Everybody Knows Your Name (9 page)

From the driveway the mansion reminds me of the Alamo, if the Alamo had been built in 2003 and had six bathrooms and a waterfall pool. Even though it's extremely late, you can see the house plain as day, they've got it so lit up: red roof tiles, arched windows, spotlights reflecting yellow off the thick plaster walls. They don't build them like this at home, these Spanish-looking houses that seem solid enough to ricochet a cannonball.

I look at this place before me and I'm blown away, but I'm also thinking it's going to be hard to get comfortable, what with the first elimination a day away. Someone is going to have a real short visit.

Dillon and I get out of the last van. Our shoes touch wet ground, and I ask, “Did it rain while we were in that party?”

“What, you don't watch
The Bachelor
?” he says. “On these shows they really like to spray the driveways down with water. Looks better on camera.”

Sure enough, the camera and sound guys are set up ahead of us, waiting to capture our first reactions to the mansion. I try to put on an awed country boy face, feeling like that's what they must want. Looking ahead, I see Magnolia already standing at the door with the rest of the group since she came in the first van. She leans against the wall with the glowing doorbell.

“Come on, man,” says Dillon. “We get the inside of it too.”

We walk up the rest of the driveway, and Catherine gestures to the crew that we're ready for the next shot. They disappear around the side of the mansion. She goes up to the front double doors. I look at Magnolia. Magnolia looks at me. I can't read her, not even a word. We look away from each other.

Catherine claps. “Okay, guys, I'm going to need high energy. I'm going to need
Tiger Beat
kind of lunacy, but it's a house you're losing your nuts over, like you love it so much you want to date it. So it's open mouths and a lot of
oh my God
s. Pretend like it hasn't already been a long night. Got it?” She pokes her head in one of the doors to make sure the crew's ready on the other side, and then she stages McKinley to be the one who lets us in.

He presses down on an iron lever, and we walk in with our mouths already open.

I don't say anything. I can't.

Because the first floor of the mansion is the size of California. I honestly don't know what one family would do with all the space (play really long games of hide-and-go-seek or something?). There are framed photographs of girls at the ocean and hot orange sunsets and galaxies in space about six feet tall, no kidding. And I have no clue what the paintings are supposed to be, but they're just as big and just as overwhelming. The leather and see-through furniture is the kind you see on TV that nobody actually owns. Suddenly everyone's going crazy, even though we're exhausted. It's like a summer camp with no counselors in here.

Nikki takes off sprinting down a long marble hallway, laughing, and the twins and Ricky are already running upstairs. McKinley grabs one of the furry pillows from a couch in the open living room and hits Belinda in the head with it. She's still seeming kind of fried from tonight—her performance was really out there, and I suspect, from my vast experience, that she might have been on something. Either way, she starts laughing like a maniac. Even Gardner cracks a smile when he looks in the built-in aquarium by the stairs and sees it's filled with a bunch of black fish.

Magnolia heads off toward the glass doors that lead to the backyard. Dillon says to me, “We've got to get the best bedroom!” with real panic in his voice, so we head up that way. Hector follows right behind us, his camera at the back of our heads.

I think I'm starting to be able to tell the twins apart, so I'm pretty sure it's Mila who is already fighting with Ricky over a bedroom. Hector goes running into that room to capture the drama. I pass by one of the bathrooms and there's Felicia (pretty sure) doing gymnastics. The bathroom is that spacious. Dillon says, “You're so flexible” to her, and then he takes a running jump into the tub that's the size of a boat.

While Dillon's taking a soak in his clothes, I leave that bathroom and walk by myself down the upstairs hallway. I come to what I guess is an entertainment room, and sit down on a luxurious couch that feels like it was taken out of its store packaging just a second ago. And I just know I'm the first person to ever sit here. I let myself feel it.

