P.J. Morse - Clancy Parker 02 - Exile on Slain Street (3 page)

Muriel laughed and licked her lips. “Yeah, if I got a piece of Patrick Price…”

Harold started blushing and harrumphing, so I cut her off before she could go into graphic detail. “You know, when I was a kid, I preferred Sean Morgan. He was all serious. But Patrick played great guitar.”

Muriel laughed and sat in Harold’s rocking chair. “That’s our Clancy.” Then she imitated the voice of a high-strung nerd. “Why, yes, I believe Patrick is good-looking, but I am interested in him solely on a professional level. Perhaps we can play guitar together, right after a thrilling game of bridge!”

I rolled the poster back up and tapped her on the head with it. “That’s enough.”

Wayne stirred, sat up and chimed in, “It’s not about Patrick. It’s about the ladies on the show. They fight and yell and it’s all like mud wrestling and then Patrick comes in and says,” — Wayne affected a smooth-talking voice here — “‘Oh, baby, how can I make it all better?’ And that’s the boring part because I like it when they start fighting and yelling again.”

Harold said, “Wayne, you are on to something. I have always felt that reality television is merely a form of professional wrestling.” He adjusted his glasses. “Let’s meet these lovely ladies who will challenge Clancy in the ring.”

I joined Wayne on the floor and pressed play on the DVD remote. I had to hit fast-forward because it took a few minutes for each woman to sit down, and the interviews had been recorded on low-quality video. A blue-eyed woman with wavy, platinum-blonde hair took a seat, and she held a card saying, “Andi: Phoenix, 24.”

“Whoa,” Shane said once Andi lowered the card to her lap. If I hadn’t been assured that she was human, I would have mistaken her for a Muppet. She had dirigibles attached to her chest, and her legs poked out of her inflated torso like two needles.

Muriel laughed, “I think there’s an unwritten law that says every reality show must include at least one contestant who spells her name with a gratuitous ‘i.’”

Wayne yelled, “I’m in love!” He clutched a couch pillow to his chest. Some of the stuffing started to puff out.

“I’m glad I’m not actually trying to win this thing,” I sighed.

Andi seemed confident in front of the camera, but her voice came out like she’d just swallowed helium and she couldn’t stop giggling. I could hear Kevin say off camera that she was going to need to watch that. He said, “Sweetie, how can we keep you around if we don’t understand what you’re saying?”

“Oh… oh… I guess so.” And then she giggled merrily away. Her dilated pupils danced everywhere, and she didn’t seem to know where she was throughout the entire interview.

And then came Topaz: Las Vegas, 29. She was all bad attitude, plus tattoos and a weave. She had never heard Patrick’s music, but she said she was legit for the show because she had dated some of the white players with the Oakland Raiders and the Denver Broncos. Defensive line only, she noted, as if football groupies were connoisseurs. She said that Patrick was the hottest white man she’d ever seen. Kevin asked her about her police record, as she was the one who had attacked a man with the high heel. She stared right into the camera, arched an impeccably groomed eyebrow, and said, “Don’t come at me, and I won’t come at you.”

“I won’t come at you, lady!” Shane said, waving his hands. “She’s good TV! She’s, like, hot and mean all at the same time!”

“Dominatrix vibe!” Wayne agreed.

Topaz certainly made an impression. I didn’t want to piss her off.

Then we had Dawn, a 22-year-old flight attendant from Minnesota with bobbed blonde hair, plump freckled cheeks, and dangerously skinny arms.

Off-camera, Kevin asked, “Do you have any experience with acting?”

“Well, I did some musicals in Duluth, sir.”

“Sir?” Kevin laughed. “You don’t need to call me ‘sir.’ You can call me ‘Kevin.’”

“Yes, sir,” Dawn said. Then she realized what she just did and blushed.

Harold shook his head. “She’s a child. She will be eaten alive.”

Kevin seemed to realize this, and he asked, “Why would you audition for a reality show? You seem like a good girl.”

“Well… Kevin,” Dawn said, touching the pink barrette in her hair. “I love these dating shows, and
Atomic Love
was my favorite.”

“Because of Patrick’s band? The Nuclear Kings?”

Dawn shook her head. “No. I don’t like hard-rock music, but Patrick seemed so kind. He was so much nicer than all the other guys on dating shows. And I just love all the romance of it. I saw there was an audition, and I asked my parents what they thought of it. They told me I should go for it!”

