Elimination Night - By Anonymous Page 0,59

wanted the judges and “a few key members of staff” to watch the season premier together—yet another effort to promote camaraderie. In reality, the only thing it promoted was an argument between Bibi and Joey over where the screening should be held. Joey, who was booked to play a gig with Honeyload in Kuala Lumpur the night before, said it should be at his house, because he was a sixty-two-year-old man, and he’d be exhausted from all the traveling. Bibi countered by saying that because she was looking after quadruplets (or rather, she and her twelve nannies were looking after quadruplets) the gathering should take place at her place. Joey then pointed out that he lived at the top of Sunset Plaza Drive in the Hollywood Hills, a more convenient location for pretty much all the executives and producers who’d been invited. Bibi responded with the observation that her house was bigger, more expensive, and had twice been featured prominently in Architectural Digest magazine. Plus, she had her own private movie theater.

And so it went on.

Bibi won, naturally. Which meant I had to take the hour-long journey to Secret Mountain, and then the hour-long journey back home again. Only this time—no surprise—Bibi didn’t send David to Little Russia in the Rolls-Royce to pick me up. Instead, I had to take a cab, which charged me four hundred dollars (thanks to an obviously rigged meter) for the ride. Worse luck: The cab wasn’t allowed beyond the military-grade checkpoint at Secret Mountain’s entrance.

“That’s prohibitive, ma’am,” said the spectacularly obese woman who filled (quite literally) the gatehouse. “No taxicabs, buses, coaches, minicoaches, or multipassenger vans.”

“Prohibitive?”

“It’s on the sign, ma’am.”

“Don’t you mean prohibit-ed?”

“Read the sign, ma’am.”

This wasn’t going anywhere. “Okay,” I said, changing tactics. “I’m here for the Vasquez residence.”

“Name?”

“Sasha King.”

“… I only have a Bill King, ma’am.”

“Yeah, that’s me.”

“You just said your name was Sasha, ma’am.”

We went back and forth like this for—oh, forever. Eventually, it was established that, yes, I was indeed Bill King, and no, this did not mean an exception to the no-cabs rule could be made. So my unshaven driver with his jerry-rigged meter performed a U-turn in the fire lane and declared that I now owed him an extra eighty-five dollars for waiting time. I paid him and climbed out onto the street. There was no alternative: I was going to have to walk to Bibi’s. Uphill, in the dark. With no sidewalks. The woman in the gatehouse told me it was “probably less than a mile” but given that she looked as though she’d never walked farther than a few yards in her life, I wasn’t about to take her word for it. In fact, the Google Maps app on my phone informed me that it was two miles.

At least I’d worn jeans and flats.

This no longer seemed like such a good thing when I reached the house, however. I’d underestimated—by some degree—the grandness of the occasion. This wasn’t going to be a bunch of us sitting around in wearable blankets, chugging domestic beer, and laughing at inside jokes, as the e-mailed invitation had suggested. Oh, no. By the looks of things, it was going to be something more closely resembling an awards-season aftershow party. Bibi’s driveway already resembled a Concours d’Elegance, what with the vintage gull-wing Mercedes, next to three black Range Rovers, next to a glowering Aston Martin. And more cars were arriving by the minute, greeted by a line of valets in red “BV” monogrammed jumpsuits. They ignored me as I crunched wearily through the gravel between them.

At the door, I was met by the same housekeeper as before. If she knew who I was, she didn’t acknowledge it. This time, she led me in the opposite direction to the kitchen, to a separate wing of the house. We walked all the way through it to the other side, exited into an rose garden, and followed a stone pathway to an outhouse, which I assumed from the vintage Gone with the Wind billboard at the entrance was Bibi’s private movie theater. Tuxedoed waiters greeted me there, holding aloft trays of champagne and mini lobster rolls. I inhaled three of the latter before getting through the door. And then… well, there I was, feeling catastrophically underdressed. Bibi was wearing some kind of orange-plumed minidress with matching plastic go-go boots and a necklace with enough diamonds on it to fund a minor African civil war. Edouard was in a three-piece suit, as were the couple’s five