by P. J. Morse
“Oh, we’ll pay you well,” Kevin assured me. He put the cigar back into his coat and threw out a figure that made my spine tingle: a figure I’d never heard from any other client in my brief history as a private investigator. I knew that the actual contestants on the show were making a pittance, but the money I would earn would let my band make the most of that deal with Comet Records. Maybe we could enjoy an equipment upgrade before we went on tour. Maybe we could even sleep in clean hotels when we were on the road, not in sleeping bags in the van or on fans’ floors. I thought of all our day jobs and how many more rehearsals we could have if we could dial back the hours we spent making money.
Plus, I thought I could handle the Atomic Love 2 assignment. When I was onstage, I had thousands of eyes on me at once. Television couldn’t be any different, and it had to be easier than performing in front of a live audience. Not all audiences are adoring. I was once arrested for drunk and disorderly after telling an audience member exactly where he could shove that request for a Matchbox Twenty song. When he responded with something ugly about my mother, I asked him how he’d like the taste of my boot on his tongue, and it just went downhill from there.
Even though I was tempted, I kept my face straight. I wasn’t going to say “yes” just yet. There was a downside: It could be negative publicity for the Marquee Idols if their lead guitarist showed up as a reality-show bimbo. And it never hurt to negotiate for more cash. “Still, this could come at a cost to my band,” I said.
“Eh,” Kevin shrugged. “We can reveal who you really are at the reunion show and let you guys play. Promotion covered.”
He didn’t get it, so I tried to clarify the matter for him. “I am not sure that our fans would be into the show.”
What I was trying to say finally dawned on him. “Oh. I never understood that whole ‘indie’ thing. Lemme guess, your bandmates would be embarrassed if you were on the show?”
“Not necessarily. Our lead singer loved the first season.” That was true. Wayne, the Marquee Idols’ frontman, couldn’t afford a DVR, but he used an old VCR with a timer to catch all the episodes. According to him, Atomic Love was “television to get stoned by.” Then again, for Wayne, most television was “television to get stoned by.”
Kevin kept going. “We can work out a deal. It’s not like the network would give you free advertising or even mention you by name, but I think we can still help you, at least indirectly. I’ve done my research, and I’ve heard your band. No offense, but you guys aren’t the most marketable band in the world. Your sound isn’t poppy enough, and emo is kind of big right now.”
“Tell me about it,” I grumbled. Emo and teenage boys wearing too much eyeliner.
“But, the network could use your music as background for its clip shows. You’re signed with that label… something about spaceships…”
“Comet Records,” I filled in.
Kevin nodded. “The network has a deal going with Comet Records where it can use their tracks, and the bands got royalties. It’s a good deal for the bands, actually. They make money but don’t look like complete sellouts, and it gives those clip shows some cred.”
“You could get our music on the network?” I asked. As far as I was concerned, this guy finally had something big to offer.
He snapped his fingers like it was nothing. “Yeah. The clip shows and documentaries use music from Asphalt, Highbrow/Lowbrow, the Critters, Lorem Ipsum, Inverted Jenny, all that stuff…”
“All that stuff” included bands whose success I could only dream of.
“And one last thing,” Kevin added. “We’ll give you half the money up front. Now, how can you say no?” He held out his arms, like he wanted to give me a big hug and bring me into the fold.
“I am warming up to the idea.” I said. “I’ll call you.”
Chapter Three:
Casting
I checked my bank account and called Kevin back an hour later to accept the job. We the Marquee Idols had celebrated far too much after signing with Comet Records, and all those nights out had depleted my funds. Once I gave my assent, I found out that Kevin and his production staff didn’t waste any time. Production on Atomic Love 2 was starting in Marin County the next day, and they had to get me briefed and in there as soon as possible. Kevin himself drove by my apartment and dropped off a DVD featuring the audition footage for all of Patrick’s aspiring girlfriends, along with a copy of the first season of Atomic Love.
