Reality Check Page 8

  “Yep. It’ll be an even quicker turnaround for me than I’d originally planned. I’d intended to fly home first thing this morning, take care of some business down there; then pack up what I needed for the telecast of the first Bad Date episode and fly back to New York sometime after noon tomorrow. It’s going to be something of a commute for me for the next thirteen weeks. I’ve got too much going on with the restaurant to just pick up and move here for the duration of the show.” He gave me a quick, passionless peck on the cheek. “Well, I can’t tell you how glad I am that you’re up and about . . . so . . . I guess I’ll see you tomorrow night.” He looked over at my roommates and smiled warmly, waving to them as he headed for the revolving door that emptied onto Madison Avenue. “Nice to see you again, ladies.”

  I felt embarrassed that they did not return his cordiality. “C’mon, you guys, let’s go home. I need what’s left of the weekend to get some sleep before the broadcast.”

  Nell started to laugh. “Used to be Sunday nights was reserved for Walt Disney movies on TV. Now, Bad Date is going to be the main event. What does that say about our society?”

  “Honey,” Jem said in a drawling tone. “If you have to ask, you don’t want to know the answer!”

  We headed for the exit arm in arm, all three of us. Nell started to do a little jig, pulling us to and fro with her. “Lions and tigers and bears! Oh, my!” Jem and I fell into sync and took up the chant; then we jumped into the same bay of the revolving door. Suddenly, we were like little girls in a playground again, dissolving into giggle fits. I felt like shit, but I was deliriously happy. Happy to be alive.

  10/

  Pre-show Jitters

  Nell and Jem were very helpful in outfitting me for the first Bad Date episode. What do you wear on live national television when your arms and legs are still dappled with raised scarlet splotches, and yet you want to give the impression of alluring sexuality? Miraculously, my face and hands had remained unmarked by the rash. We settled on a pair of slim black slacks with just a hint of body-toning Lycra in the fabric and a ribbed cashmere turtleneck. Who cares that I might roast under the lights; at least I would look chic. Nell loaned me a goldtone chain belt, which broke up the monotony of the ensemble. With my stiletto-heeled suede booties, I looked like the prototype of a real New Yorker. Nell, with her perfect, chemically tanned coltish legs, chose to wear a vintage Pucci print minidress in various shades of blue that complemented her eyes, no stockings, and a pair of precipitously high pumps. Jem elected to go with a pearl gray linen pantsuit. I have to admit that half the fun of the day was figuring out what to wear. It took our minds off the butterflies in our stomachs. We assumed the other female contestants were sharing similar anxieties, but wondered if the men on the show had given more than a moment’s thought to their appearance.

  “Are we shallow?” Nell questioned aloud.

  “Do you really want to hear the answer to that?”

  “Jem . . . ,” I warned. I checked my watch. “Five-thirty. The car should be downstairs.” We were expected to be at the studio at six o’clock and report straight to the hair and makeup department. Bad Date went on the air at eight P.M.

  The studio had sent a black limo for us. Its interior smelled of new leather and old money. We felt like VIPs. As soon as we stretched out our legs, marveling at the amount of room, Nell went straight for the complimentary bottle of champagne. “This is so cool you guys! Where do you think they keep the glasses?”

  “In the Green Room after the taping,” Jem said, grasping the bottle by the neck, removing it from Nell’s hand, and replacing it in its leather nesting place.

  Nell wrinkled up her nose. “Spoilsport!”

  “We need to be sharp for this, Nell.”

  “I just wanted to take the edge off.”

  “So do we,” Jem said, looking to me for concurrence. I nodded my head. “But let’s not give them any reasons to kick us off the show before we get to tape a single episode, by walking in buzzed.”

  “Then why did they put a bottle of champagne in the limo?” Nell asked. “If not for us?”

  “I think they probably keep all the limos stocked with bubbly, no matter where the passengers are headed. There’s no sign on the bottle that says, ‘Hi, Nell. Drink me,’ so we shouldn’t assume it was put there specially for us.” I finally got her to give up on the booze.

