by P. J. Morse
“Hello!” he shouted. “Wow!” Meanwhile, Tina picked up her cocktail glass and trotted back into the house. Her lower lip jutted out because Cookie had wiped her from Patrick’s memory.
“Wanna see my special trick?” Cookie asked, bending over.
He leaned in, and the cameras swarmed on the scene. “Honey, I cannot imagine what you can do to top that.”
Cookie’s display left me speechless, but I could not say the same for Topaz, who was lurking on the sidelines. I heard her snap, “Special trick? Please. He ain’t gonna be interested unless it involves her blowing bubbles out her — ”
Cookie heard Topaz running her mouth and said, “Excuse me, but I’m talking here.”
I cringed, trying not to imagine anyone blowing bubbles out of anything. Meanwhile, Cookie stepped away from Patrick and put her hand into a fist. At first, I thought she was going to pull a martial-arts trick, but then I saw her fist move toward her head. In one swift motion, she managed to stick her entire fist in her mouth.
“I don’t stand a chance,” I said aloud.
Tina, who had returned with an open bottle of booze, took a spot by Topaz. She snarled, “I hope that nasty thing washed her hands first.”
After the display, Cookie pulled her fist out of her mouth as quickly as she put it in. She smiled, and her jaw didn’t appear to be dislocated.
Patrick applauded and gave Cookie a long, lingering kiss. She fell back in rapture and surprise. Her eyes almost rolled back into her head. She sighed. “It happened.” Her reaction to the kiss made me wonder just how far she’d go to get another one.
She staggered back, and Wolf, who was among the camera crew, darted forward to catch her. He put an arm around her and fanned her with a paper plate. If Patrick was impressed with Cookie, Wolf looked like he would throw rose petals and gold dust at her feet. “Any time you need your foundation rocked, I will pour the concrete,” he announced.
Cookie gazed back at him, strands of her thick hair wrapping around him, almost like a spider web. “I totally get what you’re saying,” she replied.
Wolf didn’t say anything; he just guided Cookie to another wicker bench and kept fanning her with the plate.
With Cookie safely in Wolf’s hands, Patrick stood and spun around like he was going to cross to the other side of the pool area, but then he paused and looked at me. “So, what’s your special trick?”
“Me?” I asked.
“Standing around looking like a bumpkin,” Tina muttered. I ignored it. But how was I going to compete with Cookie? Or even with Andi’s magical boob-twitching?
In moments such as those, I usually asked myself, “What would Muriel do?” By this point, Muriel probably would have punched several of these women in the face and then dragged Patrick off in the corner for a make-out session. That would make for an amusing moment, but an extremely short reality-show season.
Then I noticed the booze bottle in Tina’s right hand. I could tell it was rum by the shape of the bottle.
“Do you have a light?” I asked Patrick.
“Yeah,” he replied. He pulled a cigarette lighter from his pocket and gave it to me.
I held up my finger so he would wait. I tore the bottle of rum from Tina’s hands and took a swig, but I didn’t swallow. Then I took the lighter, flicked it on, and spat the rum right into the flame, creating a fireball that shot out over the pool and came perilously close to singeing the eyebrows off the faces of a few crew members. All their faces were illuminated in the light, reminding me that, despite the crew’s all-black outfits, their cameras weren’t hidden.
“Whoa!” Patrick clapped. “Now I haven’t seen that in a while! Well done!”
Tina snatched the bottle back from me, but she didn’t have anything to say.
“I can do it, too!” Andi, who had arrived from the bar, chirped. She ran up to Tina and tried to take the rum bottle from her.
Tina quickly pulled the bottle away. She may have been rude, but she had solid parenting instincts. “No, honey. Stick with the stripper pole. That’s your talent.”
Then, as if the shiny object dangled in front of her face had been removed, Andi shrugged and walked toward the woods that were just behind the pool. She bumped into a tree.
I felt a hand on my arm. It was Greg, wagging his finger. He pulled me away from the other women.
“Aw, c’mon, man!” Patrick protested.
