Elimination Night - By Anonymous Page 0,51

Bonnie’s hand—“God has sent you one of his very own angels. That voice of hers; that’s the voice of an angel, buddy. She’s been sent from above to look out for you, man. I swear that’s true.”

Mikey tensed, his body gripped with some passing spasm. Then he blinked. Once. Twice. Then five or six more times. “What’s that?” asked Joey. “You tellin’ me somethin’?”

Now Bonnie was in tears. “Yes, he is,” she nodded, swallowing heavily. “He’s telling you—”

“Yes?”

Bonnie tried to go on but couldn’t, so Mikey’s mom spoke up from the corner of the room. (Len had waived the rules to let her in, along with a few other family members.)

“He’s saying…”

Now an unfamiliar shudder in my chest. Wow, Mikey’s story was really getting to me.

Mikey’s mom gulped and started again. “He’s telling you…”

Another shudder. I took a long, deep breath. I needed a drink of water. I needed some air.

“… when he first went to Afghanistan…”

Jesus, what was wrong with—

SHIT, it was my phone! It was ringing—or vibrating, rather. Right there in my breast pocket, where I’d put it a few minutes ago, because my belt clip had broken. I’d totally forgotten it was there. Worse, I hadn’t switched the damn thing off. Hands shaking, I yanked the warm plastic casing from my jacket pocket. Any second now, it would break into “Hell on Wheels.” Fuck! Len would kill me! He would literally throw me out of the window, headfirst. Manic fumbling. Find the red button. Find the red button. At last, the rings stopped. I looked around for any witnesses of this near disaster. None. Slowly, I released the oxygen from my lungs and glanced down at the now-muted device. “Brock, missed calls (3),” it told me.

Perfect timing, Brock. Perfect timing.

When I looked up again, Mikey’s mom had finished speaking. Everyone was howling, even Len.

I hadn’t heard a word that she’d said.

16

When They Were Young

BONNIE DIDN’T STAND a chance.

This wasn’t because of her voice—far worse singers had thrived in the competition—but because she represented a triumph for Joey Lovecraft. And a triumph for Joey Lovecraft was by definition a failure for Bibi Vasquez. You could see the look of horror cross Bibi’s face the very moment Joey got down on his knees in front of Staff Sergeant Mike Donovan in that San Diego hotel suite. Until then, Bibi had been convinced that she was the real star of the show. She was paid more than Joey—a lot more. She got better treatment (in spite of Mitch’s best efforts). She had quadruple the number of assistants and stylists. Sir Harold Killoch called her personally every other day to make sure she was doing okay. And the reporters and paparazzi who thronged outside every Icon audition venue were interested only in her, not some crusty old relic from… whatever the hell his loser band was called. As far as Bibi was concerned, Joey was a Blist (if that) sidekick, a provider of occasional moments of comic relief.

But when Bonnie and her husband walked into that room, everything changed.

For Bibi, the irony must have been excruciating. She was the one who was supposed to be revealing her humanity, tears, and compassion! Teddy had promised her this, over and over. Ridding herself of the shallow, bragging, pre-Recession Ice Diva legacy of “I Wanna Rock (Any Diamond Will Do)” was the whole point of her being on the show. And yet when confronted with Staff Sergeant Mike Donovan, she had reacted in precisely the way an Ice Diva would: She had frozen. And who could really blame her? Nothing in Bibi’s life until that moment had prepared her to interact with such a human tragedy, at such an uncomfortably close range—a man with limbs blown off and half of his face missing, who was rocking violently back and forth, making some god-awful gurgling noise, while producing a steady ooze of greenish-yellow fluid from his lower jaw.

But Joey hadn’t flinched! His first instinct as a Child of the Earth, brimful of Kangen water, channeling the teachings of the great High Lama Yutog Gonpo, was to embrace.

There’s more to it than that, of course. For all Joey’s many faults—his compulsive libido, his terminal addictions, his lecturing of others on their every perceived failure—the man has a preacher’s gift for connecting with strangers. And not just strangers who also happen to be teenage beauty queens. Grandmas. Toddlers. Truck drivers. Bankers. Anyone. Joey loves people, and people love him right back… which makes Joey love people even