Elimination Night

20

Maison Chelsea



“LOOK, BORIS,” I BEGAN, awkwardly, as I climbed off my bicycle, lost my balance, and clattered into the sidewalk with a startled ring from the handlebar bell. “There’s been a—uh, oof, dah, grrr—misunderstanding. This whole, y’know, this Internet thing—”

Boris reached out to grab my hand.

I motioned to him—as best I could, given that I was on the floor with my feet in the air and a bicycle on top of me—that I could manage on my own, thank you very much.

“As I was saying,” I resumed, now upright, dusting myself off. “This whole—”

“You speak English,” said Boris, with surprise.

“What?”

“Oh, nothing. Just from your e-mails. I thought… y’know, you write with an accent.” He laughed. Boris didn’t seem nervous. He was also… dammit, I didn’t even want to admit this… not bad-looking—by the standards of an Internet date, anyway. Or that’s what I assumed, having never been on an Internet date before. Hair longish and brown. A couple of days’ stubble. Hazel eyes. Not short. I mean, okay, the suit was a bit odd—who the hell wears a suit in LA?—but it was at least in a tan color and went very nicely with the fitted white shirt underneath.

“Look, about those e-mails, Boris,” I said. “I didn’t actually—”

“You like Japanese?” he asked, suddenly.

“The food?”

“No, the trains.”

“Huh?”

Boris laughed again and play-punched me on the arm. “Messin’ with ya,” he said. “Yeah, the food.”

This Boris was quite a character. I liked him already. More to the point: I needed a drink, and I was hungry. Would it really be so bad if I had some company for once? I mean, Brock would understand. Or maybe I didn’t have to tell him.

“Ooh, how about some balls,” I blurted, excitedly.

“Excuse me?”

“Tempura rice balls,” I clarified. “At Soba Kitchen on Third and Melrose. Let’s go there. Oh, and yes, I like Japanese. Food, trains, people. Whatever.”

“Well, let’s do it.”

“Okay!”

Then an awkward pause as the issue of how exactly we’d get there arose. Boris spoke first: “I’d suggest we take your bicycle, but I’m not sure I could fit into that”—he pointed to the wicker basket—“besides, I was kinda planning on being alive later tonight. No offence or anything. I’m sure you don’t always fall off when you brake.”

“That was the first time, actually,” I protested.

“I totally believe that,” said Boris.

“So?”

Boris coughed. “Oh, right. My car. It’s over there. What were you saying about your e-mails?”

“Wasn’t important,” I shrugged, as we started to walk.

“It sounded important.”

“It wasn’t.”

Okay, so a word about Boris’s car. It had once been a fairly standard, Asian-manufactured sedan. No longer. Take the airfoil on the trunk, for example. It wouldn’t have looked out of place on a commercial jet. And that was among the less radical modifications, which included inch-high suspension, plastic bucket seats (“carbon fiber,” Boris clarified), and a paint color I’d describe as radioactive carrot.

“Sorry about… y’know,” mumbled Boris, as I attached my three-way racing harness, after searching without success for a normal seat belt. “It’s kind of a hobby.”

Boris, I now suspected, was some kind of major geek, albeit one who dressed against stereotype. And my theory was confirmed beyond any doubt when we got to the restaurant, which was just as I remembered, aside from one detail: The menu was in Japanese—with no translation. Now, this wouldn’t have been so much of a problem, if any of the waiters had spoken English. But they didn’t. Soba Kitchen is authentic like that. The best you can do as a non-Japanese speaker is point vaguely at the menu and hope they don’t bring you their house specialty, the Fugu (“river pig”)—which, if served with even a minor error in preparation, will kill you with a dose of tetrodotoxin, to which there is no antidote. (I’d once recommended the dish enthusiastically to Len.) “I forgot about the language thing,” I told Boris, by way of an apology. “Last time I came here was with my friend Adam. He’s Japanese. And Jewish, actually. Not as uncommon as you might think. I fell in love with the place when I tasted his balls.”

Boris looked up from his menu.

“How many more testicle-based jokes are you gonna make this evening, Sasha?”

“Depends how the conversation goes.”

Suddenly, Boris reached over the table. “Hey—gimme your phone for a second,” he said.

