Chris Grabenstein - Fun House

With the help of a summer cop who keeps calling us “Sirs,” we find the last available parking slot on Beach Lane and walk past a gaggle of “looky-loos”-tourists straining to see one of the reality show stars or have their picture taken in front of the Fun House. I imagine half the guys posing for cell phone pix will tug up their shirts and try to wiggle their nipples.

“Hey, Danny! Ceepak!”

It’s Layla. She comes bounding down a set of steel steps attached to a gleaming white mobile home.

“Great to have you guys on board,” she says, beaming that smile that got me hooked on a New York City girl in the first place. Layla has changed into a tight gym top that doesn’t quite cover her belly button. Cargo shorts hug her hips. All kinds of radios spank her fanny.

Sometimes, a dirty mind is a terrible thing to waste.

“We’re rolling live up at the house. There’s coffee at craft services. You need to hit the head?”

This is how Layla Shapiro talks. Scattershot. She’s what they call a multi-tasker. While she’s telling us about the toilets, she’s texting on her BlackBerry and futzing with the volume dial on the walkie-talkie clipped to her hip.

“Is there somewhere we can go to discuss the details of our liaison work moving forward?” says Ceepak.

“Sure,” says Layla, jabbing a thumb over her shoulder. “This is the production office. Marty’s inside. There’s bagels. It’s air-conditioned.”

My turn to smile. Hey, it’s August, 98 degrees with 98 percent humidity. My shirt is glued to my back. My sunglasses are fogged up because I had the AC blasting in the Crown Vic. There’s only one way to defog them: more AC.

“We should have the full duty roster for the coming week completed within the hour,” says Ceepak when we’re inside the nice and chilly trailer.

“Excellent,” says Layla, clicking her BlackBerry. We’ve only dated twice, but the girl has lots of lists. And schedules. If we do have sex on our third date, I’m sure she’s already blocked out exactly when it needs to happen and what gear and refreshments need to be on location. “Can you put a downloadable PDF in your cloud?”

“Come again?” says Ceepak.

My man doesn’t know from Internet file-sharing clouds. Hey, he’s thirty-seven. His generation still sends e-mails instead of texting.

“We’ll have Mrs. Rence fax it over,” I say.

“Awesome,” says Layla, her thumbs launching into a fresh text message.

Marty Mandrake is in the truck with us, munching on a bunch of grapes, staring at a bank of monitors. Three of them, the ones directly in front of Mandrake, seem to feature today’s big scene: the beer pong tournament being played on and around the picnic table on the Fun House deck. Twelve smaller monitors built into the wall above the “hot” camera feeds remind me of the screens you’d see behind the security desk in a high-rise office building. High-angle, locked-off shots peering down on every room in the house. Very Big Brotherish.

On the three main screens, I can see Paulie and Mike Tomasino. They’re tossing ping-pong balls into a triangle of ten red Solo cups set up on opposite ends of the table. The cups are semi-filled with beer. The rules of this extremely popular frat house drinking game are quite simple: you plop your ball into a cup, the other team has to drink it. First team to have the other guys drink all their cups wins.

“Are these organic?” Mandrake snaps, plunking a grape into his pie hole.

“Yes, sir,” says Layla. “We had a P.A. pick them up at the Whole Foods up in Red Bank.”

I’m impressed. Red Bank is about sixty miles north of Sea Haven.

“Oh!” says Mandrake. “How long was that, Grace?”

Mandrake is sitting in one of those foldout director’s chairs with “Mr. Mandrake” stenciled across the back. A middle-aged woman with three different stopwatches dangling around her neck is seated beside him. Her chair doesn’t say “Grace.”

“From when Paulie ricocheted his ball off the porch railing until it bounced off the wall and plopped into the middle cup?”

“Yeah.”

“Five seconds.”

“Mark it. It’s gold. Pure gold.” He presses a button on the side of a handheld radio. “Rutger?”

“Yes, sir?”

“Get me a close-up of that ping-pong ball in Mike’s cup when he goes to drink it.”

“There’s a bug in the cup.”

“Beautiful. Shoot it.”

“You got it, Chief.”

“Rutger Reinhertz is the best director in reality TV,” Mandrake announces to the world. “Gets the money shots. Doesn’t cost a fortune.”

Ceepak clears his throat. “Mr. Mandrake?”

“Yeah?” Mandrake keeps his eyes glued on the three TV screens flickering in front of him.

“We’d like to talk to you about Paul Braciole and the anabolic steroids. If he cooperates with us, the county prosecutor might be interested in discussing a deal wherein no charges are brought against him or Ms. Kemppainen.”

“Great. Give me a minute. We need to wrap this sequence.”

“Marty has an ambitious day planned,” Layla whispers. “Including a company move down to Morgan’s Surf and Turf for the etiquette competition later tonight.”

Ceepak just nods. His wife, Rita, used to waitress at Morgan’s. Me? I’m wondering what the heck goes on in an etiquette contest.

“Come on, Paulie,” Jenny Mortadella (the skanky one) shouts as she cozies up to The Thing in a very skimpy bikini that shows off the mermaids tattooed all over her boobs. “Beat this bitch. Bounce a ball up his ass.”

“Um, we’ll, you know, clean that up in edit,” says Layla.

“You win this competition, I’ll give you a pwize.” Jenny’s doing drunken baby talk now.

“Oh, yeah? Like what?” says Paulie.

“This.” She tugs up her bikini top and flashes “The Thing” her things. She’d probably wiggle them but I don’t think that kind of plastic shimmies.

Now Ceepak’s closing his eyes, and, if I’m not mistaken, uttering a silent prayer.

“We’ll, you know, pixellate over those, block them out,” Layla explains.

The middle monitor shows a horrified reaction shot of Soozy K’s face when Jenny flashes her tattooed nay-nays. The mermaids look like they are harvesting pistachios for the winter.

“I thought you had an alliance with Mikey?” Paulie says to Jenny. Yep, there are a lot of “ee” names in the house.

“Not after he fell on his ass playing Skee-Ball because he was so drunk-”

“I wasn’t drunk, bitch-”

In my head, I start adding in the bleeps.

“Yes, you BLEEPING were.”

“So?” says Mike. “You’re a BLEEPING cow! Flashing your BLEEPING BLEEPIES. What kind of pig does that? A cow, that’s who.”

“You want to hook up later?” Jenny says to Paulie.

Paulie shrugs. “Whatever.” He bops a ping-pong ball off the picnic table and into the beer cup Soozy’s holding in her hand.

“What the BLEEP!” shouts Soozy when beer sloshes up and splatters all over her chest.

“Maybe you better take off your top too,” jokes Paulie. “Hang it up to dry!”

Now the guy named Vinnie, another bodybuilder type who spikes his hair up into a waxy Mohawk, comes stomping out of the house.

“Yo, Paulie? What the BLEEP? I found this BLEEP under your bed.” Vinnie has something in his hand. We can’t tell what it is.

“Get me a close-up!” Marty Mandrake shouts into his radio.

Two of the cameras rush in to see what Vinnie found.

“This is huge!” says Mandrake. “I’m working your drug investigation into my storyline!”