into Wi-Fi in the front lobby: Wi-Fi said they had no idea who VintageEngine was and that, with all of the messaging he’d been doing with the other peewee teams cheering the Motors on, he hadn’t even been following the guy’s posts.

That night, after lights-out, Travis had tiptoed out of his room to meet Data and Sarah as planned. But Nish – who had been snoring like a hippo, clutching the little fortune-teller’s slip of paper under his pillow like a winning lottery ticket – heard the door click open and got up to join them. He now sat beside Travis, Sarah, and Data, swinging his chubby legs back and forth on one of the hallway chairs on the sixty-third floor.

They waited. And waited.

Nothing.

Nish, who could never stand silence, burst out whining.

“It doesn’t mean that at all, Trav,” he moaned. He couldn’t let go of a conversation he’d had with Travis in their room – one where he’d asked for Travis’s opinion and Travis hadn’t been able to tell him exactly what he wanted to hear.

Nish was convinced that the fortune the Brain had given him held the secret to pulling off his spin-o-rama move; Travis thought it might be a message about appreciating friends and family. Travis’s sappy interpretation hadn’t gone over well with his glory-seeking roommate.

Nish reached into his pocket for his little paper fortune and handed it to Data for a second opinion.

Data read it out loud. “In life, we are all attached by invisible strings. Pull your strings closer to you now.”

“We are all
attached by invisible strings
,” Travis tried again. “I don’t really know what it means, but –”

“No, no, I get it,” said Sarah, trying to stifle a giggle. “I’m sorry to tell you this, Nish, but it means you’re not a real boy – you’re, you know, like Pinocchio.”

She moved her arms as though she were a puppet, and then flopped forward as if her strings had been dropped.

Even Data laughed.

“
Nooo!
That’s not it either! It’s about my
move
,” Nish complained, trying not to laugh himself.

“Then I don’t know, Nish,” Travis offered, hoping his roommate would just drop it. “Fortunes are supposed to be confusing.”

The doors to the staircase were suddenly flung open, and Wi-Fi, breathless, almost fell into the hallway, right at Data’s feet.

“Your camera is all screwed up – it looks like it’s going to fall off your hat,” Nish said loudly as Alex, also breathless, came through the same door.

“Did you break it?” Alex asked, slightly panicked.

“No, it’s fine,” Wi-Fi said, insulted. He took his baseball cap off and began fiddling with the camera. Ignoring Nish, he said to Sarah, Travis, and Data, “I’ve captured something you’re going to want to see.”

Alex and Wi-Fi had planned to meet the Owls on the sixty-third floor because that was where the producers were editing the day’s filming. The idea was to ask if they could see a rough cut of the show. And they thought they’d have a better chance if they had some representatives from both sides – especially Data. Wi-Fi and Data would pretend they needed a look to help them with their tweeting.

“But we were early,” said Alex, finally catching her breath. “And when we arrived through the stairwell – you know, it’s good training to do the stairs – we heard them talking. Inez and Brian were fighting. And then they said they were going up to the bar on the top floor for a drink – probably to fight some more.”

“So?” Nish asked. He was still in his pajamas, with his sparkly Motown bow tie dangling loosely around his neck, and was half-asleep.

“So we ran,” said Wi-Fi as he worked the tiny camera so it would stream through his phone’s Internet connection. “Down to the sixty-first floor. To hide. They were walking to the elevators. Then, when they were gone, we ran back to meet you.”

Travis couldn’t understand why Wi-Fi and Alex were being so cloak-and-dagger about wanting to see this rough cut. It wasn’t like it was going to give their team any strategic advantage, any extra knowledge about the Owls that they didn’t already have.

“Why do you want to see this rough cut so badly?” he asked.

“It’s not really for the rough cut,” said Alex, grabbing Travis’s arm. “It’s for the raw footage that they didn’t use. I’d explain, but they might not be up in that bar for very long. We’ve got a new plan – and we have to move!”

Wi-Fi and Alex’s new plan involved a hairpin, a bank card, and a locked door. And to Travis’s horror, it soon included Nish. Unlike the hotel room doors, the editing room (which was maybe a broom closet the rest of the time) opened with an actual key. Wi-Fi and Alex wanted in there,
fast.
And Nish, having gone through a brief magician phase where he had actually broken himself out of a homemade straitjacket (Sarah and Sam said he should have been breaking
into
one), said he was the one to do it.

Travis – who had helped Nish cut the locks on his “magic” straitjacket before his performance so they wouldn’t have to be picked – was relieved when Nish jiggled the handle and found that the editing room had actually been left unlocked by the producers, who must have been distracted by their argument.

“One, two, three … and the money player does it again!” Nish bellowed, and the other five immediately tried to hush him. Nish’s pudgy fist pushed open the door, and they were in.

“Maybe we shouldn’t turn on the lights,” Sarah ventured, clicking on the windup flashlight she’d bought for her Stupid Stop. Travis hadn’t even realized she’d had it with her.

