Elimination Night

8

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.

I could barely look at him. Not that I had much choice. As I approached, he stood up and walked straight at me. “Come here, babe, let’s cuddle through this muddle,” he rapped, with a concerned frown. “Let’s face the embrace, let’s seize the squeeze, honey.”

And then his arms formed a wall of crazy around me. I tried not to choke on his cologne.

“We’ll be better next time, okay?” Joey whispered, as my eyes began to water.

His eyes were watering, too.

Not from the smell, though.

“Okay,” I nodded, too busy withholding a cough of lung-exploding force to be irritated by Joey’s use of the word “we” and its implicit suggestion that I was somehow jointly to blame for Len changing the format of the script, prompting a grown man to act like a toddler who’d just discovered the unfairness of gravity.

Joey clapped his hands as he pulled away from me.

“Showtime!” he announced, with another sniff. “Let’s get this baby on the air.” Then he ambled off, jewelry clanking, in the direction of his Kangen machine.

Mu and Sue followed.

There were more complications to come, naturally. As it turned out, someone on Team Bibi had been listening in to Len’s conversation with Joey (could it have been Teddy? Had he been hiding under the sofa?) and had informed Bibi that her Messiah-like entrance during the press conference was in fact a form of mockery, not celebration. Within minutes, the Beverly Hills attorney Karl Hurt—managing partner at Dammock, Hurt & Richardson (known in the industry as Damage, Hurt, and Retaliation)—had called Len, threatening a lawsuit for breach of contract. There was a “ridicule clause” in Bibi’s agreement with Project Icon, apparently. While Len dealt with the atomictempered lawyer, he shooed me back to the front line of conference room five to calm Bibi.

“Don’t f*ck it up this time,” he mouthed.

Bibi was actually in the hallway, encircled by Teddy, Teddy’s four assistants, and five stylists.

I straightened my back (I’m five eight, so taller than Bibi by five inches) and exhaled.

“Ahem. Miss Vasquez?” I attempted.

“Miss Vasquez is busy,” said Teddy, appearing center frame. “Very busy.”

This was quite obviously untrue. Bibi wasn’t busy at all. The people around her were busy. One stylist was using a miniature spray bottle to apply toning liquid to her calves, giving them a warm, buttery texture. Another was using some kind of air gun to apply perfect distress to individual strands of hair. Meanwhile, an assistant held out an iPad upon which Bibi’s horoscope from a supermarket tabloid was displayed on the maximum zoom setting. Bibi was reading it with great interest. She’d clearly noted my arrival, yet nevertheless had enough plausible deniability to ignore me without risking any awkwardness.

“Look, Teddy,” I began, emotionally. “I just need you to know… we all love Bibi.”

“Everyone loves Bibi,” snipped Teddy, now distracted by an e-mail on his phone. As with Bibi, an assistant was holding it out for him. Couldn’t these people do anything for themselves?

“Of course!” I fawned. “But we think she’s, y’know, really, really amazing. And, er, I just want to, er—”

“Hasn’t Len f*cked you enough for one day, Bill?” Teddy interrupted, without looking up (the e-mail he was reading had come from Bibi, I could see, with Karl Hurt copied). “You really wanna get f*cked again? Why not let the grown-ups handle this.”

Grown-ups? Oh, that was rich.

“I mean, Len sent you over here, right?” Teddy continued, now offering me a full twenty-five percent of his attention. “And he thought you could talk to my client?” He laughed. “Len thought YOU could talk to one of the most famous, successful women alive today? You? With your… boyfriend jeans and hiking shoes? Oh, hilarious.”

That was it: screw these a*sholes. I was all set to give up and walk away when suddenly, the stylists around Bibi parted, giving me a direct view of the star herself.

Eye contact.

Holy crap: Bibi Vasquez was looking at me.

“Honey,” she said, in a tone that suggested an attempt at warmth. “What is it you wanna talk to me about?”

Silence.

A crippling panic. Then irritation. What is wrong with wearing hiking shoes when you spend sixteen hours a day running around a set under hot studio lighting, especially if you have an abnormal big toe, like I do? Then I made a decision. If Len could bullshit Joey, then I could bullshit Bibi. When in hell, do as the devil does, as they say. Okay, so no one actually says that. But you know what I mean.

“Look, Bibi,” I began. “I just want to say, as both a producer and a fan”—yes, I was going all the way on this—“you’re the biggest thing that has ever happened to this show. Everyone at Icon feels that way, Bibi. And I know for a fact that Joey does, too. But he also feels… well, threatened. You’ve got to remember, he’s an alpha male, Bibi. A rock star. And that makes him want to compete with everyone—even when he’s not even in the same game. He just doesn’t know how to respond to your level of fame and success, Bibi. Or the fact that you’re a woman, a mother… an icon. That’s why we sometimes have to talk him down from the ledge. I mean, you saw what happened today, right? But he’s okay now. He’s ready to go. And all I want to say is—if you’re ready, so are we. We’re ready to go out there and own prime time, Bibi. This is so… amazingly… awesome.”