Kevin laughed. “You are adorable! I love that you asked your parents. I’ve never heard of that one before.”

Dawn sat up straighter in her chair. “But I’m not a goody two-shoes!” she protested. Then she pulled the barrette out of her hair and shook out some strands. “I can be romantic, too, especially for a nice guy like Patrick!”

“If you’re for real,” Kevin continued, “you’re in, as long as you can prove you’re old enough to drink.”

Then Dawn’s interview wrapped up. Dawn seemed so sweet that I wanted to step in front of the camera and stop the filming, but her passion for Patrick Price struck me as stalker-ish.

Tina from Miami followed up, and with her dark hair and dark tan, she was everything Dawn wasn’t. She stared into the camera as if she wanted to give it a sloppy kiss at best or flash it at worst. When she wasn’t flirting with Kevin in Spanish, she prefaced nearly every story she had with, “Oh, I did that for
Playboy
” and concluded with, “I cannot tell you how much I love sex!” Then she would smooth her brunette hair, giggle, and twitch her hips in the seat. I wondered what she could do for the show that could be aired before a network audience.

We heard Cookie before we saw her sit down. She was chattering in a Texas twang about what she’d like to do to Patrick if she got five minutes alone with him. Then she plopped down. The card on her chest said she was twenty-nine, which was generously low. I put her at about thirty-five, a good-looking thirty-five, but certainly not twenty-nine.

As soon as Cookie started talking into the camera, Harold asked me to turn down the television. “I saw the Nuclear Kings on their first tour when they came through Houston!” she proclaimed. “When they opened for the Smashing Pumpkins! I was there from the beginning!” She kept whipping around her jet-black hair, like a pony would with its tail.

Off camera, Kevin prodded Cookie to talk about her favorite Nuclear Kings song. She didn’t miss a beat before saying, “‘High Tide.’ Easy.” She started tapping out the drumbeat from the song on the arms of her chair.

Shane joined in, tapping on the armchair of Harold’s sofa. He said, “She has rhythm.”

I was impressed. “High Tide” was from the second Nuclear Kings album and wasn’t even a single. She wasn’t fronting. She was a genuine fan. Unfortunately, that also put her in my log as a possible stalker. Surely a stalker would know every Nuclear Kings song: even the obscure ones.

Then I heard Kevin shout “There’s our pro!” as an auburn-haired, blue-eyed woman whose card read “Lorelai: LA, 25” sat down. “So, are you ready for another reality merry-go-round?” he asked.

She laughed. “It’s all in good fun. Pays better than the work I’ve been getting lately.”

“But you had a speaking part in a movie, right? What was that movie, again?”

“I was a bank teller in
Laguna Beach Mafia
. I can’t believe you saw that.” I grabbed my laptop, which I’d parked on Harold’s coffee table, and looked up what other “reality merry-go-round” she’d been on. The show was
Bikini Girls Ahoy!
, a show that Kevin also produced, which was about aspiring swimsuit models. She was listed as being on for only three episodes, so Kevin probably felt like he owed her more screen time. She was pretty, but in a way that was more wholesome and wide-eyed than the rest of the women. If Dawn were the innocent and Tina and Andi were the tramps, then Lorelai fell somewhere in between.

When we were finished with the DVD, Wayne mumbled, “I feel like I just ate a whole bag of junk food. With my brain.”

Shane shook an empty bowl that once held nacho chips and replied, “I did eat a whole bag of junk food! And it was great! Clancy, you are a lucky woman!”

“I don’t know,” Harold declared. As our official elder, he always had the final say on everything. “All of these women would drive me bonkers.”

I had to agree. Each woman on the tape acted as if being on camera was her god-given right. Some of them, like Dawn, Lorelai and Cookie, seemed like they might be relatively easy to deal with, but even they looked into the camera as if they expected it to fill a gaping hole in their lives.

Chapter Four:
Eau De Psycho

W
hen Kevin pulled up in his silver Mercedes, Harold and I were already waiting outside the apartment. While he got out, he jabbered away into a clip-on cell phone earpiece, yelling at someone that they needed to get more champagne for the first night of shooting, or there would be hell to pay. “And don’t get the rosé this time — that shit stains the carpet!” he yelled.

He then turned to me and smiled, as if he hadn’t been shouting a second before. He wore a grey shirt that had the slightest bit of glitter. He reminded me of one of those alpha-male seals who preened themselves on Fisherman’s Wharf and basked in the adoration of the tourists. “You have no idea how glad I am to see you. We’ve got trouble already. The stalker is back, and she’s writing love notes.”

