Elimination Night Read online

  His lower jaw hung open.

  “Okay, honey,” said Bibi, as a stylist dabbed at her face with a microscopic lip gloss wand. “You didn’t have to say all that, but you’re sweet. I’m glad Joey is feeling better. He shouldn’t feel threatened. But I understand. Let’s get this over with.”

  Back to my hangover:

  My head felt like a busy market square after a car-bomb attack. Broken glass everywhere. A high-pitched ringing noise. Smoke damage. At least my phone had stopped playing that Blade Morgan riff. Instead it told me with two dying shudders that a voicemail had been left. Brock, probably. I really needed to be better about returning his calls.

  I released a long, tobacco-infused sigh—had I eaten the damn cigarette?—and stared up at the cracked stucco on the ceiling. Must tell Mr. Zglagovvcini about that, I thought.

  Speaking of whom.

  “Meess Sasha?” Are you there, Meess Sasha?”

  More knocking.

  “Jesus Christ!” I yelled, rolling out of bed furiously. “I’m coming!”

  At least I didn’t have to bother getting dressed—one of the few yet undeniable benefits of falling asleep in your clothes. Another blessing: It took only three and a half paces to reach the front door. My apartment—if it deserved such a title—was basically one room, with a sink and microwave at one end, my bed at the other, and a folding door in the middle that led to a bathroom with no actual bath and a towel rack that forced me to lean forward at a forty-five degree angle while doing whatever it was that I had to do. Such luxurious accommodation came with a price tag of eleven hundred dollars a month. The sympathetic real estate broker had told me this was cheap for Hollywood.

  “I thought we were in Little Russia?” I’d replied, dumbly.

  “Little Russia is in Hollywood, dear,” she’d said.

  “But—”

  “I know, dear, I know. It’s not like it is on television, is it? You’ll get over that. Eventually.”

  I’d taken the place largely because it was close to Greenlit Studios, allowing me to cycle to work. The rent seemed more reasonable if it meant I didn’t have to buy a car.

  “Meess Sash—”

  To the sound of splintering plywood, I yanked open the termiteinfested front door. “What is it, Mr. Zglagovvcini?” I demanded, with more anger than I’d intended.

  “Ah, Meess Sasha, you alive, good, good. Two things…”

  It occurred to me that I’d never seen Mr. Zglagovvcini wearing anything other than tennis shorts, flip-flops (in lifeguard yellow), and an obviously counterfeited blue Ralph Lauren T-shirt (obvious because the horseman on the breast pocket is holding up an AK-47, not a polo stick). Presumably the favorable contrast between the LA weather and his native Siberian climate had convinced him to remain as close to naked as possible—within the local decency laws—at all times. I didn’t exactly blame him. Dad, who was raised on the drenched shore of the Irish Sea, had been exactly the same way when he’d taken me to LA as a kid. Except he hadn’t worn any kind of shirt. Just jeans and his old running shoes.

  “Mr. Zglagovvcini,” I pleaded. “Can we do this some other—”

  He raised both palms.

  “Very quick,” he promised. “What would you say are the six things you could never live without?

  I closed my eyes. Please tell me I hadn’t gotten out of bed for this.

  “Look, I—”

  “Six things. Answer carefully.”

  “What are you talking about, Mr. Zglagovvcini?”

  “It’s question for eCupidMatch.com.”

  I began massaging my temples, which seemed only to make my head feel even worse. “Mr. Zglagovvcini,” I began, “are you seriously creating a profile for me on a dating website?”

  “Noooo! Mrs. Zglagovvcini say I not allowed to go on such thing. She think I might run off with stripper. Me! With wrinkly old dick! So she taking care of it, only I have to get information from you, as she very shy.” With a shaking hand, he lifted up his reading glasses and studied a list. “Which you say describes you best: dreamer or schemer? If you eaten by cannibal, how you most like to be prepared?”

  “Mr. Zglagovvcini, I really, really don’t want you to—”

  A car horn sounded outside.

  “Oh, that reminds me,” said Mr. Zglagovvcini. “The other thing I need to tell you: Your car has arrived. Driver says he was sent here by Meess, er… Gee Gee? Dee Dee? Maybe Zee Zee? Anyhow, whatever her name is, she didn’t want you turning up to her house on bicycle. She obviously knows you crazy woman.”