I invited everyone in the Marquee Idols over to my apartment in South Park to watch the footage. Harold Cho, my landlord, sidekick and self-anointed spiritual advisor, was joining in on the fun and let us use his television and DVD player. I was a little nervous about how Harold would handle Atomic Love since he was a senior citizen, but he seemed enthusiastic. He was setting up bowls of chips and icing beers by the time my bandmates arrived.
Wayne came first, already as high as a kite. I figured that he got stoned early because Harold, who was over 60, couldn’t handle the smoke. He promptly lay down on the floor for a catnap before I played the DVD.
Muriel, the bassist and my best friend, and Shane, our drummer, showed up soon after. “I have something for you,” Muriel said, handing me a rolled-up cardboard tube. “You are going to love this.”
“Thank you!” I popped open the end of the tube and rolled it out. It was a poster for the Nuclear Kings, circa the late ‘90s, taken with the Golden Gate Bridge in the background. The band name was in a brick-red, bold font, stamped against the sky. Their singer, Sean Morgan, stood in the middle, his long, curly hair fanning out in a manner intended to remind everyone that he had musical ties to Eddie Vedder and Chris Cornell. Off to one side stood Patrick Price, who was sporting a sneaky grin.
If Sean was the serious one, Patrick was the band’s court jester and chick magnet. Unlike Sean, Patrick kept his hair neat and combed back, and he didn’t hide his buff biceps under a flannel shirt. He went with a tight, black, short-sleeved tee that showed off his tattoos of various Chinese characters. Of course, the picture was over a decade old, but he still looked good enough to warrant his own reality dating show.
Patrick seemed to accept the exploitation of the music industry for what it was. Sean Morgan didn’t take the disillusionment as well. A few years after the band had a number-one record, he drove his motorcycle off a cliff in Santa Barbara.
Muriel leaned over to look at the poster as I rolled it out. “I loved those guys when I was in junior high school.” She laughed. “I thought they spoke for me!”
I thought the Nuclear Kings spoke for me, too. They had an anthem called “Lemmings” that was brilliant. Unfortunately, it became so popular that people flocked to buy the band’s records, which negated the entire point.
“You know they were from Gardenia, right?” Muriel asked. “Hey, where’s the beer?” Harold tossed her a cold one as he situated himself on his orange, ‘70s-style sofa. Then Muriel pulled out a ring of keys, which had a silver bottle opener on it, from her pocket. She popped off the cap and said, “They were the legend of my high school. You have no idea how many of those girls claimed to bang members of that band — your guy, most of all!”
“He’s not my guy,” I told her, wincing at the word “bang.” Muriel was not known for her tact.
Shane was already on the sofa, stretched out so that he took more than his fair share of the space. He was more interested in the chips Harold set out than the beer. “You’re going to have to protect Patrick Price from Muriel’s clutches. We were on our way here, and Muriel said that, if she had your job, she might not be able to — ahem — focus on it.”
I kept looking at the poster. I thought Patrick Price was handsome, but I wasn’t going to let my bandmates have the satisfaction of knowing that. “And that’s why I have my job and Muriel has hers.”
Muriel laughed and licked her lips. “Yeah, if I got a piece of Patrick Price…”
Harold started blushing and harrumphing, so I cut her off before she could go into gra
phic detail. “You know, when I was a kid, I preferred Sean Morgan. He was all serious. But Patrick played great guitar.”
Muriel laughed and sat in Harold’s rocking chair. “That’s our Clancy.” Then she imitated the voice of a high-strung nerd. “Why, yes, I believe Patrick is good-looking, but I am interested in him solely on a professional level. Perhaps we can play guitar together, right after a thrilling game of bridge!”
I rolled the poster back up and tapped her on the head with it. “That’s enough.”
Wayne stirred, sat up and chimed in, “It’s not about Patrick. It’s about the ladies on the show. They fight and yell and it’s all like mud wrestling and then Patrick comes in and says,” — Wayne affected a smooth-talking voice here — “‘Oh, baby, how can I make it all better?’ And that’s the boring part because I like it when they start fighting and yelling again.”
