Elimination Night - By Anonymous Page 0,25

Earth as a mother, thinker, philanthropist, businesswoman, dancer, style icon, and best-selling author… BIBI VASQUEZ. Then lights up, ‘Gotta Disco’ will resume, Bibi’s dancing troupe will run up the center aisle, and Bibi will perform a three-song set. Then cut to the prerecorded Rabbit News Special with Bibi featuring Sir Paul McCartney, the Dalai Lama, and the First Lady of the United States.”

Finally. It was over.

The only sound in the room now was Teddy giving his own heartfelt personal round of applause.

Mitch was under the table, making a noise I’d never heard anyone make before.

Then it began. Joey stood up, loosened his belt, and began to adjust his leather chaps.

“Get the pee cup, Mitch,” he ordered.

A few seconds earlier, I wouldn’t have believed it possible for Mitch to sound any unhappier.

He was now proving me wrong.

“The pee cup,” Joey repeated. “It’s in the contract, right? These guys want me to take a pee test every week, to make sure I ain’t gonna do any crazy shit on prime-time TV?”

A muffled voice from under the table: “Joey… please… this isn’t the time or the—”

“Mitch: SHUT UP. I need the pee cup, and I need it now, ’cause trust me, I’m gonna take so many pills and drink so much booze, my pee ain’t gonna be clean again for a thousand fuckin’ years. You promised me equal treatment, you motherfuckers. And now Little Miss Perfect over there is getting a royal coronation? Mitch, you suck. Teddy, you suck cock. That’s cool, but you fuckin’ ain’t.”

He turned to me. “And you, girl-called-Bill,” he said. “I thought you were okay, man. What happened? You’re all the same, you people. You’ve all got the same poison in your soul. Fuckin’ TV producers. And to think I fell for it. Well, I hope you’re happy now, ’cause I ain’t doing this bullshit anymore. Show over. Go fuck yourselves.”

“Joey,” I said. “This is isn’t how it—”

Too late. He was out of the door. “Th- Th- Th- That’s all, folks!” he yelled, as it jerked shut behind him.

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