Elimination Night

15

The Moment



I MUST HAVE CALLED Brock ten times when I got home. But he had an all-night shift at the bar of the Hua-Kuwali and wasn’t answering. He probably couldn’t even hear the phone. For the first time since I’d arrived in LA, I felt a shudder of uncertainty about him. Could this really work—one of us in California, the other on a rock in the Pacific, halfway to Japan? Why hadn’t I just gone with him and taken a job as a waitress, as he’d once suggested? Wouldn’t that have been easier? But, no… I had to take Len up on his “dazzling opportunity,” mix with the celebrities, be the hotshot producer, and try to stash away enough money to take an entire year off.

It was beginning to seem like an almost delusional plan—especially given the current status of my Novel of Immense Profundity, which had recently undergone some significant revisions, mostly to the grandfather character’s dialogue. I’d deleted it, basically. So now my manuscript was one sentence long. As for those unresolved plot issues, they remained very much unresolved—I’d finally had an idea about where the Black Lake of Sorrow might be located.

“Hey, it’s me,” I told Brock’s voicemail, sounding croaky as hell. “I know I haven’t been calling you back… I’m sorry. And I know I’ve been bad on e-mail and Facebook and pretty much everything else. It’s just… things are crazy. I’ve had a bad day, babe. I’m not sure I can do this. Call me, okay? Just call me.”

Click.

I wondered if he’d get my message tonight. I had to talk to someone, tell them about Bibi, the whole situation. I mean, what an unbelievable bitch! I didn’t doubt for a second that she could get me fired by saying I’d given pills to Joey—or more likely, relaying the accusation via Teddy. I wondered if anyone at Rabbit would even bother to ask Joey if it was true. Probably not. An addict’s word can never be trusted. And besides, for someone like Ed Rossitto or David Gent—Bibi would definitely go that high, if not all the way to the top—it would be more trouble than it was worth. Better to just fire the stand-in producer (what was her name again?), keep Bibi happy, and forget it ever happened. And Len wouldn’t object. Better me than him. That’s why he’d put me up to this in the first place—just like he’d had me take the fall for Joey’s treatment during The Reveal. The whole thing was crazy, like my worst day at high school squared. I also felt a bizarre kind of shame—as if this were all my fault, as if only a world-class loser could make an enemy of a woman so admired and so powerful.

I debated calling Mitch. He’d understand. He’d tell me what I wanted to hear. But he’d also tell Joey everything, which would be a disaster. That left only one other person whose number I could dial: Mom. But it was past midnight on the East Coast. And she’d worry. Or rather, she’d lecture me about how I should have never gone to “Hollyweird” to begin with, and then she’d start checking in with me every day, asking questions, making me paranoid, getting herself into a state. Which meant calling Mom was an option best left for real emergencies. Like if I was fired. Or if Icon was cancelled, which basically meant the same thing.

Slumping down on the bed, I allowed myself a fantasy of escape; of not going to San Diego—the next stop on the Icon audition tour—and instead taking the morning flight to Honolulu. If I could find a ticket for less than a thousand bucks, I still had enough credit left on my Visa card. No more Bibi. No more Len. No more clipboards and swollen toes. Just white sand and flip-flops… and Brock making me breakfast. Ah, yes… lovely, blue-eyed Brock, muscular and bare-chested, holding up a tray of… ooh, yes, Danish pastries… as the Tom Waits version of “Ol’ ’55” plays on the radio… and our pet sea turtle—all my Hawaiian daydreams involve a pet sea turtle—rests in his shell on the rocks beyond the lanai…

I closed my eyes.

That was more like it.

“Hey—me again.”

I was back on the line with Brock’s voicemail, sitting upright, the hoarseness now gone from my throat. “What if I get on a plane tomorrow? Seriously. Screw Icon. I can find a job—whatever. I can write on the weekends. Call me, call me, call me.”

But he didn’t.

