The Assistants

by Camille Perri

  G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

  Publishers Since 1838

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street

  New York, New York 10014

  Copyright © 2016 by Camille Perri

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  eBook ISBN: 9780698180802

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Perri, Camille.

  The assistants / Camille Perri.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-0-399-17254-0

  1. Office workers—New York (State)—New York—Fiction. 2. Office practice—New York (State)—New York—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3616.E768A88 2016 2015025081

  813'.6—dc23

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Afterword

  Acknowledgments

  prologue

  YOU’VE PROBABLY HEARD of my former boss. And even if you haven’t heard of him, he has influenced you, I promise. Ever watched the all-day news or seen a big blockbuster summer movie? Him. Do you read the newspaper? What about one of those glossy magazines with magenta cover lines like Dirty Talk Hot Enough to Make His Boxers Combust? Him. Odds are, if you exist in the modern world, Robert owns all or a portion of the media you consume. He hovers around number thirty-five on the Forbes billionaire list. I was his assistant.

  All important men have assistants.

  That’s the first principle I want you to remember.

  Do important women also have assistants? Yes, of course. But men rule the world. Still. That’s the second principle I want you to remember. Men still rule the world. Not because this is some feminist manifesto, but because it’s a simple fact essential to how this all started. And that’s what everyone wants to know—the reporters, the bloggers—what they all want to know is how we did it.

  How Did Two Little Girls Outsmart the Most Powerful Man in New York? That was the Upworthy headline. I’m thirty years old; Emily’s twenty-eight. My five feet four inches on tippy-toes brings down the average, but Emily is a solid six foot something in heels. Not so little. What Upworthy meant was “powerless.”

  A BuzzFeed story read: Modern-Day Robin Hoods Look More Like Charlie’s Angels. They Photoshopped us into swimsuits and put guns in our hands.

  Gothamist dubbed our network the Secretary Sisterhood of Thieves! (Exclamation theirs.)

  Rumors, all of it. Internet chatter. No one knows for sure what actually happened.

  So, let me make this perfectly clear. It wasn’t stealing, really. And it was almost by accident that we discovered just how much money there was out there for the taking.

  That’s the third principle I want you to remember. There is enough money.

  There is so much money.

  1

  HERE’S HOW this whole mess started: Robert had to be in LA for a big meeting with his West Coast Titan Corporation execs and his Boeing’s engine had the gall to malfunction.

  “Tina!” he yelled from inside the soundproofed glass cube of his office.

  Robert isn’t a yeller by nature, but he had no other choice in order to overcome the soundproofing, forcing his voice to travel through his open office door. I knew it was my name he’d called by the tone. We each had our own tone. If it had been his deputy he’d wanted it would have been a gruff monosyllabic bark; for his senior editor it would have been a throaty holler; his executive producer called for a higher-pitched squawk. My skill at deciphering these subtleties was critical because it was my job to fetch whomever he called. When he wanted me, his voice dropped to a quieter bellow that bordered on a plea. It was a more intimate sound because with me Robert’s needs were always personal—he had an upset stomach and required TUMS, he’d forgotten a birthday and needed a last-minute gift, or he couldn’t for the life of him figure out how to upload this new software onto his iPad. Robert’s vulnerable call for me was a daily assurance that I was essential to the success of this castle of a man—a man whom half the world considered to be a monster because they could never come within earshot of understanding him.

  In less than a second I was at his desk, notepad in hand. Behind me a wall of flat-screens flashed the news being broadcast by Titan and its so-called competitors. Robert had the uncanny ability to devote a small portion of his gaze to each screen simultaneously. In all he owned nine satellite television networks, one hundred seventy-five newspapers, one hundred cable channels, forty book imprints, forty television stations, and one movie studio. His total audience reached around 4.7 billion people, which came out to around three-fourths of the population of the entire globe. But the news was his baby. He was never not watching it, analyzing it, shaping it. That’s why he situated his office at Titan News headquarters, where he could keep close watch not only on his wall of flat-screens but also on his journalists. A man as powerful as Robert could have hidden himself anywhere, pulling at the strings of the world from a lounge chair in the Seychelles, unseen by his employees—but he needed to be here at the center of it all, at the hub.