Once Greg had me out of earshot and away from Patrick and the cameras, he screamed, “Do you realize what kind of problems there would have been if someone caught fire? It’s all fun and games until someone gets a third-degree burn!”
“Have you ever watched Jackass?” I asked, putting my hands on my hips. “I would be happy to tell viewers not to do that at home. Besides, that was minor based on what I’ve seen on other television shows. And I think Patrick liked it.”
“The least you could have done was tried your stunt with a can of Major Rager,” Greg grumbled.
Then I looked around Greg and saw Kevin standing watch in the corner. He looked right back at me and shook his head “no” slowly. I guess he needed me to turn it down a notch, and he was right, but I had to admit that I wanted to impress Patrick. And my skill didn’t involve anything related to a stripper pole or an unusually roomy mouth.
I almost walked off and left Greg flapping his gums, but he said, “Let’s get some on-the-flys. May as well do it now. Stay here.” He motioned over the chubby, placid sound guy and the skinny, jumpy cameraman who seemed to have adopted me for the night. Those two reminded me of the Tortoise and the Hare.
Next, Greg motioned to Tina, who was walking past. “Hey, Tina, c’mere, we gotta get a reaction from you, too, okay?”
He had Hare, the camera guy, aim right at Tina, and Greg started firing off questions. “What would you say is your defining characteristic?” Greg asked.
“I’m classy!” Tina said. She turned around to show off a tattoo of the Miami Heat basketball logo on the back of her shoulder.
Greg caught the cognitive dissonance between Tina’s stated “classiness” and her tattoo. “Okay, then,” he said. “Tell me about your ink.”
Tina patted her tattoo and replied, “Let’s just say I wanted to remember a very special night with some very special men.”
When she walked away, Greg stared at her butt and mumbled, “Who needs roses after group sex when you can have a team logo tattoo?” Then he turned to me. “Your turn.”
Hare started rolling, and Tortoise waved a mic in my face, but Greg struggled to find something to ask me. “I just don’t know your storyline,” he told me. “Tina, she’s the centerfold, Topaz is a fighter, Cookie’s the stripper, Dawn’s the innocent, Andi’s the resident bubblehead… what are you?”
Greg was right to be puzzled, as I didn’t know who I was supposed to be myself. The research I did for my cover did not include developing a larger-than-life character, complete with tattoos that represented my personality and after-dark preferences.
Looking at me closely, Greg scanned every detail, and then he settled on the cowboy boots. “Redneck,” he said. “Rednecks never go out of style.”
I glanced at my boots and recalled how I’d stepped on a few toes when I was trying to get to the bar. I was the farthest thing from a redneck imaginable. I was born and raised in Massachusetts. I went to boarding school. But, as a detective, I had chased after many a redneck in a trailer park, an environment ripe for divorce and cheating cases. Maybe I could swing it, I thought.
“Okay,” Greg said. “So what we need from you is some Southern-fried wisdom.”
“But I’m from California. And I don’t like fried food.”
“Well, people who are watching aren’t going to know that.”
Hare volunteered, “I went to college in Atlanta, if it helps. Just say something about how you don’t like people on your lawn, you’ll open a can of whoop ass, call the police the ‘po-po,’ stuff like that.”
I started cracking
up. “Whoop ass! Yes, I will open a can of whoop ass if one of these gals gets between me and my man! It’s like my momma always said, you gotta fight for what’s yours!” I then kicked my boot in the air.
Greg smiled and applauded. “You got it! I was getting worried about you. If you can preface everything with, ‘It’s like my momma always said,’ you’re golden!”
I finally understood that whether or not someone stayed or went was not based on her hotness or her chemistry with Patrick. A major factor was how easily producers like Greg could work with us, molding us to fit their preconceived storyline. For the first time that day, I felt like I understood the rules of the game.
Chapter Nine:
Attack of the Stripper Pole
Since it was getting chilly, I decided to head back into the house. I passed by Patrick, who was being accosted by Stacy, Tracy, and Casey. Even though the Inebriated Triple-Headed Hydra was busy trying to sit on Patrick’s lap all at once, he managed to poke his head out of the fray and call out to me. “Hey! I wanna talk to you! Katherine, right? My resident beer drinker and flame thrower?”
