The Second Assistant (2 page)

I’d hate to take a bite of you. You’re a cookie full of arsenic.

—Burt Lancaster as J. J. Hunsecker
The Sweet Smell of Success

M
y floor at The Agency resembled a battery hen factory; it consisted of about twenty neat little squares of desk. Each one featured:

• An assistant in his/her early twenties, clad in regulation black with a face that would probably crack if it smiled. Though nobody had ever tested this theory.
  
• An iMAC. Bright, white, luscious, and triffidlike, with a screen-saver featuring a life-affirming statement in a foreign or ancient language—i.e.,
  Plus est en vous
  or
  Carpe diem.
  Most assistants had been to NYU film school or majored in literature at an Ivy League college, and this was their only opportunity to exhibit their $100K education.
  
• A can of some diet soft drink.
  
• A framed poster hailing a piece-of-genius movie, the likes of which hasn’t been made for at least fifty years, often starring Jack Lemmon or Audrey Hepburn.
  
• A blister pack of Advil or, for the more hard core, a silver Tiffany pillbox containing Valium.
  

All of these details were virtually obscured by vertiginous piles of scripts bound with glossy black endpapers bearing the legend
THE AGENCY
, in gold letters. These were stacked up on every available surface, every square of carpet tile, and often in the hands of an overburdened, buckling teenage intern on the way to the copy room. Each had a title in wonky black felt-tip lettering scribbled on the spine. Nobody had ever heard of any of these movies. In time I learned that unless Julia Roberts fell in love with one of them, nobody ever would.

It was late Friday afternoon of my very first week, and I had just put a call from the president of Universal Studios through to the mailroom instead of to Scott. Thankfully Scott didn’t notice, because he was watching the trailer for one of his client’s new movies in his office and laughing uproariously.

“Hey, you guys, get in here. Check this out,” he yelled. His door was open, so Lara and I took off our phone headsets and shuffled into his office. We perched on the arms of his leather sofa.

“Isn’t it the fucking best?” Scott hit the play button on his remote control and spun around delightedly in his chair. Lara and I watched the trailer.

It wasn’t the best. It was the worst. But it starred one of Scott’s biggest clients, who had just been on the diet of the century. She actually looked great on the multiplex-size plasma screen on his office wall. Though when she’d walked into the office a couple of days ago, trailing her stylist and half a dozen Barneys bags, you could see the bones on her shoulders through her sweater, and her face was covered in all those little blond hairs that anorexics sprout.

“Joined the ’rexy files.” Lara had rolled her eyes heavenward.

“But she looks like a total rock star,” Talitha, another of the assistants had sighed enviously.

Scott rewound the tape and paused it at a part where the actress was doing push-ups in a tank top.

“Great, huh?” he marveled again but didn’t really pay much attention when I said, “Yeah, I think it looks like a lot of fun. I’m sure it’ll do great box office. She’s so bankable.” I’d been reading what were popularly known as “the trades”—those movie-industry rags
Variety
and the
Hollywood Reporter
—that land on every single desk in this town each morning of the week and detail Hollywood’s every breath, from photos
of heavy hitters at premieres to domestic box-office profits. Consequently I had picked up moviespeak almost as quickly as I’d mastered the art of wearing black.

“Look at her rack.” Scott slapped his thigh. “Lara, go get her on for me.” I followed Lara back out toward our desks. Though just as I was about to sit down and update the call sheet, my phone rang.

“Is this Elizabeth?” A woman’s voice inquired.

“Speaking.”

“This is Victoria.”

“Victoria?” Who the hell was Victoria? Was she the new Angelina or Uma, who required no last name, and I hadn’t yet read about her in the trades?

“Elizabeth, I’ve been watching you.” Oh, hey, I thought, my first stalker. But typical—it’s a woman.

“You have?”

“I’d like you to come into my office.”

“Okay, well . . .”

“Preferably now.” And she hung up.