I gave it to him. He tapped on the screen a few times—he seemed to be entering a password—waited a few seconds, then handed it back to me. “There,” he said. “It’s an app that a friend of mine from MIT has been working on. It’s coming out next month. You’re gonna love playing with this. Hit that icon—the red one.”

I did as he said, and my phone switched to camera mode.

“Now take a picture of the menu.”

Cha-chick.

Boris smiled. “Hold on,” he said. “Seriously, this is so cool.”

A moment later, the phone played a little jingle. “Language detected,” said an automated voice.

“Check out the picture.” Boris was grinning.

I did as he said. The image was just as I expected: the restaurant logo not quite in focus; too much glare from the flash; my finger in the bottom left corner of the frame.

“And?” I said.

Boris raised his eyebrows and nodded at my phone. I looked at the picture again. What was so special about it? It was just the menu, with the descriptions of each… oh… my God… they were in English! The app had recognized each Japanese character, translated it, and doctored the image accordingly.

“That’s incredible,” I said. “I mean… I say ‘that’s incredible’ a lot. But this is actually incredible.”

“I know,” said Boris, leaning over to take a look. “It can understand all the major languages, and they’re adding more all the time. Soon they’ll be moving on to the really obscure African and Middle Eastern… whoa—what the bejesus is ‘river pig?’”

Before I had a chance to explain, seven text messages arrived simultaneously, causing the phone to almost shake itself apart with excitement. This wasn’t unusual, of course—Brock often sent me dozens of texts at once—but these messages hadn’t come from Brock. They’d come from a number I’d used only once before. Mitch had given it to me, during the sanity checks.

I tapped the screen to read:

“GET YOUR GINGER MINGE OVER HERE, BUNGALOW BILL.”

“MITCH SAYS IT’S AN ORDER!”

“SO DO I.”

“OH—HERE IS CHELSEA HOUSE.”

“LAST SUPPER!!”

“BAD NEWS COMING.”

“DAH-DAH-DAHHH!!”

Boris was still looking over my shoulder. “Hey, I don’t mean to pry,” he said, raising his palms and moving back to his side of the table. “But is that… the Joey—”

“Yeah,” I sighed. “It’s him.”

“Wow.”

“Not really. Look, I’m sorry, Boris, but I’m gonna have to get my balls to go. It’s a work thing.”

“I’ll drive you.”

“That’s very sweet, thank you.”

“One condition, though.”

“What?”

“We try this again next week.”

I’d never been to Maison Chelsea before, but I knew what was it—a private club, owned by a mysterious Frenchman, located on the penthouse level of Fortune Plaza, one of the few high-rise buildings to cast a shadow over Hollywood Boulevard.

Pretty much every Big Name in town is a member of Maison Chelsea, and it’s not hard to understand why: Paparazzi can’t get anywhere near the place (the entrance is on the twenty-eighth floor); the commitment to privacy is such that all electronic devices are banned, and regardless of how famous you are, you can take a maximum of only three guests. The latter ensures that membership of Maison Chelsea is vital to anyone with even the vaguest of social aspirations. Marriages have failed because one partner’s application to the club was accepted while the other’s was declined. Similarly, lifelong friendships have been severed.

I asked Boris to drop me off outside, only to discover after fifteen minutes of wandering aimlessly between illuminated palms in the courtyard that the elevator to the penthouse level was located in the underground garage. So down the steep driveway I went, ducking under the traffic barrier by the ticket machine, and ignoring the sign that read, “THIS IS NOT—REPEAT, NOT!—A PEDESTRIAN WALKWAY.” On the other side I encountered an amused-looking valet, who pointed me toward an unmarked glass doorway, barely visible between two black Maseratis. Beyond it was a small, dark lobby with two banks of elevators, an angular sofa—clearly designed for minimum comfort and maximum aesthetic value—and a reception desk. Downtempo electronica pulsed in the background.

“Bonjour and welcome to Maison Chelsea,” said one of the male receptionists. He was dressed like a Depression-era newsboy and didn’t sound the least bit French. He sounded British, in fact. (Just what I needed in my life: another Brit.)

