Free Elimination Night by Anonymous

Big Corp and told to go find Bibi and Joey, wherever they happened to be in the world, and get their signatures within twenty-four hours. But Teddy couldn’t help himself: He leaked a story to
ShowBiz
bragging of how Bibi had gotten the better deal. Example: She’d been given a dressing room for The Reveal, when Joey had been told to show up “camera ready” with nowhere to sit but the backstage lounge area.
    Mitch was so mad, he had to be strapped to a gurney and shot up with Xanax. By the time he’d calmed down, it looked like the whole thing was off. But then Ed got on the phone and convinced Mitch that Teddy had been bullshitting.
    All
the judges had to turn up camera ready.
    “If it makes you feel any better, I’ll give both of ’em
both
dressing rooms,” he said. “How about that? We’ve got an assistant producer down at The Roundhouse—Len will get you her name—who can sort it out. Tell her exactly what you need.”
    Grudgingly, Mitch agreed. It didn’t change the fact that Bibi and Joey wouldn’t actually
need
the dressing rooms. But it was enough of a symbolic gesture to finally get some ink on the contracts. That’s why I had to spend eight days and fifty thousand dollars making sure every last detail was taken care of, right down to Bibi’s red iPads, which had to be custom-ordered from a store in Hong Kong. It never occurred to me the judges would never even see the result of all this work.
    Clearly, when it came to celebrities, I still had a lot to learn.

7
    The Run-Through
    LEN’S PHONE WAS ringing now.
    The tone was broken and distorted, probably due to interference from the microwave trucks outside.
    Still ringing.
    My panic had now mutated into a kind of existential doubt: Was this even the
right day
for the press conference? Had I somehow completely misunderstood Len’s instructions? Was I about to wake up in my old bedroom at Mom’s house, soaked and trembling, from some horrendous anxiety dream? Nothing about this situation made any sense whatsoever. How could Bibi, Joey, and JD—even Wayne Shoreline—just
disappear,
at the exact moment they were all due on stage? And where the hell were Teddy and Mitch when I actually needed them?
    I thought I might throw up. But then a strange kind of anger came over me. This job was taking decades off my life. And for what? My salary was a joke. My colleagues were psychotic. I’d never even wanted to work in TV. Certainly not
this kind
of TV. If it hadn’t been for that random call from Len, with this “dazzling opportunity,” I would neverhave come all the way out here to LA. And, who knows, maybe I’d have found another way to write my novel, like I promised Dad I would.
    Great: Now I was thinking about Dad. Or rather, I was thinking about our final conversation in that greasy-walled diner he used to like, the one so close to the Long Island Expressway, everything would rattle when an eighteen-wheeler drove past.
    “I’m not gonna be around forever, Sash,” he’d announced, halfway through his standard midafternoon breakfast of coffee and buttered toast. Dad was skinny as hell. It was nerves, he said. Toast was the heaviest thing he could get into his stomach before a show—and he played two shows a night, every night of the week. That’s what it takes to make a living when you’re splitting the money among a fourteenpiece wedding band.
    I’m pretty sure Dad knew about the cancer by then. No one else did, though. Not even Mom. I mean, how could she have? Dad was away most of the time, and he didn’t want her to worry. It took her months to find out that his “tour of Louisiana” was nothing of the kind. He’d booked himself in a hospice on Staten Island.
    “I’m sorry I never had much money to give you,” he said, between gulps of weak, sugary coffee. “But at least your old man did what he loved, right? I mean, look at Stevie, Jimbo… Fitz. You think those guys wake up every morning, happy to put on their shirts and ties