“No, no,” you said. You shifted on the pod chair, uncrossed your legs. You looked hard at me, your eyes glittering. “I wanted to ask if you’d consider staying here and being my assistant. I mean, my personal assistant.”
I still gripped the arm of the couch, as if it might capsize. The meaning of your words penetrated slowly.
“A lot of actors have friends as their assistants,” you continued. “People who already know them and live with them and anticipate what they need. People they trust. I was thinking maybe you’d consider that. I’m at the point where I need help. It would just be day-to-day things. Keeping track of my appointments, answering the phone, maybe organizing some household stuff. My agent keeps telling me I need an assistant, but I’ve been putting it off. I thought it might be awkward, too rigid or something. But if it was you, it would be different. It would be fun. And I trust you completely.” You blinked, and rode the swaying pod chair. “I’d pay you, of course. And you could stay here for free.”
I concentrated on keeping my grip on the couch, so as not to dive at your feet. Finally, I spoke. “You want me to be your personal assistant?”
You nodded.
“And keep staying here?”
You shifted forward and put your feet onto the floor, halting the chair’s swinging. “Please, Abby. I hope you’ll say yes.”
I inhaled. “Are you sure it wouldn’t be weird for you?”
“No, no.” You shook your head. “It would be a relief.” You blinked again, rapidly. “But take some time to think about it. No pressure. If it’s uncomfortable for you, I totally understand.”
You looked deeply at me for a long moment. You fluffed the dress over your legs, and a fluttering warmth spread through my body.
“It would be wonderful,” I said solemnly.
Your lips curled into a smile, and you pushed yourself up from the chair and came toward me. “Oh Abby, I’m so glad. I really love having you here. You’re such a great support to me. There’s no one else I can trust like I trust you, who I know will always be loyal.” You embraced me and kissed my cheek. “How crazy is this? Who would have thought we’d end up here, from when we were kids? It’s so crazy.”
“Yes, crazy,” I echoed.
Suddenly, amazingly, I was your closest confidante. I’d slipped back into your life as if I’d never left, as if we’d somehow awoken from a slumber party as grown women.
At first, being an assistant simply meant keeping you company when you wanted it and leaving you alone when you didn’t, as I’d already been doing. You were sweetly hesitant about asking me for things at first, afraid of demeaning me with a load of dry cleaning. “No, this is my job,” I said firmly and took the clothes into my arms. Dry cleaning would happen every week, we decided. You’d put it in a bin in the laundry room. As for regular laundry, you wanted to give it to your maid service, but I insisted on doing it myself. I emptied your bedroom hamper on Mondays and Thursdays, poured a dab of clear liquid detergent directly upon the fabric of your underwear, and fastened the hooks of your bras before putting them in zippered mesh bags. The fabric of your garments was splendid, tinseled with copper strands of your hair.
You gave me your credit card and checkbook so I could pay for everything. You sent me to a natural food store where, instead of gum and breath mints, there was organic chocolate bark and artisanal spring water in the checkout lane. I bought some of your wine there, too, a few bottles of pinot noir and rosé, sustainably grown from the local vineyards you publicly favored. The rest of the wine supply, and the hard liquor, I purchased from a roadside place where the paparazzi wouldn’t track me.
You got a new phone and gave your old one to me to serve as your administrative line. Only Rafael and I had your updated number. The old phone rang incessantly, and I turned down lunch appointments on your behalf and took messages from your agent.
“Oh, you’re her assistant! Good, I’m so glad she took the leap. Please have her call me when she can.”
At your insistence, I set up my own email account. I adopted a friendly, professional tone in answering messages and texts from the acquaintances who hadn’t rated access to your new phone number. I felt a frisson each time I rejected a request for a social appointment. You were swamped with your big role coming up, I’d tell them, but you’d be in touch as soon as you came up for air.