Harold said, “Wayne, you are on to something. I have always felt that reality television is merely a form of professional wrestling.” He adjusted his glasses. “Let’s meet these lovely ladies who will challenge Clancy in the ring.”
I joined Wayne on the floor and pressed play on the DVD remote. I had to hit fast-forward because it took a few minutes for each woman to sit down, and the interviews had been recorded on low-quality video. A blue-eyed woman with wavy, platinum-blonde hair took a seat, and she held a card saying, “Andi: Phoenix, 24.”
“Whoa,” Shane said once Andi lowered the card to her lap. If I hadn’t been assured that she was human, I would have mistaken her for a Muppet. She had dirigibles attached to her chest, and her legs poked out of her inflated torso like two needles.
Muriel laughed, “I think there’s an unwritten law that says every reality show must include at least one contestant who spells her name with a gratuitous ‘i.’”
Wayne yelled, “I’m in love!” He clutched a couch pillow to his chest. Some of the stuffing started to puff out.
“I’m glad I’m not actually trying to win this thing,” I sighed.
Andi seemed confident in front of the camera, but her voice came out like she’d just swallowed helium and she couldn’t stop giggling. I could hear Kevin say off camera that she was going to need to watch that. He said, “Sweetie, how can we keep you around if we don’t understand what you’re saying?”
“Oh… oh… I guess so.” And then she giggled merrily away. Her dilated pupils danced everywhere, and she didn’t seem to know where she was throughout the entire interview.
And then came Topaz: Las Vegas, 29. She was all bad attitude, plus tattoos and a weave. She had never heard Patrick’s music, but she said she was legit for the show because she had dated some of the white players with the Oakland Raiders and the Denver Broncos. Defensive line only, she noted, as if football groupies were connoisseurs. She said that Patrick was the hottest white man she’d ever seen. Kevin asked her about her police record, as she was the one who had attacked a man with the high heel. She stared right into the camera, arched an impeccably groomed eyebrow, and said, “Don’t come at me, and I won’t come at you.”
“I won’t come at you, lady!” Shane said, waving his hands. “She’s good TV! She’s, like, hot and mean all at the same time!”
“Dominatrix vibe!” Wayne agreed.
Topaz certainly made an impression. I didn’t want to piss her off.
Then we had Dawn, a 22-year-old flight attendant from Minnesota with bobbed blonde hair, plump freckled cheeks, and dangerously skinny arms.
Off-camera, Kevin asked, “Do you have any experience with acting?”
“Well, I did some musicals in Duluth, sir.”
“Sir?” Kevin laughed. “You don’t need to call me ‘sir.’ You can call me ‘Kevin.’”
“Yes, sir,” Dawn said. Then she realized what she just did and blushed.
Harold shook his head. “She’s a child. She will be eaten alive.”
Kevin seemed to realize this, and he asked, “Why would you audition for a reality show? You seem like a good girl.”
“Well… Kevin,” Dawn said, touching the pink barrette in her hair. “I love these dating shows, and Atomic Love was my favorite.”
“Because of Patrick’s band? The Nuclear Kings?”
Dawn shook her head. “No. I don’t like hard-rock music, but Patrick seemed so kind. He was so much nicer than all the other guys on dating shows. And I just love all the romance of it. I saw there was an audition, and I asked my parents what they thought of it. They told me I should go for it!”
Kevin laughed. “You are adorable! I love that you asked your parents. I’ve never heard of that one before.”
Dawn sat up straighter in her chair. “But I’m not a goody two-shoes!” she protested. Then she pulled the barrette out of her hair and shook out some strands. “I can be romantic, too, especially for a nice guy like Patrick!”
“If you’re for real,” Kevin continued, “you’re in, as long as you can prove you’re old enough to drink.”
Then Dawn’s interview wrapped up. Dawn seemed so sweet that I wanted to step in front of the camera and stop the filming, but her passion for Patrick Price struck me as stalker-ish.
