P.J. Morse - Clancy Parker 02 - Exile on Slain Street

by P. J. Morse

  “Ow,” he grunted.

  “Are you guys okay?” I asked as I headed to the accident. I touched Patrick’s shoulder, and he gripped my hand. Cookie ran for Wolf. The barn doors on the light had sliced him, and blood was seeping through his pants, on his left butt cheek. “What about you, Wolf?” I asked as crew members swarmed around and the audience members rushed the stage.

  “One should never be afraid of new tattoos,” Wolf replied. From his even tone, he made it sound as if he’d barely been scratched.

  Cookie tried to hug Wolf as best she could given his awkward position. “You saved our lives!” she cried out.

  Patrick was still clutching my hand, which surprised me. He had turned white.

  Before I could say anything to him, Kevin was rounding up everyone and putting them in the places they were in before the light fell. Greg was trying to soothe the audience, many of whom were threatening to leave because they were understandably afraid of getting beaned by falling objects. At that point, Patrick let go of my hand and helped Greg with the audience, promising autographs, CDs, and show T-shirts in return for their cooperation.

  Cookie didn’t move. She kept her hand on the back of Wolf’s hamstring, under where he’d been hit by the light, and she said, “‘Blood from a stone.’”

  Kevin put his arm around her. “That’s right! Once we get this cleaned up, you wanna come back up here and say that on camera?”

  Cookie turned to face him, horrified. “You mean you’re going to keep going?”

  “Oh, yes,” Kevin said, patting Wolf on the back. “We’ll give Wolf a ride to the hospital, and we’ll wrap this up. We get kicked out at 1:00 pm.”

  “But he’s hurt, real bad!” Her hand remained on the back of Wolf’s leg, and I noted that Wolf wasn’t registering any pain in his face. He was in love.

  “Can’t we quit?” I asked, pointing at the light. “There might be another loose light up there!” I began thinking of the “jailbreak” Greg referred to earlier. Instead of going out for wine coolers, one of the contestants might have toyed with the lights instead.

  Kevin began helping Wolf up, and he tried to reason with me. “We don’t have much longer to go. We can breeze right through this. Help us out.” He gave me a pleading look.

  I remembered I’d been hired to keep the show running smoothly, so I turned to the other women and snapped my fingers. “Hey! Line back up and let’s get this over with! Wolf’s not crying, so we shouldn’t, either.”

  “You only say that because you think you’re gonna win,” Tina sniped, folding her arms across her chest.

  “Do it for Wolf! C’mon!” I walked to the podium, and Lorelai followed me.

  Wolf held his finger in his air and said, “The show must go on.”

  Greg ran onto the stage, holding a towel and a first-aid kit. He told Wolf, “You can lay down on your belly in the back of the van.”

  Somehow, Kevin restored order to the scene as Greg tried to wrap the towel around Wolf’s middle and lead him out of the room.

  Cookie was still crying, and Kevin had Hare get some shots of her by herself onstage. I guess they could edit it to look like she had a nervous breakdown after missing the question. With all the camera angles they had, they could probably erase Wolf’s injury completely.

  Once the crew swept up the broken glass and wiped away the blood, it was like the stage light incident never happened. After a pass through all the women, only three remained for the second round: Lorelai, Topaz and me. Now that I knew Lorelai had a rock ‘n’ roll connection, it was going to get tough.

  Lorelai answered a simple question about Chris Cornell and which band he played in (Soundgarden), and Topaz crashed and burned when Patrick asked her to ID the band that did the song “Would?” (Alice in Chains). Clearly, her grunge music knowledge stopped with Nirvana.

  Then Patrick turned back to me. “We’re gonna be hard on you, Katherine,” Patrick said. He had his card all ready. “Which legendary bassist played with many bands — including the Minutemen, fIREHOSE, Ciccone Youth and, yes, even the Nuclear Kings?”

  “I should have worn flannel today,” I joked. “That is Mike Watt.”

  The studio audience applauded, some of them strongly. I heard one guy in the front row say to a friend, “As God is my witness, I never thought I’d hear Mike Watt’s name uttered on a dating show. If Patrick won’t have her, I’ll propose.”