It was wonderful, you said, to have this new peace. You shut yourself in the bedroom, or in the dream room with the glass orbs, to go through the script. You walked outside the house, wending around the citrus trees, talking to yourself, becoming Joan. For the next few weeks, I knew to avoid you, to give you space. If I came across you accidentally, I bustled away like a housekeeper—unless you stopped me, as you did a few times, and asked me to listen to your delivery. Then, I stood stiffly in front of you as you spoke in an affected warble, gesturing with a limp hand.
When you finally came out of your trance, you sought me out, knocking on my door as I hunched with my drawings. I shoved them under the bed, out of sight, before answering. Your eyes were alight when I opened the door, as if you’d been loosed from a chain.
“Let’s go shopping,” you commanded.
I’d become accustomed to being “papped” and had even begun to recognize some of the photographers, although I never understood how they found you and why they sometimes didn’t. It never stopped being a shock when they materialized outside your car, a disorderly squadron aiming their cameras like stubby cannons. I sensed a submarine current of excitement beneath their workmanlike demeanor. Some had an alcoholic blear in their eyes as they barked your name, or a twitch at the mouth that suggested a cyclical dependence on adrenaline. And as much as you, like every star, professed to dislike it, I wondered if there might have been a corresponding shade of addiction on your part, too. There must have been something energizing—life affirming—in hunting and being hunted that kept you and the whole city going.
I was an observer, a tagalong, a pet. It didn’t bother me to be left in waiting rooms during dress fittings, to sit in the parking lot during script workshops. I didn’t mind not being introduced when you ran into an acquaintance at Nobu. I was admittedly lost by the politics of the film industry, useless as a strategic adviser. I was simply there to listen, to groan in sympathy and glow with pride. And listening was what I did best, what I was grateful to the heavens to be able to do. I loved the sound of your voice. Whatever its petty grievances or vacuous prattle, I would have been happy to hear it forever.
V.
FOR THE Vespers premiere, the stylist worked on you for hours, and when you emerged from your room, the bohemian girl had been replaced with the archetype of woman. Your dress was bridal white, long and demure but for metal hooks at the sides, stapling the front and back together like pieces of paper, hitting a precise note of aesthetic risk. Your hair swept over one shoulder in a wave, secured by invisible combs. In your hand was a silver clamshell just big enough for car keys and a tube of lipstick. The stylist helped me, too, laying out an assortment of dresses for me to try. She decided on a black satin dress with a sweetheart neckline and swing skirt, and handed me gold-cluster earrings.
“Just some red lipstick and you’re set,” she said. “You’ll look like Diablo Cody.”
Later, I asked you who that was.
“Oh, that’s a big compliment from Bianca.” You jostled my shoulder. “Diablo Cody was, like, the hippest thing in Hollywood a few years ago.”
Rafael, I supposed, was with his own stylist. The plan was that you and he would arrive in a limo to appear together for photos, and I’d be dropped off in a taxi. I was to stay near but not beside you on the red carpet. No one told me anything else. The stylist was in a fluster. She popped into my room to check in with me, nodding her approval at the black dress and red pumps, the cherry-bomb lipstick. As I teetered out in the heels, I had a momentary flashback to our high school reunion and wished that our classmates might somehow know about this—that they might see me here
in this black minx dress, this parallel universe.
The premiere was at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. I’d been told the theater was iconic, but it looked like a tacky shopping center to me. Traffic cones and cattle barriers lined the sidewalk where the stars would appear. There was an actual red carpet. Cars and taxis passed the spectacle without slowing, a constant stream down Hollywood Boulevard. A herd of fans huddled across the street, holding up camera phones and screaming out names.
I was ushered onto the red carpet, and abandoned there. The nerves swarmed in my stomach as I withdrew against a metal barrier. Around me, a group of unfazed industry people loitered. The glare of the klieg lights gave the scene an eerie surreality. Only the actors were brushed and glitzed; only they strode and posed within this bright bubble. Everyone else was businesslike, focused on moving the evening forward minute by minute. Time seemed rushed and clipped: the cursory interviews in front of massive TV cameras, the quick struts and pivots you and Rafael performed as if ballroom dancing, the artillery of flash photography. I bent down and touched the red carpet. To my surprise, it was made of rough industrial fabric, not the velvet I’d imagined. The name of the movie was printed on it. It occurred to me that a new carpet must be manufactured for every premiere.