“I’m meeting someone,” I offered. The way it came out sounded like an apology for my very presence. I was annoyed with myself for being so easily intimidated.

“And the member’s name?”

I had no idea if Mitch was the member, or Joey. Somehow, using Joey’s name seemed ridiculous.

“Mitch,” I said, my face now a boiling cauldron of shame.

“Last name?”

“McDonald.”

“No.”

“No?”

“No.”

Several legitimate club members were now in line behind me. I could feel their pity.

“… what do you mean, no?” I asked.

“There’s no ‘Mitch McDonald.’”

“Can you try under Joey? Joey Lovecraft.”

The receptionist’s concentration intensified. Skepticism had also made itself plainly visible on his brow. He moved the nib of his fountain pen quickly down a list in the leather-bound signature book in front of him while making a diligent-sounding clucking noise. “Hmm,” he said to himself. “Well, I see that Mr. Lovecraft is expecting someone this evening. But I’m afraid… hmm, I’m only seeing a… Bill.”

“That’s me,” I said, relieved. “I’m Bill.”

“Oh, so you’re Bill?” said the receptionist, with only barely disguised sarcasm.

“Yes.”

“ID, please.”

The “please” was delivered with such contempt, “f*ck you” might have sounded a bit friendlier.

I produced my wallet. Then I realized the problem.

“Well, my ID says, ‘Sasha,’” I began to explain. “But he calls me Bill.”

“Fascinating,” came the reply. “I’m sure there’s an absolutely hilarious backstory. You should tell me all about it another time. Take a seat. I’ll have someone look into this.”

“But—”

The receptionist gestured to the unwelcoming slab of foam in the corner.

Sighing, I sat down. Five minutes passed. My back started to hurt. Another five minutes. I stood up and walked around. At least a dozen other Maison Chelsea members came and went, each displaying or otherwise confirming their credentials with no effort whatsoever. They were from another world, these people: a taller, better-dressed, more beautiful world, in which everyone looks a bit like Wayne Shoreline. I sat down again. Okay, so this was getting miserable. I would have called Mitch and Joey, but all communication devices were banned. Then, at last—thank God—I overheard the receptionist discussing my case on the phone with an assistant manager upstairs. “If you get a moment,” he was saying, “could you ask Mr. Lovecraft to describe, ‘Bill’? Thanks.”

I’d been here—what?—forty minutes now.

The receptionist raised his eyebrows at me as he waited for the callback. “Yes?” he said, when the phone finally rang. “A redhead. Very pale, you say. No makeup? Oohhkay… it is a she, then. Jeans. Plain top. Plain everything. Right.”

Click.

“Please make your way upstairs,” he ordered. “Mr. Lovecraft is in The Blue Room. You can ask the hostess on the penthouse level for directions when you get lost.”

“When?”

“Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you’d been here before.”

“I haven’t.”

“I didn’t think so. Enjoy your night.”

The Blue Room was indeed virtually impossible to find. Although Maison Chelsea is located atop Fortune Plaza for the views, the hallways that join the bar, restaurant, bathrooms, cinema, and private rooms are entirely windowless. I felt as though I were inside a tenth-century château, what with the narrow, wood-paneled walls, oppressive ceilings, and low-watt fixtures. It must have taken an interior design budget in the tens of millions to turn what had originally been a modern, open-plan office space into something so gloomy and unnavigable.

None of the doors were marked. Some were locked; others weren’t. As for the staff, they didn’t wear uniforms or make eye contact, so unless you caught them directly in the act of a service-oriented task, it was difficult to know who they were. Even then, they weren’t exactly very helpful. “Honestly, madam, the only way I could tell you how to get to The Blue Room would be to take you there myself,” as one waiter explained, as though he were describing a physical impossibility.

I found it by myself in the end, using a system of trial and error. The very instant I pushed open those gigantic double doors, there was no doubt I was in the right place. Aside from its size—I’ve walked through more intimate hotel atriums—it was… well, it was very blue. The ceiling was blue. The floor was blue. Even the view through the thirty-foot-high panoramic windows was blue, given that it was comprised mostly of early-evening California sky. The rest of the blueness, meanwhile, came from light reflected through water, which was possible because the room—and I appreciate how crazy this sounds—was inside a swimming pool. Or to put it another way: The ceiling was the glass-bottomed floor of the pool’s upper deck, while in several places throughout the room, the water deepened to fill transparent cylinders that served as kind of Roman columns, which were in turn linked to more water under the opaque floor.

