Free Elimination Night by Anonymous Page B

Doesn’t give you long for the run-through, so chop-bloody-chop, Bill. Take them up to conference room five. I’ll meet you back here when you’re done.”
    Classic Len: I was too unimportant to be told about the change of plan, so he’d let me flap around up here, questioning my own sanity, until I figured it out for myself. What an ass—
    “C’mon, Bill, cock-a-doodle-doo!” yelled Len, clapping his hands. “We’re on in ten.”
    Unbelievable.
    “Okay, everyone,” I announced as loudly as I could, to disguise the fear in my voice. “I’m going to give you the run-through, so follow me, please. Conference room five.”
    I led the way confidently, phone in one hand, clipboard in the other. No one followed me. So I returned to the lounge area, repeated my instructions, and tried again. Still no luck. Then I noticed the reasonfor the distraction: Mitch had cornered Len before he could leave the room and was chewing him out about something. “You’d better not fuck us today,” I heard him threaten. “I mean it. Joey still hasn’t forgotten about that dressing room bullshit you tried to pull on us.”
    “No one’s fucking
anyone,
okay?” Len hissed, impatiently. “As we explained to you before, Mitch, the dressing room situation was all in Teddy’s imagination.”
    Mitch didn’t look convinced—and for a moment, I found myself sharing Len’s frustration. Why did these celebrity managers have to be so…
angry
all the time? Couldn’t they put their trust in human nature for one second? I couldn’t imagine what it must be like to view the world through such a dark vortex of cynicism.
    Like I said before: I still had a lot to learn.
    As Len finally broke away (where the hell was he going, anyhow?) I tried yet again to marshal the panel. This time, they fell in line behind me. Conference room five turned out to be on the floor above, with a U-shaped table in the middle, some cheap plastic chairs, and an overhead projector that probably hadn’t been switched on since the Clinton administration. The place smelled vaguely of beer and ashtrays. Or maybe it was urine and ashtrays, it was hard to tell. Whatever the case: Joey couldn’t have looked more at home if he’d just been returned to his mother’s womb. Bibi, on the other hand, seemed disgusted. Fortunately, one of Teddy’s assistants had brought some plastic wrap for her to sit on.
    “So, uh, hi everyone,” I began, excruciatingly. “How was breakfast?”
    “We all held hands and sang
Kumbaya
,” replied Wayne, nastily. “Now can you give us the run-through—or is there something else you’d like to know? We had eggs, if that helps.”
    Suddenly, heat in my face. “Okay, yes, right,” I said, between shallow breaths.
    “She’s
sorry,
” Wayne snorted. “My God, where do they get ’em? Producer school?”
    Titters.
    Joey wasn’t laughing, though. He lifted his bare feet onto the tableand said, “Take your time, Bungalow Bill. Ain’t no hurry. Don’t listen to HAL fuckin’ 9000 over there.”
    That’s the big joke about Wayne Shoreline, of course: That he’s not actually human. It’s a compliment, of sorts—an acknowledgment that his ability to host a live one-hour broadcast with such ruthless calm is beyond the realm of mere flesh and blood. But there’s another reason for Wayne’s heart-of-silicon reputation: The fact he’s never had any kind of public relationship—male or female—during his entire twenty-year show business career. Indeed, when he’s photographed at dinner, it’s usually with his mother. “The press thinks he’s gay,” as Mitch once told me. “But I doubt it. I don’t think he’s
anything.
If you pulled down the guy’s pants, the only thing swinging between his legs would be a USB stick.”
    Everyone was now waiting for me to continue. So I cleared my throat and started again.
    “Okay, so Wayne’s up first,” I said, consulting the script on my clipboard. “He’s going to do the intro,