Back home, our stuff was
used.
Even my family's living room couch has a complicated history: it belonged to Grandma Tilda for thirty years before she died and gave it to Aunt Rose, whose son Brad slept on it for two years before he traded it to his friend, David Barr, for a rusted-out '86 Camaro with no engine. When David got a job cleaning up after an oil spill in Texas, he gave it to Sissy, even though she had turned down his marriage proposal about five times, and then one day there it was in my parents' living room with the same fading flowers I remembered from when I visited Grandma Tilda when I was a kid. Y'know,
used
.

I take a second, alone in this room, to look around at where I am.

I finally say, “Oh my God.” But it's not caught on camera, so it's like my proverbial tree falling in the forest.

Still, I heard myself say it.

“Hello, Cheboygan! Are you ready to rock?” Dillon asks the full-length mirror in our new room, pointing a finger at an imaginary audience as he sweeps his arm to make sure the whole fantasy stadium feels included. Still just as wired as he was last night.

He's working on what he calls his “stage posturing.” He says that growing up performing in a giant mega temple, you learn that you can't do things just for the people in the front row. You want them to see your moves up in the cheap seats. You've got to go big. For him this means standing with his legs spread really wide, swinging his arms in giant circles, and throwing in a jump kick after a high note.

I try to point out to him, “We're really performing for the cameras and they're taking close-ups half the time, so maybe we don't need to
overdo
it.” But he's in the middle of another jump kick.

“I'm going to the kitchen. You want anything?” I ask.

“You're gonna go look for the Superstar.” Dillon points at me, smiling like he's caught me at something.

Last night, after every room in the mansion had been explored, Catherine called us back downstairs. We were nearly delirious, they'd kept us up so late. Jazz Billingham was standing in front of the leather couches in a tiny tux kind of thing, but she wouldn't look at anyone until Skip was in place and ready to start filming. It seemed like it should have been way past her bedtime.

Once the camera was on, Jazz came alive. “Somewhere in this house there has been hidden a silver statuette called the Superstar. . . .” She took a dramatic pause. “And the one person who finds the Superstar can use it
one time
to stop herself from getting sent home.”

“Herself?” panicked Ricky. “It's only for the girls?”

“No.” Jazz sighed. “But person is singular, so it needs a singular pronoun.”

Catherine stepped toward Jazz from out of the shot and motioned for a new take. We could hear Catherine muttering to Jazz, “Jesus Christ, just say ‘themselves.'”

So we reset, and Jazz did the announcement over again, even though it seemed painful for her.

On the flat-screen TV, Jazz showed us a picture of the Superstar, which to me just looked like a silvery, genderless six-inch alien with a shooting star in its hands. She told us the rules. If the losing contestant produces the Superstar, then the next-to-last loser has to go home. And we're not allowed to hurt each other while looking for the Superstar, or the involved parties both lose the Superstar privilege. I listened, half-asleep. But when we wrapped, right away people started to poke around, myself included.

Just now, though, I wasn't being sneaky about going to the kitchen.

“I'm really going to the kitchen,” I promise Dillon. “Seriously. So you want anything?”

“I want to rock! And maybe some Cheez-Its.” He launches off his bed and goes spread-eagle in the air. Twenty-four hours a day this guy is performing at Madison Square Garden in his head. Other than that, he's not a bad dude. I leave him alone with his millions of fans.

Once I step out of our room, I'm still thinking about the Superstar, but even more than that, I'm thinking about Magnolia. Since yesterday's show and move-in, they've been shooting us nonstop. But we've been given the night off, so maybe I can finally talk to her without a camera in our faces. The house is so big that sometimes you really have to go looking if you want to find someone.

If you do find someone, though, you might not even be sure what you have to say. The kiss is already starting to feel unreal.

Still, if it didn't really happen, I don't know why I'm so damn conscious of who's in a room from the second I walk in. Like when I stop by the entertainment room, I instantly know she's not in there, even before I know who is.

The twins and Ricky are dancing to an Azealia Banks video playing on the giant flat-screen. The twins look like a mirror image, nailing every single one of the moves in perfect time. Ricky is really doing his own thing, which is mostly a lot of crotch grabbing.

I sit on the arm of the couch to watch for a second, maybe thinking someone else will come in. And then I realize that I've started involuntarily nodding a little because watching the three of them dance makes you feel like you have to dance too.