“What the hell took you so long?”

I turned to see Joey, alone on a king-size recliner. He was wearing nothing but a fluffy white gown, his wrinkled, skinny legs—along with that enormous, fading sock tattoo on his right calf—poking out from underneath. Not even Joey’s tan could make those legs look any healthier. They were as mangled and gnarled as rotting timber—a result of forty years spent doing airborne splits while singing “Hell on Wheels.” No wonder he’d fallen off the stage that time in Houston. No wonder he snacked on painkillers like they were M&M’S. It was incredible his legs could support a grown man’s body weight, nevermind comply with the acrobatic demands of a world tour with Honeyload.

“Where is everyone?” I asked.

“Gone,” he replied, sadly. He was surrounded by at least two dozen trays of half-eaten food—I caught sight of spring rolls, steak au poivre, lobster tails, steamed vegetables, a Cobb salad, three doughnuts, and a banana pudding—and as many empty champagne flutes. I hoped it had been non-alcoholic champagne. “They were all here,” Joey continued, not quite sounding himself. “Mitch, Len, Bibi, JD, the ex-human cannonball Ed Rossitto—who still creeps me the hell out, just FYI. Oh, and that nasty little f*ckhead Teddy. But they all went home.”

“So soon?”

“Oh, y’know. Bibi got upset about the view.”

He pointed to the aquarium-like glass above us. Now I noticed there were swimmers in the pool. Three or four women. Young. In exceptional physical shape. And all completely naked. They appeared to be performing some kind of water aerobics for Joey’s benefit. One of them was now underwater, thrusting herself deep into one of the see-through Roman columns in front of us, leaving a trail of bubbles as she went. She righted herself and waved, treading water. Then she flipped over and performed a split, holding the gynecologically detailed pose for as long as the air in her lungs would allow.

Joey applauded.

“Um-hmm,” he said, as if tasting a vintage port. “LA strippers, man. F*ckin’ outstanding. No wonder Mötley Crüe wrote a song about ’em.” He began to sing the chorus of “Girls, Girls, Girls,” humming the parts where he’d forgotten the words.

“I should leave you alone,” I said.

“Here,” said Joey, handing me a champagne glass.

“Does this have alcohol in it, Joey?”

“Chillax, Mom. Yours does. Mine doesn’t.”

He lit up a cigar and patted the space next him, beckoning me to sit. I couldn’t stop looking at his legs. Those poor, mangled limbs! He might as well have fallen into a wood chipper, they were in such a state. And his toes… he didn’t even have toes—he had toe, in the singular. A fused mass of bone, cartilage, and skin, located at the end of each twisted foot. How did the man even manage to walk?

I lowered myself onto the recliner, leaving as much room between us as possible. Then I drank the champagne. All of it, in one gulp. It had been that kind of day.

“The numbers, huh?” said Joey, nodding at my empty glass. “Not good.”

“You said there was bad news coming,” I replied, pouring myself another.

“Sure there is. We’re gettin’ nuked. They’re giving us one last episode. No ratings, no more show.”

“Our elimination night.”

“Ha! Ironic, ain’t it? God, I could graze on that ass for a month.” He was looking again at one of the swimmers, who was performing an underwater handstand. Then he turned to me quickly, as if not wanting to cause any offence. “I f*ck dudes, too, by the way,” he said. “Just in case you’re thinkin’ I’m some kinda sexist or something. Size is a factor, though. More than seven inches and it feels like—”

“I get the idea, Joey.”

“She blushes again!” he roared, pointing at my face. “Shit, man—the traffic lights on Sunset Boulevard turn red less often than you do. It’s cute, Bill. Very cute.”