When I awoke the next day—still in my clothes (I know, I know)—my phone showed no new messages, no missed calls. Not even an e-mail or a Facebook message. WTF. Usually, Brock was the one chasing me. Had he just had a busy night at work? Had he left his phone on the beach? Or did I no longer have a boyfriend? (If I’d been having doubts, maybe he’d been having doubts, too.)

What a perfectly shitty end to a perfectly shitty week.

So.

I made myself coffee. I ate a week-old bun. I took a shower. I found some clean clothes and put them on. I decided to buy cigarettes. I walked to the 7-Eleven up the street. I decided against buying cigarettes. I walked home again. I changed my mind. I walked back to the 7-Eleven up the street. I changed my mind again. The guy behind the counter asked me if I was okay. Uh-oh—sobbing redhead! He gave me a soda on the house. I reassured him that I was okay. I reassured him again that I was okay. I told him that, no, seriously, I did not need his cell number.

Then I walked to Plummer Park and spent ten minutes on a bench, watching old men play chess, and feeling pathetically sorry for myself. But here’s the thing with self-pity: It’s boring. I just don’t have the patience for it. So I walked back home, and when I got to my front door—a surprise. Wedged into the jamb was a white envelope. I pulled it out and ripped it open.

On ruled notebook paper, this:

Crazy Woman!

You have date next Tuesday night, eight o’clock, with Boris, nice boy from. He meet you here and take you for dinner. And don’t worry your head—I watching out for you.

Mr. Z.

PS: Nothing I can’t live without (apart from Mrs. Z).

PS: Mrs. Z make me write that.

Oh boy, I thought.

This should be interesting.

Another day passed, and still no word from Brock. Judging by his Twitter feed, he was still alive—he just wasn’t returning my calls. Maybe he was trying to teach me a lesson by doing what I’d done so many times to him for the past few weeks. Or maybe I really was dumped. I guessed I’d find out soon enough. In the meantime, I sucked it up and took the early morning Amtrak to San Diego, ready for the next round of auditions. It was going to be awkward, being on set with Bibi, that was for sure. But whatever. As long as I still had a job, why should I care?

As usual, the venue was a downtown hotel, all thick-veined marble and smoked glass, glittering over the marina. But this time, no one was staying there apart from the judges. The rest of us had been booked in a dive so far across town it was practically in Mexico, and told to get to work using public transportation. This wasn’t a big deal, apart from the fact we had to be at work by 4:30 a.m., when there wasn’t any public transportation. Which meant we had to get taxis at our own expense. In a mass e-mail to staff, Len explained that Zero Management and Invasion Media had implemented a “rigorous cost-control program” to meet “significantly lowered expectations” from Rabbit’s advertising sales department. This was almost certainly bullshit. The real explanation, I guessed, was that Sir Harold had finally gotten around to watching the footage from Houston and Milwaukee, and had issued another cancellation threat. Cutting the budget was probably Len’s way of trying to buy us some more time.

I wished there was something I could do, other than talk to Bibi again, which wasn’t even worth thinking about. Not that Len knew what had happened between us, of course. As far as he was concerned, I’d at least managed to get rid of Teddy from the set, which was an achievement of sorts. He’d even slapped me on the back and done that pointy-clicky-winky thing that bosses do when they’re pleased. But with Edouard now on the scene—a.k.a. The Man With The Very Itchy Nose—it would only be a matter of time before he figured things out.

And then?

Hello again, Square One. Great to be back.

At least the routine of the auditions was now becoming comfortably familiar: the judges faking their arrival at the hotel where they were already staying; the contestants doing their thing, first for the decoy panel, then the real one; Joey consulting his “golden gut”; Bibi consulting Edouard’s facial signals; JD saying “booya-ka-ka” interminably; and then, finally, the verdicts being reached, followed by Wayne Shoreline’s ambush and interrogation of the winner/loser beyond the deliberately hard-to-find exit. Not to forget the countless delays for the Glam and Mojo Squads, plus snake breaks and outfit changes… all of which left us behind schedule on Day One by two and a half hours, even before lunch.