  Lorelai took a deep breath.

  Patrick shuffled the cards. “Okay. Lorelai, can you name all the members of Nirvana?”

  “Kurt Cobain, Dave Grohl…” her face contorted. The bassist, Krist Novoselic, was giving her trouble. She’d know Dave Grohl from the Foo Fighters, but Novoselic was doing something with social activism and wasn’t exactly on the national radar.

  When Lorelai rolled her eyes to the top of her head, Patrick called, “Time! Katherine, can you answer?”

  I held the answer in for dramatic effect, like I was trying to think of it. “Krist Novoselic.”

  “Argh!” Lorelai threw back her head.

  “So, Katherine, if you can answer the next question correctly, you’ll win a date.”

  I rubbed my hands together. “Let’s go!”

  “This is a similar question, only the band might be tougher. You ready?”

  “Yup.”

  “This is a band I love. Name the original lineup of the Replacements.”

  I was a little surprised. The Replacements were hardly grunge or punk. The Marquee Idols were more like The Replacements, not all these grunge bands. Patrick’s taste was wider than I had assumed.

  I paused so I didn’t stumble over anything: “Paul Westerberg, Bob Stinson, Tommy Stinson, and Chris Mars.”

  “Damn,” Topaz said. “I didn’t know this was rock Jeopardy!”

  The audience applauded. Lorelai hugged me. “You earned that one,” she said.

  Patrick applauded. “Now, now, since it was so close, both these women are going on a special date tonight.” The audience joined Patrick in approval. “Katherine and Lorelai, we’ll join up back at the mansion tonight, and I’ll take you two somewhere special. How’s that sound?”

  Lorelai clapped. I smiled and pretended to shred an imaginary guitar. “You wanted a shot at that guitar, and you’re gonna get it!” Patrick said. Then Kevin whisked him away, and I decided to get off the stage myself, before another light came loose.

  I went backstage to check on Cookie. Since she had been in the van with me the whole time, I realized she couldn’t have rigged the light to fall, unless she had the ability to be two places at once. And I wanted to protect her. Patrick seemed to like her, and now she was a target.

  It didn’t take long for me to find her, as she was screaming at Hare, who refused to stop filming her crying.

  “Do you have to do that?” I asked Hare.

  “Don’t blame me. You signed up for this,” he replied. His voice was squeaky and Southern, and I realized that he was probably barely 21.

  “You’re too young to be so pushy. Maybe I’ll call your mother and get your ass grounded,” I sassed back. Then I turned to Cookie. “Cookie, are you okay? I’m sorry about the challenge — I just got lucky.”

  “All’s fair in love and war,” she said nobly. “I knew the answer. I just lost my concentration.”

  “I know you knew it! I think he knew you did. He gave you that question. Did you see him pick cards for us?”

  “He must have liked you best, then.” Cookie snuffled and blinked hard so she wouldn’t mess up her eyeliner.

  “I doubt it. He gave me the hardest questions. How many women on that stage are going to know a damn thing about Mike Watt? He’ll probably find a way to get out of the date — you watch!”

  Cookie snuffled. “Well, test your reflexes before you go. If it weren’t for Wolf, my head would have split open like a melon.” Then she looked down at her palm, which was smeared with Wolf’s blood.

  Chapter Twelve:

  Commercia
l Break

  When we returned to the mansion, Greg let me and Lorelai know that our date was going to happen in the early evening, and we needed to be in the foyer at 4:00 pm sharp. The rest of the time, we could get ready and go into the diary room so we could talk about our impressions of the day’s events.

  I thought the first day had been overscheduled, but I was starting to realize that there is no downtime in reality television. Tortoise and Hare, the sound guy and the camera guy, kept on following me, even though I wasn’t doing anything special.

  “You guys really like me, don’t you?” I asked.

  “You’re going to have a nervous breakdown!” Hare said, gleefully. “You’re like a volcano!”

  “Would you pipe down? I gotta listen to you all day,” Tortoise grumbled. He was much fatter than Hare, and he was rebelling against everyone else who wore black. That day, he wore a grubby gray T-shirt that said, “Got MILF?”