I sat at my desk for a moment and looked around me for clues. All the other assistants had their heads down, bent as if at prayer. Lara was listening in on a call as Scott told the shrunken actress how
fucking
fabulous her movie looked. One of the millions of things I still had to get used to in this job was the listening in on phone conversations. It betrayed all my polite instincts, and I was usually so embarrassed that I forgot I was supposed to be making notes of script titles, actors’ names, restaurant details, and the like, so that Scott could read
Hustler
and pick his nose safe in the knowledge that he didn’t have to remember a thing.

Lara was chewing her pen and smiling to herself as she eavesdropped. Scott had his feet up on the desk and was watching MTV as he chatted to the actress. But nowhere could I see a Victoria. I leaned over to ask Talitha, whose desk was next to mine.

“Hey, Talitha, am I supposed to know who Victoria is?”

“Victoria?”

“Yeah, she just called me up and asked me to go into her office, only I have no clue who she is or where her office is.”

“That figures.”

“It does?” I wondered which part figured, Victoria’s calling or clueless me.

“Victoria’s office is over there.” She pointed to the door across the corridor where the poker-haired woman had emerged from on my first day.

“Oh, her.” I stood up and smoothed down the wrinkles in my pants. “Okay. Thanks.”

“You won’t be thanking me later. That’s for sure,” Talitha said ominously.

“Elizabeth, take a seat.” The woman smiled, revealing a row of small, even teeth behind her thin lips. She was wearing Saint Laurent, but it might as well have been Talbots it was so creased and baggy.

“Thanks.” I sat down on the very, very edge of an armchair and glanced surreptitiously around her office. The sparse furnishings were rendered even less friendly by a series of miserable nudes that graced the walls.

“Lucien Freud. I love him,” she informed me as she poured herself a glass of prune juice.

“Want some?” she proffered.

“I’m fine, thanks.” Anxiety was all the laxative I needed right now. “They’re . . . very impressive, your pictures.”

“I don’t like anything too colorful. Except perhaps for my little friends.” It was then that I clocked a trophy cabinet filled with Barbie dolls. Summer Vacation Barbie. Winter Gala Barbie. Olympic Games Barbie. There was more nylon hair on those shelves than on Ben Affleck’s head. (If the rumors were to be believed, and Lara had it on good authority from an assistant at Disney that his tresses were faux as faux can be.)

“Ooh, you collect Barbies?” I displayed my teeth, but it could hardly be considered a smile.

“They keep me sane,” Victoria informed me, oblivious to the irony of this comment. “So how do you like your new job?”

“Oh, it’s great,” I replied enthusiastically.

“I see. Then you’re happy to just answer phones and fetch coffee for the rest of your life, are you?”

“Well, no. I mean, I’ll use my time here to learn the basics of what I’m sure will be a fascinating career,” I fudged quickly.

“Oh, so you think that you’re too good for us? You’ll be on to the bigger, better deal as soon as you can?” she spat witheringly. She was clearly bipolar. Or merely a good old-fashioned lunatic.

“I’m . . . well . . . I’d like to . . .”

“So do you want to learn or not?” Victoria snapped.

“I’d love to learn.” She couldn’t argue with that. Could she?

“What’s your favorite movie?”

“La Dolce Vita.”
I lied because I couldn’t tell her it was
Meet the Parents.

“Pinnacle of your ambition?”

“To see
Crime and Punishment
made into a movie.”

“Starring?”

“John Malkovich.” Again untrue. It was Jude Law.

Victoria paused for a moment, looked at my shoes, and took another sip of prune juice.

“I’d like to take you under my wing and teach you what I know. I’ve been in this business many years now, and you can learn from me.”

“Thank you so much, Victoria. I’m honored.”

“Great. Well, you’d better get back to your desk. I’ll clear this all with Scott, but I’m sure it’ll be fine. It’s a wonderful opportunity. See it as a fast track to success.” She folded her hands together, and I took this as my cue to leave.

