own way. And Joey? Well, he felt bad, of course. But the way he saw it, he had given Bonnie a gift more precious than winning Icon. Besides, there was nothing to stop her following a singing career after leaving the show. Nothing other than the baby’s arrival in nine months’ time, anyway.
So the question remained: Why had Joey become so… boring on camera suddenly? It didn’t make any sense. He was supposed to be the King of Sing, the Devil of Treble… the Holy Cow of Big Wow!
My guess was the drugs. Although I’d reclaimed my jar of green pills (by then almost empty), Joey could easily have found another supply. He was an addict, after all. And an addict will do anything to get his fix, especially if the addict in question is a multimillionaire rock star with his own private staff. I’d alerted Mitch to the issue, of course—but there was only so much he could do without drawing Rabbit’s attention to the matter, and that was the last thing he wanted after the whole Bonnie fiasco. “Let me handle it, Bill,” he told me over the phone after the Maison Chelsea incident. “I’ll call his sponsor. We’ll get him fixed, don’t worry.”
Meanwhile, I couldn’t help but think back to Las Vegas Week. Was there any way I could have left my pills in his trailer? Was there a chance, no matter how infinitesimal, that he was telling the truth, and that he hadn’t actually stolen from me?
It just didn’t seem possible. I couldn’t even remember what Joey’s trailer looked like, to be honest with you. I certainly hadn’t been inside it. Which meant Joey must have seen the jar in my purse—just as Bibi had done in that Milwaukee bathroom—and then waited for his opportunity. It wouldn’t exactly have taken a criminal mastermind to pull it off. The only flaw in his plan being that once his addiction was reactivated, he got through most of the jar in twenty-four hours. And then he needed more. So what did he do? He invited me over to his private club, on the pretence of a “last supper” with Mitch and the others, in hopes that by then I’d refilled my prescription. Better to steal from me (again) than call up one of his old dealers, with all the risk that involved. Only he was so wasted by the time I got there—and so driven into a frenzy of lust by the nude aerobics in the pool—that he made that desperate, fumbled pass at me instead.
Strangely enough, however, I still had enough faith in Joey to believe that he hadn’t gotten hold of any more pills after I busted him. In fact, I suspected that he’d done exactly what Mitch had told him to and called his sponsor. When you’re an addict, relapses happen: I’d learned that growing up from one of Dad’s alcoholic friends. In rehab you’re taught to prepare for them, recognize them, shut them down. Pray for potatoes, but grab a hoe, as they say. The reason for Joey’s recent behavior, therefore, was probably more a combination of justified anxiety at the live shows coming up—during which he was expected to talk, not sing—and postrelapse shame. After all, he had another pee test due before the next live episode (they were scheduled every six weeks now) and he’d taken so many of my pills—at least forty, by my estimates—that not even an ocean full of Kangen water could flush all traces of the drug from his system. Which meant Joey was probably facing yet another self-inflicted career disaster. I doubted Len would fire him, even so. Way too much hassle. But that wasn’t the issue. The issue was Joey’s pride. If he failed the pee test, there was a good chance the story would get into Showbiz, thus proving Blade Morgan and the rest of Honeyload right about the shit they’d said about him over the years—i.e., that he was the biggest junkie in the band, a terminal fuckup, and essentially unemployable.
The whole point of Joey taking the job on Icon had been “to stick a middle finger up to those fuckin’ hypocrites.” To say, “Screw you guys, I’m fine.” And now… it might do the very opposite. Hence Joey sinking lower and lower into a private, croc-filled swamp of despair. His confidence, his swagger… his showbiz sheen—it had all gone. Just as Bibi had been afraid of Icon’s editors during the prerecorded episodes, Joey was