QUAAAAAAAAAAAACK!
Hope the Duck must have mistaken Porsche’s scream for the sound of an enemy predator, because its beak shot toward her heaving chest with the power and precision of a martial artist.
QUAAAAAAAAAAAACK! QUAAAAAAAAAAAACK! QUAAAAAAAAAAAACK!
Bentley’s heart stopped. She couldn’t listen to another word. She felt herself pulling away, letting the chaos of the rooftop restaurant dissolve around her. Before she knew it, she was plugging her ears. She couldn’t bear it. Her whole world—everything she’d thought she understood, every fixed point of her known, dependable universe—had all just gone into free fall.
“Bentley”—Bach leaned in toward her, a look of genuine concern in his sparkling green eyes—“I think we’re losing it. What are we supposed to do?” He sounded shocked, like he’d been slapped in the face, which was increasingly likely, given the flurry of avian and human limbs.
Do?
How was she supposed to know?
Did Bach think this was in the Bentley Bible? Because it wasn’t—and that was about all she knew for certain. They were off the map, in uncharted Royce family waters.
This is what’s going on, she wanted to say. The Royces are not all right.
Each person in their family was even more terrified than the poor, thrashing duck in front of them now—and that was what really scared Bentley.
If Mercedes and Porsche are like this now—what will they be like if we don’t make it?
If we do get canceled? If we have to move?
How could they survive that?
Bentley had no clue. She didn’t know what to say or even think. Instead, she found herself beginning to hum.
Times are bad and getting badder, ain’t we got fun?
She closed her eyes, blocking out her screaming mother and her crying sister and her thrashing duck brother and her dumbstruck human one.
In the meantime, in between time, ain’t we got fun?
She imagined her mother driving the RV down the dusty I-15, singing to stay awake while the three of them lay on the bed in the way back.
The rich get richer and the poor get poorer . . .
She could picture Porsche running ahead of her into the Dairy Queen. Mercedes laughing, carrying Bach on her hip, behind them. Counting out enough nickels and quarters and dimes at the register for four chocolate-dipped cones. Bent could hear the sound of the coins hitting the counter—hitting and falling and rolling right across the sticky aluminum steel. They sounded like love.
Ain’t we got, ain’t we got, ain’t we got fun?
Porsche screamed—and Bentley opened her eyes just in time to see Hope the Duck attack again.
“STOP THAT!” Mercedes yanked its leash. Now the duck whirled around, this time going for Mercedes’s gold-studded Hermès collar, shrieking as it did.
“Watch out—” Bach yelled.
“OH, NO YOU DON’T! NOT THE HERMÈS!” Mercedes swung her purse at it. “THINK AGAIN, YOU FILTHY ANIMAL!”
QUAAAAAAAAAAAACK!
The leash went flying. The duck went flying.
Porsche knocked it back toward her mother, who swung again, smacking it clear into the air with a single adrenaline-powered surge.
QUAAAAAAAAAAAACK! QUAAAAAAAAAAAACK!
Hope the Duck spun into the cloudless blue sky. The cameras swung to track it.
“No—no, no, no—” Bentley shouted, suddenly realizing what was happening. She lunged after Hope again—the leash only a fraction of an inch from her outstretched fingers—
But it was too late.
They all watched—Royces and crew alike—as the poor duck went soaring over the stone balustrade that edged the rooftop of Barneys.
The cameras stayed on it.
It arched into the sky and desperately began to flap—
If only ducks could fly.
At most, ducks could get off the ground a few feet, then settle down. They certainly couldn’t carry their weight this high in the air—especially not with the additional heft of the leather Hermès collar and leash—oops!
QUAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaackkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk . . .
Mercedes, Porsche, Bentley, and Bach stood helplessly by as Hope plummeted five stories down. It was right then that Bentley Royce had an epiphany, and not just that her family needed to make a rather large donation to the ASPCA.21
She had no choice but to face two facts—and they stuck with her the whole time she winced and waited for the inevitable thud.
First, someone had to do something. Even if keeping Rolling with the Royces on the air was no easier than teaching a duck to fly, it was the only chance they had.
