Reality Check Read online

  “So we get to his place and I thought he was going to put the moves on me, so I got all naked and seductive and it turned out that he really did just want to paint my picture. It totally sucked.”

  Chad was up next and told a story about a blind date who turned out to have more chest hair than he did.

  I could feel a wave of sympathy issue from the audience. Then I heard my name. Shit, shit, shit, what am I going to say? The walk to the cone throne felt like a journey to the gallows. Where had my confidence gone? Give them a good one, I thought, but save the bigger ammo for later in the season. We were a little less than halfway through the round. Five down, and eight to go after me. So far, the tales of woe had been pretty good. I hoped Rob Dick and his staff were pleased with how willing we were to humiliate ourselves.

  “When I was in college, I had a huge crush on this gorgeous grad student who became a professional actor,” I began. “And a few years after we were both out of school, I went to see him in a Broadway show and I went backstage to say ‘hi’ afterward. The dressing room was filled with people, including a couple of pretty famous actors and actresses who had also gone back to congratulate my friend on his performance. And in front of all those people, Geoff invited me, little, insignificant, unfamous me, to go out for a drink with him. So after everyone left the dressing room, he let me stay there while he showered and dressed. I was in heaven. He kissed me and we started making out on his couch. And then he suddenly jumps up and says it’s time to go for that drink, and we head out of the theater and down the street, and where does he take me—but to a strip club! And from that point on, he totally ignored me and spent the whole time leering at the strippers. He didn’t even look away when I told him I was going home.”

  I heaved a huge sigh of relief. I was past the first hurdle. Well, I wouldn’t know for sure until all of us had been given our chance in the cone throne. I couldn’t look at either of my roommates or even at Jack for that matter, because the camera followed me until I returned to my seat and the red button was pushed, ejecting the next contestant’s ball. Rick announced the name. “Jemima Lawrence!”

  Jem strode cooly up to the platform, took her time seating herself, then stuck her fingers in the cones and began her anecdote. “I went to dinner with this guy once who told me that he had to go out with me because he thought I was so beautiful. And for the whole date, he kept asking me what I was. I didn’t know what he meant. What I was? I’m a teacher, I said. I’m a Democrat. I’m a Christian. ‘Well, but what are you?’ he kept asking. ‘Are you white? Are you black? Are you an Indian?’ and I couldn’t figure out why it would make any difference to him if he knew what my ethnicity was. And in truth, my answer was ‘all of the above,’ but that wasn’t good enough for him. He had to have me narrow it down to one thing, and there seemed to be a right answer as far as he was concerned, but I didn’t have a clue what it was and I wasn’t into playing his head games. So I walked away and left him with two plates of food and a big check in front of him.”

  Only Jem could silence a room like that, but the audience had been paying attention. I watched their faces as Jem spoke and they clearly thought her date had been an asshole.

  Allegra was up next. “I had sex on the beach,” she said in her lilting voice.

  “Do you get the point of this game, Allegra?” Rick asked her. “It’s called ‘Bad’ Date.”

  Good. She was providing some much-needed comic relief after Jem.

  “I know,” Allegra said. “It was with my first cousin.”

  “So?” Rick asked.

  “Her name is Julia.”

  “Well, well,” Rick grinned and shook his head. “Did anybody take any pictures? You know, for the family album.” He ejected the next ball and read the name.

  The butch-looking Diz loped up to the cone throne and talked about confessing her attraction to the guy who was her best buddy when they were in the navy together. His unedited reaction had been one of total and insulting shock because he’d assumed she was a lesbian.

  Diz returned to her own seat and was replaced in the cone throne by Travis.

  “I had sex on the beach, too,” he said. “But it turned out that the woman was the trophy wife of some really rich financier guy who was staying at the hotel, and I ended up getting demoted to washing towels for half a year. You can’t get any tips washing towels.”

  “I hear ya, dude,” Rick commiserated. I figured the film star had never washed a towel in his life. “Next up is Jack Rafferty,” Rick said, reading the ball that had just popped out of the machine.