“Oh, and by the way, there’s a ‘Barbies of the Seventies’ auction at Sotheby’s on Monday. I’d like you to go along and bid on a few pieces for me. I have a ten-thirty with Nic, or I’d go myself.”

“Sure. Sounds fun.”

“Good. I’ll let you have the catalog later. Oh, and I have some dry cleaning that I’ll need picked up this afternoon. Here’s the ticket. Hollyway Cleaners. It’s just off Santa Monica, shouldn’t take you more than twenty minutes if you go at lunchtime.” She handed me a blue ticket.

“Right, okay. Well, thanks again, Victoria.” I edged my way backward across the room and out the door, my smile petrified on my face. When I closed the door behind me, I saw the twenty faces of the assistants stare up at me. And then hastily look down again. Burying themselves in their call sheets.

The only person who didn’t look down was Lara. Instead she motioned me over to her desk.

“Did Victoria ask if she could mentor you?” she asked, frowning.

“Yeah, she seems . . . well, she seems nice. Enough.”

“Elizabeth, what are you doing after work?”

“Nothing. Actually, I’m going to look at a couple of apartments. I haven’t found anywhere to live yet, and I’m still staying out in the Valley with my aunt, but—”

“We need to talk. I’ll take you for a cocktail and explain a few things to you. Okay?”

“Okay,” I agreed, an uneasy feeling settling in the pit of my stomach. “Thanks.”

Words that I have never liked very much:
We need to talk.

My first Hollywood cocktail was in the Polo Lounge of the Beverly Hills Hotel. The peaceful palm-tree wallpaper and lowered voices softened by the tinkling piano music relaxed my frayed nerves. My afternoon had been further pissed upon from a great height because Victoria’s dry cleaning had turned out not to have been hand-finished and Scott had left his stash in the bathroom at the Standard last night and asked me to go retrieve it while he underwent cold turkey on his office sofa. Lara had plied him with black coffee while I dashed to the bar and scrambled among condom wrappers on the floor of the men’s room hunting for the remnants of an eight ball. It had turned up behind a dusty, God-only-knew-what-covered pipe leading to the urinals. And I was supposed to be thrilled.

I sipped my cocktail as Lara leaned back in her chair and ran her fingers through her shiny red hair. Out of the office, and in Seven jeans instead of her terrifyingly tailored jacket and a pen in her hand, she had the cool, edgy look of a top model. In fact, she looked pretty gorgeous, and at least three men in the room were circling our table and staring at her as though she were the proverbial long drink of water. One was really cute, too. He looked like Johnny Depp at twenty-six. But Lara seemed oblivious.

“This is a really fucked-up town,” she began. “And the way I look at it is this: Who needs lovers in Hollywood when your friends will fuck you at the drop of a hat?”

“It can’t be
that
bad, can it?” I smiled, thinking she was joking.

“No, it’s much worse. I like you, Elizabeth. I think you’re smart and you’re probably a good person.”

I shrugged my shoulders in a self-deprecating way.

“Which is why there are a few things you need to know.”

“In that case, fire away.” I took a large sip of my drink to disguise the fact that I wasn’t altogether sure whether I wanted to hear what she had to say.

Lara cracked her knuckles and began. “The thing about this town is that it’s a very insular place, and nobody gives a shit about anybody else. Armageddon could be looming on the horizon, and people here would just assume it was smog. Don’t for a second think that anyone cares about global warming, world hunger, human-rights violations, or Third World debt.” Lara skewered her cocktail onion very efficiently.

“I didn’t really expect them to, though,” I said. “I mean, it’s entertainment, right? It’s supposed to be fun.”

“Oh, sure, superficiality isn’t so much a condition as a requirement,” Lara answered.

“Do you really hate it that much?” I asked, shocked by her vitriol.

“Yeah, I really do.”

“Then why do you stay? I mean, surely there are a hundred other jobs you can do.”

“I want to be a writer. This is a great place for contacts and learning what it takes. Though I’d never tell anybody at The Agency that, okay?”

“Sure.”

“So Victoria wants to mentor you?”