  I couldn’t process what he was saying. My brain, like the CPU of an aging computer, had maxed out with the stress of running other applications (talking, standing up, keeping my eyes open) leaving me with a spinning wheel-of-death where thoughts should have been. “Whose car? Where? What?” I said, uselessly.

  “Your car,” he repeated. “It’s here.”

  He pointed to the window of the lobby, beyond which a white Rolls-Royce was waiting. It was gleaming in the sun. The driver waved as I squinted at him.

  I thought I might black out.

  9

  “I Hope You Like Celery”

  TEN MINUTES LATER, I was in a teak and leather capsule, being swept along the 101 freeway in total silence at eighty-five miles per hour. Yes, that’s correct: Teak. Being inside that car was like being aboard a transatlantic steamship from an alternative, retro-futuristic universe. There was even a pull-down picnic table in front of me, the clasp as heavy and stiff as the stops on a cathedral organ. When I pushed open the sliding lid on the surface, it revealed a tiny computer keyboard in matte steel. Tapping on a key activated the iPad embedded in the headrest in front of me. There was another screen in the door pillar to my left: This served as a vanity mirror—a camera was hidden in the frame—with honey-toned backlighting that gave even my reflection the luster of good health. Impressive, given how close I felt to death. Or at least as close to death as it was possible to feel in the embrace of such a ludicrously overstuffed chair, beneath the constellation of fiber optic stars that had been woven into the padded suede above me.

  “Hey—you comfortable?” asked the driver (twentyish, stubbled, his jaw so perfectly set that I had been forced to swallow an involuntary gasp upon first sight).

  “Well, if I’m not comfortable now,” I replied, cheesily, “then I don’t think I ever will be. Ha!”

  I swear I could win gold at the Nerd Olympics.

  “Alright,” he said, nodding slowly in a way that involved his entire upper body, as athletic, overconfident young American men often do. “If you need anything…”

  The car surged on, without effort.

  It had taken me all of seven minutes to change out of the previous night’s clothes, shower, apply makeup (and by that I mean lipstick), and locate my least-unimpressive dress. I was actually surprised by how little thought it required to select the outfit. I mean, what are you supposed to wear when going over to Bibi Vasquez’s house for a lunch appointment? It’s not like I owned any velvet Dior jumpsuits or feathered Alexander McQueen stilettos. So my only black dress, purchased at a chain store whose name I am too ashamed to reveal, would have to suffice, as would my leopard print kitten heels, which had seemed like a good idea on the slightly tipsy (okay, totally wasted) afternoon when I’d bought them. Unsurprisingly, they weren’t standing up very well to examination in the illuminated shag pile footwell of a half-a-million-dollar automobile.

  In all honesty, I couldn’t even remember Bibi inviting me over to her house. It was possible, I suppose, that the message hadn’t directly come from her. Perhaps Teddy had passed it on. Or (more likely) one of his many assistants. There was, however, another explanation: That my hangover—or rather, the alcohol that caused it—had erased a crucial section of my memory between the end of The Reveal and whenever it was that I had made it back to Little Russia.

  I hadn’t planned to get wasted, FYI. I was just so relieved when the day was over, I agreed to go for a po
stwork drink with the crew. And the crew being the crew, they wanted to go to Timmy Dergen’s, a poorly lit, sticky-floored Irish dive over on Fairfax and Wilshire. That was fine by me: Dad pretty much raised me in sticky-floored Irish dives. Indeed, one of my first memories—I must have been five or six—is of his taking me to Billy McQuiffy’s in Long Island City for one of his wedding gigs, and then sending me out, across an eight-lane highway, at night, to buy him a pack of smokes from a gas station half a mile away. (We lived in a high-rise a few blocks away at the time.) Mom gave Dad a black eye when she found out. As far as I was concerned, of course, it had all been an incredible adventure. Dad was a hero. Mom was a bore. Parenting can be unfair like that sometimes.

  Which made me think: If only Dad could see me now. He’d go nuts. Lunch at the house of Bibi Vasquez, a multi-Grammy-winning recording artist? In a white Rolls-Royce?

  So anyway: Timmy Dergen’s. Me, plus ten big dudes in black T-shirts and dusty jeans. Naturally, the after-work drink soon turned into an after-work let’s-all-get-hammered. Now don’t get me wrong: I can hold my drink. Dad used to joke that the most valuable thing he ever gave me was a liver of truly prodigious capacity. I’ve seen men twice my size (that’s you, Brock) collapse into a puddle of drool hours before I’ve reached my limit. But there is a limit. And I reached it. The evening faded to black at some point while I was dancing with a valet in the Mel’s Diner parking lot, a borrowed cigarette fizzing in my hand.