  Our office didn’t look like a newsroom that you’d imagine from movies or TV drama series. The floors below ours were more like that—the broadcast, print media, and digital newsrooms, each of which could have easily passed for something out of The Matrix. And there was an entire floor of flashy studios used for our nonstop news coverage and thrill-a-minute opinion shows. But our office on the fortieth floor was far less exciting, just row after row of desks and cubicles. Still, we were the brain of the whole operation, the source from which all orders trickled down. Titan’s chief editors and all of Robert’s most trusted deputies had desks on our floor so Robert could pull them into impromptus with the business leaders and celebrities he met with—and so he could foster relationships between them and the political-party representatives (yes, from both parties) who came to lobby him. I guess what I’m trying to say is, what the fortieth floor lacked in flash it made up for in influence.

  Robert had his shirtsleeves rolled up and was rubbing his dark-haired head with both hands like he always did when he was upset
. For a man his age, Robert had a surprisingly full, thick head of hair, which he attributed to a hearty diet of smoked meats and aged bourbon.

  “I need to be on the next flight to LA,” he said. “And have them bump the seats around mine.”

  Robert made requests like this as if he were ordering a pastrami on rye at the corner deli, or in his case, maybe braised brisket on a roll.

  “You’re flying commercial?” I asked.

  “Don’t get me started. The Boeing died and they tell me there aren’t any jets available for the rest of the afternoon. Can you believe that shit? Not one. I used to be somebody in this town, you know that?”

  In the six years I’d worked for Robert, not once had he ever flown on a commercial airline. I glanced at the clock. In order for him to make the LA meeting on time, he’d have to be on a flight in the next two hours.

  “And make sure they comp me,” he said.

  “The airline?” What amounted to buying out half of first class on a flight that would be leaving almost immediately, Robert wanted for free. And he expected it to be done as simply as saying “hold the mustard.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  Robert brought his hands down from his head, placed them flat on his desk, and looked at me amiably with his big brown eyes. “Thank you,” he said.

  That’s something people who haven’t met Robert can’t understand—his graciousness. They see a seventy-year-old media tycoon accused of evading every tax and law imaginable to expand his multinational domination. They see a sinister businessman accused of single-handedly making a mockery of news journalism. They see a one-percenter with a “Don’t Mess with Texas” bumper sticker on the back of his Mercedes. But actually, Robert’s a very nice man.

  So I called the airline, used my executive voice, and politely explained our crisis situation.

  “You do understand this will cause a great disruption to our other first-class passengers,” the phlegmy-voiced woman on the phone said. “But because Mr. Barlow is such a valued customer we’re happy to accommodate him.” She sounded like one of Marge Simpson’s chain-smoking sisters.

  “Thank you,” I replied, perfectly mimicking Robert’s amiability.

  All sweetness and light, Robert always said. That’s how you have to talk to people, all sweetness and light, but tough as stewed skunk.

  She clicked away on her keyboard. “The total fare will come to nineteen thousand, one hundred forty-seven dollars.”

  I had the urge to gasp. That was a high enough figure to make flying in a private jet sound fiscally reasonable.

  “Ma’am?” I said. “I do understand this is terribly short notice and you’re going to great lengths to accommodate Mr. Barlow’s sizable request, but I was wondering if it would be possible for this fare to be complimentary.”

  Silence.

  “Hello?”

  More silence. Then laughter, then the clearing of mucus, then finally—“You’ve got to be fucking kidding.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Who does this guy think he is?”

  “Ma’am,” I said again, which always made me feel slightly Southern in spite of my New York roots, and also a little bit like an asshole, “did you just curse at me? I’d like to speak to your manager immediately.”

  “There is no way we’re comping Robert Barlow,” she said.

  I glanced at the time and then at Robert’s desk. He’d already left for the airport, unable to even fathom that his request would be denied. Jesus, no wonder he never flew commercial if this was the treatment he got. Asking to fly for free or not, where were these people’s manners?

  “Fine,” I said. “We’ll pay the fare. But as soon as I hang up this phone I’m filing a complaint with your customer service department.”

  “Credit card number, please.”

  I recited Robert’s corporate Amex number from memory as obnoxiously as possible.

  Two seconds later the woman replied, “I’m sorry,” like she wasn’t sorry at all. “That card’s expired.”

  “Impossible.”

  I could hear her grinning through the receiver. “That card is expired.”

  Shit. Fine. How could I be losing this battle of wills so terribly? I fished through my bag, found my wallet, pulled out my own credit card, and read off the number.

  Titan didn’t allow assistants to have corporate cards, so it was my personal card that I had to use.

  “One moment, please,” she said.

  I listened to her breathing, which sounded like Darth Vader performing an anti-tobacco PSA, and then she came back with: “I’m sorry. That card’s also been rejected. You’ve exceeded your credit limit.”

  I pretty much set myself up for that one. None of my credit cards had a limit over eleven thousand dollars. “Can I split it between two cards?” I flipped through my wallet.

