Elimination Night - By Anonymous Page 0,9

case, however, I am indeed a genuine fan. Somewhere in my old bedroom closet at Mom’s house, I even have a collection of Honeyload T-shirts, each featuring the band’s logo of a gleaming silver tool: wrench head at one end, penis head at the other—the latter glowing red and orange, as if reentering Earth’s atmosphere at a great speed (while firing sperm-shaped bullets). In fact, I can still remember the very first time I ever heard Joey’s voice on a warped cassette that I’d liberated from Mom’s old boom box in the attic. I was seven years old. The song was from some bootlegged gig that Honeyload had played in Wichita Falls, back during the last days of legal acid and curable STDs. It was his tone, more than anything, that I fell in love with: like three singers in one, each slightly above or below the key, combining to form this aching, ragged noise that could jump between five or six octaves without ever losing power—a voice so clear, it sounded as though it had been recorded and mixed inside the singer’s lungs.

Lucky for me, Honeyload had its first big comeback a few years after I discovered them. In fact, Joey was as big a star when I graduated from Babylon High as he’d been when Mom had done the same thing twenty years earlier. I remember him pouting down from my bedroom wall: shirt open, legs astride, flower protruding from between those enormous, never-quite-settled lips. To me, Joey was—will always be—The King of Sing, The Devil of Treble, The Holy Cow of Big Wow, and yes, The Wizz o’ Jizz, as he’d so infamously christened himself during that 1998 Hellraiser magazine interview. (During the fifteen-page Q&A—no longer available online for legal reasons—Joey declared that he had never counted his conquests: “I only count the number of times they scream, man.” He went on to claim responsibility for 1,028,981 female orgasms since Honeyload’s first record deal.)

“So tell me something, Bill,” asked Len. “If everything you say is true, why in God’s name does a man like Joey Lovecraft need a show like Project Icon?”

I thought about this for a moment.

“He doesn’t,” I concluded.

Len gave a condescending snort. “Oh, c’mon,” he said. “Even you know better than that.”

“I mean, he doesn’t need the money,” I clarified. “Honeyload sells ten million albums a year from its back catalog. And Joey does a lot of stuff on the side. His venture capital group just invented a marijuana-infused soft drink that’s legal in twenty-three states. It’s going to IPO next month.”

“Nevertheless,” said Len, impatiently. “There’s a reason he’s coming here today.”

Before I could answer, I felt a vibration near my waist. Instinctively, I reached for my phone.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” declared Len, with as much sarcasm as he could manage. “I didn’t realize I was disturbing you. Would you like me to leave the room while you take that? Would you like me to tell Joey to come back another day?”

“I thought it was off,” I protested, glancing at the screen while reaching for the power switch. A flurry of text messages had just arrived—all from a number I wouldn’t have recognized, had I not programmed it into my address book a few hours earlier when the faucet in my apartment began delivering raw sewage instead of hot water. “Mr. Z,” was how it came up.

I couldn’t resist reading:

QUESTION FOR YOU, MEESS SASHA

WEBSITE NEED TO KNOW

ARE SUPER-LOGICAL GUYS ARE A TURN-ON?

OR YOU PREFER EXCITEMENT?

PLS ANSWER

PS: I FIX THE SHIT IN YOUR BATHTUB

I closed my eyes and shook my head. Mr. Zglagovvcini and I needed to have a very long talk.

“Is somebody dying?” asked Len.

“No,” I replied, finally shutting down the phone. “It’s nothing. Spam. Won’t happen again.”

“Good. Now tell me what Joey Lovecraft wants out of this deal. And hurry. He’ll be here any minute, swinging that giant dick of his everywhere.”

4

The M-Word

THE ANSWER TO LEN’S question was simple: Joey wanted to get Honeyload back together. Or more accurately, he wanted Blade Morgan to beg him to return as lead singer.

Without Project Icon, however, this wasn’t likely to happen. After all, Joey hadn’t spoken to Blade for three years. No phone calls. No emails. Not even a single text message. And the reason why Blade and Joey hadn’t spoken was because Joey had gone back on the pills and the cognac during their last tour. Hardly a big deal in itself, of course: Joey had been high during every tour in the band’s history.