Hare aimed the lens right in my face, so I guessed it was my turn for getting-to-know-you time. Earlier in the evening, Patrick had taken some of the women off in corners for one-on-ones, but I didn’t think I would be one of them. I really hadn’t campaigned too hard for some alone time with him, plus a camera crew, because Kevin had to keep me around for a while. Then again, a woman commands attention when she spits fire.
Patrick led me over to a patio sofa with plush red cushions. When I sat down, he pulled me a little closer to him, and I wriggled away in response. Then I realized that dating on reality television is like a Chipmunk record, with everything at top speed. We’d barely exchanged any words, yet he kept his arm around me as if we were on our second or third date.
“So, are you going to be my tomboy?” he asked. He was already slotting me into a role, but there were worse roles out there than “Tomboy,” and it fit in well with Greg’s “redneck” story line, so I went with it.
“I guess. I’m sorry to say I’m not much of a lap dancer.”
“That’s okay. We all have our talents. What do you do for fun?” he asked.
“Oh, probably whatever you find boring.” I lifted my beer can, which was mostly empty. “I drink beer, I spit fire, I work, I play guitar, I shoot guns.” All of that was true. My license let me carry a weapon, although Kevin wouldn’t let me bring it on the show.
Patrick’s jaw dropped open. “I have to ask… what is a girl like you doing on a show like this?”
Instead of saying, “Earning a great paycheck,” I smiled and told him, “I love your band.”
“Now, am I going to have to worry that you are some kind of groupie? You strike me as the independent type.”
I decided it was time to play my card. “I grew up listening to the Nuclear Kings. I’m from Gardenia.”
“Get out! Man, I feel so old!” He rubbed the top of his freshly shaved head.
“It’s totally true! I learned to play guitar because of you guys!” The truth was that I actually started begging for guitar lessons after a babysitter played me a Sonic Youth record, but at least I owned a Nuclear Kings album in the past.
He took my hand and stroked it. “I knew you played guitar. I saw the calluses earlier. And I like it.”
I was all ready to talk music and maybe even squeeze out some tips about dealing with a record label, but out of the corner of my eye, I could see Lorelai approaching. She was ready to steal some camera time. I realized that she was wearing what seemed to be a dress, but the dress was, upon closer inspection, merely a dark blue negligee.
“Hey, there,” she said, touching him lightly on the shoulder. “I have something to show you.”
“Just a minute, sweetie!” Patrick said, raising his finger. He turned back to me. “I gotta talk to you later. Did you bring a guitar?”
“Nope. They limited me to one bag, but I’d be happy to try whatever you’ve got.” I briefly performed some air guitar.
“Absolutely.” Then his face came right at me. I was stunned — I’d barely had a conversation, and he was aiming his lips at my mouth. If he hadn’t been making out with at least ten other women that evening, I might have given him a chance, but I had a slow reaction. I turned my head at the last minute, so that he kissed my ear and received a faceful of hair.
“Coy!” he yelled, pulling back and removing a few red hairs from his mouth.
“I need a little music first,” I said, looking anywhere but his face. The last place to be coy was on reality television, but I found myself reacting as if it were a first date.
I even felt a twinge of jealousy when Lorelai slid her body next to his and gave him an intense kiss. I scooted aside so Hare got a clear view. I had to hand it to Lorelai — she knew which camera angles were good and what sped up the storyline. But no woman liked to have her territory encroached upon, whether she was actually interested in a guy or not.
Once the cameras were off me, I walked back toward the house, stepping over the body of either Tracy or Casey, who had passed out across the paving stones and was snoring loudly. The woman wasn’t in a hot-pink dress, and that was the only way I could tell Stacy from the other two members of the Inebriated Triple-Headed Hydra. “Gee, your best friends aren’t the kinds who hold your hair back when you puke, huh?” I asked her.
Tracy — or was it Casey? — just kept snoring blissfully.
