The Second Assistant

by Clare Naylor

  The combination of crippling disappointment, fear, and vodka began to well and truly kick in at precisely the moment that Lara emerged beside me from the swirling crowd.

  “Hasn’t that shitty little pumpkinhead sent anyone to replace you yet?”

  “Who, Ryan?”

  “Of course Ryan,” she said.

  “Lara, does Ryan have a problem with me?” I asked.

  “Ryan has a problem with everyone. He hates without discrimination. But in your case, Daniel hired you, so he probably presumes you’re being groomed for success.”

  “Well, that’s bullshit,” I said. “Daniel’s forgotten me.” Clearly I was less than memorable all around. I let in Marilyn Manson, who was never on the list in the first place because he once stole Daniel’s girlfriend from him, which—let’s face it—is not flattering.

  “Ryan’s twisted.” Lara took the clipboard from me and handed it to Nick. She gave him an imploring smile, and he took over happily. Unsurprising, as she was looking more stunning than I’d ever seen her, and certainly more relaxed. She had a man’s tux jacket slung over her porcelain-white shoulders, and her hair looked very déshabillé, very fucked in the bushes.

  “Who’s the lucky man?” I asked, pointing to the jacket.

  “You wouldn’t want to know.” She slipped her arm through mine and led me into the thick of the party. “Oh, and by the way, great party. Scott and Daniel are thrilled.”

  “No, you’re kidding! What about the strippers?” I asked, not wanting to hear the answer.

  “Yeah, nice touch.” Lara laughed. “When I first saw them taking off their gold costumes, I thought you’d lost your mind hiring them. But when everyone saw how awesome George thought it was and what fun he was having, even Daniel got into it.”

  “Honestly?” I asked.

  “Sure,” Lara said.

  I was so relieved. This was a death-row pardon, and I couldn’t have been happier. I’d deal with Ryan later. My Crazy Girls were tiptoeing around a cigar-wielding Jack and his cronies in their G-strings, not an oversize nipple in sight, and the lush foliage of palm fronds and orchids seemed to be alive with kissing strangers, deals being brokered, and asses being kissed. Hollywood was definitely a jungle. I caught a glimpse of George chatting to a very cute guy with black hair and groovy schoolboy sneakers on—in defiance of the black-tie dress code, I might add.

  “Who’s that?” I asked Lara as we weaved our way poolside.

  “Luke Lloyd!” she yelled, too loud for my comfort. “He’s a hottie and actually not a gross-receipt-obsessed moron like most producers.”

  “Oh, he’s a producer.” I kissed the idea of him good-bye and began looking for cute waiters. It wasn’t that I was afraid to incur Lara’s wrath anymore, just that she’d been proved right with her warning about dating industry men. I hated being the talk of the office, and I hated even more turning the next corner and seeing Esther Hartley sitting on Jake’s knee. Her long arms were draped around his shoulders, and whatever she was saying was making him laugh. And if I had previously allowed myself to dream that he might one day want to settle down with a sweet, normal girl like me, whose heart was kind and whose feet were on the ground, I changed my mind. Hell, even I wouldn’t settle down with me if I’d been adored by Esther Hartley and her numinous body.

  “Can you believe she has a degree in astrophysics?” Lara nudged me as we went by the delirious couple. Then she realized her mistake and grimaced. “Oh, sorry, honey.”

  “Not to worry.” I shrugged. “I think he’s receding in the wrong way. I noticed that when we were in his sports car and the wind was blowing his hair back.”

  “Like a monk spot?”

  “No, more the abused-hedgehog thing, sparse at the front.”

  “Oh, that’s bad. Lucky escape.” Lara laughed as we came to a halt by the side of the pool.

  “Drink?” Lara handed me a glass of something the color of a swimming pool, and we both sunk into pool chairs.

  “Woo hoo, bush action.” She pointed to the shrubbery beside me where a Crazy Girl was being led by the hand into the bushes, but I couldn’t make out the man doing the leading. A few minutes later, the girl emerged with a slightly dazed but not displeased look on her face and a business card in her hand. But as Lara and I began to laugh, Scott, who had been sitting at a table nearby, beckoned Lara over. I didn’t think she’d noticed, as she was looking determinedly in the other direction, but just as I was about to point him out to her, she had gotten up and was striding, drink in hand, to where he was sitting. With a woman I assumed was his wife. Certainly she looked bored and he looked out of it.

  I took another hit of my drink and decided to investigate the bush action a little more closely. Besides, I felt quite vulnerable sitting alone with a spare pool chair beside me. It was like advertising in a singles column where any old crazy could come and size up your wares. I stood up and wandered, cocktail in hand, to the greenery, which I’d gotten cheap because it hadn’t been sprayed for bugs, something I hoped Daniel never found out.

  “You’re back, baby. I knew you would be.” A big hand clutched at my wrist as I approached the place where the man had disappeared with the Crazy Girl.