  The limo pulled up to the back of the television studio and the driver got out and opened the car door for us like we were celebrities. I rang the bell and after waiting about half a minute, we were admitted by a burly stagehand with a salt-and-pepper crew cut who pointed the way to the hair and makeup room.

  We followed a series of hand-lettered signs down an unremarkable and somewhat dark corridor that finally led us to a large room that looked like a beauty salon. The room was a hive of activity with about a dozen individual stations set up with large mirrors rimmed with lights. The counter tops were piled with assorted tools of the trade: brushes, blowdryers, and tackle boxes overflowing with pots and wands and tubes of color. The air smelled of a dozen different colognes.

  I was assigned to a handsome, ponytailed hairdresser named Ethan who made a point of telling me that he was the only straight guy on the hair and makeup staff. He wore a white shirt, crisply ironed, unbuttoned just enough to show a thatch of brown chest hair, and, suspended from a length of rawhide, a Native American amulet: a small leather dream pouch that he wore as a necklace. I watched his hands in the mirror as he ran them through my hair, deciding how to style it for the show. On the middle finger of his right hand he wore a silver ring wrought with Celtic knots.

  “You can really see how great a color your hair is when I blow the wave out of it. You’ve got natural auburny-russet highlights in the chestnut.” While Ethan talked shop, I gave myself over completely to his capable hands, which sent tingles along my scalp. By the time he finished and my makeup artist, Gladiola—a woman with a pierced tongue and fuchsia streak in her bleached blonde hair—had worked her magic, I felt very glamorous indeed.

  “Listen up, folks!” I looked in the mirror and saw that Rob Dick had entered the room and was clapping his hands for silence. “Hi there, remember me? Just your friendly producer here, to say hello and welcome, and to wish you luck. You all look terrific. Let’s have a round of applause for our talented hair and makeup staff!”

  We obeyed him like a flock of dutiful sheep.

  “We’ve got dressing room assignments posted on the door here, so take a gander at them on your way out of the room. You can lock up your personal belongings in there for the duration of the taping each week. For the first half of the season until we ‘attrit,’ so to speak, you’ll have a dressing-room mate, except for two of you who will have your own room, since we’ve got an odd number of each gender.”

  Rob Dick clapped his hands again to get our attention. “Okay, now, I went over the guidelines for the show with each of you at your auditions and interviews, but let me reiterate that we’re on live TV. That means no curse words, even though we’ve got a seven-second air delay, so we can bleep you if it comes to that. However, let me remind you that Bad Date, the most honest reality show on television, is family entertainment and we don’t want to alienate any of our sponsors nor do we wish to offend our audience.”

  I couldn’t help myself. “Yeah, we don’t want the kiddies to switch channels from true-life tales of our miserable sex lives to Nickelodeon, now, do we?” I caught Ethan winking at me in the mirror.

  “Keep it up, Ms. Pemberley,” Rob Dick said.

  Shit.

  The producer approached my chair. “No, I mean it.” I felt his warm breath in my ear as he whispered to me. “I told you at your interview that your quick wit was just the ingredient the show needed to have a natural foil for our host Rick Byron.” He patted my shoulder reassuringly, then thought of something else and leaned down to me again. “Just don’t go too far.”

  Rob Dick returned to the doorway and resumed his group pep
talk. “Another thing to remember: When you share your bad date experiences, you will be connected to finger electrodes that will monitor your remarks like a polygraph. Behind the head of the speaker will be a big screen that will show the results of the polygraph right on TV. So, if you gild the lily, the world is watching and our studio audience will more than likely liquidate you. Remember, keep your eyes on the prize and strategize. There are intercom speakers in each dressing room, so you’ll receive updates on how many minutes we’ve got until air time, plus a real-live human stage manager—oh, here she is now, folks, this is Geneva.”

  An efficient-looking, young, black woman with fifties-style harlequin eyeglasses had just poked her head in the door and whispered something to Rob Dick. She showed him the time on a large stopwatch that hung from her neck on a woven lanyard, the kind you make in arts and crafts at day camp. She waved at us, whispered something else to Rob Dick, and left the room.

