Elimination Night by Anonymous Read Free Book Online Page A

when Bibi, Teddy, and Bossy T got into an argument in a Chelsea ice cream parlor, during which Mr. Tiddles let off three rounds from his gun. (Bibi and Bossy T were questioned but not charged. Mr. Tiddles spent the next three months on Rikers Island, saying nothing to nobody.)
    The scandal was enough to end Bibi and Bossy T’s romance—but Bibi stuck with Teddy, who became her manager, publicist, charisma coach, agent, and business partner, taking a separate percentage for each. He quickly consolidated her image as an unsmiling, imperious diva with a white fur wardrobe and a Queens-girl toughness. Every woman inAmerica wanted to be her. Every guy in America wanted to sleep with her. Black, white, Asian, Hispanic—it didn’t matter. The great irony being that Bibi achieved all this without even being able to sing.
    That was hardly the point, of course: Bibi was a brand, an idea, an
aspiration.
    I can hardly even begin to imagine how many millions Bibi and Teddy made together. They opened a chain of nail salons (Mani Bibi), launched a perfume brand (Bibi Beautiful), and created a line of personal massage wands (Bibi Naughty). As for Bibi’s personal life: She became involved with her hairdresser, Tommy Stiles, who proposed within three weeks of their first date. Teddy was both the officiant at the wedding—he sang the vows—and the best man. He even joined the couple on their honeymoon at Bibi’s villa in Italy, where the staff expressed surprise to an undercover
ShowBiz
reporter that the groom was spending more time with Teddy than he was with his bride.
    When they all got back home to LA, Bibi hired two lawyers: One to annul her marriage; the other to sue Teddy. Not long after that, Bibi’s new boyfriend, Logan Deckard—Oscar-winning actor, chairman of the Hollywood Actors Union, patron of multiple cancer charities, and presumed candidate for governor of California—had his people take a look at Bibi’s books. Among the excesses uncovered: a full-time employee whose sole task was to switch on Teddy’s iPhone. (Teddy had never quite mastered technology.) Meanwhile, Bibi and Logan made inevitable plans to wed. He bought her a ten million dollar ring and a Siberian tiger in a cage. She bought him a private island and helicopter by which to get there. Then she recorded a song, “Bibi from the Hood,” the gist of the lyrics being: a) she was richer than God, and b) she was still a down-to-earth girl from Middle Village, Queens. Clearly, no one had thought to point out to her that writing a song expressing point a somewhat invalidated point b.
    Then came Bibi and Logan’s first movie together,
Jinky,
which one critic summed up by praising its ability to “take the sexiest, most closely watched celebrity couple in the universe, remove all their chemistry,and make you want to stab yourself in the neck with a rusty fork for no other reason than to relieve the boredom.”
Jinky
made $400.25 on the Friday it opened in a few dozen theaters. Its costars had called off their wedding by the following weekend.
    Thus began the most recent—and troubled—stage of Bibi’s career, which this time I
did
have to Google, largely because of the press’s waning interest in her affairs.
    Her nail salons filed for bankruptcy. The company that Teddy had outsourced to manufacture her branded massage wands was found to be employing six-year-old girls in China. And try as she might, she just couldn’t recover from
Jinky.
Her follow-up movies bombed. Her albums didn’t sell. Even her fashion sense was mocked: “Bibi’s acrylic bedsheet,” was how the
Style
section of the
New York Chronicle
described her eccentrically dimensioned Oscars dress that year. (Teddy had previously selected all her outfits.) Exhausted, Bibi took a break to get married, again, this time to her teenage sweetheart Edouard Julius, the actor, trapeze artist, and former Olympic show jumper. To everyone’s surprise, it lasted more than a week. They even had