And second, the Royce family had finally hit rock—
THUD.
Bottom.22
DUKE OF DUCKS SPIN-OFF DUCK CAKE WARS GREENLIT; ROLLING WITH THE ROYCES ROLLS DOWNHILL
AP: Beverly Hills, California
Via Celebcity.com
What’s better than a reality television cooking show based on duck hunting season? A reality television cooking show based on duck hunting season AND high-fructose corn syrup consumption—two time-honored American pastimes rolled into one!
Further proving that more is more, and that when it comes to Hollywood, success always has a formula, cable’s latest reality cooking show offering, Duke of Ducks, has just announced that a duck-themed cupcake contest spin-off is in the works for the fall lineup: Duck Cake Wars, starring Duke of Duck’s own Joelynne Wabash!
“I love cupcakes and hunting season and just getting out there and doing my public-speaking stuff, so this is a dream come true,” said Joelynne Wabash (rocking beaded bangles and matching bead-and-feather earrings, both by Walmart), who will now be moving to Hollywood for her new show. “And this is a big middle finger to everyone who told me I’d never get famous unless I got braces.”
Teeth aside, when you’re hot you’re hot, and when you’re not you’re not, and unfortunately for Hollywood’s longest-running reality cabler, Rolling with the Royces, there isn’t even a duck on the menu—unless you count the lame duck the show has become in the Lifespan lineup.
“I’m confident the Roycers will come out to support us for a sixth season, just as they have for the past five,” Mercedes Royce said, in a statement issued by her representatives. “Lifespan is part of our family, and the definition of family is the people who stand by you throughout the ups and downs. Isn’t it?”
Jeff Grunburg, Lifespan’s top exec, was unavailable for comment at the time of printing. His assistant, Dirk Daniels, did say this: “Rolling with the Royces is all about THE JOURNEY. And of course THE FEELS. And the CLIMB.” When pressed for clarification, he had no comment.23
(Disclosure: Celebcity is a fully owned subsidiary of the Lifespan Network, which is itself a fully owned subsidiary of DiosGlobale.)
Follow @celebcity for breaking details, or www.celebcity.com.
* * *
16 It is to us vegans! —D
17 Per JG: So we’ll need to hire a fake camera crew to follow our fake/real Royce family around while our real camera crew follows the fake crew around? Budget note for pilot. —D
18 JG points out that the RWTR contracts are perfectly transparent on this point, and suggests this addition: “Even if it was clear to LITERALLY everyone else that Jeff Grunburg was the boss of Mercedes Royce.” (He’d also suggest bolding.) —D
19 JG asks: How deep? JG is concerned, will circle back on this. (I’d actually like to know too.) —D
20 Per JG: Remind Marketing—prime opportunity to promote our BigBoxBaby megastores! —D
21 Jeff’s daughter Tallulah “Saved Animals” as her Mitzvah project, so JG will have Tallulah (or T’s assistant, Felicity) get back to us with notes on which groups to mention here! (Expect Post-its; T has Felicity drive them over most afternoons. One at a time.) —D
22 Reminder: pls destroy this footage. It can never surface. Ever. Anywhere
. —D
23 I feel this statement was perfectly self-explanatory. —D
Five
ON THE BUBBLE
June 2017
The Lifespan Building, Century City
(Avenue of the Stars between Little Santa Monica and Olympic)
Bentley knew better than to leave important moments to her mother and sister. That was why she now stood, digital tablet in hand, trying to wedge her way into the green-light meeting on the other side of this conference room door. Mercedes and Porsche had just walked right through it, but Jeff Grunburg had blocked her path the moment Bent had tried to follow them inside.
“Sorry, kid. This one’s not open to the public.” Jeff smiled a very Jeff smile, which was to say not so much a friendly expression of emotion as an aggressive baring of teeth. Beyond the frosted glass door, Bent could hear the other executives in the room laugh. (Mercedes said they were Jeff Grunburg’s human laugh track.24 She said all Top Execs wanted one, the same way they wanted a personal bathroom in their office, as if crapping on people and crapping on other things were all related.)25
“Bentley! What do you think you’re doing?” Mercedes looked horrified from the other side of the door. “You and Bach can wait for us outside, like always.”