He handed it to me. The paper and the envelope were light purple. It was spattered with a darker red color. After Kevin popped open the trunk and let me throw my duffel bag in the back, I opened the letter. The lines had been printed out in a plain black font:

Purple is for the king

Purple is for what I want, the ring

Purple is the blood that will spill when I do my thing

Harold leaned over my shoulder to read the missive. “Well, she’s not much of a poet, huh?” He sniffed the envelope and wrinkled his nose. “And she is heavily perfumed. Methinks you will find her by her
eau de psycho
.”

“Who’s this guy?” Kevin asked, pointing at Harold.

“Harold Cho. My landlord and spiritual advisor.”

Kevin shook Harold’s hand. He was about a foot taller than Harold and three times as wide. Harold said, “Take good care of her, will you?”

Kevin stepped back and looked from Harold to me. “He might be good on camera.”

“Ooooh!” Harold clapped his hands.

“Hold your horses, Harold,” Kevin told him. “I just know an interesting personality when I see one.”

“You are not kidding,” I said.

Kevin stroked his black goatee. “We haven’t gone after the over-60 demographic, but everyone loves a naughty elderly person. Look at Betty White! Cloris Leachman!”

Harold asked Kevin, “Should I swap my AARP card for a SAG card?” Then the two nudged each other like old pals. Harold said, “Me and the Marquee Idols are betting on Andi for the runner-up and Lorelai for the win.”

“What? Not Clancy for the win?” Kevin chuckled, but he looked at his cell phone.

At that point, Harold’s face turned serious. “Just get her home safely.”

“You got it, buddy,” Kevin said. “We’ll call you if we need you.”

Kevin and I got in the car, and I saw Harold standing, waving and watching as the car took off. I waved back, turned to Kevin and explained, “Harold’s worried. Those drops on the bottom of your little purple letter look like blood. You sure you don’t want to bring in the cops? The real deal?”

“And ruin the show? The network is heavily invested in this one, and it’s high-stakes for us. The crazy shit in this letter just confirms I was right to hire you.” Kevin started cutting through the city traffic toward the Golden Gate Bridge.

“So, who is going to know about me?” I asked.

Kevin said, “No one but me. You need anything, you tell me.”

I asked, “But what if you’re not there?”

Kevin had an answer for that. “If it’s an emergency, go to Wolf. Tell him what’s up, and he’ll help. You can’t miss him.”

“Who’s Wolf?” I asked.

“Patrick’s body man. His cousin.”

“Oh!” I finally remembered Wolf from watching the first season of
Atomic Love
. He was indeed a body no viewer could miss. He was shaped roughly like a slab of beef, he had a short black faux-hawk, and he wore gigantic plugs in his earlobes. If Patrick was grunge, Wolf was punk. On the show, he had been presented as a combination of a bodyguard and philosopher, like Henry Rollins, only Wolf was more caffeinated and didn’t make as much sense. I was worried I couldn’t speak his language, which appeared to be Zen. “How’s Wolf going to know I need help if you’re the only one who knows who I really am?”

“All you have to do is say the word ‘Sean,’ and he’ll get me. That was our panic word last season. Wolf will be a big help to you. He spends much of his time making sure the ladies don’t kill each other.”

“Has that been a problem?” I asked, cracking the window slightly. I could still smell what Harold called the “eau de psycho” from the stalker’s letter, and I thought that the scent smelled like one of those floral, drugstore-knockoff perfumes that preteen girls tend to wear.

Kevin shrugged. “We’ve had a couple of lawsuits in our time… other than one settlement, we beat ‘em all.”

“What about rest of the crew? Shouldn’t they know about me?”

Kevin twitched the wheel slightly, almost scraping a MUNI bus going parallel to him on Van Ness. “No. Some of the crew… I don’t trust them. A few of them just want to trash the show. You’ll probably get an earful of this — the crew wants a raise. They have a low pain tolerance.”

“For what?”

Kevin shrugged. “Long hours. But it’s television. You wanna succeed, you better make it your life.”

“Reality television makes a lot of money,” I said. I didn’t add that the crew probably just wanted a fair cut. The only people on reality television who made money were the networks, the producers, and the rare individual who somehow broke into a legitimate career or married a famous person. The existence of a single success story was enough to give all the other contestants hope.