Love in Reality: A Contemporary Romance (The Blackjack Quartet) (11 page)

After his intro had been taped a couple of times, he was positioned facing the new school of Fish.

“Fish, you are about to start swimming toward
The Fishbowl
’s million dollar prize! In a minute, I’m going to tell you to dive into what will be your home for the next two months—that is, if you make it all the way to the finale. But for someone, this week will be their only time in
The Fishbowl
. So get ready to do some strong swimming. Because before this week is out, one of you will be on the hook and fished out—and that will be the end of your time in
The Fishbowl
.”

He paused dramatically, then announced, “But one of you is going to be the strongest Fish, last the longest—and be this season’s winner of
The Fishbowl
.”

Were they expected to do something—cheer? Clap? Look greedy?

Another long period of standing and doing nothing while the crew adjusted the cameras and Jeremy retaped his speech. Libby’s nerves had evaporated in the wake of stultifying boredom. Time to get inside the Fishbowl. Once they were there, the twelve of them could say what they liked. And sit down. Then, before she’d tensed for the start, Jeremy was yelling at them to start swimming!

Libby ran with everyone else into the elaborately decorated set. She saw the hallway and ran immediately to the blue bedroom and plunked her bag on the bed along the far wall. She waited to see who got the other bed. Please let it be the gorgeous Native American woman and not the snotty-looking redhead. Then the baby-faced blond guy raced in and pounced on the other bed.

“Hi, I’m Greg,” he announced.

“Li—Lissa,” she said. She managed a smile. She was still aware of all the hidden cameras and the transmitter at the small of her back.

“Where are you from?” Greg asked.

“Philly. How about you?”

“St. Joseph, Missouri,” he replied proudly. “Birthplace of the Pony Express.”

“I didn’t know that,” Libby admitted.

“Most people don’t,” Greg said. “I could not believe they picked me. You know? I’ve been super excited ever since I got the news. I just wish I could have done more touristy stuff before we moved in. It’s my first time in L.A. I kept thinking my band would get to the Rose Bowl, but it never quite happened.”

“Your band?”

“The Marching Mizzou.”

“Ah.” Best not to tell him she knew nothing about college football. “Well, shall we go out and meet our fellow Fish?”

“Sure,” he replied.

Libby was tempted to wink. Greg looked like a younger brother, not someone who would pressure her into a strategic alliance with him. With his engaging smile and eagerness to chat, Greg seemed good company. One down, ten to go.

As they left the room, Libby spotted the door further along the hall marked “Journal Room.” Finally, she could think it for real. Today she’d get to talk to Rand again.

Rand watched the feeds in the director’s booth, ignoring Marcy’s frantic screeches about imaginary panics. When she left, she took a cartoon-sized weight of tension with her. Everyone exhaled as the door closed.

He went back to the monitor with the best view of Lissa. Rand had watched Lissa snag the blue bedroom and get the Band Geek as her roommate. Based on their body language, there was no sexual tension between them.

Shit. He might have thought about Lissa hooking up with someone in the ’Bowl before now. Rand looked at the master list on the wall. The Jock was probably too young, but the Boy Next Door and the Hunk were around Lissa’s age.

Rand went back to the monitors. Everyone was milling around the living room, so it was hard to get a handle on who was saying what to whom. He hadn’t memorized Debbie’s contestants yet, but he recognized them by their call-sheet labels. Easy to spot the Cougar, for example. And props to Debbie for finding a Vixen with red hair.

Rand checked to see who ended up together in the other bedrooms. The Jock, the Codger, the Hunk and the Vixen were in the largest bedroom. The Sophisticate, the Country Bumpkin and the Cougar were in a third bedroom, which left the Boy and Girl Next Door in the final bedroom with the Goth, who was already scowling darkly at anyone who talked to her.

Charlie wandered in, having checked that the stationary mikes were working correctly.

“Worst part of this job. Waiting for them to get to know each other well enough to fight or scheme or something. Instead, they limit themselves to anodyne platitudes. They all still want to be liked,” he said.

“‘Anodyne platitudes?’” Rand said. “Have you been reading the dictionary again, Charlie?”

“Word-a-day calendar. My wife got it for me. It pisses her off when I actually use the words, so you know—”

Rand nodded. “Yeah, you gotta use the words.”