Still, there was a sense that something was different in San Diego. The stakes had now changed: We needed to have a moment, as Nigel Crowther used to say, or just pack up and go home. And sure enough, that moment came toward the end of the first afternoon, just as I was beginning to think that another day had been lost. Daylight was fading, the judges were tired and cranky (I’d caught Joey yawning at least four times), we’d failed to get back on schedule, and—aside from a couple of exceptions—the contestants had been a bore.

Then at five o’clock, Len called my cell. “Okay, Billy the Kiddo,” he announced, “something a bit different next. Tell everyone to hold tight, I’m on my way.”

This was unusual, to say the least. When Len wasn’t busy messing with contestants’ heads on the decoy panel, he tended to watch the auditions from a mobile control room, located in the back of an eighteen-wheeler parked outside the hotel entrance. This allowed him to issue orders to the judges through me—then deny all knowledge if something went wrong. So the fact he was coming upstairs to take personal responsibility for a segment was nothing short of a Major Event.

I looked down at my clipboard. It told me that the next contestant due to audition was “Bonnie Donovan—with husband Mikey.” I groaned internally. That’s all we needed: another husband-wife duo, thus giving Len the opportunity to send one of them home, just to see what would happen to their marriage. (That very scenario had already led to three Project Icon divorces and one very expensive lawsuit—which, admittedly, had improved season five’s ratings.)

But wouldn’t I have remembered a married double act from our first visit to San Diego back in August? Maybe not… I was one of twenty prejudges, after all. Still, these things tended to be discussed at production meetings. And I hadn’t heard a word about it.

Seconds later, Len strode into the room in his usual manner—i.e., with an impatience that suggested his time was more valuable than everyone else’s. “Listen up, everyone,” he commanded, smoothing his tie and adjusting his cuffs. “It’s time for our last audition of the day. But there’s a twist to this one. Here’s the deal: Two people, a man and a woman, are gonna come through that door”—he pointed to the entrance—“but only one of them’s gonna sing. Now, be warned: It’s a heartbreaker. He’s a U.S. Marine, back from Afghanistan. She’s a public-school teacher. Childhood sweethearts—they met in eighth grade. I’ll say no more.”

A groan of protest went up at the unnecessary suspense.

“C’mon, Len, what’s so heartbreaking?” complained Bibi, her chin tilted at a strange angle so the Glam Squad could perform some microadjustment to her foundation.

“You’ll see.”

Bibi rolled her eyes.

As Len left the room, the Glam Squad packed up its cases and brushes, the set was cleared, and the crew hunkered down behind the scenes. With a shout of “action!” from the director of the day (Len went through so many, I’d given up keeping track), in they came: a man and a woman, just as Len had promised.

But they weren’t at all what I had expected. For a start, Bonnie was pushing Staff Sergeant Mike “Mikey” Donovan in a wheelchair, her tiny arms straining with effort to move the two-hundred-pound Marine. They were also young. Like, not even out of their teens. And yet Mikey’s life—such as it was—was over in any conventional way. His right leg below the thigh was missing. His left arm was gone completely. And the skin covering his face, neck, and hands glistened like translucent plastic—a result, I assumed, of reconstructive surgery. A roadside bomb had inflicted this terrible damage. Mikey was the only member of his unit to survive, if survive was the right word: His injuries had left him with brain damage so severe, he’d never talk again. Indeed, he had lost control of nearly every muscle. But he could still understand spoken words. And after months of therapy, he was slowly learning to communicate using a system of coded blinks.

Mikey had proposed to Bonnie a week before the explosion. And when he finally got home after the first stage of his recovery on a German military base, Bonnie insisted they go through with their wedding plans—against the advice of both families, who said that at her age, she should feel no obligation to spend the rest of her life as a full-time caregiver. Her response? She loved her Mikey. She wanted to be with him—forever, no matter what. And now Bonnie, as blonde and tan and hard-bodied as only a military wife can be, had entered Project Icon to help raise awareness for veterans’ charities. “I’m no Aretha Franklin,” she told the panel. “But I like to sing, and it’s for a cause I believe in. Besides, nothin’ can happen to me up here that’s worse than what my Mikey’s been through.”

