Elimination Night

25

El Woofaleah



I WAS SURPRISED AT HOW tiny and ancient Nigel Crowther appeared when he wasn’t on camera. He couldn’t have been much younger than Len, in fact. There was also an unsettling… femininity about him. Something to do with the tone of his skin—as though the outer layer had been peeled away—plus of course those infamous twin protrusions from under his sweater. It was extraordinary that Crowther’s nipples were visible at all, given the thickness of the fabric that covered them—which made you wonder if it were somehow deliberate. The breasts, too, were unavoidable: great swollen mounds, not quite of Mia Pelosi dimensions, but large enough to make his belly seem almost modest in comparison.

“I, uh… I like your helicopter,” I said, not sure of the etiquette in such a situation.

“You’re quite an awkward girl, aren’t you, Sasha?” replied Crowther, who’d noticed me staring at his chest. I hadn’t meant to be so obvious. “That is your real name, isn’t it: Sasha? I never approved of the way Len turned you into Bill. How dehumanizing. Then again, it’s the only way Len knows. They gave him a terrible time at school, y’know, especially when he took up tap dancing. Imagine that: Chiswick Technical School, west London, just after the war—and there was Len, a sickly kid with curly hair and a passion for musical theater. There were toilet plungers in Chiswick which spent less time in the bowl than he did. Created a monster, if you ask me. And yet not a very effective monster, judging by those abysmal ratings. Anyway, come on inside.”

He paused.

“Oh,” he added, handing me an iPad with a stylus attached. “And if you wouldn’t mind signing this. Standard nondisclosure agreement. Can’t have you telling anyone about this little meeting, I’m afraid. But I think you’ll want to hear what I’ve got to say.”

Squinting, I tried to read the words on the display, but there was too much glare from the floodlights on my glasses. I gave up and signed anyway. I mean, what was I going to do—refuse, get back on the helicopter, and go home? Maybe Crowther wouldn’t even let me use the helicopter. Maybe I’d have to swim.

“Jolly good,” he said, as I handed the device back to him. “This way, my dear.”

I followed him into the yacht’s relentlessly modern entertaining area: a white box, essentially, with sharp-angled sofas, a circular fire pit, and brushed steel fixtures. It was an obsessive-compulsive’s fantasy in there, a clean-room laboratory masquerading as a living room. The only vaguely organic-looking matter was supplied by the tall women with tiny waists draped everywhere—on the sofas, by the bar, inside the bubble chair that hung from the ceiling. In fact, I could see only one male: He was older than me, smirking, with a reddish mullet. He looked uncomfortably familiar. Was he from Rabbit? Invasion Media? Or perhaps the New York office of Zero Management? Then it came to me, and my fists balled involuntarily. It was… I couldn’t even believe I was in the same room… it was that a*shole reporter, Chaz Chipford, from ShowBiz magazine.

“You know him?” I hissed to Crowther, trying not to glare at the man who’d made a career out of running front-page “exclusives” predicting Project Icon’s demise.

“Who? Chaz? Oh, yeah.”

“He’s your friend?”

“God, no. Can’t stand him. Dreadful little man.”

“Then… why is he here?”

Crowther stopped walking and turned to me. We were in the middle of the room. Chaz was about ten feet away—too far to hear us over the nondescript Latin-themed lounge music. “They really don’t teach you very much at Project Icon, do they?” he said. “Rule number one, Sasha: Always look after the press. That means lots of hot girls, otherwise known as publicists. It also means free booze, finger buffets, gifts, upgrades, whatever you can throw at them. Cash, if you must.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Absolutely not. Chaz writes whatever I ask him to, more or less. Oh, and see those lights over there?” He pointed out of the window: Beyond it, I could just about trace the illuminated outline of a smaller vessel. I was surprised I hadn’t noticed it from the air.

“Paparazzi,” he said. “I invited them here myself. I even chartered the boat for them. And you know what that means? It means I know exactly what they’re up to, all hours of the day. It also means they keep other paparazzi away, to protect their turf. It gives me control, Sasha. I get to be photographed at my best, when I’m not eating. No one looks good when they’re eating, Sasha. Remember that. It’s important.”

“But… don’t these journalists have… ethics?”