“I’m not the public,” Bentley said, glaring down at Jeff. (She was a good two or three man-buns taller than he was.)26 “And I just need a minute.”
“Well, that’s a minute more than you’ve got,” Jeff said, activating his human laugh track. As he spoke, rage began bubbling inside her chest, until her whole body shook. She lowered the tablet in her hand so he wouldn’t notice.
Calm down. You want him to think of you as a grown-up? Act like a grown-up.
It was up to Bentley now. Porsche and Mercedes had been with the Royce money managers every afternoon, and from the way they fled to their separate rooms (Mercedes to the master suite, Porsche to the pool house) the moment they got home, it didn’t seem like anything had been resolved.
Which had left them little time for working out season-six story line pitches.
Enter Bentley.
The Royces were a televised train wreck, and they were in desperate need of a mechanic. As a result, like any responsible, concerned passenger, Bentley had been forced to reconsider her priorities. Frankly, the more Bent thought about what her family would be like when and if they were left on their own—when and if the cameras had moved on—the more she realized the scenario could only ever be one of unspeakable horror. The Royces were not a normal family, and they would never be cut out for normal life. There was no plan B. There was only plan Bentley.
Bent stood tall (Golden string! Golden string!) and eyed Jeff Grunburg. “If you don’t have one minute, then I guess you’re going to miss out on all my killer story line ideas for season six.”
“Your killer story line ideas? For season six? I don’t know which part of that is funnier!” Jeff himself was laughing now. “Okay, kid, you got me. That’s hilarious.” It actually wasn’t.
“I’m not going anywhere until you at least listen to my ideas,” Bentley said.
He didn’t appear to be moving out of her way, so she took a deep breath and dug in. “The problem with our show is that it’s gotten predictable, right? So how about the whole arc for the upcoming season is RWTR: RELATABLE. And that’s the basic idea. It’s about real reality. The Bentley character stops acting like a jerk, and the Porsche character stops acting like just a dumb bombshell, and maybe the Bach character finds true love, and the Mercedes character goes to work in a real job, as the CEO of Porsche’s Lippies line. . . . I don’t know, we could do, like, family therapy, get a dog or something . . .”
Jeff was laughing so hard, he had tears in his eyes when Porsche darted back out through the door to her sister’s side, blocking his view of her. Porsche lowered her voice. “What are you doing, B?”
“I’ve been brainstorming,” Bent said stubbornly, holding up her tablet. “You guys need me in there, now more than ever. I can help, just like Mercedes said. So let me.”
Porsche shook her head at her sister sadly. “I think that’s the sweetest thing anyone’s ever tried to do for me, Bent.” She glanced over her shoulder, back into the conference room. “Also probably the stupidest.”
“I’m not an idiot.” Bentley stood her ground, or at least her doorway. “I’ve been on this show as long as you guys have.”
“But you’ve never been in one of these rooms, and that’s a different thing. And especially now, with this whole Lippies mess . . .” Porsche shrugged.
“But you don’t have to do it alone. You can’t,” Bent said, because she knew it was true.
Porsche reached for Bentley’s hand—but grabbed her by the wrist. It was how the big sister and the little sister had always held hands, how Porsche had pulled Bent safely through a thousand parking lots and across a thousand playgrounds. “I need today to go well. We all do. So in three seconds, I have to shut this door, and you have to let me.”
“Porsche,” Bentley began. “Listen.”
“Two,” Porsche said, firmly.
“I can do this.”
“One. Sorry, B.”
Jeff Grunburg cleared his throat behind Porsche. “Are you coming, Porsche?” He reached for the open door with one hand and looked at Bentley, irritated. “I thought we wrapped up this conversation. Is there a problem? We have a lot to get through.”
Porsche smiled at him. “You know kids.”
“I know Tallulah,” he said, looking tired. “And she tells me I’m the immature one.” The laugh track went off again, in the background.