  And now… here I was, barely recovered, speeding my way to the home of Bibi Vasquez, a woman so famous, you could hike for weeks through the Liberian jungle, meet a one-hundred-year-old tribal elder, and he’d be able to recite to you the lyrics of “I Wanna Rock” without a moment’s hesitation. Shamefully, a part of me wanted to crow about where I was going. A casual, single-line Facebook posting, perhaps, in the obligatory format of the humblebrag: “Bibi’s for lunch—how weird is that??” But you can’t humblebrag in this job, let alone brag-brag. It’s like working for Homeland Security. They monitor you. One indiscretion—one blog post, one Twitpic, one status update—and you’re out.

  I wondered if Len was coming today, too. I hoped not. Then again, it seemed unlikely—no, impossible—that Bibi had invited me over for a private get-together. The very thought of me and Bibi, alone, was enough to induce panic, and before I knew it, I’d cracked open the window and was gulping air, trying not to vomit.

  “You okay?” asked my handsome driver, glancing back.

  “Fine,” I said, pulling out my phone and dialing Brock’s number. This was long overdue.

  “Yo!” said Brock, after barely half a ring.

  “Hey, babe,” I began, trying to keep my voice down. “So, you’ll never guess—”

  “This is Brock,” he interrupted. “I’m either busy right now, or a robot from the future has vaporized me and is impersonating my voice, hoping to lure you into a deadly trap.”

  “Brock?”

  “If you’re planning to meet me someplace, BRING WEAPONS. Otherwise, wait for the—”

  Beeeep.

  “Arrrgh! Jesus, Brock, how old are you?”

  I hung up. Brock had no doubt been watching The Terminator again with Crazy Pete, his old high school buddy. Pete smokes weed like most people chew gum. I wouldn’t have cared, but Brock is annoying on weed. It makes him giggle. Men shouldn’t giggle.

  About forty minutes had passed when the Rolls-Royce took a ramp off the freeway, crossed a bridge, wafted down a side street, crossed another bridge, then arrived at a gatehouse. The barrier opened automatically as we pulled up to it, and a uniformed attendant waved us in. “Welcome to Secret Mountain,” read a woodsy-looking sign on the other side. I knew the name from ShowBiz: This was a private town, with its own private supermarket, private cinema, private church, and private school, where celebrities could live beyond the lenses of the paparazzi. Or at least that was the theory. Unfortunately, the paparazzi had discovered an invention known as the helicopter.

  After turning up a steep driveway, we at last reached Bibi’s house. Well, I say “house”… but the place was big enough to hold its own on the international palace circuit.

  The Rolls came to halt in a circular motor court. The driver got out and opened my door. Stepping out of the car, I took in the view: Ranchland in every direction. Not a road, not a rooftop, not a single transmission tower. (I’ve since learned that Teddy paid to have all the electrical cables buried within a twenty-mile radius.) We were only a few miles from LA, yet we might as well have been out in Montana.

  “Please,” said the driver—my God, he was hot—gesturing toward the entranceway.

  A maid ushered me inside calmly. Russian or Polish, I guessed. Her manner was somehow both deferential and unfriendly. It occurred to me that I’d never been inside a celebrity’s home before. Not that the usual rules of domesticity apply, I guess, when it comes to the likes of Bibi Vasquez. No, for someone like her, a home isn’t so much a home as a private hotel, built and operated for the needs of a single guest. As such, they tell you little about their owners, aside from their choice of interior decorator, and the manner in which they manage their staff. In Bibi’s case, however, both of these tasks had been outsourced to Teddy, presumably in return for yet another percentage point or two on her income.

  I was led down a gnarled-oak hallway. Along the way, we must have passed a dozen other household employees—not explicitly uniformed, but identifiable by their ironed polo shirts and creased khakis—attending unobtrusively to various chores. In one room, a woman was bathing five pit bull puppies. In another, a giant popcorn machine was being recalibrated. And then of course there were the cleaners, oddjobbers, security guards, and landscapers outside (using rakes, I noticed, not blowers, to avoid disturbing the peace). Finally, we emerged into a kitchen with a floating central countertop that was more continent than island. Beyond it was a table of UN Security Council dimensions, a clutter of wooden chairs, and perhaps two dozen people, none of whom I recognized. Judging by the mix in ages, they were family, not friends. All were focused exclusively on a tiny woman in a white and gold jumpsuit, pacing the floor under a wall-mounted television while brandishing a highly complicated-looking remote. “Wait, wait,” she was saying. “You gotta fuckin’ see this shit. This shit is fuckin’ unreal. How do I unpause this motherfucker? Oh, here.” She jabbed at the device and the image on the screen became unstuck.