“You looking for Magnolia?” Felicia (I think?) asks, and gives Mila (90 percent confident it's Mila) a sly glance. The twins have this way of looking at each other that makes it seem like they can communicate full thoughts through eye contact alone. It makes you feel like you're with people who speak a different language.

“No.” I try to sound casual. “Just messin' around.”

“She's not here anyway. Some guy came to see her,” Felicia says.

“Really? What guy?” I ask, forgetting to act cool.

“Don't know. This white, blond guy. I guess
some
people think the ‘no guests' rule doesn't apply to them.”

“Hmm” is all I got. My face feels hot as I stand and walk away. Where are all these feelings coming from? I mean, what did I think was happening here anyway? I barely know this girl. All I should be thinking about is the competition. It might be the only chance in life I'll ever get. But I can't deny what was there just a second ago, a knot in my stomach and a burning in my face. I jog down the stairs.

On the first floor I pass a bathroom and see Nikki applying eyeliner to Gardener. Laying it on pretty thick. I grin at them. Nikki beams back. Gardener just gives me that blank stare of his.

In the kitchen I find McKinley sitting at the counter, texting, looking all serious and grown-up, while his mom makes him a PB&J. I poke around the cabinets a little and end up just grabbing an apple.

“I said no crust, Mom,
c'mon
,” McKinley says like he's talking to his personal maid. He slides the plate back over to her, shaking his head at me like,
Can you believe moms these days?
His mom starts slicing off the crusts without complaint.

My mother would have been slicing off my eyebrow if I pulled a move like that. I don't know if that makes her a worse mother or a better one.

I walk out the doors to the back patio. The night is still warm. The grounds are lit up by small lamps along the pathways. The place smells like I imagine the Garden of Eden would, with purple jacarandas and white honeysuckle growing all over the place.

The pool throws disco ball lights around the yard. It's more like a waterpark than a swimming pool, though, what with the giant waterfall pouring over fake boulders that are slides too. Would they have hidden the statue outside? Jazz didn't say if the outdoors counts. If anybody is gonna need that Superstar to get through this thing, it's me. These people have singing voices trained to do everything except the dishes. And, honestly, as much as I'd like to win without a cheap freebie pass, I'm not above using it. I'd use it in a flat second.

So I should be searching for that thing like I'm Indiana Jones and it's the Lost Ark, but I'm feeling crazy trapped. Like I need to escape. Where do you go to escape from the place you escaped to?

I get an idea, and continue around to the front.

My motorcycle is parked outside the garage, light reflecting off its silver gas tank. The producers have made it clear that they don't want us leaving the grounds. But all I want to do is go for a ride so my nervous energy will just vibrate out through the handlebars.

I push my bike quietly to the side gate. I'm not supposed to know the code to this number pad, but I watched the pool guy punch it in this morning. The gate silently swings open. I hop on the bike and point it downhill.

The headlight shows another mansion's gate just across the street. There's so much money up here. The Hollywood Hills have mansions on top of mansions, most of them hidden behind walls and hedges. Seems like rich people want to live as close together as possible but never actually see each other. The streets up here are tight and twisty, like a rat's maze. And I guess these are the rats that got all the cheese.

Leander used to tell me stories about the band he was in in the late sixties, the Escalators. He'd show me their old photos—a young whip-thin Leander with dark hair cut like he was in the Rolling Stones. A devilish grin. He hadn't always been an old grayhead whose sad eyes seem like they see everything in slow motion. It's hard to imagine time could change anyone that much.

One of their songs hit it big in Texas and then started getting play in California. They came out to LA to go on one of those TV shows where teenagers danced around while the band lip-synched its hit song. It seemed like they were really going to make it.

But after they got back to Texas, their lead singer overdosed on drugs and things just fell apart. The band members all drifted off and ended up working at gas stations and diners and such. I think it took Leander a lot of years to realize that it was all over.

Still, while they were in LA, they played at a place called the Whisky a Go Go on the Sunset Strip. It was a famous venue back then, and a lot of rock legends played there: Jimi Hendrix, the Doors, Led Zeppelin—all the big ones. Leander said he even hung out with Janis Joplin one night.