Then, policemen stopped traffic, parting the waters long enough for you and Rafael to cross toward the pen of jostling fans. I watched as the two of you moved along the metal barrier, pausing to sign autographs, tilting your heads to pose for photos. You were completely exposed, at the mercy of the mob. Whose idea was this? What member of your public relations team had decided that touching heads with strangers on Hollywood Boulevard was good for your image? To my consternation, the photographers followed you across the street. Rafael threw an arm around you and squeezed, planted a photogenic kiss on your forehead. You were so airy in your sheath of white, just a trace of a person. I saw the labor it took just to inhabit your name. Watching you and Rafael posing together, I understood that you were no different from the red carpets—thrilling, but ultimately disposable, interchangeable. The only real sovereignty belonged to the producers, the jowly, deep-pocketed men in black suits. The only real freedom belonged to the writers and directors.
By the time we filed into the theater, I was exhausted. I sank into my seat at the rear with the other minions. The movie itself was generic sci-fi, visually luscious but formulaic. Your role consisted mainly of searching gazes held in camera close-ups, whereas Rafael was the galaxy explorer, discoverer of your planet, barking commands to his crew and clenching his jaw.
At the after-party, I stood alone near the food table while you held court in a banquette with Rafael. There was an ice sculpture, and a jazz quartet on a revolving stage. I recognized the narrow-faced actress who came up to your table—the French starlet, Mireille Sauvage, leaning in to kiss Rafael on both cheeks. She wore a sheer layered gown that showed the outline of her breasts and buttocks, and I saw Rafael’s hands travel down her back as she pushed into him. It was clear, as if I were watching a scene in a movie, what would happen between them, if it hadn’t already. I could see the dress dropped candidly to the floor, the languor with which he’d pull her astride him on the bed.
I watched as Mireille Sauvage slid into your banquette, as Rafael poured champagne into her glass. I reached nervously toward a garnished platter and pinched a crab roll between my fingers. I watched you crane past Rafael in your white envelope dress, a piece of your hair escaping from its clip as you smiled and said something pleasant to Mireille.
The table was weighted with food, but no one else seemed to be eating. I finished the crab roll, and as I took another, a man came up to the table. I glimpsed dark hair, unevenly cut, shaggy over the ears. He slouched in a way that suggested he was not an actor in the film. He put an empanada on his plate and shot a sideways glance at me.
“I really don’t like these things,” he said.
I swallowed. “Empanadas?”
“No, these parties.”
“Oh,” I said and took an empanada for myself. He stood, waiting for me to continue, and I thought of something to say. “Why are you here, then? I mean, what’s your connection to the film?”
“I’m a camera guy, but I finagled a plus-one from the DP.” I detected an accent in his voice, though I couldn’t place it. He faced me and stared. “You?”
“I’m, uh, a friend of one of the actors.” My face heated, and I wished I had a drink in my hand.
He kept staring. “Which one?”
“Elise Van Dijk,” I breathed. I thought of adding, I live in her house, but stopped myself. I glanced at the banquette where you sat pressed against Rafael, your hair still artfully arranged over your shoulder.
The man didn’t respond but put a whole empanada in his mouth. A long moment passed as I waited for him to finish chewing. Very likely, he had nothing else to say to me. He’d just walk away, and I’d stay shuffling at the table until it was time to leave. A kind of nervous plaque had been building in me all evening, and I realized it would actually be a tremendous luxury to have a meaningless conversation right now, just to sit down with a drink and talk about anything. There was something about this man, or his low status, that put me at ease.
As if attuned to my thoughts, he finished swallowing the food and said, “I’m going to the bar, do you want to come?”