  Jack walked up the platform to the cone throne. He cut such a fine figure it was hard not to stare at him. His bearing was presidential, in the best sense of the word. Regal. Assured. He wore a pale blue shirt and a custom-tailored navy blazer that enhanced his telegenic appearance. “You said short and sweet, Rick, so here it is: a woman I once took out on a date in San Francisco tried to run me over with her car after I insisted on paying the check.”

  “Whoa, there. Some women’s libber,” Rick quipped. “Or was she off her medication? Okay, folks, we’re in the homestretch now.” The machine popped another ball into the well. “Milo Plum, come on up!”

  Milo strolled with feline grace to the hot seat and slid his long fingers into the metal electrode cones. “I grew up in a very conservative small town, and they were ready to run anyone out on a rail if they even painted their house an unusual color. So of course I was expected to take a girl to the prom, and I invited the ugliest girl in my class because I knew none of the straight boys were going to ask her and I felt terrible that she might have to suffer the humiliation of going alone, or worse, staying home because she was too embarrassed to show up dateless. So I took this girl— Cornelia Winthrop—and she was so happy, she just blossomed on that dance floor and told me that she thought I was the best dancer in the class and how much she really liked me but she was always too afraid to approach me. Then she tried to kiss me and I didn’t want to disappoint her, so I kissed her back but I realized I just couldn’t keep up the charade. So I gently took her hands off me and sat her down and told her that I was gay. It was the first time I had come out to anyone, and it ended up being with this misfit girl who liked me for who I was until I burst her bubble. And she didn’t know how to deal with it and I didn’t either and we both burst into tears and just sat there looking at each other and crying.”

  I felt really bad for both of them as well. Nowhere in the Bad Date ground rules was it written that all our stories had to be funny. We were supposed to be pathetic losers anyway, so our studio audience and the rest of the show’s viewers could feel smugly superior.

  Milo returned to his seat and the machine ejected the next little white ball. Rick read it. “Candy Fortunato!”

  Candy sashayed up to the chair and plugged herself in. “First I just wanna say to Liz that I hear ya about that thing with Geoff. Guys shouldn’t bring their dates to a strip club unless it’s consensual. Anyway . . . so here’s my story. There was this guy, Tony, I had a date with.”

  I couldn’t believe she still had her gum in her mouth.

  “And he wanted to go to this restaurant which I wasn’t so crazy about on account of because I thought the clams there were lousy, and I preferred to go somewhere else, like maybe Chinese instead. But my father started giving me grief about it. So me and Tony go there, and then just before dessert—I remember I ordered the tartufo and he went with the zabaglione—I had to go to the little girls’ room, so I excused myself and went to take a wee, and when I got back, the back of Tony’s head wasn’t there no more. There he was, face down on the tablecloth like he was takin’ a nap, with his brains spilling out into his zabaglione.”

  Candy had an interesting life; I had to give her credit. Finally, it was time for the last contestant to share his tale of woe. Millard Milhaus installed himself in the cone throne and looked earnestly into the camera. “There have been many versions of this story, but I want to set the record
straight,” he began. “On the night of August fourth of last year, I was driving my white Lexus down Hollywood Boulevard, when a damsel in deep distress flagged me down.”

  The polygraph line began to wiggle above Millard’s head. It was the first time the thing had moved all evening.

  “She told me her feet hurt, so I offered, in the name of chivalry, to let her sit in my vehicle to rest her tired tootsies. I asked her, in the name of making light conversation, what she did and she told me she was an eighteen-year-old student.”

  The polygraph line began to zigzag.

  “She asked if we could take a little drive because she needed to get some sundries at a local drugstore, so I put my car in gear and we drove off. Next thing I know, her face is in my crotch. I am a good father and a model husband—well, I was a model husband; I’m divorced now—and the soul of citizenry.”

  The screen showed the needle on the polygraph going crazy.

  “At no time before her lips were on my zipper was I ever aware that this person was not a woman.”

  The screen looked like a giant Etch A Sketch. Millard returned to his chair. A bell rang.

  Rick took center stage. “Well, folks, we’ve come to the end of Round One. Now, it’s time to vote. Which contestant will you choose to liquidate?”