Greg began running through the pool area, commanding attention. “Round it up, ladies! It’s elimination time!” He paused when he saw Tracy/Casey sprawled on the ground and looked at me, pleading, “Can you help get her up?”
“Great.” I said. I tried to pull Tracy/Casey up, but she was wobbly on her heels. “C’mon, kid. You’ll be sleeping like a baby real soon. Let’s go, okay?”
Like a rag doll, Tracy/Casey flopped into my arms. “I love you!” she cried.
My response was, “If you puke on me, I will drop you on your ass.” Despite my threat, I couldn’t suppress common decency, and I dragged her into the house.
The elimination was to be in the foyer, and someone from the production crew had dragged the tiers we stood on earlier in the day inside. I laid Tracy/Casey out on the lower tier. She thanked me, called me “Mommy,” and returned to her peaceful slumber.
I stood there for a bit in case we were going to start shooting immediately, but Greg was having trouble rounding up the women. Even Lorelai was helping with contestant wrangling. I was getting bummed. I actually led what could be considered a rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle. I’d been stupid drunk many a time in my life, occasionally on stage. Only it never seemed this desperate before.
Then, a few more women wandered into the room and tried to stake out places on the tiers. One of them almost stepped on Tracy/Casey’s head. The remaining two members of the Inebriated Triple-Headed Hydra stumbled into the foyer.
“Hey!” I pointed at Tracy/Casey and Stacy. “She belongs to you, so you look after her.”
Stacy’s tube dress had wriggled down to a dangerously low spot. Hare was having fun trying to zoom in on her bosoms. She began clinging to Tracy/Casey. “Oh, my god! Poor Tracy!”
“Wait! I’m Tracy!” the woman she was clinging to shouted.
“Well, that clears that up,” I said.
Then Stacy tried to pick a fight with me. “I gave you my flask, and now you think you’re better than me. You know what? You look snotty!”
Tracy giggled in agreement. Casey yelled, “Snotty!” up from the floor.
Before I was forced to try to speak English with the Inebriated Triple-Headed Hydra, I heard a small voice from the stripper pole room chirp, “Watch this!”
I took that as an excuse to leave the foyer and head into the stripper pole room, which had become my unexpected DMZ. Dawn, who was strutting around on the stage in heels she clearly wasn’t used to, started prancing around the stripper pole, working herself up to a go
od spin. I could see Topaz and Tina clapping and shouting “Dawn! Dawn!” but Tina was snickering, too, ready to laugh out loud once she saw the amateur performance.
Dawn kept spinning, as if she were mustering up the courage to lift her legs for something resembling a flip.
Her legs left the floor, and she turned upside down, grasping the pole tightly in between her calves. For a moment, I was proud of her. I didn’t think she could do it.
Then the pole creaked. I heard an “Aaaaah!” and the top of the pole ripped right out of the ceiling, taking Dawn down with it. She was lucky. If the angle of her fall had been any different, she might have gone through the plate-glass window behind the pole.
I rushed over to Dawn and crouched down. She said, “I had been practicing in my basement… I never made this mistake before.” Blood had rushed to her cheeks, and her legs were still twisted up around the pole. The cameras kept on rolling to capture her shame.
Tina got her chance to laugh. I saw her pull Topaz away toward the foyer for elimination, leaving me with Dawn.
“They left,” Dawn moaned, looking at the place where Tina and Topaz had been standing. She looked like she was going to cry. Her new so-called buddies got her plowed, encouraged her to attempt something way out of her league on the pole, and left her there.
Kevin stuck his head in the room. “Guys! Hurry up! It’s elimination!” Once he saw the condition of the pole and the large hole in the ceiling, his jaw went slack.
I told him, “Uh… we got a problem here.”
Dawn groaned, pushed the pole away, and rubbed her right inner thigh, which was going to have a nasty bruise by morning. I patted her back but wasn’t sure what I could do to fix her embarrassment.
“What the hell?” Kevin’s face turned purple. Greg and some of the black-clad minions appeared instantly as Kevin came to our assistance. “People! What is a reality show without a decent stripper pole? Who is responsible for this? You are not filming Attack of the Stripper Pole here, okay?”