They watched the camera feeds for a while. The Fish looked awkward and uncomfortable. “I call it the mix-and-meet period,” Rand said. “The only time I can stand them. This game is like a disease that causes them to break out in scheming and petty jealousies. They’re infected, only they’re not symptomatic yet.”

“Yeah,” Charlie said.

A tiny amount of this “getting to know you” dance would be spliced together for the first episode, making it seem the Fish were already conspiring and colluding. Another illusion for the viewer. Jeremy was brilliant at the breathless voice-overs explaining who everyone was, carefully modulated to sound like he was imparting confidential information gathered during the first day or so in the ’Bowl. Actually, the contestants had filled out lengthy questionnaires, coughing up all sorts of incriminating crap long before the show started. Rand’s scripts for Jeremy’s first episode voice-overs had been written weeks earlier based on how Marcy wanted the audience to think about each Fish.

Marcy walked back in. “What do you think?” she asked, waving vaguely at the monitors.

“The Goth—what’s her name?” Charlie asked.

“Hell, I don’t know,” Marcy said.

Rand checked his notes. “Joanna, but she insists on being called Jo.”

“Ri-ight,” Marcy drawled.

“Well, she’s already in a foul temper. Oh—look at that,” Rand said, pointing at the feed from Camera Six, aimed at the huge kitchen. The Goth, Jo, appeared so angry her purple-tipped fauxhawk was quivering.

“Wow,” Marcy said. “I think she’s set a new record. It usually takes people a couple hours before they lose it. Turn up the sound in the kitchen,” she said to the director.

On screen, Jo was screaming at Lissa, “You must have cheated. What about the bedroom thing, hunh?! You act all innocent, but c’mon, admit it. You had to know which bedroom to run to.”

Rand felt his blood go cold. He couldn’t believe this—and with Marcy watching intently. He waited for Lissa’s response.

“Um, I’m sorry? I just ran to the end of the hall. I mean, don’t we all know you have to grab a bed right away?” Lissa looked to the Band Geek for confirmation. Rand released his breath in relief. He was so proud of her—she was doing the Ditz thing perfectly.

“Yeah,” the Band Geek chimed in, rounding on Jo. “What’s this about, anyway? It’s just a bedroom.”

Jo wasn’t mollified. “Oh, you’re so full of shit. We all know that it’s a huge advantage to be in the smaller bedroom. How’d you two get there first? That’s what I want to know.”

By this time, other contestants had come into the kitchen, drawn by the yelling. Rand waited to see what Lissa would do next.

“Wow. I think the game involves more than picking a bedroom. But yeah, of course I wanted that room. We all did. Greg and I just got there first. You know, luck of the draw?” Lissa explained, her face scrunched up in confusion.

“Chill out, man,” the Hunk said to Jo. “It’s way too soon to start hating on someone, you know?”

“Fuck off.” Jo glared at him, then stalked out of the room.

Rand kept watching Camera Six’s feed, which was trained on Lissa. She looked shaken, but he wondered if she wasn’t amused as well.

“Well, that was fun. Our first profanity to bleep out,” Marcy crowed. “Good tape for the Tuesday show. Rand, be sure to ask everyone about the bedroom thing in your Journal Room chats. Okay, people, let’s get the food challenge going, okay? And someone make sure the Ditz and the Goth are on the same team. With any luck, they’ll try to kill each other.”

* * *

Libby’s team won the creature comfort contest, and a disembodied voice—not Rand’s—told them to explore the kitchen pantry. They all listened as the voice explained the rules for their meals. The losing team ate their Fish Food in stony silence as the winners scrambled to make a meal of sandwiches and soft drinks.

After dinner everyone lounged around the living room, talking about what they would miss during their time in the house. The absence of books and magazines was hardest for Libby. Everyone else listed music and TV. The guys were starting to argue about sports when a disembodied voice—Rand’s?—requested Jim to go to the Journal Room. One by one, each player left for a while. When they came back to the living room, they all said the same thing: they weren’t supposed to talk about what they’d said in the Journal Room.

Libby seemed to be the only one left out when the disembodied voice called, “Lissa, please come to the Journal Room.” In fact, a few of the other contestants had already gone to bed.

Her heart was pounding as she got to the door. Rand was—should be—waiting to talk to her. Her palm slipped on the door knob. Deep breath.

