more, because Joey needs to be loved above everything else. This much was obvious from his behavior while on the road with Icon. Morning and night, he would greet fans outside each venue, signing autographs, nuzzling babies, posing for photographs, answering questions—the very things Bibi took immense care to avoid. And at lunch, Joey rarely made use of the judges’ table, instead making sure to sit with the lowliest members of the crew, even if he’d just been humiliating them over some insignificant grievance a few moments earlier. Bibi? She ate only in her two-story trailer—sometimes with Teddy, at other times with Edouard and the four kids.
Mostly, though, Bibi dined alone.
Now, I should state for the record that I have no proof there was any plot against Bonnie. Perhaps it was simply my encounter with Bibi in the bathroom of that Milwaukee hotel that made me immediately assume the worst. All I can say is this: It was obvious to everyone after Bonnie’s appearance that Joey had become the undisputed star of season thirteen. Nigel Crowther might have defined Icon once with his “Mr. Horrible” routine, but it was now possible to glimpse an alternative future for the show: A kinder, softer, tearier Icon—and all because of the actions of a sixty-two-year-old drug addict and serial philanderer who had once been declared “the enemy of America’s children” by the U.S. Congress.
Len couldn’t have been more delighted. Hence the impromptu announcement he made over the crew’s headsets while Joey was still down on his knees in front of the injured US Marine. “In case anyone’s still wondering,” he’d croaked, between sobs of triumph, “this is why we hired him. Now listen up, all of you—I want ten moments like this EVERY SINGLE EPISODE.”
Bibi of course had no choice but to fight back—to launch (as it were), a countercaring offensive. Either that, or she had to find a way to recover the Bonnie situation at a later date. Joey was already both the wit of the show and its resident musical genius. If he also became its heart and soul, then what was Bibi for? Clearly, she and Teddy had to come up with a plan—and quick, as there were only four more stops left on the audition tour before so-called Las Vegas Week, where the finalists from each city (about a hundred and twenty in total) would be whittled down yet again to the “Final Fifteen.” After that: Too late! The episodes would have started to air, the critics would have delivered their verdicts (“A triumph for Lovecraft!”), and Bibi would have started the live shows at an unrecoverable disadvantage. Assuming Sir Harold hadn’t switched off the lights by then.
By the second day of filming in San Diego, it was already clear we were playing by new rules. For a start, Edouard was gone. Bibi said he’d been called away urgently to visit a sick relative in France and had taken the kids with him, along with the family Gulfstream (actually, one of the family Gulfstreams). No one believed this for a second. The previous night, there’d been reports of screaming coming from Bibi’s suite. Guests had complained; a room service tray had been dropped from the balcony; maintenance staff had been seen carrying away broken furniture. I wondered if Teddy had been involved, or if it was Bibi who’d asked her husband to leave. (I could never quite tell how the power was distributed among the three of them.) Whatever the case: Edouard had vanished, and Teddy hadn’t taken his place, which meant no more cues from behind the scenes.
It was like making a whole new show. Bibi might not have been as confident as Joey in her decisions—who could be?—but she was at least now looking in the right direction when she made them. And while she was for the most part nauseatingly positive (“You have a beautiful instrument, sweetie, and your dedication moves me”), there were times when traces of the real Bibi Vasquez leaked through. Typically, this happened when she was asked to judge a younger, better-looking female (“Honey you’re cute… but y’know, cute is a dime a dozen these days”)—or, even more noticeably, when a male contestant was unwise enough to say something like, “Man, I was totally obsessed with you when I was a kid.”
Oh, this riled Bibi like nothing else.
“When you were a kid, huh?” she spat, on the second occasion it happened. “Was that when the world was still in black and white?