Down the Rabbit Hole - Holly Madison

long as I walked my butt down to the office and signed those papers.
Still in my pajamas, I trudged down to Mary’s office at the other end of the mansion. Without
saying a word, I sat myself in the chair next to her desk and started playing with her white Maltese
pup named Miss Kitty.
“So,” Mary started, looking over the top of her small-framed eyeglasses. “Did Hef tell you about
the contracts?”
“Yes,” I grumbled, before pleading my case. “And I’m not thrilled about it. I think it’s wrong.”
Mary sat in silence with her arms folded, allowing me my few moments to vent.
“Because the show is about Hef’s girlfriends, I feel like I’m signing a contract to be in a
relationship,” I whined. I was beyond frustrated. I had my back against the ropes. If I wanted to move
forward with the show for a fifth season, I had to bind myself to Hef’s production company. What if I
wanted to move out? Or do another show? I felt like this contract might make that impossible.
“That’s not really what it’s about, Holly,” Mary reassured me, her voice smooth and calm. “E! is
just hesitant to move forward with the show if their talent isn’t under any kind of contract. That’s all.”
“I know, but . . .” I allowed my voice to trail off. I’d already had the same argument with Hef
and it wasn’t going to result in any different outcome with Mary. I fell silent for a few moments
before asking, “Do they have to be signed today?”
“Yes,” Mary said very matter-of-factly. “They need them back today.”
“Why did we get them so last minute, then?” I asked, my anxiety starting to escalate again. “We
don’t even have time to look them over!”
“The contracts are with Alta Loma, dear,” Mary went on, sidestepping any explanation as to why
we were just now receiving them. “You know if there’s a problem, Hef will release you from it.”
But would he? I know that in Mary’s heart, she sincerely thought that Hef was a good man—just
as I believed at the time. But a nagging voice in the back of my head kept warning me not to trust this
situation.
If signing this contract was really so important to everyone, I decided to just get it over with. I
knew that ultimately I had no choice. Hef would find a way to corner me into signing it, so I might as
well just save myself any further aggravation.
“Fine, “I said, grabbing a pen on Mary’s desk. “Where do I sign?”
I scribbled my name on the contract that Mary nonchalantly shoved under my nose and handed it
back to her.
“Now . . . what to do about the Kendra problem,” Mary continued.
Kendra was in the Dominican Republic for a paid nightclub appearance, so she could hardly
sign the paperwork by E!’s alleged deadline. But Hef and his team must have found some kind of
solution, if all three of our signed contracts were indeed delivered to E! that afternoon.
I can’t say this with certainty since I never witnessed pen to paper, but the gossip around the
mansion was that someone on Hef’s staff must have had to forge Kendra’s contract in order to meet
the network’s deadline. Of course it’s also possible that E! never even gave Hef a deadline or that he
used a false date to get us to sign without giving us the opportunity to really review the documents.
Who knows? All I know is, the whole thing seemed highly unusual to me.