Wanting Sheila Dead (5 page)

The panel at the front of the room was all trying to look encouraging, except for Sheila Dunham, who always looked sour. Alida stood very straight and waited, patiently. There was something about the girls she'd been seeing all day. None of them could be patient. None of them could be calm. They were all jumping and hopping all over the place.

“So,” the one called Deedee Plant said, “your grandparents were in a Japanese internment camp in World War II—”

“My great-grandparents,” Alida said.

“What?” Deedee said.

“My great-grandparents,” Alida said again. “I'm only nineteen. It was a long time ago.”

“Your great-grandparents,” Deedee said.

Pete Waldheim leaned in and tried to look aggressive. Alida nearly giggled.

“I think the point here,” he said, “is that we'd like to know if you knew these people. These great-grandparents. The ones who were in the internment camp.”

“I knew my great-grandmother a little,” Alida said. “She died when I was six. My great-grandfather died before I was born.”

“Your mother died, too, didn't she?” Sheila Dunham said.

Alida would never in her life have done anything as stupid as take a deep breath, or shift on her feet. The important thing was not to let go of your emotions, only to look as if you had. There was something else the Americans had a mania about: showing your feelings. Only
idiots and savages showed their feelings on their faces, as if it didn't matter who could see what.

Alida was counting to thirty in her head. Finally, she said, “Yes. My mother is dead. She died when I was twelve.”

“And how did that feel?” Deedee said. “Could you tell us how that affected your life? You were just at the age when girls most need their mothers.”

“I want to know how she died,” Sheila said. “Did you kill her?”

“For Christ's sake,” Pete said.

“It's a perfectly legitimate question,” Sheila said. “Remember that girl they let into Harvard a few years ago? Then they found out that she'd been convicted of killing her mother, and they had to take it back. Have you been convicted of killing your mother?”

“I haven't been convicted of anything,” Alida said. “And my mother died of breast cancer.”

“Is that an issue you feel strongly about?” Deedee said. She sounded as if she were rushing. “A lot of our contestants have causes they want to advance if they win the competition. Maybe breast cancer can be yours.”

“I've thought about that,” Alida said.

And it was true. She had thought about it. Everybody had a cause in America. Everybody wanted to help the world. Everybody wanted the world to like her. That was the problem. The world never liked really successful people; it envied them. Alida wanted to be envied.

Sheila was staring at her. Alida did not smile. She was not surprised at the questions: They were the kind of questions Sheila was famous for asking. Sheila Dunham made a career out of being an uncivilized jerk.

“Well,” Sheila said.

The panel leaned in toward each other, whispering. Alida was not worried. Sheila took a clipboard and wrote something on it. She passed it around. The others also wrote something on it. Then they gave it back to Sheila. If you had perfect calm, perfect poise, perfect self-control, you could stand in a crowd of people and have them all believing you weren't a savage.

Sheila looked at the clipboard and then handed it across the table to that Miss Dahl who had brought Alida in to the panel. Miss Dahl looked at the clipboard and nodded.

“Come with me,” Miss Dahl said.

Alida nodded to the panel—she'd seen the show a million times; she'd seen the clips from this part of it; she was supposed to look sincere and strained and to thank them for considering her and tell them how desperately she needed to do this with her life.

“Good luck,” Deedee said.

Alida smiled this time, and then followed Olivia Dahl out of the canvas-enclosed area. She was just passing through the flap to what appeared to be yet another corridor at the back when she heard Sheila Dunham say to the other judges:

“You're going to regret that one. She's got all the emotion of a dead fish.”

The corridor went through a long stretch of what looked like high school lockers, to a back staircase.

“This way,” Olivia Dahl said, climbing.

Alida followed her.

“I need you to stay in this room until you're called again,” Olivia said. “That may take another hour or so. There are still a lot of girls who have to be interviewed, and of course there are always borderline cases that have to be reinterviewed and rediscussed. You're in neither of those categories. You'll be in the initial thirty, which means you'll appear in at least the first episode of the new cycle.”