I asked Jesse the PA about the place earlier, and he said it was still there. The winding streets from the hills all descend onto Sunset Boulevard, and from here it isn't supposed to be far. Sunset Boulevard, Melrose, Mulholland Drive—even the streets in this town are famous. I pull onto Sunset, heading west.

Broad curves wind between slick hotels and strip malls. But it's the thirty-foot-tall palms leaning wildly over both sides of the street, like crazy cartoon trees, that make me really feel where I am.

A police car speeds past me, sirens blaring. I'm imagining some fictional movie cop like Denzel Washington in the driver's seat. The Chateau Marmont hotel rises up on my right (famous for having some famous guests act up, mistreat the furniture, even die there, Jesse told me). Multistory buildings pasted with billboards of eighty-foot-tall Victoria's Secret models. You can't not look at them, but I don't know how you can see them straight without running into the back of the car in front of you.

Then, on a corner across from a gas station, painted completely over in a red so dark that it's almost like it doesn't want to be seen, is the Whisky. I park on the street and get out to take a look.

It's not what I expected. After all the years of listening to Leander, I guess I thought it would somehow be stuck in its glory days of the sixties. Hippies lounging around outside, Jim Morrison's ghost hanging from the roof by his fingertips. But it's a quiet Wednesday night, and there aren't many people around, living or dead.

Still, I like to think about young Leander being here, in this very spot, in those days when everything was going right for him.

“Ford, hey, Ford, over here!”

I look over in confusion and see a very large black guy videotaping me. A light is in my face. I think he just said my name—is he talking to me?

“Ford! How's the show going, buddy?” the guy asks from behind his camera. He is talking to me. I think maybe he's one of those paparazzi guys. I'm shocked to realize that something is already starting between the show and the outside world. The first episode only aired last night. But it's in motion. He knows who I am.

“Fine,” I say, wondering if I'm even supposed to talk about it.

“What's going on with you and Magnolia?”

That question knocks me off-balance. I guess I expected that sort of thing back at the studio and the party, but from some random guy on the street? It feels like I accidently left my journal out and the whole world's reading it.

I mean, I get why he's asking, but that doesn't make it feel any less weird. Like, I know we were on television, but up until this very second, I haven't been able to grasp what that means in a larger way. We've heard the producers talking about ratings being surprising, but those are just numbers. Thinking about ratings is like trying to feel something for a problem in a math book. I don't know what I imagined those TV cameras were connected to, but it turns out there were people sitting on the other end.

I realize now that the kiss is something a bunch of strangers have an opinion about.

“Magnolia and I are just friends,” I say, trying to walk away.

“I wish I had some friends like that.” The paparazzi guy has a stupid grin on his face.

I don't want Magnolia to think I used her for a prop, to get attention for myself or something. It wasn't that thought-out; nothing I do onstage ever is. If I could just find a way to talk to her, I think I could explain myself.

Suddenly someone's got their arms around me, and I assume I'm about to get mugged; I know from TV that these cities have muggers in every alleyway. My fists tense, and the thought occurs that maybe Sissy's got the right idea, always carrying around a screwdriver. Then I feel warm lips on my cheek. When I turn to face the person tackling me, the lips move onto my lips. I pull back.

Two girls, around my age, with their moms. One is taking a photo of the other one kissing me. They're dressed in flouncy short skirts and colorful tights. They've also got on Hollywood tourist T-shirts, like they just went shopping on the Boulevard together.

“Ford! We love you! You are so, so cute. Can we take a photo?” But they are already taking photos. I'm astounded again to realize these girls have seen the show. And all it's taken is one glimpse at me, one song, and they already think I'm someone they love? They feel connected to me, just like that.
Holy shit
is all I can think.

“Thanks,” I say, because it's hard to know how to respond to someone being so aggressively complimentary. I'm stunned. I try to move back toward my bike.

“What's Magnolia gonna say about this, Ford?” That's the paparazzi guy, still filming.