“Do you ever care what happens to Icon, Joey?” I asked, with more bluntness than I’d planned. “I mean, if I were you, with your—y’know, the back catalog and everything—I wouldn’t want the hassle. Taking orders from Len Braithwaite. Dealing with Bibi. Or worse, Teddy Midas. C’mon, Joey. Wouldn’t you rather be sitting on a beach somewhere in Hawaii, writing your memoirs, sipping mai tais—”

“Whoah!” Joey interrupted, with an eruption of partially chewed spring roll from his mouth. “You got me ALL wrong, sugar. Holy crap-a-doodle-doo, have you got me wrong. Lemme tell you a story about how much I care, Little Ms. Bungalow Bill, about how much I invest in the shit I do. You remember the summer of ’83?”

I blanked. It was the year Swordfishtrombones by Tom Waits came out. That was all I knew.

“Yeah, like shit you do,” Joey went on, not waiting for a reply. “You weren’t even a sperm in your daddy’s dick! So let me remind you: It was the middle of Honeyload’s third world tour. Me and Blade, we were banging ten chicks a night, drinking, fighting, playing, using. We’d gone deep into Crazy Land, man. And I lost my shit a few times, that I admit. But that summer, Blade went psycho-f*ckin’-killer on me. Said he wanted to put a bullet in my head, ’cause the band was driving him insane. Accused me of not caring—just like you did a moment ago. He even got it into his head that I was gonna f*ck everyone over and go solo. He’d seen how well Ozzy was doing after Black Sabbath, and he was shitting his pants. Big time paranoia, like you wouldn’t even believe.

“So, it’s the last night in July,” he continued, “and we’re booked to play Yankee Stadium. And our manager—may the devil roast his soul over the hot coals of hell for all f*ckin’ eternity—has this far-out idea for starting the show: He’ll give us all some parachutes, take us up in his Learjet, fly over the stadium, and at just the right moment we’ll jump out the back, pull our rip cords, and float down to the stage. And when our feet touch the ground—DNN, DNN, BLAM!—we’ll launch into ‘Duckin’ and F*ckin,’ the first track on our new album. Genius idea, credit where it’s due. Only me and Blade were still fightin’ so much, taking us up in an airplane was pretty much the dumbest thing anyone coulda done.

“It was a bad scene, man. In that tiny plane. Bumping around all over the place. It’s dark. The door’s open. Wind screaming in our ears. Me and Blade screaming at each other, swinging punches, arguing over… reverb settings, would you believe—at twenty thousand feet! And I just go off. I f*ckin’ blow, man. I unclip my ’chute right there in the plane, and throw it out the hatch. It’s gone—a dot, a tiny dot, falling toward Manhattan. Some homeless dude in Central Park probably thought it was a sleeping bag from heaven. And I say to Blade, over the engines, I say to him, ‘It’s your lucky day, motherf*cker, ’cause I’m gonna jump out this plane, right now, and you don’t have to do a thing. Just let me fall, let me die, and all your problems are solved. You got enough dough from royalties, you’ll never have to work another day again in your life; that’s how much I care about you, a*shole. But if you wanna trust me, if you wanna COMMIT to this band as much as I do, then jump out after me, and catch me, man. Just catch me. And we’ll land together and do the gig. Your choice. Farewell, my friend.’”

I’d never heard this story before. I mean, I knew about the jump, of course. Everyone knew about the jump. After the Beatles playing The Ed Sullivan Show, it was the most famous event in rock ’n’ roll history. But I thought it had been some kind of prank gone wrong, an accident with a very lucky ending.

“And?” I said, when I found my voice. “What happened?”

“What happened? Dude caught me. We played the show. Best night of my f*ckin’ life.”

“He just… ‘caught’ you?”

“Blade’s been skydiving since he was in the womb. Literally—his mom was some kinda champ, did jumps when she was pregnant. Dude can pull midair moves like an F-18. In fact, he messed with my head before saving my life. He flew right past me, showed me the birdie, and told me to aim for the spike on the roof of the Empire State Building. I thought I was pink slime, man. I was crying, praying, wishing I hadn’t thrown away the ’chute, then—WOOOMPH—he’s right there behind me, arm around my waist. Next thing I know, he’s hooked me onto him, and we land together, best buddies again. It made me rock hard, man.”

“That’s… amazing—I mean, that he caught you.”

“Well, the president didn’t think so. He called me ‘Joey Dumbass’ the next day in the Rose Garden.”

“Must have hurt,” I said.