“Thank you.”

“There's no point in thanking me. I had nothing to do with it. The other girls in the room up here will also be part of the first episode of the new cycle. But you've got to remember that none of you is on the show or in the house yet. Once we've made the determination of just which thirty of you there will be, we'll film an episode where first ten of you will be eliminated, then another six, and the fourteen left standing will be cast for the show proper. Do you understand all that?”

“Yes,” Alida said.

“You've watched the show?”

“I watch it all the time.”

“Good,” Olivia said. “You wouldn't believe how many people try out for this thing without ever bothering to watch the show. What's the point, really? It's not even good strategy. Well, never mind. Up here.”

They were in a dark upstairs corridor, carpeted and wallpapered just like the corridors downstairs, all dark and fuzzy-velour. Olivia opened a door and held it back. Alida looked in on a small crowd of girls, some of whom she recognized from the line and the waiting room, some of whom she didn't. There was that girl with the thick green streak in her white-blond hair. There was that Southern girl who looked like she was dressed to go to a very formal PTA meeting.

“This is Alida Akido,” Olivia said in a very loud voice.

Alida stepped into the room proper, and behind her, Olivia pulled the door closed and disappeared behind it. Alida looked from girl to girl. Some girls were sitting. Some girls were standing. Some girls were all the way down on the floor.

She'd gone about halfway around the room when she finally noticed the black girl, and then it was all she could do not to make a face. It wasn't just a black girl. It was a black girl with a bright red Afro that looked like a Brillo pad in the electric chair. It was a black girl with “ghetto” screaming out all over her.

And it didn't help that Alida knew that both she and the black girl were in this room for the very same reason—because
America's Next Superstar
didn't want to look like it was prejudiced.

Alida shrugged slightly, and then turned away, looking for somebody to talk to who wouldn't be an annoyance or a threat.

Olivia Dahl thought she had a headache, but she wasn't sure. She would have a headache, when all this was over, because she always did. Right now it only mattered that she kept going without hurting anyone, and especially without hurting Sheila. Executive assistants
were supposed to worship the ground their celebrity employers walked on, but Sheila wasn't that much of a celebrity, and Olivia was from Brooklyn.

She looked into the big room where she had put the final thirty. She counted them off. She had already made sure that there was plenty of video from the interviews. They could go through all that later and pick what they wanted to use. That was always a difficult choice to make. You wanted some losers as well as some winners. The viewers liked to second-guess the panel, and they really liked to watch the tearful exit interview with some poor girl who'd washed out completely before the game even got started. It was also important not to make everything too obvious. You didn't want the audience to know who was going to end up in the house before the elimination that got them there.

Olivia counted a third time—there should be thirty, there were thirty, she had to stop obsessing like this—and then retreated to the hallway outside to check on the recording equipment. There were a dozen men and women out there, carrying heavy things and tripping up everything with wires.

“Don't forget,” Olivia told one of them, “it's like a news show, not a movie. You have to get them when they talk and it has to be clear. We don't get to come back in and put the sound on later.”

“Yes,” said the man she was talking to. He looked faintly contemptuous. She blushed. Some of these people had been working with them forever. She could never remember them from one season to the next.

“Fine,” she said.

She turned around to find Sheila walking in among the wires. She looked smug as hell.

“Did you get that thing about whether she'd murdered her mother?” Sheila said. “That's got to go in the final cut. Don't you think? God, I'm beginning to like this. I thought I'd hate it when it started, but I'm beginning to like it.”

“You thought it was the end of your career,” Olivia said.

“That's when I didn't realize the potential,” Sheila said. “It's gotten
huge, this reality thing. Oh, not the crap, you know, twelve people screwing one another's spouses and voting each other off some island in the Pacific. I don't understand why anybody watches that kind of thing. But this stuff. The competitions. They're the biggest thing since television started.”

“If you say so,” Olivia said.

