Elimination Night - By Anonymous Page 0,58

whole body is convulsing. She covers her face. Joey looks at her in bafflement, then turns to JD. They both shrug. Bibi’s wailing intensifies, so Joey tries to comfort her, but the effort is wary, halfhearted.

“She’s so brave!” Bibi is protesting. “She doesn’t, uh, uh, DESERVE this!” JD is edging into the action now: With some trepidation, his left arm creeps across Bibi’s shoulder.

Meanwhile: The sobs are getting louder, thicker, faster… wetter. “This wasn’t my decision!” she yelps, hugging a pillow. “I can’t believe we did this! I can’t… uh, uh… go on.”

She goes limp. Literally—WHUMP!—face down.

Another camera swings overhead.

“Er, guys?” says JD, looking at the camera. Everyone’s thinking the same thing: What the hell’s he doing? First rule of television, never acknowledge the camera.

“Jesus!” yells Joey, also breaking the rule. “Can we get some help here? We got a screamer!”

KLUNK.

Houselights come on. Everything stops. Then a blast of cool air as the emergency doors swing open. From behind them come loud, confident voices. “Where is she?” Boots on metal. A uniformed ambulance crew is now climbing the stairs to the suspended cage. I glimpse an oxygen tank, a stretcher, a survival blanket. Joey and JD are told to stand aside. Then a thick palm over the camera. For a moment: Nothing in the monitors but calloused flesh and a dirty wedding ring. Another camera ducks into the fray, almost cracking Joey in the temple. Len tries to stop it—“SWITCH THOSE BLOODY THINGS OFF!”—but he’s too late: Joey has already drop-kicked the telescoping lens, cracking the glass.

Now sirens outside, as the fire department arrives—all of it, judging by the noise. The Las Vegas Police Department isn’t far behind. I no longer feel as though I’m on the set of a TV show. I feel as though I’m at the scene of a natural disaster. A steady beat of rotors above is making the walls vibrate. More sirens, at hearing-loss volume. As for Bibi—she’s no longer visible amid the uniformed personnel. They’ve picked her up and are carrying her down the stairs in a well-rehearsed sixteen-legged shuffle. People are yelling, pointing, running in all directions—with the exception of one man, who’s standing right across from me, surveying the chaos while talking calmly into his phone.

It’s… Teddy. Is he dictating something? I move closer but he hangs up, passes the phone to an assistant, and with a tiny smirk, thrusts his hands deep in his pockets.

He seems amused. No, satisfied.

I look around for Bonnie, but she’s gone.

18

Vengeance Enough

THE SEASON THIRTEEN premier of Project Icon was due to go out at eight o’clock on a Wednesday evening, near the end of the month. It was hard to believe it was actually happening—but with every day that passed, it seemed less and less likely that Sir Harold Killoch would order the preemptive cancellation that ShowBiz magazine kept predicting so confidently on its front page. Billboards went up. Listings were printed. And then the very first sneak-peeks began to air during Rabbit prime time—most of them featuring Joey being either pixelated or bleeped.

Seven months it had taken us to get this far—thanks to the sanity checks, the contract negotiations, the audition tours, and then Las Vegas Week. It felt more like seven years.

My plan was to watch the show at home in my pajamas—a luxury I obviously wouldn’t have when the live episodes began. I’d even bought my very first TV for the purpose. Yeah, I know: How very nineties of me. But the show wasn’t going out live on the Internet, so I didn’t have any choice, and as much as I wasn’t exactly looking forward to seeing how the auditions had been edited together, there was no way I was going to miss it. I had the whole evening all mapped out, in fact. At around seven, I’d open a bottle of wine from my super-special reserve—i.e., the stuff that cost more than two dollars a bottle—then I’d order a chicken tikka masala from The Gates of Eternal Destiny (Full Bar & Restaurant) on Sunset, and then, when my one-woman feast arrived, I’d sit on my bed with my plastic glass and disposable cutlery and cringe alone at Bibi’s distracted gazing, JD’s booya-ka-kas, and Joey’s… well, his general offensiveness. (“That performance was almost as crazy-ass hot as your daughter,” he remarked to one of the older contestants during the early auditions, apparently unaware that the girl in question had only just celebrated her twelfth birthday.)

My fantasy night in never happened, of course. Len