“C’mon, Sasha. Chaz Chipford isn’t exactly a contender for any literary prizes. Look at him: He’s pathetic. Entertainment reporters have all the sophistication of single-cell amoebas. Have you ever been to a junket before? My God, it’s depressing. Full of broke, ugly, desperate morons. You don’t even have to pay them for a good review most of the time. A free drink and two minutes with a celebrity is enough. It’s incredible that the likes of Len Braithwaite hasn’t figured that out yet. He won’t even provide an open bar for the press at Project Icon, never mind a massage room. No wonder the trades have been so hostile. Well, it’s too late now.”

Suddenly, Crowther stood back, grinned, and opened his arms. Someone he knew was approaching from behind me. I turned—and felt blood drain from my face.

Then I almost lost my balance.

“Hello, Sasha,” said my former boss. “It’s been a while.”

“Bill,” I croaked.

“The one and only,” he replied, “Although thanks to you, that’s not exactly true any more, is it? I hear you stole my identity. Just don’t take out any credit cards in my name!”

“But I thought you—?”

“All faked,” interrupted Crowther. “The accident, the light falling from the rig—the blood, the ambulance. That’s why we did it in Denver. We knew no one would ever go visit him.”

“But… why?” I could barely move my jaw.

“Bill had a contract he couldn’t get out of, and I needed his help. It’s not easy setting up a franchise like The Talent Machine in eighteen months, y’know. I wanted the best of the best. And Bill here was at the top of my list.”

“Sorry, Sash,” offered Bill, sheepishly. “He made it worth my while.”

“Len is gonna freak out!” I blurted.

“Len will never know,” said Crowther, firmly. “Remember our little agreement?”

“Oh, the nondisclosure thing, right… look, I don’t mean to be rude, Nigel, but why am I here? What was the whole deal with the helicopter? Why am I in Malibu, on a yacht with a basketball court for the president, at ten o’clock at night? I don’t understand.”

“We should talk in private,” he said. “Come to my room.”

“Nigel,” I said, raising my hands in protest. “I really don’t think—”

“Relax, for God’s sake, I’m not Joey Lovecraft. This is strictly business. This way.”

He escorted me out of the room, through a door with a raised threshold, and down a narrow hallway.

“You like Joey, don’t you?” said Crowther, when we reached the master suite.

“I’m mad at him, actually,” I replied.

Now we were inside. The room looked pretty much the same as the entertainment area, only with a low, Japanese-style (i.e., hard) bed in the center, covered with monochromatic throw pillows. The entire yacht was such a heterosexual bachelor cliché, I couldn’t help but wonder if its owner was trying to prove something.

“Yeah, but you like him,” Crowther continued, pulling out a chair for me by his desk. “Even though I can tell from the look on your face that he’s already made some kind of awful pass at you. God, how predictable. I bet he tried to win you over with the parachute story. That’s his masterpiece, the parachute story. Such a shame it isn’t true.”

“What do you mean, it isn’t true?” I said, feeling unexpectedly defensive. “Of course it’s true! A hundred thousand people were at that gig. They all saw it happen. It was on TV.”

“Trust me: He didn’t jump out of that plane.”

“But that’s… ridiculous.”

“He didn’t jump, Sasha. Blade Morgan pushed him.”

“Oh, c’mon.”

“Believe what you want. The truth is, Joey screwed Blade’s wife. Knocked her up. And while he was screwing her in Blade’s own bed, he also took the liberty of stealing his drugs—even more of a betrayal, in those days. He’s a very twisted man, Joey Lovecraft. All the fault of his Danish mother, apparently—she used to throw boiling water at him when he sat under her piano. Anyway, in the plane, Joey gave Blade that whole speech about jumping—how the band was worth more to him than his own life, et cetera, et cetera—and before he could finish it, Blade just pushed him out. He figured that if Joey was going to die anyway, he might as well have the satisfaction of being the one who killed him. Then obviously he changed his mind, and went out and caught him.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Blade is a good friend. He regrets saving Joey to this day—wakes up in the night screaming about it. He says that if he’d let Joey die, Honeyload would have hired a new singer, and the last thirty-five years might have actually been fun.”

“He sounds like the twisted one.”

“Joey’s not the worst of your colleagues, of course,” Nigel went on, ignoring me. “God, no. I mean, who could ever hope to compete with Wayne Shoreline? He’s a functioning psychopath, y’know. Len showed me the medical file that Rabbit had to send to the insurance company when he joined the show. Absolutely terrifying.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I know about Wayne.”

I wished Crowther would get to the point. This was getting exhausting. But he seemed to be relishing this opportunity to speak ill of his former coworkers.