By the second line of “I’ll Stand By You,” most of the room was unashamedly weeping. And by the last chorus, even Teddy’s bodyguard, Mr. Tiddles—all four hundred pounds of him—was sobbing in thick, gulpy barks, like the cry of a mortally wounded elephant seal. It wasn’t that Bonnie was a great singer. She had a narrow range and limited power. But she was on key, and what she lacked in talent, she made up for with sincerity. It was a truly devastating performance. So devastating, in fact, that for the first time since I’d taken my job on the show, I stopped feeling ashamed of it. So what if Project Icon was mass entertainment? If we could find and help people like Bonnie, then maybe it all had a greater purpose, maybe we were actually doing some good in the world.

When Bonnie was finished singing, however, I immediately began to worry about the judges. How would they react? Did any of them have the depth or composure required to honor Mikey, this national hero—not to mention his incredible, selfless wife—in a way that could do any justice at all to what we had just seen and heard?

The answer was no, if the expression on Bibi’s face was any indication. She was immobilized. It was as though she knew she was expected to do something—something real—but didn’t have the first idea what that might be. As for JD: “Booya-ka-ka” wasn’t exactly an appropriate response. So he just sat there, saying nothing.

And then… oh, Lord, there was Joey.

But Joey didn’t hesitate.

When “I’ll Stand By You” was over, he got up from his chair, walked around the judges’ table to the podium, and threw open his arms for Bonnie. They wept as they hugged. They hugged as they wept. It was tender, fatherly… beautiful. And then Joey pulled back, moved over to Staff Sergeant Mike Donovan, and knelt down beside his wheelchair. He took hold of the wounded soldier’s only remaining arm. He looked him right in the eye. And then he swung around his other arm to lock him in a muscular embrace. “You’re a hero, buddy,” rasped Joey. “We all know what you did for us. Don’t ever think that we don’t. Every one of us here, everyone in this room, and all the people out there in America”—he motioned to the cameras—“we know you went through this for the sake of our freedom. And look”—he reached out for Bonnie’s hand—“God has sent you one of his very own angels. That voice of hers; that’s the voice of an angel, buddy. She’s been sent from above to look out for you, man. I swear that’s true.”

Mikey tensed, his body gripped with some passing spasm. Then he blinked. Once. Twice. Then five or six more times. “What’s that?” asked Joey. “You tellin’ me somethin’?”

Now Bonnie was in tears. “Yes, he is,” she nodded, swallowing heavily. “He’s telling you—”

“Yes?”

Bonnie tried to go on but couldn’t, so Mikey’s mom spoke up from the corner of the room. (Len had waived the rules to let her in, along with a few other family members.)

“He’s saying…”

Now an unfamiliar shudder in my chest. Wow, Mikey’s story was really getting to me.

Mikey’s mom gulped and started again. “He’s telling you…”

Another shudder. I took a long, deep breath. I needed a drink of water. I needed some air.

“… when he first went to Afghanistan…”

Jesus, what was wrong with—

SHIT, it was my phone! It was ringing—or vibrating, rather. Right there in my breast pocket, where I’d put it a few minutes ago, because my belt clip had broken. I’d totally forgotten it was there. Worse, I hadn’t switched the damn thing off. Hands shaking, I yanked the warm plastic casing from my jacket pocket. Any second now, it would break into “Hell on Wheels.” F*ck! Len would kill me! He would literally throw me out of the window, headfirst. Manic fumbling. Find the red button. Find the red button. At last, the rings stopped. I looked around for any witnesses of this near disaster. None. Slowly, I released the oxygen from my lungs and glanced down at the now-muted device. “Brock, missed calls (3),” it told me.

Perfect timing, Brock. Perfect timing.

When I looked up again, Mikey’s mom had finished speaking. Everyone was howling, even Len.

I hadn’t heard a word that she’d said.