“That’s hilarious,” Porsche said, trying to bring up a smile.
“Believe me. You wouldn’t want to face Tallulah in this conference room,” Jeff said. “You’d lose. We all would.”
HA HA HA HA HA—Mercedes’s artillery-fire laugh floated through the open door. Jeff held the door for Porsche, who disappeared back inside the room without looking at her sister. Then he slammed it shut.
Bent could still hear the muffled laughter from the other side. It seemed Jeff’s laugh track had decided she was the joke of the day.
Maybe they were right.
Here she was, stuck out in the lobby on the wrong side of the most important door of her family’s life. Utterly and completely powerless.
An hour later, Bentley and Bach were still sitting in the low leather chairs in the lobby of the sleek Lifespan building.
“Are you all right, B?” Bach put his hand on her shoulder. “You look like you’re going to be sick.”
“I feel like it.” She looked up from the University of Southern California website open on her iPad, and noticed for the first time that day that Bach didn’t look so good either. His sky-blue eyes were red around the edges and supported by dark, puffy crescent moons. “What’s up with you, Bach? When was the last time you slept?”
“What are you talking about?” He rubbed his face and smiled. “I sleep. I slept last night.”
“For how long? What time did you come home?”
“Uh, I dunno. A normal time? What’s with the third degree, Bent?”
“You just seem out of it. Did you go to some awesome party and not invite me? Because that’s what it looks like, and that would be rude. A direct violation of our code.”
“Sorry, sorry, it was a boys’ night out,” he said, seeming oddly relieved. “I’ll let you know next time, promise.”
“Were you gambling, Bach? You smell like smoke, you know.”
“I do?” He lifted his T-shirt to his nose. “What does smoke have anything to do with it?”
“Oh, please, I’ve been to the casinos. It’s like a ten-thousand-square-foot ashtray in there.”
He laughed. “Okay, I might have been gambling. But why not? Yolo, right? And besides, a little poker never hurt no one.”
She eyed him suspiciously, then smiled. It felt nice to have a real conversation with a real person who she really cared a
bout. Oh god, she thought, the highlight of my day is now scolding my little brother for playing cards? What has my life become?
She felt almost physically ill as the facts of “reality” life rushed back in.
Ever since the fateful D-day (which of course meant Duck Day, but they had now been legally advised never to speak of the incident themselves, unless they wanted to incite the ire of every animal rights group on the planet), one thing had become perfectly clear.
If the show went, her family was going with it.
Twenty million dollars was a lot of green, but the current crisis wasn’t just about the money, and it wasn’t about the failing product line.
Bentley didn’t know why she hadn’t seen it before. It was all so obvious now. What could someone like Mercedes Royce do, for example, without RWTR? Bentley tried to imagine her mother’s future starring vehicles.
RESOLUTIONS WITH THE ROYCES?
High Concept: Every New Year’s Day, Mercedes screams scathingly supportive comments—like “FRIED rhymes with DIED for a reason, you know!”27 or “NOTHING tastes as good as SKINNY feels!”28 or“COBB SALAD? COBB is the CHEESECAKE of SALADS!”29—at total strangers instead of her own daughter. (Probably a no-go. Bent somehow doubted that watching someone berate strangers would be as satisfying as watching someone berate their loved ones.)
RUNNING WITH THE ROYCES?
High Concept: Mercedes keeps her face on bus stops and billboards across the country—two of her favorite places to see herself, when not on the cover of a magazine—by running for public office. Hijinks ensue. (Unlikely. Bent suspected her mother’s past as Southern Utah’s most infamous demolition derby bookie might rule this one out. Mercedes had always had a hard head for numbers and a shrewd eye for opportunity—give or take a duck or two.)
REBOOTING WITH THE ROYCES?
High Concept: Mercedes goes back to the trailer park and revives TRASHPIRATIONAL. (Possibly. It would depend on the statute of limitations on money laundering. And also if the town had a hotel now, aside from the one in the gas station where Mercedes had allegedly given birth to Porsche.)30
Royce Rolls Page 6