Elimination Night - By Anonymous Page 0,41

the table and stumbled off in the direction of the bathroom, his twelfth visit of the day. (I knew this because the crew was now keeping an official tally.)

“That man has the smallest bladder of anyone I’ve ever met,” Len declared. “Can’t you get him a new one, Mitch? We have to stop every three fucking minutes for it.”

“Ha-ha,” sneered Mitch. “I think you’ve got a more urgent problem to deal with, don’t you?”

I looked at Len. He took a swig of water. “It’s okay,” he said, when he was done. “Mitch knows.”

“So what are we going to do?” I asked.

“We?” said Len, feigning shock. “Shouldn’t the question be ‘what are you going to do?’”

“Me?”

“Forgive me,” said Len, in his most condescending tone. “I must have mistaken you for Bibi’s newest little friend. You know, the one she sends for by dispatching the very lovely David in a white Rolls-Royce Phantom to her crappy little apartment in Little Russia. I could have sworn that was you, Bill. Clearly I was wrong.”

“How did you—”

“I know everything.”

“But it wasn’t like that. We’re not fri—”

“You need to talk to her,” said Len, pointing his fork at me. “I don’t care how you do it, just do it quick. And don’t fucking upset her, okay? But I want Teddy off the set, no excuses, and this bullshit with the cue cards has got to stop. I’ll be amazed if we can use a single contestant from Houston, based on what I saw today. It’s a joke. She’s your mate—have a quiet word. Oh, and this didn’t come from me. If you so much as mention my name, I’ll deny all knowledge. Understood?”

I stared back at Len numbly. I had no more appetite. I wanted to leave the room and never come back. Before I could mount any kind of protest, however, there was a commotion outside in the lobby. Loud male voices—possibly security guards. Sobbing. A walkie-talkie hissed and crackled. And then one of Len’s Lovelies—a publicist named Dana—entered the room in a state of obvious distress. Flushed from walking at top speed in heels, she made her way directly to our table. Sensing trouble, Len wiped his mouth and began to get to his feet.

Now I could hear sirens. Distant, but unmistakable.

Holy sh—

“It’s Joey,” announced Dana, breathlessly. “We just found him in the bathroom… with, uh…”

“SHIT!” yelled Mitch, jumping up with enough force to make his chair topple backward. “Did he have the crack pipe? That piece of—I told him, dammit, I told him!”

“He didn’t have a crack pipe,” said Dana, firmly.

The sirens were getting closer.

“Huh?” Mitch looked bewildered.

Pandemonium in the lobby.

“It’s worse than that, Mitch,” said Dana.

The sirens were right outside the hotel now. Car doors slamming. More walkie-talkies.

“He didn’t have the crack pipe?” Mitch had turned gray. He didn’t understand.

“No.”

“Then what?”

“He had…”

“WHAT?”

“He had Miss Idaho.”

Mitch doubled over, winded—as though he’d just been punched in the gut—and then tried to make a run for the door. With considerable effort, Len held him back.

“You mean… the contestant?” I asked. “The girl with the ‘I Da Hoe’ T-shirt?”

“Well, it turns out she is,” Dana confirmed. “Unfortunately, her dad doesn’t quite see it that way. He says she’s his little angel. There’s… there’s a lot of blood.”

13

Coach Andy

ONE WEEK LATER…

“How’s he doing?” I asked.

“Let me tell you something,” Mitch replied, his nose dotted with the foam of a triple-shot cappuccino. “Joey Lovecraft’s moods are like Martian weather. Little understood. Spectacular from afar. And basically unsurvivable by humankind.”

“Ah.” I tilted my head to catch more of the early afternoon sun. “So not good, then?”

“I’d say he was a nine today. Borderline ten.”

I stared blankly across the table.

“No one told you?” said Mitch, surprised. “We track Joey’s moods with a numbering system. Ten is the worst; one is the best. Mu sends out an e-mail to the staff every morning. Just a number in the subject line—that’s it. She’s never reported a one, as far as I’m aware. If you believe some of the older roadies, he came close during the summer of 1983, before that stupid fucking parachute jump. Typically, though, four is as good as it gets. Five means Mu and Sue go home in tears. Higher than a six, and Joey’s bodyguard has the okay to call his doctor for a medical-marijuana prescription. An eight usually means hospital or incarceration.”

“And a ten?”

“Imagine an asteroid the size of Manhattan landing on Manhattan.”

We were back on The Lot in the San Fernando Valley. Only this time,