Tina from Miami followed up, and with her dark hair and dark tan, she was everything Dawn wasn’t. She stared into the camera as if she wanted to give it a sloppy kiss at best or flash it at worst. When she wasn’t flirting with Kevin in Spanish, she prefaced nearly every story she had with, “Oh, I did that for Playboy” and concluded with, “I cannot tell you how much I love sex!” Then she would smooth her brunette hair, giggle, and twitch her hips in the seat. I wondered what she could do for the show that could be aired before a network audience.
We heard Cookie before we saw her sit down. She was chattering in a Texas twang about what she’d like to do to Patrick if she got five minutes alone with him. Then she plopped down. The card on her chest said she was twenty-nine, which was generously low. I put her at about thirty-five, a good-looking thirty-five, but certainly not twenty-nine.
As soon as Cookie started talking into the camera, Harold asked me to turn down the television. “I saw the Nuclear Kings on their first tour when they came through Houston!” she proclaimed. “When they opened for the Smashing Pumpkins! I was there from the beginning!” She kept whipping around her jet-black hair, like a pony would with its tail.
Off camera, Kevin prodded Cookie to talk about her favorite Nuclear Kings song. She didn’t miss a beat before saying, “‘High Tide.’ Easy.” She started tapping out the drumbeat from the song on the arms of her chair.
Shane joined in, tapping on the armchair of Harold’s sofa. He said, “She has rhythm.”
I was impressed. “High Tide” was from the second Nuclear Kings album and wasn’t even a single. She wasn’t fronting. She was a genuine fan. Unfortunately, that also put her in my log as a possible stalker. Surely a stalker would know every Nuclear Kings song: even the obscure ones.
Then I heard Kevin shout “There’s our pro!” as an auburn-haired, blue-eyed woman whose card read “Lorelai: LA, 25” sat down. “So, are you ready for another reality merry-go-round?” he asked.
She laughed. “It’s all in good fun. Pays better than the work I’ve been getting lately.”
“But you had a speaking part in a movie, right? What was that movie, again?”
“I was a bank teller in Laguna Beach Mafia. I can’t believe you saw that.” I grabbed my laptop, which I’d parked on Harold’s coffee table, and looked up what other “reality merry-go-round” she’d been on. The show was Bikini Girls Ahoy!, a show that Kevin also produced, which was about aspiring swimsuit models. She was listed as being on for only three episodes, so Kevin probably felt like he owed her more screen time. She was pretty, but in a way that was more wholesome and wide-eyed than the rest of the women. If Dawn were the innocent and Tina and Andi were the tramps, then Lorelai fell somewhere in between.
When we were finished with the DVD, Wayne mumbled, “I feel like I just ate a whole bag of junk fo
od. With my brain.”
Shane shook an empty bowl that once held nacho chips and replied, “I did eat a whole bag of junk food! And it was great! Clancy, you are a lucky woman!”
“I don’t know,” Harold declared. As our official elder, he always had the final say on everything. “All of these women would drive me bonkers.”
I had to agree. Each woman on the tape acted as if being on camera was her god-given right. Some of them, like Dawn, Lorelai and Cookie, seemed like they might be relatively easy to deal with, but even they looked into the camera as if they expected it to fill a gaping hole in their lives.
Chapter Four:
Eau De Psycho
When Kevin pulled up in his silver Mercedes, Harold and I were already waiting outside the apartment. While he got out, he jabbered away into a clip-on cell phone earpiece, yelling at someone that they needed to get more champagne for the first night of shooting, or there would be hell to pay. “And don’t get the rosé this time — that shit stains the carpet!” he yelled.
He then turned to me and smiled, as if he hadn’t been shouting a second before. He wore a grey shirt that had the slightest bit of glitter. He reminded me of one of those alpha-male seals who preened themselves on Fisherman’s Wharf and basked in the adoration of the tourists. “You have no idea how glad I am to see you. We’ve got trouble already. The stalker is back, and she’s writing love notes.”
He handed it to me. The paper and the envelope were light purple. It was spattered with a darker red color. After Kevin popped open the trunk and let me throw my duffel bag in the back, I opened the letter. The lines had been printed out in a plain black font:
Purple is for the king
Purple is for what I want, the ring
Purple is the blood that will spill when I do my thing