Elimination Night - By Anonymous Page 0,89

I did as he’d instructed, and made my way to the hospital as quickly as possible. I hardly dared think what might have prompted Mitch’s silence: Was Joey even still alive? I kept checking the ShowBiz website, just in case. There were no dead rock star stories, thank God: Just another page one feature about Sir Harold’s German problems, which appeared to be getting worse. “Big Corp implosion buys resurgent Icon more time,” it read. “Could lucky break save unlucky season thirteen?”

Resurgent? Even ShowBiz must have expected last night’s ratings to be good.

What a moment for Joey to fall off the wagon.

Three hundred dollars, the lousy cab driver charged me. For a fifteen-minute journey. I guess it was my own fault for calling him in advance, which meant he got to see me arrive at Santa Monica airport in a presidential-grade helicopter. I didn’t even argue with his crooked meter, which had raced upward like the jackpot on a one-armed bandit. I just signed the receipt and threw it at him through the hatch. “No wonder everyone buys their own damn car in this city,” I said, climbing out.

Security was tight at the hospital: Black-and-whites on the street, armed guards in the lobby. And of course no one wanted to tell me Joey Lovecraft’s room number: “Joey who? I’m afraid there’s no Joey-whatever-his-name-is here. You must be mistaken.”

This was precisely why Joey always went to Mount Cypress: The place was built for celebrities in distress, what with the two-thousand-square-foot “recovery suites” and counterpaparazzi squads at every entry and exit point. Not that I’d noticed any telltale blacked-out SUVs on the way in, which suggested no one knew about this yet—or at least no one other than Nigel Crowther…

Holy crap, tonight had been weird.

I couldn’t even begin to think about who Crowther’s “source” might be—or anything else regarding my time aboard The Talent and the Glory, for that matter. With Joey in the hospital, in God knows what condition, it made me feel almost traitorous.

At the reception desk, I tried desperately to remember the fake name Joey had used when booking himself into hotels on the Project Icon auditions tour. It was a cartoon character, I knew that much. But which one? Think, Sash, think. “I’m here to see Mr. Scooby-Doo,” I announced, eventually, to the exhausted-looking and bespectacled African American man behind the counter. “He’s in one of the private recovery suites.”

“No ‘Scooby-Doo’ here,” he said, without looking up from his paperback.

“Please,” I begged, “I can’t get through to his manager on the phone. I need to be up there. It’s urgent.”

The receptionist sighed, put down his book, and shifted uncomfortably on his chair. “Why don’t you try again,” he said, tapping a key on his computer. “Along the same lines.”

“Oh, thank you, thank you.”

“Don’t thank me, Miss. Just get it right.”

I was sure it was Scooby-Doo. But there was some kind of twist to it: Something ridiculous.

“Mr. Scooby-Dooby-Doo?” I attempted.

He shook his head.

“Mr. Scooby-Dooby… Doo-Wop-Dooby-Doo?”

Handing me a laminated guest pass, he said: “Take the elevator to the fourth floor. Ward three, room 709. Oh… and Miss?”

“Yes?”

“Can you please ask Mr. Scooby-Dooby-Doo-Wop-Dooby-Doo to come up with a better name. I’ve been through this a dozen times already this evening.”

“I will. Thank you again. Thank you so much.”

I ran.

Mitch was standing outside room 709 with a heavy blanket in his arms. The door was half-open, enough to reveal the shape of Joey’s body under starched white bed covers. Next to him was a giant rack of monitoring equipment. It bleeped and pulsed. “They pumped him out pretty good,” said Mitch. “It was touch and go a few minutes ago—I had to switch off my phone, sorry—but it looks like he’s pulling through. The docs say he should be in okay shape by the morning.”

I was so relieved, I threw my arms around Mitch and hugged him, causing the blanket he was holding to twitch and squeal. I jumped back in surprise, almost knocking over a passing nurse. Then I watched in disbelief as two small, pink nostrils emerged from between the folds. They sniffed the air. Then an oink and a grunt.

“Mitch,” I said, calmly. “Why do you have a pig in that blanket?”

“Oh, uh—Joey got him last week on the advice of his psychiatrist. He’s a ‘comfort animal.’ Helps reduce depression and anxiety, or so they say. Joey takes him everywhere now.”

“Does he have a name?”

“Benjamin Lovecraft the Third, after Joey’s great-grandfather.”

“Quite a title.”

“We call him BLT.”

“… so what happened,