  “So, that’s Geneva,” the producer continued. “She will knock on your door to let you know your calls, just in case the sound system is a little wonky. We’ve got an after-show party in the Green Room, which is all the way down the hall to your left as you exit this room. Dressing rooms are off to the right; the letters are on the door, along with your nameplates, so you can’t get lost. So . . . that’s all I have to say for now. Just go out there and make commercially viable entertainment!”

  No one knew if we were expected to applaud, so we did, just to be on the safe, butt-kissing side.

  Now that we were all beautified, glamorized, and pep-talked, we were free to head off to our respective dressing rooms. I checked the assignments posted on the door. Jem and Nell were assigned to share a room. I was paired with someone surnamed Fortunato. I looked at the men’s list. Jack got the long straw, his own dressing room. Lucky devil. I hadn’t said a word to him since I got to the studio. Nor had he acknowledged my presence, or indicated that he knew Nell or Jem. Was that part of a strategy attributed to him by my suspicious roommates—not to let anyone know that he was already acquainted with three of the contestants? Or was he just being inexplicably rude? Or could his aloofness simply be due to the fact that he was just as nervous as we were, and was just putting his “game face” on? Still, I’d have thought at the very least he would have found some way of asking me how I was feeling.

  A woman with heavily moussed blue-black hair wearing a hot pink sweater, leather miniskirt, fishnet stockings, and thigh-high boots was following me down the hall to the dressing room. “Hey,” she called out, “you Pemberley?”

  I turned around. “I’m Liz Pemberley.”

  She stuck out her hand. “Candy Angela Fortunato. Do you think they’ll make me take my gum out for the show?” She snapped it for emphasis. “You can just call me ‘Candy’ because the ‘Angela’ part makes it too long. Looks like we’re sharing a room.”

  We arrived at Dressing Room A. The door was unlocked. At first glance, the décor was impersonal but comfortable. One wall was mirrored and lit in the same way that the hair and makeup room had been. The dressing table stretched the length of the mirror. There was a little sink, a hanging bar for clothes, and a door that led to a toilet. Elaborate floral displays, courtesy of the Urban Lifestyles Channel, greeted us, the enormous rubrum lilies perfuming the narrow room with their pungent scent. A tray of soft drinks and Perrier, with glasses and an ice bucket, rested on a low table between the two armchairs.

  Candy sank into one of the armchairs and threw her legs over the side. “Well, whaddya say we kick back until they need us?” She surveyed the room. “I wonder if they can get me a Dr Pepper. I don’t drink any of that stuff,” she said, pointing to the beverage bottles. “Actually,” she added, sliding up her skirt and removing a small silver flask from a black garter encircling her thigh, “this is just what the doctor ordered.” She waved the flask at me. “Bourbon. Dr Pepper and a splash of Jack is to die for.”

  “Jack?” My head was somewhere else. Another Jack. The one whose business card I was still carrying like a talisman in my wallet.

  “Jack Daniels,” Candy replied. “Whatsamatter with you? You don’t drink?”

  Candy’s Brooklyn accent was so thick you could cut it with a chainsaw. It sounded to me like she’d said “witchyou,” instead of “with you.” I shook my head, declining her offer. “Not before the show.”

  “Ya sure?” Candy took a swig.

  “Positive. But thanks.”

  Candy capped her flask and replaced it in its satin holster. She adjusted her skirt in a ladylike manner that seemed oddly out of character.

  An announcement over our intercom told us we had ten minutes before we were needed on set. There was a knock on the door and a young man came in to hook us up with body mikes. He tucked the battery pack down the waistband on the back of my pants. I turned around to look at him, somewhat appalled. “Oh, don’t worry,” the man said matter-of-factly, “no one will see it there.”

  A few minutes later, Geneva knocked on the door and we joined the other contestants, following her into a holding room just outside the soundstage. “You’ll all be seated on set in just a minute, so you’ll be in place by the time we actually go on the air. Break a leg, everyone,” she said flatly.

