The Second Assistant (3 page)

“She said so. Does she say that to all the new girls?” I tried to make light of what seemed like my preferential treatment.

“No, but it’s generally the kiss of death when she does.”

“I see.” I ordered another drink. “What is her position, by the way? Roughly.”

“She’s an agent. They keep her because she’s got a couple of AAA-list clients who are really loyal to her.”

“So she’s powerful?”

“-Ish,” Lara conceded. “But she’s not a player or a partner. Scott is a partner. He’s powerful.”

“I see.” I nodded.

“But don’t worry too much about Victoria. She’s just a very psychotic lady who’s worked in this town for too long and doesn’t get laid enough.” Lara looked intently at me. “I’ll keep an eye out for you. She won’t mess with me.”

“That’s really kind of you.” I nodded gratefully. If I only made it to my first paycheck at this rate, I’d be ecstatic.

“But there are some things that you have to take my advice on, Elizabeth.” She was deadly serious. “And if you don’t, you might as well leave this town now. Do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars.”

“Okay,” I nodded.

“I’m not kidding,” she warned.

“I’m listening,” I assured her.

“Always read the trades, and never date anybody in the business.”

“That’s it?” I asked. Thinking that if this were the case I was already Sherry Lansing manqué. Bring on my first Jil Sander suit.

“Yeah, but it’s not as easy as it sounds. Which is why there are a few caveats. At least where the dating is concerned.” Lara crossed her legs and rested her elbows on the table and told me The Rules of Sex and Dating in Hollywood, as stipulated by Lara Brooks. They were pretty much as follows:

1. Never sleep with your boss unless you have a good sexual-harassment lawyer on retainer.
   
2. If you’re sleeping your way up the ladder, remember it’s the ugly men who are the cruelest.
   
3. Be prepared to tell all the details of your sexual exploits to as many people as possible as soon after the event as possible. Because his version will be ten times worse.
   
4. Never give stock tips, script secrets, or movie ideas to your lover. He
   will
   steal them.
   
5. AA, NA, and SA are all good places to meet movie stars, producers, and directors if access is proving to be a problem.
   
6. In all reality, if you need to have sex, do it with the pool boy or craft-services guy on a movie set. You’ll save yourself a lot of heartache.
   

As I waited for the valet to bring my car around I said good-bye to Lara. She pressed a business card into my hand and told me to call her friend Charlie, who had a lead on a studio apartment in Venice.

“I’ve got to rush to dinner,” she said as our cars arrived.

“Anyone exciting?” I asked, thinking of the great dating possibilities
that must be available in this town to someone as beautiful and cool as Lara. Even outside the business—barring producers and actors and studio heads and directors, et al.—there must be some very cute, eligible guys around.

“Ugh, yeah right.” She rolled her eyes sarcastically. “I’ve got the date of the fucking decade.”

“Oh, well, it might be fun, you never know. See you Monday.”

“Later.” She waved and pulled away. I watched the small man in the car behind Lara’s struggle to climb up into his enormous SUV. Cars in L.A. were disproportionately huge and obviously symbolized power, ego, penis size, or zip code. I just couldn’t quite work out which. I only knew that if I were his wife, I’d buy him crampons and a rope for Christmas to make the ascent easier. Then I got into my own car and followed Lara down the driveway from the hotel, wondering whether I’d be able to afford to drive a shiny, brand-new Range Rover like hers when I made it to first assistant.

I’m hard to get. All you have to do is ask.

—Lauren Bacall as Marie Browning
To Have and Have Not

T
he apartment in Venice that Lara’s friend Charlie looked after turned out to be perfect for me. Granted it was only one room, with a kitchen somewhere to the left and a bathroom without a door to the right, but if you shoved your head out the window and twisted your shoulders, it had a view of the ocean. It also had the Spanish hardwood floors that I’d dreamed about since I got this job. And it was
almost
affordable on my pittance of a salary if I was prepared to eat out only one night every two weeks and do my own manicures. I was thrilled and immediately began moving my suitcases and boxes of books and the two pairs of shoes I owned over from the Valley.

The building was also inhabited by about a million other young people—assistants, gonnabe actors, scriptwriters, and an Ashtanga teacher in the room next door to me.

“Focus on the soft space between your anus and your sex organs,” she was telling somebody in her room. I could hear this because we shared an air vent.

“That’s harder than you think,” a male voice came back.

“You’ll get the hang of it,” she assured him.

Once I’d unpacked most of my stuff, I realized that I was ravenously hungry. I grabbed my purse and the Dostoyevsky novel I one day planned to see adapted to the big screen and set out in pursuit of food.
I figured that I could at least afford a bagel or a bowl of pasta in some el cheapo café by the beach. I walked beneath the palm trees, past the basketball courts, the iron men of Venice crunching as if their lives depended on it, and at least a hundred cute, Rollerblading girls who could have been on a casting call for a Tampax commercial. I was about to take off my sandals and walk barefoot on the sand when I literally saw stars. Not, you understand, the Hollywood variety. Not a Brad or Jen in sight. No, I saw the sucker-punch kind of stars. I collapsed to the ground, and when I came to, a man with the bluest eyes and most handsome face I’d seen outside the Calvin Klein billboard that reigned over Sunset Boulevard was looking down at me, very, very concerned.