  “OH! MY! GOD!” she exclaimed, hand over mouth.

  The real Bibi was now looking at the celebrity Bibi on the screen. I recognized the footage instantly: It was from the press conference at The Roundhouse—the last few seconds, when all three judges were on stage together, locking arms. This wasn’t the raw video feed, though. It was a clip, repackaged for an episode of The Dish, the sarcastic nightly entertainment show hosted by Jordan Wade, one of Wayne Shoreline’s less successful friends. From what I could gather, Jordan was making a joke of the improbably large fish tooth that dangled from Joey Lovecraft’s blown-out mane. “Dude, where d’you get that?” Jordan was asking the camera, holding up a rubber shark. “How did it get up there? Were you, like, cutting your hair with a hammerhead—and it just fell out?”

  Bibi screeched with pleasure.

  “D’oh!” mimicked Jordan. “Happens to me all the time! Damn those hammerheads and their shitty-assed dentistry! Still, give the fish some credit: It didn’t eat your head, right?”

  “Goddamn, he’s a fuckin’ funny motherfucker!” wailed Bibi, catching my eye for a moment, but ignoring me nevertheless. It was though she were on stage, midperformance.

  “Did Teddy write that?” someone yelled, struggling to be heard over the television.

  “Of course!” snorted Bibi. “Well, not Teddy personally. It was that scriptwriter guy he hired. Y’know, the one who won that Oscar for that… war thing.”

  “Teddy can get Jordan fuckin’ Wade to talk shit about Joey on his show?” asked someone else.

  Bibi tapped her nose theatrica
lly, as though this were some big trade secret.

  Delighted laughter.

  Not quite knowing what to do, I sat down. The guy next to me—European accent, expensively dressed, and seemingly desperate for Bibi to notice him laughing and slapping the table after everything she said—nodded an acknowledgment of my presence, then passed me a bowl of celery sticks. Unfortunately for my hangover, this appeared to be the extent of the lunch. I began to wonder why Bibi had brought me here for… this. It didn’t make any sense.

  And it wasn’t about to get any clearer.

  After The Dish, Bibi went through her DVR playlist, selecting all the other shows that had featured the Project Icon press conference. Seven in total. Then it was time for a screening of the unedited footage of the event, which I noticed featured my left foot (complete with hiking shoe) protruding briefly from one of the wings.

  “Wayne Shoreline is such a douche nozzle,” Bibi kept saying during the introductions.

  The room jeered in agreement.

  Due to the frequent pausing, all of this went on for perhaps two or three hours.

  “She curses more in real life, don’t she?” said a voice to my left, near the end. I turned to see an Afro-Caribbean woman, perhaps late sixties, wearing bejeweled jeans and a purple leather blazer. Was this… Bibi’s mom? I didn’t have the nerve to ask.

  “Hmm,” I nodded, diplomatically.

  “Such a perfect face. And such a dirty, dirty mouth. You know what we call her?”

  I shrugged.

  “Ghetto Barbie. It’s worse when Edouard and the kids aren’t here.”

  I smiled, not sure if it was safe to agree.

  “It’s hard for her though, poor baby,” the woman continued, as if for her own benefit. “Everyone wantin’ her for her money. Y’know, in my own way, I know how she feels… when I came here from the islands, I worked as a baby nurse for a rich white lady in Manhattan. And oh—the men who chased me! Everyone wanted themselves a baby nurse for a girlfriend. Cash income. Woman away all the time, working nights, so they could play around. Ha! I learned the hard way how it worked. That’s why I wanted my Bibi to get herself an education, find a man with a college degree, so he could take care of her. But it didn’t work out like that, I guess.” Chuckling sadly, she continued: “I worry about that boy Teddy she got managing her things, y’know. Odd fellow. Gives me the heebie-jeebies. I’m not even sure about Edouard, sometimes. He’s a man, even if he don’t act like it half the time. And real men don’t like to earn less than their wives.”