  “No,” she said.

  “No?”

  “No.”

  “I would seriously like to speak to your manager immediately,” I said. “I’m not even kidding now.”

  “Okay, fine. You can use two cards.” My nemesis was growing bored of sucking the life out of my day; I was obviously harshing her mellow disengagement. “But this isn’t customary. I’m doing you a favor.”

  “I appreciate that,” I said, because at heart I’m a total weakling.

  I read off the number to my second credit card, got “one moment”–ed again, but—at last—tragedy was averted.

  I hung up the phone and took a deep breath.

  Of course I filed an expense report the moment I received an e-mail confirmation for the fare. Twenty thousand dollars was half of my yearly salary.

  People often assumed I made more as the assistant to one of the richest, most powerful men on the planet, and I let them. It was less humiliating that way. Maybe there was a time when “executive assistants,” also known as “secretaries,” were “taken care of,” but those days are long gone, at least in the media industry. They went out with lunches at the Four Seasons, smoking indoors, and the existence of the middle class. Every assistant I knew made under fifty K a year. But the new hires made only thirty-five K, so it wasn’t really my place to complain.

  —

  YOU KNOW HOW sometimes when you call to order something over the phone, like plane tickets, let’s say, a recording might come on just before a real person answers that says, This call may be recorded for quality assurance purposes?

  Well, my call with the hater from the airline was one of those lucky calls. I’d never filed a complaint the way I threatened to; I’m way too lazy for that sort of thing. But a few days after the incident, I received a call from the airline’s head of customer relations apologizing for the “confusion” of the attendant on the phone. She’d been “let go,” I was told, also known as fired. The airline retroactively comped Robert’s flight and they were sending a gift for his troubles.

  “Would Mr. Barlow enjoy a bottle of good red wine?” the groveling woman asked.

  “Why, yes. Yes, he would.”

  Things like this happened to Robert all the time. Before I worked for Titan, I never realized that very rich people didn’t pay for stuff.

  (Let’s call that rule number four: Very rich people don’t pay for stuff.)

  I was so naïve. This sucking-up from the airline would have at one time struck me as shocking and unbelievably unfair, nonsensical even. Why wouldn’t a billionaire have to pay for something a poor person would absolutely have to pay for? But I’d grown used to it in the past six soul-crushing years, so it no longer fazed me. I immediately filed the whole incident under forgotten, went home, watched some Netflix, and fell asleep ignoring the unpaid bills piling up on my kitchen table, per usual.

  A few days later I was g-chatting with Handsome Kevin Hanson from legal (that’s what every female in the office called him, or j
ust Kevin Handsome for short) while shoveling spoonfuls of Pinkberry into my mouth. I was enjoying an intense brain freeze coupled with the rush I always experienced while chatting with Kevin, when Billy the mail guy (aka “Patchouli,” on account of his stinking to high hell of the stuff and dutifully passing it on to all of our parcels) dropped a white, hippie-infused envelope onto my desk that read: Travel & Entertainment Reimbursement.

  Suddenly I remembered.

  I signed off g-chat, made sure Patchouli Billy was at a safe distance, and then sliced open the envelope with my silver letter opener. And there it was. A crisp green check in the amount of $19,147 with my name on it.

  Of course. My credit cards were billed. My credit cards were unbilled. But T & E had already filed the claim. I’d already been approved for the reimbursement.

  I couldn’t stop looking at that beautiful, blossoming number. Nineteen thousand, one hundred forty-seven dollars. It was so much money to me. It was nearly, to the dollar, the exact amount of my student loan balance, and I’d been struggling to pay that down for almost a decade. (Thanks for nothing, NYU.)

  I folded the check in half, then in half again, and shoved it deep into the black-hole darkness of my bag.

  Later, I would recognize this as the moment that I faltered, my pivotal turn. But at the time it seemed innocent enough. I would just, you know, bring the check home and then tear it to shreds.

  Sure, I could have torn it up right then and been done with it, but I wanted to look at it some more first. To sit with it in my moldy one-bedroom Brooklyn apartment, with its leaky roof and rats in the walls. I needed to take the check home to bed with me, for just one night, before discarding it.

  So I did.

  One night then turned into a week that I slept with that gorgeous green-patterned piece of paper on my nightstand, weighted down by my half-empty orange pill bottle of Lexapro. Then I had a nightmare that one of the rats in the walls made it into my room when I wasn’t home and ate the check, so I weighed it down with a mousetrap instead. Not one with cheese in it, just the trap, set and ready, cocked like an armed security guard.