  “I’m gonna make myself a sandwich. Does that sound exciting to you?” I asked, heading for the kitchen.

  “The first sandwich is always the hardest,” Tortoise said, cryptically.

  I thought he was making fun of Wolf’s manner of speaking until I opened the refrigerator. Then I understood what he was getting at. I knew that everything had a sponsor on reality television, but I didn’t know how serious the producers were about getting only certain brands on the air.

  All I wanted was a simple peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich. However, I had a hard time finding the jars because almost all the labels for the foods, which the exception of the peanut butter, were covered with duct tape, just like the liquor at the bar.

  Once I opened a few jars and sniffed, I finally found some strawberry jelly and set it on the counter, by the remains of someone else’s attempts to make a sandwich. Tortoise and Hare had me make the sandwich five times. First, they couldn’t see the peanut butter brand. Second, the jam had to be put out of the camera’s view because they didn’t want the jam to distract from the peanut butter. Third, they forgot the brand on the bread, which I had forgotten and exposed by accident. Fourth, I threw the bread bag at Tortoise’s head, so I guess that delay was my fault. Fifth, I wanted to make two sandwiches and put one in a baggie for later so I wouldn’t have to go through the ordeal again. Andi was lounging by the box of baggies, and I asked, “Hey, Andi, can you hand me one of those?”

  “One of those what?” Hare asked.

  “A plastic baggie,” I over-enunciated. My stomach growled. I wanted that damn sandwich. My hand started drifting toward the jar of peanut butter, and I was thinking about ways I could hit Hare without damaging the camera.

  “It’s a SturdyBag. You have to say ‘SturdyBag,’” Hare told me.

  “You’re kidding, aren’t you?”

  “SturdyBag!”

  “Hey, are you gonna brand our asses, or what? Can you even use this footage?” I grabbed the peanut butter, leaned back and started winding up my arm like I was ready for a pitch.

  Hare laughed. “We can use everything!”

  Tortoise agreed. “Yeah, I like that ‘brand our asses’ line. How the hell did you get on this show?”

  I was getting tired of hearing that. “All right, all right!” I slammed the peanut butter jar on the counter and started waving the butter knife around. Then I put the knife down. Who knew how they would edit it? They might make it look like I was stabbing somebody.

  Speaking of stabbing somebody, Topaz showed up just as I was ready to have a bite, so I shoved as much of the sandwich as I could into my mouth. I really was hungry, and she wasn’t going to keep me from my food.

  Topaz leaned in and angled her face toward the camera. No one yelled at her because she knew her positions perfectly, and she was meaner than I was. “Damn, girl,” she said. “You fall off the turnip truck from Gardenia? You eat like a pony!”

  I swallowed and hoped there wasn’t peanut butter and jelly on my teeth. I had to defend Gardenia, for Muriel’s sake. “We do have civilization in Gardenia, you know.”

  “How civilized can it be if you chew with your mouth open? You’ve got peanut all on your tongue.”

  I began to tee up a verbal shot regarding what I thought Topaz put in her mouth when she was working in Vegas, but Hare interrupted me. “This is all good stuff, but can you guys talk about Patrick first?”

  Topaz shifted gears faster than I could. “You know, I don’t think you’re really here for Patrick. I think you’re here for a ticket out of Gardenia.”

  I stuffed the rest of the sandwich in my mouth. I knew they could cut it out later because they had multiple angles, but I tried to chew in an aggressive fashion. “No talking with your mouth full!” Tortoise cautioned.

  I swallowed again. “That ‘you’re not here for him’ crap is the oldest line in the book, Topaz! You don’t think we have TV in Gardenia?” I asked, trying to channel Muriel. “We have satellite dishes!”

  I was briefly distracted from defending Gardenia by a spraying sound. Andi had opened the fridge door and was squeezing whipped cream straight into her mouth. “Mmm-mm!” she hummed, slamming the can on the counter.

  I was tempted to start fighting again, but Andi wasn’t done. Then she started grabbing up small jars of jelly and tubs of margarine, piling them up on the ledge of her fake breasts. She walked out of the room, stopped, paused, and came back, grabbing a bag of bread while balancing everything else on her chest.