My bullshit generator had reached maximum capacity. If I didn’t stop talking immediately, it was gonna blow. So I wrapped up my speech with a fake little shudder of excitement, then looked over at Teddy, hoping for some support.

His lower jaw hung open.

“Okay, honey,” said Bibi, as a stylist dabbed at her face with a microscopic lip gloss wand. “You didn’t have to say all that, but you’re sweet. I’m glad Joey is feeling better. He shouldn’t feel threatened. But I understand. Let’s get this over with.”

Back to my hangover:

My head felt like a busy market square after a car-bomb attack. Broken glass everywhere. A high-pitched ringing noise. Smoke damage. At least my phone had stopped playing that Blade Morgan riff. Instead it told me with two dying shudders that a voicemail had been left. Brock, probably. I really needed to be better about returning his calls.

I released a long, tobacco-infused sigh—had I eaten the damn cigarette?—and stared up at the cracked stucco on the ceiling. Must tell Mr. Zglagovvcini about that, I thought.

Speaking of whom.

“Meess Sasha?” Are you there, Meess Sasha?”

More knocking.

“Jesus Christ!” I yelled, rolling out of bed furiously. “I’m coming!”

At least I didn’t have to bother getting dressed—one of the few yet undeniable benefits of falling asleep in your clothes. Another blessing: It took only three and a half paces to reach the front door. My apartment—if it deserved such a title—was basically one room, with a sink and microwave at one end, my bed at the other, and a folding door in the middle that led to a bathroom with no actual bath and a towel rack that forced me to lean forward at a forty-five degree angle while doing whatever it was that I had to do. Such luxurious accommodation came with a price tag of eleven hundred dollars a month. The sympathetic real estate broker had told me this was cheap for Hollywood.

“I thought we were in Little Russia?” I’d replied, dumbly.

“Little Russia is in Hollywood, dear,” she’d said.

“But—”

“I know, dear, I know. It’s not like it is on television, is it? You’ll get over that. Eventually.”

I’d taken the place largely because it was close to Greenlit Studios, allowing me to cycle to work. The rent seemed more reasonable if it meant I didn’t have to buy a car.

“Meess Sash—”

To the sound of splintering plywood, I yanked open the termiteinfested front door. “What is it, Mr. Zglagovvcini?” I demanded, with more anger than I’d intended.

“Ah, Meess Sasha, you alive, good, good. Two things…”

It occurred to me that I’d never seen Mr. Zglagovvcini wearing anything other than tennis shorts, flip-flops (in lifeguard yellow), and an obviously counterfeited blue Ralph Lauren T-shirt (obvious because the horseman on the breast pocket is holding up an AK-47, not a polo stick). Presumably the favorable contrast between the LA weather and his native Siberian climate had convinced him to remain as close to naked as possible—within the local decency laws—at all times. I didn’t exactly blame him. Dad, who was raised on the drenched shore of the Irish Sea, had been exactly the same way when he’d taken me to LA as a kid. Except he hadn’t worn any kind of shirt. Just jeans and his old running shoes.

“Mr. Zglagovvcini,” I pleaded. “Can we do this some other—”

He raised both palms.

“Very quick,” he promised. “What would you say are the six things you could never live without?

I closed my eyes. Please tell me I hadn’t gotten out of bed for this.

“Look, I—”

“Six things. Answer carefully.”

“What are you talking about, Mr. Zglagovvcini?”

“It’s question for eCupidMatch.com.”

I began massaging my temples, which seemed only to make my head feel even worse. “Mr. Zglagovvcini,” I began, “are you seriously creating a profile for me on a dating website?”

“Noooo! Mrs. Zglagovvcini say I not allowed to go on such thing. She think I might run off with stripper. Me! With wrinkly old dick! So she taking care of it, only I have to get information from you, as she very shy.” With a shaking hand, he lifted up his reading glasses and studied a list. “Which you say describes you best: dreamer or schemer? If you eaten by cannibal, how you most like to be prepared?”

“Mr. Zglagovvcini, I really, really don’t want you to—”

A car horn sounded outside.

“Oh, that reminds me,” said Mr. Zglagovvcini. “The other thing I need to tell you: Your car has arrived. Driver says he was sent here by Meess, er… Gee Gee? Dee Dee? Maybe Zee Zee? Anyhow, whatever her name is, she didn’t want you turning up to her house on bicycle. She obviously knows you crazy woman.”

I couldn’t process what he was saying. My brain, like the CPU of an aging computer, had maxed out with the stress of running other applications (talking, standing up, keeping my eyes open) leaving me with a spinning wheel-of-death where thoughts should have been. “Whose car? Where? What?” I said, uselessly.

“Your car,” he repeated. “It’s here.”

He pointed to the window of the lobby, beyond which a white Rolls-Royce was waiting. It was gleaming in the sun. The driver waved as I squinted at him.

I thought I might black out.