“It’s okay, man, she’s coming around,” I heard him say.

“Thank fuck for that,” another voice lolled in the background. “I’ll get back to the game, then. You can take care of her. Just make sure she doesn’t sue. It’d suck if we had to stop playing down here.”

“Hey, are you with us? Can you hear me?” he asked me. I realized that my head was in this man’s lap.

“I’m . . . sure . . . I’m just fine. . . .” As the seconds passed, I also noticed that I was lying on the gross, dog-pee asphalt, so I struggled to get up.

“Honey, I think you should just lie still for a few seconds.”

I may have been unconscious, but I could tell that he was checking out my body. Giving my exposed legs the once-over. I made a lame attempt to pull my skirt down past my knees.

“I’m Jake, by the way. I was playing hockey with my buddies, and the puck hit you on the head,” he informed me.

“I’m Lizzie.”

“Well, Lizzie, I’m gonna help you up and take you to where you live so we can make sure you’re okay.” He smiled.

“Sure.” I was aware of a stabbing pain in the side of my head and raised my hand to it, wondering if there was blood.

“It’s not bleeding. Just kinda red,” Jake reassured me. “Now, on three, I’m gonna stand you up. One. Two. Three.”

He held my hand and pulled me to my feet. I managed a few woozy steps. As we passed the hockey court, a group of thuggy-looking frat boys began whooping delightedly.

“My buddies,” he announced proudly.

I concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other. He had his arm through mine, guiding me like an old lady. I think that Jake was planning to take me to my apartment, jettison me off on a concerned girlfriend, and leave with a clear conscience to resume his hockey game. Unfortunately, when he saw that I didn’t so much as have a sofa, let alone a girlfriend, he seemed to change his mind.

“Oh, no, I can’t leave you here,” he said as he surveyed my bare, minuscule room. “Jesus, this is like Raskolnikov’s room!” He laughed.

“You’ve read
Crime and Punishment
?” I looked at him with new wonder. I was about to wave my novel in his face triumphantly, but then I realized that I must have left it back on the dog pee.

“Sure. You think everyone in California’s a dumb-ass?” He laughed again.

“I have no clue. I’m new in town.”

“Would never have guessed.” He looked around the apartment for some sign of life or hope and, finding none, extracted his car keys from his pocket. “Which is why you’re coming with me. Oh, and for the record. I
am
the only smart guy in this town.” He laughed once more as he slammed the door on my room.

Two minutes later and common sense was a distant memory. I was in his Porsche, zipping up the Pacific Coast Highway with the wind blowing the parts of my hair that weren’t plastered down with the Neosporin he’d borrowed from the Ashtanga teacher, whose name turned out to be Alexa and whose ability to sniff out a single man in a crisis was as finely honed as her pert little butt. Not that I cared about Alexa. Or anything. Jake could have been planning to strip me naked to star in a porno for all I knew. In fact, Jake could have done anything he wanted with me that day, because he was the best-looking man I’d seen in my entire life. He looked like a movie star. But tall.

“Where are we going, by the way?” I yelled to be heard over the thudding bass of “Still” by Dr. Dre.

“My place. I just think that we’d best keep you under observation.” He kept looking at my legs, as if he’d hit them with a hockey puck, too, and was searching for bruises.

“I don’t want to be any trouble,” I mumbled. Not meaning it even slightly.

And that’s how I came to spend one of the most blissful afternoons
I can remember. He drove me out to his house in Malibu. It was literally on the beach. You could jump off his deck and land in the sand. And he kept me under observation. Together Jake and I drank Coke and watched some of the World Series. We took a walk on the beach, he ordered takeout from Nobu, and every so often he’d touch the side of my head to make sure my brains weren’t spilling out. We talked about everything from books to politics, but it was only later that I realized we hadn’t discussed what either of us did for a living. I think possibly because I assumed from his perfect looks and seriously beautiful home that he was a very successful actor whom I’d never heard of. This was entirely possible since I barely ever went to the movies. So I simply didn’t ask for fear of embarrassment and exposure.

When it finally got dark and the air out on the deck became damp, after we finished the last drops of red wine in our glasses he turned to me.

“So, hot stuff, I guess that you’re not gonna die, then?”

“It doesn’t look that way. Which is bad luck for you, ’cause it means you have to drive me home.” I shrugged. Meaning, “You could ask me to stay, though.” Clearly he wasn’t fluent in Shrug.

“Oh, that’s no problem. The traffic’s not too bad at this time of night.” He stood up and, offering me a hand, pulled me to my feet. And then, thank Christ—otherwise I’d have thought he was gay or I was too unattractive for words—he kissed me. If I hadn’t gotten a hint of action in those movie-cliché surroundings—moon over the ocean, Trotanoy Pomerol ’75 flowing in our veins, me with my fragile concussed pallor, and he with large hands—I would have had to go back to politics and grow my leg hair in preparation for a life of same-sex crushes and chastity. Instead the waves crashed and I didn’t kick my empty wineglass over and it was a great, fabulous, spectacular kiss that made me forget my own name. Hurray for Hollywood, I thought. Not giving a flying fuck if this was
The Truman Show II
and I was the star.