“You kidding? It was like a billion bucks of free advertising. Not that I was thinkin’ about that at the time. Honestly, I just wanted Blade to believe me when I said I cared more about the band than my own life. By jumpin’ out of that plane, I proved it to him. And believe it or not, Bungalow Bill, I feel the same way about Project Icon. I’m gettin’ older. Look at my legs. I can’t jump around on stage every night of the week. My doc gives me two years max before I start rollin’ in a wheelchair, Johnny Cash—style. So I need a regular job. And no, by the way, I don’t wanna sit on a beach. You think that’s fun? Honey, you ain’t never done it. I retired to Hawaii in 1984, after I got my first hundred million in the bank. Six days, it lasted. And I’m surprised I held out that long. I was hitting myself in the face with f*ckin’ rocks, I was so bored. Beautiful place, man, don’t get me wrong. But live there? Try it, I dare ya. Relaxation is stagnation. F*ck that shit. Besides, at Project Icon, I can help give some cow town kid like Jimmy Nugget a shot at doin’ what I did. That means the world to me, Bungalow Bill. Where else is the next generation gonna come from, huh? Without Icon, there’d be no music shows on prime time. There’d be no audience. Shit, if you’re unknown, you can’t even get a gig these days, ’cause the venues make you guarantee the takings at the door in advance. What kind of young kid can afford to do that?”

I didn’t get a chance to answer this question—because without warning, Joey lunged. I guess I must have leaned in closer while he was speaking, or maybe it was the nude Olympics going on in the background that had triggered some sex impulse in his head. Whatever—I couldn’t get out of the way fast enough. And by that I mean, I couldn’t actually get out of the way fast enough. So there I was, pinned on the recliner, with the tongue of a sixty-two-year-old man trying to push its way between my clenched jaw and into my mouth. It lasted, oh, five seconds. The moment I struggled against him, Joey broke away, surprised at my reluctance. He’d miscalculated. He’d mistaken my interest for attraction. But as he retreated, something light and hollow fell out of his gown pocket and rolled across the floor. I looked down—and Joey made a dive for it. But it was too late.

I’d seen them.

I’d seen my jar of little green pills, with “Sasha King, take as needed” on the side.

“How the hell—!” I screamed, in a rage that took hold of me with a sudden, almost frightening force. The lunge had been bad enough: But this? He’d stolen from me, too?

“You left ’em right there!” Joey yelled, now slurring his words. It was now so horribly obvious what had happened. He must have taken a pill—or pills—right before I arrived, and they were only just beginning to enter his bloodstream. He was high.

“Where?” I demanded.

“My trailer. In Las Vegas. Shit, Bill, I’m sorry. But you left ’em, you left ’em right there, man.”

It was a lie. It had to be a lie. I’d never been near his trailer, not in Las Vegas, not anywhere.

“Joey—how could you?” I said, the rage beginning to pass. Now I just felt confused. Depressed and confused. “And I thought you were one of the good guys. I really did, Joey.”

I stared at him, still trying to process what had just happened.

He said nothing.

“Dammit, Joey,” I sighed. “I liked you from that first moment in Ed’s office—even when you weren’t even being likable. And after all the shit we’ve been through with Bibi—what she did to Bonnie—I thought you were better. Jesus, what a sucker I am.”

Joey’s entire body stiffened. “… you think Bibi was the reason Bonnie left the show?” he said.

An awful silence. “Yeah. Why?”

“Oh, man. I’m a terrible person. A terrible, terrible person.” He stood up and walked over to the balcony. I hoped he wasn’t about to cry. Tonight had been bad enough already.

“What happened, Joey?” I asked, anger still in my voice. “Just tell me what happened.”

“… I didn’t mean to,” came the forlorn reply. “I just… I’m just built that way, Bill. And that’s what people want, isn’t it? The whole rock star thing. Ain’t that why they pay me all that money to be on the show? It was a kiss, goddamnit.”

“You KISSED Bonnie?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh, Joey… oh…”

“They made a whole big f*ckin’ thing out of it.” Wiping his eyes, he stared out at the groaning, howling city below. “Guess they were just mad at me,” he sighed. “Y’know… for making her pregnant and all.”