“Sure.”
“I’m Paul,” he said, loping beside me. “I was watching you before and wondering if you came with the Solar crew.”
“The Solar crew? Uh, so to speak, I guess.”
“How do you know Elise?” Again, the sideways look. I entertained the suspicion that he might be in love with you, might be angling to get closer. That was how it happened in Hollywood, I imagined. Even camera guys hoped to swivel into the orbits of stars, hoped that one serendipitous contact might lead to a promotion to director of photography and to an affair with Elise Van Dijk.
“I’ve known her since we were kids,” I said.
“Really? Well, she seems nice,” he said. “Still untainted, you know? What would you like to drink?”
“Gin and tonic, please.”
I watched him as he talked to the bartender. His suit was the right size but didn’t seem to fit. There was a looseness to his movements, as if his joints were slightly misaligned, and the shine in his hair didn’t seem to be from styling gel, but from natural oils. The skin at his chin and neck was irritated pink.
“I was hoping you’d talk to me,” he said as he handed me the drink.
“Well it doesn’t take much.” I put my lips to the straw and channeled the first jeweled string of quinine and juniper. I took another, longer sip and felt the cold bloom at my chest.
“Let’s sit, if you don’t mind sitting,” Paul said.
He led me past the stage, away from the music, to a lounge area. The men were young and dart-eyed in colorful shirts and skinny belts. There were only a few women among them, dramatically leaning. They all seemed to be doing more looking than talking. By the time I sat on an ottoman, I’d nearly finished my drink.
“So, friend of Elise Van Dijk’s, what brings you to this place? I’m guessing you’re from Michigan, too, if you knew her back when. But you’re not in the industry, are you.”
I was momentarily stunned to hear the word “Michigan,” but I reminded myself that this was common knowledge about you. The humble midwestern girl making it big. The rough gem, refreshingly real.
“No,” I conceded. “I’m not in the industry.”
“So just here for moral support? Or on vacation?”
“A little of both.” My drink was now drained, even the juice sucked from the lime carcass. I didn’t know what else to say. I wasn’t used to talking to new people. You’d mediated nearly all of my introductions in L.A. and, excluding my cash register interactions at Meijer, I’d hardly spoken to a stranger independently since college. Now I remembered the suffocating sensation that sometimes came over me, the feeling of being trappe
d inside hard layers, like a Russian nesting doll.
But Paul didn’t push. We just sat, angled away from each other on ottomans. He didn’t cross his legs the way most of the men here did: ankle to knee. Instead, he leaned forward, forearms on thighs, like someone waiting for a bus. He seemed to be concentrating, listening critically to the music.
When he looked back toward me, I asked, “So what’s your camera job?”
He straightened up, pushed a strip of hair off his forehead. “I load the film.”
“Oh.”
“It’s more complicated than it sounds.”
“I believe you.”
He explained the importance of loading film correctly. One mistake could lead to hours of wasted shooting. On digital films, he took care of all the data. He’d been working cameras for years now and enjoyed the cooperation and camaraderie of the crew. There was a rigid hierarchy that he’d learned to appreciate, each worker adding his stealth contribution to the apparatus, subordinating himself to the whole. Working on Vespers had been particularly enjoyable, he told me; the stars had been interesting to watch. He was a bit of an anthropologist, he explained, observing the behavior of industry people from the inside.
“And I’m a filmmaker, too,” he added softly. “I do my own stuff.”
This, I imagined, was true of every man in L.A. But there was a smolder in his look as he glanced away from me and took a drink.
“Tell me,” I said.
“I’m making a documentary about Central American refugees. At least I’m planning to, when I get the funding.”
He looked across the room as he said this, toward your banquette. Perhaps it was nothing to blame him for. It was hard for me not to look, too.
“By the way, we have something in common,” he said. “I’m also from Michigan.”
I was instantly suspicious. He didn’t look or speak like anyone I’d known in Michigan. If anything, his accent sounded European.
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