“Hurry, or else they’re going to come back,” Alex whispered nervously. “We can’t let them catch us.”

Wi-Fi hooked his camera up to one of the two monitors on the small but packed editing table. “First, we’ll show you this.”

The video started running. No sound.

On the screen, the Motors and Owls were at the warm-up before the second day of competition. Andy Higgins’s butt moved past the camera as Wi-Fi, already on the ice, bent down to tighten his skate. The footage was obviously shot from his helmet cam. Sarah and Travis could be seen chatting briefly, then they both went after pucks. Nish glided by, using his stick as a witch’s broom handle. Muck, in the background, was shaking his head, calling the players over to the bench.

When the Motors, too, were called over to the bench, the footage went all wonky. Wi-Fi explained that he had removed his helmet and placed it on the boards in front of him so he could fiddle with the wires, but the camera was still running.

And that’s when the film got interesting.

At an odd angle and from very far away, Inez could be seen standing with her back to the boards on the other side of the rink. She was barking into her cell phone. Then she hung up. Then she called back. Next, Brian appeared. They started arguing with each other. “No-no-no.” “Yes-yes-yes.”

“And watch this,” said Wi-Fi as Hollywood, who was late for warm-up that day, walked out of the Motors’ dressing room and straight into the argument.

“He argues with them for a minute and forty seconds,” said Wi-Fi, glancing up at Alex for corroboration. “We want to know about what.”

“I know this editing system,” said Data. “Let me handle this.”

The first file Data clicked on was the actual rough cut of the show: “
Here, on
Goals & Dreams,
it’s a classic story of David versus Goliath, of those who have versus those who have not
,” said the voice-over as the footage cut from a dressing room shot of the Motors putting on their mismatched hockey gear to a shot of Nish rolling around on his bed, kissing his new helmet. Then Nish was chanting “
Monnn-ey! Monnn-ey!
” at the Green Dot Stables restaurant, once while on his way back from hair and makeup, and a second time with half a chewed-up Korean slider in his mouth and a smear of peanut butter on his bow tie.

“
They’ve had it all since the beginning
 …” the voice-over continued over shots of Mr. D handing out five-dollar bills to the Owls at the Stupid Stop, of the Owls walking right past the homeless guy on their way to The Fist, and of the Owls, all dressed identically, standing in a circle on the ice, listening to their coach.

“They have opportunity, money, self-assurance, and training. But having it all means nothing if you don’t have soul, as they say in Motown. As every hockey player knows … that’s the most important piece of equipment you can have.”

Then came shots of the Motors: Smitty telling the story about his family being out of work, Hollywood helping reorganize the pylons after Nish smashed through them on the ice. “
When you’ve got little to lose
,” the voice-over continued, “
winning can take everything you’ve got: blood, guts
 … 
and hope. The Motors began this week as underdogs. But for today’s competition, the final game, they will emerge better, stronger, faster. They have no choice but to bet everything … if they want to leave this rink as champions.
”

“What the heck
is
this?” asked Travis, his mouth wide. Sarah’s face was empty of expression – she was so shocked.

“Did you see me? I was awesome!” Nish cheered, twisting himself back and forth on one of the cushy swivel chairs that had been squished into the small editing room. As the promo went on – they guessed it was a promo for the final game – they saw Nish stuffing his face at the buffet, and then going on and on about how great he played.

“Stop it.
Stop it
!” Sarah commanded Data, who slammed his thumb down hard on the space bar. “Now what
is
it that you guys are looking for?”

“We need to find an electronic marker,” said Wi-Fi. “Something they might have labeled. Like Nish doing that stupid … I mean, that witch-riding-a-broomstick thing. Then we can forward through to the fight between Inez and Brian. If they left the parabolic mikes on, the ones that looked like satellite dishes and could grab sounds from far away, we might be able to get some audio.”

Data pressed a few buttons on the computer. He searched the raw footage file for anything tagged “Nish” or “show-off.” He scrolled through a dozen embarrassing options – from loudmouthed comments to on-ice antics – and then … 
bam!
There it was: Nish on his imaginary broom.

Fast forward to few minutes later, and there was Inez talking to Brian: “I told you, we need the romance today. It has to start
now
or else we won’t have time to make the story arc.”

The production assistant holding the parabolic mike must have been following the on-ice action, just like the pivoting cameraman beside him. The two were synched. Every time the camera passed over the area where Inez and Brian were standing – even though they were only in the background of the shot – the mike picked up a little more of their conversation.

Brian: “No, first we need to show more of the opposite-worlds thing – rich and poor, privileged and desperate. We can’t say the Motors come from the wrong side of the tracks if we haven’t established that yet.”

Inez: “Establish it, but I want the girl now. It has to happen.”

Sarah’s cheeks turned crimson as she realized they were talking about her. This was how they’d come up with their flirt-with-Hollywood scenario. She’d been part of some cooked-up drama.