  Topaz massaged the bridge of her nose. “That child… Jesus, give me strength!” Then she looked at the camera and me. “I’m not done with you. Just because you have TV doesn’t mean you’re not trash.”

  I waved what was left of my sandwich in Topaz’ face. If I had to make it so many times, I was going to make it worth it. “Stop disrespecting my town! I don’t disrespect Vegas! Patrick doesn’t disrespect Gardenia! He’s from there!”

  “He don’t disrespect it to your face! And stop spitting your nasty-ass sandwich in my face, bitch!” she started moving her chin in a way that signaled big trouble, at least on daytime TV talk shows.

  I kept chewing and clicking my teeth in the most annoying way possible. I didn’t move as she took a step toward me. I could see Hare making a “wrap it up” gesture with his finger. “Eat it,” I told her.

  The only way for me and Topaz to resolve our personality conflict was for both of us to start beating on each other, but it was too early in the show for that. So I stalked off.

  Topaz watched me leave, and I heard her say, every word as clear as Windexed glass, “Choke on it. And I know you’re not here for him.”

  It didn’t matter what I said in response. She was right. But I had to admit that I was looking forward to that date and bragging to Topaz about getting some alone time with Patrick. This whole job was bringing out an ugly mix of my aggressive and feminine sides.

  Chapter Thirteen:

  First Date

  When we stepped out the front door, I expected a limo, which was standard on dating shows. But I did not expect the black stretch Hummer from the day before to return. I thought that was just for show and we’d be in the vans the rest of the time, but the challenge winners really did get a few perks.

  Fred, the Santa who delivered me to the mansion on the first day, was standing out front, and he was freshly groomed for the cameras. He was wearing a suit, and his beard had been trimmed slightly, but he still looked like he just left the North Pole. He offered me and Lorelai his hand, which we needed because it was hard to climb up into that car.

  Once we got inside, I realized just how insane the stretch Hummer was. Neon lights lined the inside, while yet another bar ran along one side. An intercom was set up every few feet, just so we could inform Fred of our whims and wishes. A privacy screen separated Fred from us, but we could roll it down from controls in the back, along with the other windows in the car.

  I could see how the Hummer was useful for reality television. Patrick and his dates could snuggle up and enjoy adult beverages — and Ma
jor Rager — while Tortoise, Hare, and Kevin had a clear view of the action and plenty of room to set up their equipment. Ever the amateur mixologist, Patrick took advantage of the bar, making all of us Manhattans. It was funny watching Hare sipping a Manhattan with one hand and steadying the camera with the other.

  The Hummer had serious shock absorbers, though. Our drinks barely sloshed as Fred maneuvered the car through Belvedere, although I wasn’t sure how the car would cope with the narrow San Francisco streets. I was also worried that some outraged eco-activists might attack the car on the grounds that it was a shameless gas guzzler.

  Kevin wanted some shots of us partying, but he was grouchy because Lorelai and I weren’t exactly party-hearty. We were chatting quietly with Patrick about where he’d been and where he’d toured. I asked him what his favorite place was to play, and he started talking about Vienna. Lorelai said she passed through there once after filming a monster movie in Hungary, and I had visited on a class trip. We were all swapping stories about dodging drunks at the local heurigens.

  Kevin asked, “Can one of you sit on his lap during all this travel talk?”

  Patrick groaned. “Aw, man, we’re having a conversation. You know… a conversation. In which information and ideas are exchanged. We are getting to know each other before taking it to the next level — what normal people do. No offense, ladies, but I’m not ready to say that I’m in love quite yet.”

  “None taken,” I said, but Lorelai stuck out her lower lip.

  “I’m serious. Can we at least get some party shots?” Kevin said. “Half the audience doesn’t know where Vienna is! I don’t know where Vienna is!”

  “That’s not very charitable toward the American educational system,” I said.

  Kevin rolled his eyes. “Can you please just sit on his lap?”

  I rolled my eyes, but I shifted over on my seat and made myself comfortable on Patrick’s lap. Lorelai began clapping, “Me next! Me next!”