  The band played some more heighten-the-tension music. The camera panned across our faces, one by one. “Who will stay . . . and who will go?” Rick asked ominously. “We’ll find out when we come back!”

  We went to the final commercial break. Back on the air, Rick announced that the votes had been tabulated. If there was a ranking system, we weren’t privy to it. The only information divulged was the name of the person who had received the most votes. Not surprisingly, it was Millard Milhaus. He was the only one who set the polygraph-thing off. Also, because he was the last contestant to speak, he was the one who was foremost in the audience’s memory. Luke Arrowcatcher could have said practically anything, I realized. The viewers probably barely remembered it. Something had to stick out in a bad way for them to vote someone off. Lying was the most obvious example. Otherwise, in this first round, everyone but Millard had a pretty good tale of woe. I watched him leave the soundstage, waving his arms as though he’d scored a victory instead of an embarrassingly ignominious defeat.

  Jem passed me in the hall on our way back to the dressing rooms. “Let’s blow off the after-show party and catch a drink down the street instead,” she whispered in my ear. “Meet you over at Pinky’s on Fiftieth Street. It’s on the south side of the block.” She gave a furtive look around to see if anyone had overheard her. “I’ll let Nell know, too.”

  We smiled at one another, as though we had jointly overcome an obstacle. Yet, it didn’t feel entirely genuine. I wasn’t so sure that we three were a team anymore. Something had happened in the past half hour that changed everything. And I wasn’t at all sure it was for the best.

  13/

  A Toxic Shock

  I walked into Pinky Moran’s with my two roommates. None of us had said a word to one another since we’d left the television studio. Pinky’s was one of those New York theater district pubs that had withstood the Times Square area’s gentrification by mass market conglomerates like Disney and Starbucks, the invasion by cutesy theme restaurants catering to sports and rock music fans, and the sea change in acceptable tavern fare from steam table corned beef and cabbage to personal pan pizzas. The walls were stained from decades of tobacco smoke. Out of curiosity I stole a peek behind a framed print of Ebbets Field just to see the difference the discoloration had made over time. Even Pinky’s nonsmoking area smelled of stale smoke.

  The bar had an earthiness to it, which was why Jem and I tended to like it. “Real” people went there. Teamsters; stagehands and supporting cast members of Broadway shows, actors making the Equity minimum; journalists, especially sports writers; and the crowd of regulars who routinely grouped themselves at the curve of the long bar near the entrance. Those were the veterans of wars and of life who habitually came in for their first beer sometime around ten A.M.

  Five minutes after we were seated, I pulled a lock of hair toward my nose and noticed that it no longer smelled of the Aqua Net Ethan had used on me at the studio, but it now reeked of cigarette smoke. Jem lit up. She only smokes when she drinks outside the home—that’s how she manages to control her nicotine jones. I have never seen anyone more in control than Jem. This is not a woman who throws shrill tantrums when she loses her temper; she gets real quiet instead. And she’s the only person I know who didn’t cry when E.T. had to go home.

  Nell started to fuss about the cigarette smoke. She’s convinced it darkens her hair color. Jem promised to stop after two and find out if we could then switch to a table in the no-smoking section.

  Something else about Nell and Jem . . . Ordinarily, Nell is extremely tolerant. In fact, she once scolded me for complaining about Jem’s smoking, saying we should support those around us who were unable to stand up and defeat their addiction. Jem had rolled her eyes at the time and snapped, “I don’t have an addiction; I just like to smoke.” Tonight, Nell had gotten cranky the minute Jem took her lighter from her purse. Also, Jem usually asks us first if we mind sitting in the smoking section, even though Nell and I always accede. This evening she just told the hostess we wanted a smokers’ table. Clearly, I wasn’t the only one who had walked off the Bad Date set feeling somewhat altered by the experience. The first episode seemed to have had an odd effect on my roommates as well.

  “Well, what do you think, guys?” I asked them. “I guess we should be relieved to have survived the first episode. One down, twelve to go. It’s time to start thinking about next week.”