  I surreptitiously reached for Jem and Nell’s hand and gave each a little good luck squeeze. Maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea to take a leaf from Jack’s book and not act like I knew anyone really well. Studio staffers had materialized to escort us to the sort of chairs that stars have on movie sets, those high captain’s numbers with wooden footrests and canvas backs that have names stenciled on them. First thing I checked for was whether mine was correctly spelled. Once we were seated, the mike guy came around again to make sure that everything was still copacetic, asked each of us to say a couple of words as a “sound check,” and then the hair and makeup people gave us a final once-over. Ethan smoothed one recalcitrant strand of hair back into place, then pronounced me “magnificent” and “foxy.” Gladiola dipped an enormous brush into a jar of loose face powder, tamped the handle against the side of the jar to eliminate the excess, and daubed my face to take down the shine.

  I noticed that each of the three cameras had a red light on top to indicate when it was on. “Don’t worry about playing to the camera,” Gladiola whispered. “He’ll find you. Just try to act natural.”

  Act natural. Yeah, right. The audience was staring at us as though we were lab rats. I felt a sudden wave of nausea and that urge to pee that you only get when you know you don’t have the opportunity to go. Geneva walked to downstage center and stood by the shoulder of the man operating camera two. She counted down from “five,” splaying her fingers until she got to “one,” when she pointed directly upstage and there was a burst of horn music. The show’s theme song had begun.

  “Welcome to Bad Date, America’s hot new reality TV show!” the announcer’s voice boomed. “Where our nation’s most pathetic singles compete for a million dollars by sharing their worst experiences, totally live and totally uncensored! Now”—there was the obligatory drum roll—“let’s meet the host of Bad Date, fresh from his starring role in the blockbuster film What’s Your Sign?”—another obligatory drum roll—“Hollywood’s Reigning Hunk . . . Rick Byron!”

  Hollywood’s Reigning Hunk bounded onto the stage in head to toe black Armani, all boyish charm and gleaming capped teeth. The crowd went nuts. I couldn’t see whether there was an APPLAUSE sign cueing them. Or a sign that said “squeal and act like he’s all four Beatles arriving at Idlewild.” Or was the New York airport called “Kennedy” by then? I blinked, realizing I was spacing out.

  “Hey, hey, hey,” Rick called out to the audience. They squealed again. “Welcome to Bad Date! Are we ready to rock and roll?!”

  He turned his hand-held mike to the crowd to record and amplify their response. “Yeaaaaahhhhhh!” they screamed madly.

  I gripped the wooden arms of my chair, feeling like I was on an airstrip increasing speed before takeoff
, and thought to myself, Hang on, girlfriend, it’s going to be a bumpy night.

  11/

  The First Episode

  “And we’re back, folks!” Rick said after the first commercial break, which came only moments after we went on the air, and during which our faces were repowdered and our hair touched up and teased back to lacquered perfection. “We’re going to introduce you to our contestants, now . . . ladies and gentlemen . . . our Bad Date producer scoured the country for fourteen of the most pathetic people on the planet, and you voyeurs in our studio audience will get to hear all about their miserable little love lives and then decide who gets to go and”—he gestured to the illuminated Plexiglas platform on which all of our chairs were placed—“who gets voted off our island!”

  The audience cheered.

  “First up alphabetically,” Rick said, “we have Luke Arrowcatcher.” One of the cameras zoomed in for a close up of Luke’s handsomely chiseled Native American features. “Luke is an ‘aboriginal American,’ folks, which means . . . he’s a real-life Indian!”

  I wondered if Rick’s banter was scripted. The patter made him sound like such a moron. A politically incorrect moron at that.

  “Luke’s tribe runs a casino in upstate New York where Luke works as a croupier. Tell us a little more about yourself, Kimo Sabe.”

  Luke didn’t crack a smile. “Why waste air?”

  Rick was temporarily thrown a curve. I saw Geneva make a looping gesture with her finger indicating he should move on to the next contestant.

  “Next we have the—might I say very lovely—isn’t she a knockout, folks? Anella A-vig-non.”