“
America's Next Top Model
is in a hundred and thirty-two countries, did you know that? I want this to be just as big. Give us a few more seasons and we will be. It's just a matter of striking the right balance.”

“Right now it's a matter of you remembering what you're supposed to say in there. Please tell me you've been paying attention to the notes. We had to film you four times last season, and after a while the responses get a little stale.”

“You can cut and paste the responses. You can always use—who the hell is that?”

Olivia looked up. A girl was picking her way through the wires toward the door to the room where the thirty semifinalists were waiting. Maybe they didn't call them semifinalists. Olivia couldn't remember. She did remember this girl, who looked very familiar.

“Who are you?” she demanded.

The girl flushed. “I'm sorry,” she said. “I didn't mean to cause any trouble. I just wanted to use the ladies' room, and I—”

“Who
are
you?” Olivia said again.

The girl flushed again. “I'm Janice Ledbedder?” the girl said. “I'm from South Dakota? I'm really sorry. I hope I haven't missed anything, or made a problem or something, I just really needed to use the ladies room and . . . and—”

Olivia checked back through the pages on her clipboard to the one with the thirty girls listed on it. She went through the names one by one. Janice Ledbedder was about a third of the way down.

“Ah,” Olivia said. “All right. Here you are.”

“I haven't caused any problems?” Janice said. “Because I really didn't mean to. I mean, I really didn't, I just wanted—”

“You haven't caused any problems,” Olivia said. “Just go in and sit down. Really. Go in and sit down. We're about to start.”

“Do you always go around dressed like that?” Sheila Dunham said. “I mean, honey, you look like you should be greeting people at the door to a Walmart.”

Janice flushed yet again. Olivia pushed her toward the door. Janice went through it and disappeared.

“Save that for when the cameras are rolling,” Olivia said, “and don't tell me it's all part of the image. I manage your image. I know better than you do that you have no need to act like a complete and utter bitch twenty-four seven.”

“It's one of the perks of the job,” Sheila said. “I don't think I ever realized, before I started doing this, just how much I wanted to say that I wasn't saying. I mean it. You worry about your career and whatever and you keep it all bottled up inside. I don't keep it bottled up inside anymore. I let it all right out there. And it's wonderful. Besides, half these people deserve what they get. Can you really believe there are hicks this stupid in this day and age?”

Olivia wanted to say that Sheila had always let it all right out there, if she'd had enough to drink. That was how she'd ended up on a reality show to begin with. Olivia, however, never let anything out, and wouldn't, even if they were paying her. She checked her clipboard again, pawed through a few pages, found the one she wanted and said:

“All right. You go in through that door over there. You'll find yourself behind a curtain. Wait for the music to cue up and then come through. We've got it set up so that there's a little platform there. After that, it's up to you to remember what you're supposed to say.”

“I remember what I'm supposed to say,” Sheila said.

Olivia watched her go through the other door. Then she herself went through the one she'd sent Janice Ledbedder through. She looked around at the girls. She nodded to one of the men behind her and the spotlight went on to the place where the curtains would part. Olivia looked at the crowd one more time and then—

“Thirty-one,” she said.

“Quiet,” the man closest to her said. “We're rolling.”

Olivia was still staring at the crowd. She counted. She counted again. There were thirty-one. She thought of Janice Ledbedder out in the hall. She looked across the heads of the girls and at as many faces as she could catch, but she couldn't find what was wrong. She went to the front and stood just behind Sheila at the podium.

Then the music started, and the curtains parted just slightly, and Sheila was out there in front of everybody. Her long red dress glittered in the light. Her long black hair looked as fake as it always did. Olivia told herself that it wouldn't matter. There were thirty Gucci bags on tables in the next room, twenty with a picture of a girl in them. If one of the losers had snuck into this room she'd be weeded out before any more filming got done before that, because she wouldn't have her picture in any of the bags. This was not a crisis. There was no need to turn it into a crisis.