The Journal Room was smaller than it looked on TV. There was a sofa that she knew would be on camera, and a table that wouldn’t be. A bottle of water stood there, moisture beading on the clear plastic. Thank God. Her mouth was suddenly gummy with nerves.

“Would you sit on the sofa, please?” a voice asked her. Rand! She turned away from the smoky window opposite the sofa to hide her smile, and fluffed the pillow needlessly, just to damp her excitement.

“Here?” she asked.

“A little to your left.”

She put the water bottle back on the table and shifted her body. He was looking at her. He was behind that window, a darker shape in a dark field. But he’d see her just fine. Having watched every season of
The Fishbowl
, the oddness of the Journal Room shouldn’t have surprised her. She’d been the voyeur and now a few million people would see her on TV. Libby could wrap her head around that.

This? This was hard. Knowing Rand was watching her when she couldn’t see him disconcerted her. A chill rippled over her skin. Libby tried to relax, but the feeling of being on display for Rand titillated as much as it disconcerted her.

“Great,” Rand’s voice sounded very matter-of-fact. “I’m going to ask you questions, but when you answer, it would help if your answer repeated the question as a statement. So if I ask you how your first day went, don’t just say, ‘Great.’ Instead you could say, ‘The first day went great,’ or ‘I found the first day to be really hard.’ Like that.”

“Okay.”

“So, Lissa, how was your first day in the Fishbowl?”

Libby hesitated at the sound of her sister’s name. She was used to the other Fish calling her that. Everything about living in the Fishbowl was so surreal that pretending to be Lissa was perhaps the most normal part of her fake life on reality TV. But Rand was part of her inner life, her life as Libby. In the weeks since they’d last met, she’d forgotten he only knew her as Lissa.

“Sorry,” she said to the dark glass. Libby focused on the question, which she guessed was one that all the contestants had answered. She was getting tired, so she took a bit longer to make sure she was answering as Lissa. “The first day was great, I guess? Long, though. And wow, that challenge was brutal. I’m glad we prevailed.” She caught herself—would Lissa use “prevail” in this situation? Oh, well. Too late.

“Could you describe that scene with Jo earlier?” Rand’s voice asked.

“Um, what about it?” Libby said to buy herself some more time. She had noticed when Jo came back from the Journal Room that she looked annoyed all over again. They’d been on the same team for the creature comfort challenge. Maybe that would smooth out whatever beef Jo had with her, but clearly Jo’s journal entry had gotten her worked up again.

“She got really angry. What was that about?” Rand’s voice said blandly. She stifled a laugh—they both knew that Jo had stumbled on her prior knowledge of the smallest bedroom. Weird that he had to ask her these questions.

“Jo seemed really upset about how I picked the small bedroom. How was I supposed to know it would be the only one with two beds? Greg came in after me, so we’re roommates. Didn’t seem like anything special. The next thing I know, Jo’s screaming at me in the kitchen, accusing me of cheating. Really. I don’t know what Jo’s angry about,” Libby said, playing up the wide-eyed innocence that Lissa had used to escape punishment throughout their childhood. “Maybe she’s just kind of angry all the time? I mean, it was such a shock to have her be mad at me so quickly—I thought I would have to double-cross someone before they’d hate me like that.” She used Lissa’s wistful, “get-out-of-trouble” smile—it never failed to work with Dad.

“Do you worry that if she wins the Shark Fight, she’ll be gunning for you to be fished out?”

“If Jo wins the Shark Fight, I might be in trouble, but why not Greg as well? And anyway, she ought to worry that I’ll win the Shark Fight.” Libby cocked her head in mock-challenge. She had no intention of winning the chance to be the first Shark unless she had to.

Rand laughed, then she could hear him murmuring to someone. Finally, he spoke again, and this time he sounded like himself. “Okay, we’re off tape now.”

“Can I turn off the mike?” she asked, pointing to the black button-shape clipped to her shirt.

“Alas, no. We’ve turned off the feed at this end. The night director’s a buddy of mine, so he’s going to let us talk for a while. If the other Fish start to comment about how long you’ve been in here, we’ll send you back out, but for now we’re cool. But you can’t be un-miked, not ever.”

“Darn,” Libby grinned at the smoky window where she could just see the outline of the camera lens.