“Morning.” I walked into the office on Monday.

“Hey,” Lara managed as she typed an e-mail. She was
le dernier cri
in her third new Marc Jacobs dress in a week. From whence? I wondered. As did everyone else in the office, judging by the looks on their
faces. But who cared? Thanks to Winona, shoplifting your clothes had become almost as cool as knitting them yourself. “How was the apartment?” she asked.

“Oh, great. I took it.”

“Cool. It’s a great deal.” She barely looked up.

“Yeah, though it’s not like I spent much time there this weekend.”

“Oh, well.” Lara was back in work headspace, but I was desperate to tell somebody about my amazing day.

“I was up in Malibu at some guy’s house,” I persisted. And that got them. Not Lara, but the other assistants in my office, Talitha and Courtney.

Until this moment my fellow assistants had been almost entirely uninterested in me. They’d looked me up and down on my first day and pretty much ignored me since. Talitha had brown, sloe eyes and long, blond mermaid hair. Her midriff was permanently exposed in an array of jewel-colored, mind-blowingly expensive hippie clothes. She was the exception that proved the black-clad Hollywood rule. She was also staggeringly ignorant of anything that happened outside the Los Angeles city limits. Except for dating, and then she was interested, conversant, and very, very prepared to travel. Apparently her parents were both prestigious Hollywood writers, but you’d never have known it, and her only ambition seemed to be to have a romantic life as colorful as her Schiaparelli-pink skirt. Her boss was a permanently absent woman called Gigi whose back I’d only ever glimpsed being trailed by a small wheelie suitcase out of the door. She was always on location with some actress or other in London or Zagreb or Sydney. I did see her face once, though, when I went into her office to find a copy of a script that Victoria asked me to read. There, on her wall, above a long-dead plant was a six-by-four framed black-and-white studio photograph of the elusive Gigi laughing her surgically lifted ass off, her hair blowing gently in the wind machine with a bewildered Labrador trying his hardest to look frolicsome for the camera and his hysterical owner. Rumor had it that Gigi only took on clients who looked like her, with oversize lips, undersize nose, and parched blond locks. Or perhaps she had grown to look like her clients over the years. Nobody really remembered how the cloning had begun, but I’d stake my life that being a fly on the wall at a Christmas party for Gigi’s client list would be a wild, freakish thing.
Still, it was perfect for Talitha to be a latchkey assistant because she was resourceful enough to spend her days on Friendster in search of her ideal studio executive.

Courtney, on the other hand, was sly, opportunistic, and deeply plain. Her appearance was only just saved from being irredeemably dull by a flock of freckles across her nose. For her, gossip was currency, and I imagined that it was not coincidence but evolution that was responsible for her long, twitching ears, which poked out through her flat, brown curtain of hair. She didn’t miss a trick in the office, and I knew that somewhere she kept an extensive filing system documenting everyone’s mistakes and shortcomings that she would not hesitate to use against them in a court of law or watercooler debate. She would slander, insinuate, and eye-roll her way to the top of the tree, and then she’d sit there for the next twenty years filing her nails and bitching about what everyone else was wearing. Whenever Courtney was around, I tried to make myself invisible to escape her hypercritical eye.

But when I mentioned my Malibu weekend to my fellow assistants, they were instantly like a pair of irresistible kittens purring all over me. And though I suddenly remembered Lara’s lecture about not dating anyone in the business and realized that she might be furious with me if Jake did turn out to be an actor, there was no getting out of it. They were hooked.

“You were?”

“Yeah.”

“Whose place?”

“Oh, some guy.”

“Really? Who?”

“His name was Jake.”

“Jake what?”

“You know, I don’t really remember.”

“You don’t remember?”

“No.”

“What did he drive?”

“Some little Porsche sport thing.”

“What did his last name begin with? Think about it.”

“I don’t know. He didn’t say.”

“Weintraub? Thompson?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Was he cute?”

“Really cute.”

“Cute like how? Like cheesy actor cute or rich and sexy cute?”

“Um, handsome. But smart.”

“What does he do?”

“Well, I’m not entirely sure. But he was just so nice.”

“You don’t know what he does?”

“I didn’t ask.”

“What was his house like?”

“Nice. Cozy.”

“Small?”

“Well, not huge but—”

“Where, exactly?”

“Carbon Beach, I think.”

“On the beach? Or across the PCH?”

“Right on the beach.”

“Wow.”

Unfortunately, our stimulating chat was interrupted. The previously scarce Daniel Rosen,
El Presidente,
chose that moment to appear in the office doorway. Actually, he didn’t arrive completely unannounced. He was preceded a few moments before by Aaron, a young assistant from across the hall, who walked by our desks and whispered loudly, “Daniel’s coming down.” At which point a hush fell over the room, feet were removed from desktops, and disdainful looks were replaced by Stepford-esque smiles. Seconds later Daniel appeared in the doorway, looking surprisingly imposing for a small man with a balding head.