Elimination Night - By Anonymous Page 0,74

to her, a way of proving that the universe—God, I suppose—was still capable of love. But Staff Sergeant Mike Donovan was of course no longer able to father a child. And unlike many of his fellow soldiers, he hadn’t visited a sperm bank before leaving for Afghanistan: It was the married guys who jerked off into test tubes before their tours of duty, not the likes of Mikey, who was still technically a bachelor at the time he was ambushed.

Now it was too late. Half of Mikey’s groin had been taken out by shrapnel, leaving him infertile. Nevertheless, he was determined to give Bonnie a baby, one way or another, even if the child wasn’t biologically his. It was the very least he could do, he told his wife (via coded eyeblinks), given all that she had sacrificed for him. So Bonnie signed up to a donor service, and was busy reviewing anonymous candidates online, purchasing every last piece of information she could about each one of them—voice recordings, handwriting samples, medical histories, anything—when she came in for her Project Icon audition.

It didn’t take long for one of the research interns to find out about her plans to conceive. And it took even less time for word to reach Joey, who immediately stepped in to “offer my schlong in the name of God and country.” Bonnie, who had grown up listening to Honeyload with Mikey, couldn’t have been more delighted. And after consulting with her husband, she accepted his offer. Nevertheless, there was a small misunderstanding about how the… uh, transaction would take place. Hence the whole issue of the kiss. Or more accurately, the lunge. Still, Joey handled the rejection well, and although he confessed some disappointment about the means of extraction, he stuck by his promise, disappeared into the bathroom, and emerged approximately thirty-eight seconds later with a plastic beaker practically overflowing with what he called his “love spunk number nine.” To Joey, who is thought to have at least forty-three illegitimate sons and daughters across the globe—along with his seventeen official children and thirty-five grandchildren (with another half-dozen grandchildren pending)—the idea of fathering an infant he would almost certainly never meet wasn’t exactly a new one. And while he wasn’t getting any “oopygoopy” (his phrase) out of the conception, at least it wouldn’t involve the usual paternity suit.

Not everyone shared Bonnie and Joey’s enthusiasm for the artificial insemination idea, however. Len, for example, was especially unmoved by Joey’s generosity with regards to the distribution of his semen. In fact, when he found out about it, he called Joey into his office, printed out a copy of the Nonfraternization Agreement that each judge had signed only a few weeks earlier, and informed him that he was now in official breach of his Project Icon contract. Not only could Rabbit fire him, said Len, but it could also sue him—as could Zero Management. Then Maria Herman-Bloch walked into the room with David Gent, Ed Rossitto, and five Big Corp lawyers. In Maria’s yellow-tinged fingers was another contract, which outlined the terms of a payment from Big Corp to Bonnie of one million dollars in return for her immediate removal from the show and a promise never to take legal action over the “private incident involving Mr. Lovecraft’s supply of biological fluids,” nor discuss any aspect of it with anyone, especially not the press. The settlement included an agreement by Joey to forgo three months’ salary as a disciplinary measure. He signed without protest.

That was what had caused the terrible scene in Las Vegas. In spite of her awkwardness around Bonnie initially, Bibi had in fact been genuinely touched by her story. It had made her go home, dismiss the nannies for the evening, and hold her young sons tighter than she ever had before. She’d even tried again to make up with Edouard, who was still upset about being fired as her cue-card holder back in San Diego. So when she was ordered to send Bonnie home with no explanation other than “it’s the producers’ wishes”—Len hadn’t wanted to tell her the real story, because of what Teddy might do—she threatened to resign.

By this point, however, Len was operating on his special reserve tank of patience. So he called her bluff. He knew Bibi liked her new job too much to leave. Bibi’s breakdown in Las Vegas was therefore only partially anguish over what she had been forced to do. It was also a tantrum over not getting her