“Let me tell you something about Wayne, Sasha,” he said. “The morning of the first ever ‘results show’—in the days when Project Icon had only one voting line, because no one thought we’d make it past the midnight time slot in August—he called me at home. Told me he had a plane waiting, and we needed to go somewhere special for a late breakfast. Of course I was intrigued, so I went along for the ride. We flew down past San Diego, across Baja California, and over to some godforsaken island in the Gulf of California. Must have taken an hour and fifteen minutes to get there, maybe a bit longer. Anyway, so we land on this island—which is part of Mexico—and go to its only restaurant. Wayne insists on ordering for both us: some kind of thick—almost black—very spicy stew. It’s the last thing I want to eat for breakfast, frankly. I can get only two or three spoonfuls down. But Wayne, he practically licks his plate clean, grinning the whole time. Then he gets the chef to come out and explain to us what it is we’ve just eaten.

“You know what the chef did? He just whistled—and all these dogs came running out of the backyard. Young dogs. Puppies. Very cute. Then he points to them and makes a throat-slitting motion. That’s what was in the stew: Puppy. ‘El Woofaleah,’ the dish was called. Some ancient Mayan recipe, apparently. Or maybe it was Aztec. Whatever. Obviously, I was terribly upset. I happen to like puppies very much. But then Wayne got very serious. He told me that when he looked in the contestants’ eyes that evening, he wanted to be utterly without mercy. El Woofaleah had been his mental preparation—like he was Muhammad Ali, getting ready for a fight. ‘I don’t want to feel like a human being,’ he said. And in truth, I think it helped him during the broadcast. He single-handedly delivered the most exquisite cruelty that Americans had ever witnessed on live TV. Back then, remember, we’d all seen kids get voted off reality shows before. But what Wayne did… oh, it was very different. I mean, here was a guy who walked on stage knowing that he’d just eaten a puppy for breakfast. No one ever called it a ‘results show’ again after that. God, no—it was an elimination night.”

“This is a joke, right?” I said, wanting to throw up.

“Ask Wayne,” shrugged Crowther, as the intercom on his desk lit up. Crowther reached for the handset. “Okay, I’ll be right there, captain,” he said. Then, to me: “One moment. I’m needed on the bridge.” When he left the room, I put my head in my hands. So much information to process. Bill Redmond wasn’t on life support. ShowBiz reporters took bribes in exchange for positive coverage. Joey hadn’t jumped out of that plane. Wayne Shoreline ate puppies for breakfast.

I needed a drink of water. Looking around, I noticed an unopened bottle on Crowther’s desk, so I reached over to get it, glancing at his laptop as I did so. The e-mail program was running, with a message in the center of the screen. I tried not to look… but couldn’t resist. The “From” line was familiar enough, but the rest was in some unintelligible font. I peered closer—I couldn’t make out a single word—and then almost fell off my chair with fright when something moved against my right leg. False alarm: It was my phone, vibrating. Composing myself, I pulled it out of the buttoned cargo pocket on my thigh.

A text from Mitch:

“IT’S JOEY. COME QUICK. CYPRESS.”

I’d barely reached the word “Cypress”—which presumably meant Mount Cypress Medical Center in Beverly Hills—when Crowther returned. He seemed impatient now, colder.

“Okay,” he said. “Down to business. I want you to come and work for The Talent Machine. Bill’s been monitoring your progress at Icon, and thinks you’d make an excellent deputy. I can offer you a car—my assistant will coordinate between you and Aston Martin of Beverly Hills—plus the use of a penthouse at Seventy-eight La Brea. Salary: Two hundred thousand dollars, details to be agreed between my office and your representative. Only of course you don’t have a representative, so I’ll have to get you one of those, too. Oh, and while we’re on the subject, I hear you’re writing a novel, so I suppose you’d like to speak to my literary agent, Rick Ponderosa, who as I’m sure you know is the very best in New York.”

“This can’t be… real.”

“Well, it won’t be real unless you give me your answer in twelve hours. Which—as you know—is approximately two hours before the results of a certain pee test are due back from a certain laboratory in the San Fernando Valley. Although I suspect that Joey has more urgent problems to deal with, given his current location.”

I froze.

“How do you… who told you… ?”

“Please. I have my sources. David’s waiting for you in the chopper outside. I’m afraid the closest he can get to the hospital is Santa Monica Airport. You can order a cab from there. Remember, Sasha: Twelve hours. Yes or no.”