  “I’m not sure what I’m going to say yet,” Jem said, looking into the middle distance. I thought she was deliberately avoiding eye contact with me. “After all, we’ve got a whole week to come up with something.”

  “Me neither,” Nell chimed in. “I mean, me, too.” She could be flaky sometimes, but never evasive. She, too, stared off into space.

  “Well . . . this is really fun,” I sighed. “I was under the impression, Jem, that you wanted to celebrate our surviving the first round. Speaking of first rounds . . .” I flagged down our waitress and we ordered a round of draft beers.

  Once the drinks came, Jem tamped out her first cigarette and waved her hands for us to all put our heads together. We leaned inward, forming a sort of huddle. “Okay, then,” Jem said. “What do we think?”

  Nell blinked. “About what?”

  “The contestants, silly. Who do you think the weak links are and who do you think are the favorites? Now is the time to start handicapping.”

  “How can we do that?” I asked. “There’s a different studio audience every week so we don’t have the chance to become their sweethearts. Each episode becomes a whole new ball game.” I shared my theory about the possibility of the producers rigging the show since the cameras didn’t show the name of the contestant on the balls as they popped out of the giant gumball machine. “Rick Byron was wearing an earpiece thing, so how do we know he wasn’t getting names fed to him by the producers who wanted the contestants to appear in a certain order?”

  Nell was certain she had the answer. “Don’t you remember our interviews? Rob Dick gave us the whole spiel about honesty and truth-telling and being above-board, above suspicion. And we’ve got clauses in our contracts that prevent us from anything resembling collusion. I mean, we’re probably not even supposed to be here talking about the show. It’s like we’re jurors, practically.”

  You’ve gotta love Nell. “Just because we had to sign something promising to remain honest doesn’t mean they’re doing so,” I insisted.

  “Liz, do you really think they’re playing games with us?” Jem lit her second cigarette.

  “Let’s just say I don’t believe everything I read in the papers.” Hmmm. We seemed to still function as a trio as long as we weren’t discussing our own strategies, assumin
g we had any.

  “Okay,” Jem said, thunking her glass beer stein on the table. “Who do we need to watch out for and who’s toast?”

  “Travis,” Nell posited.

  “Toast,” we three said in unison.

  “I mean he’s majorly cute,” Nell added, “but he’s such a dope. I would hate to go out with him. I’d thank him for a lovely evening and he’d probably be stuck for an answer. I like ’em blond and built like the side of an Iowa barn, but they’ve got to have something going on upstairs.”

  “Chad, then,” I said. “He’s sort of blond and sort of built, too. Going to pot a bit around the edges, though, now that he no longer plays college ball. And while he doesn’t strike me as the kind of man who can take Nell to the Whitney Museum and discuss the merits of modern painting, he can probably get her a good rate on life insurance. Of course the question is whether he’s got more dates from hell than we do and are his stories very entertaining. Do we think he can make it very far?”

  “Toast, probably,” Jem replied. “Let’s run down our impressions of all the guys first and then tackle the rest of the women.”

  “I like Milo,” I said, looking into my beer. “He’s kind of neat. And ‘Double-E’ DuPree is . . . well . . . he’s something else.”

  “Then there’s Jack,” Nell said. “What about Jack?”

  “What about Jack?” he asked, appearing through the haze of cigarette smoke, rocks glass in hand, collar unbuttoned, tie slightly askew. He started to pull up a chair. “Mind if I join you ladies?”

  “Yes,” Jem and Nell said in tandem.

  I felt uncomfortable about the abruptness of their response. “That was really rude, guys,” I told them. “Although it’s true that Jack—who seems to be doing his best Dean Martin impression at the moment— didn’t bother to say a word to us the entire time we were in the studio, even though he knew that I almost died the other night and he hadn’t seen me since I got out of the hospital. So, I guess we really don’t need to extend him our hospitality if we don’t want to.” His snubbing me this evening smarted all the more because of the intimacy we’d shared during the lobster debacle. How could he have kissed me the way he did Friday night in his hotel room and have been such an angel at Mount Sinai and then ignore my existence this evening . . . until now? “We were having a private conversation,” I said rather pointedly to him.