  “Hey!” I yelled as I was dragged forward through the hedge. Which was novel, at least.

  “Oh, it’s not you.” It was dark, and I couldn’t see who the man was, but there was an outside chance that it might be Leo or Matthew, who I’d seen line-dancing with a Crazy Girl earlier, so I didn’t scream just yet. “Who are you?”

  “I’m Elizabeth. Scott’s Wagner’s assistant.”

  “Well, Elizabeth, Scott Wagner’s assistant, I think you’re pretty cute.” The man chose that moment to pull out a lighter and glance the flame over his cigar, and in the light I saw that he wasn’t even slightly cute. He certainly wasn’t Leo. Or Matthew. Which would serve me right for being such a celebrity whore. But just as I was about to dart off, he said, “I’m Bob.” I knew that I’d seen his picture on the cover of Variety yesterday and that he’d just closed an enormous deal at Paramount and was responsible for at least two three-hundred-plus-grossing films. I’d also read that he was looking for new representation. Which meant that I probably didn’t want to slap him while my boss, an agent with a wife and a drug habit to support, was sitting ten feet away.

  “Well, Bob,” I said instead, “it was nice meeting you, and now I’ve gotta run. I’m kind of taking care of the party.”

  “But who’s taking care of you?” he said as he puffed on his glowing cigar and the rubbery redness of his drool-drenched lips was illuminated.

  “Oh, I can take care of myself.” I tried to sound casual, and I might have succeeded. But certainly I wasn’t correct, because a second later he had put his thick, sausagey fingers around my waist and his tongue in my mouth.

  “I’ve really got to make sure that everything’s going okay,” I said, but he couldn’t hear me because he was chewing enthusiastically on my lower lip. So instead I gave him a gentle shove in the crotch and ducked back through the bushes to the poolside, where the fairy lights and floodlit swimming pool dazzled me for a moment or two. Then I made a beeline for the house. I didn’t wait to find out whether The Agency would be signing him as a new client someday soon.

  But as I tried to make my break, shaking from yet another encounter with an aggressive Hollywood habitué, I was stopped in my tracks by Lara.

  “You’ve got to come with me—now,” she said, a dead serious look in her eyes. Holy shit, I thought, Bob had made it to Scott before me and told him that I’d attacked him. I was fired for sure. She took hold of my hand and dragged me toward the stairs.

  “Lara, I’m really sorry. But I swear that it was sexual harassment. I swear I didn’t encourage him,” I blurted as we flew by guests, banged into slightly-worn-out-looking waitresses, and what I could have sworn was one of our hottest young actresses kissing the neck of Tommy, one of my fellow assistants at The Agency.

  “Just
shut up and follow me,” Lara said as my wrist began to burn and I nearly broke my ankle tripping up a step.

  “It was self-protection. Any lawyer in the land would back me up,” I said, though I suspected that this particular case might not make it to court. I’d be bought off with enough money for my plane ticket back to D.C. and told never to darken the door of The Agency again.

  “What the fuck are you going on about?” Lara asked as we finally made it to the cool rosewood interior of Daniel’s master-suite bathroom.

  “Bob.” I collapsed on the toilet seat and was about to cry but was too stunned by the décor—the silver mosaic sunken bath, the dark matte floorboards, and the 1920s mirror. “My God, this is the most beautiful bathroom I’ve ever seen!”

  “I know, Daniel has got to be gay. I don’t care what Scott says. A man with such great taste does not eat pussy.” Lara turned the large, fairy-castle key in the door and bolted us in. “Who’s Bob?”

  “You mean I’m not in trouble?” I asked, not really wanting to go into detail if I didn’t have to. After all, I could still taste the man’s aftershave on my lips—I didn’t need to remind myself any more than was necessary. The whole thing was disturbing enough to give Wes Craven nightmares.

  “What are we doing here, then?” I asked.

  “We need to get you out of that dress,” Lara said as she ran her fingers through her hair, which was so red it looked on fire in the low-lit bathroom.

  “What?” Of course it flashed through my mind that Lara wanted my body, but only for a second, I swear.

  “Julia is wearing the same dress. If she sees you in it, she’ll leave the party, and Daniel will flip out.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me!” I laughed with relief. “Julia doesn’t care if I’m in the same dress. No matter what she wears, she’d look ten times better than me in it. Come on.”

  “Jesus, Elizabeth, you’re so clueless.” And then she came over to me and began to unzip the dress. “It’s not Julia who’ll care, for Christ’s sake. Like she’d even notice.”

  “Well, I don’t care.” I stood there shivering slightly as the dress slipped to the floor and Lara lit two cigarettes and passed me one.

  “It’s her stylist, Nadia, who’s here with Julia. She’s one of the savviest girls in the business, and if she sees you in that dress, she’ll either burn holes in it, spill a tray of cocktails in your face, or tell some lie to Julia to get her to leave the party before she’s shown up for lack of originality. Now, what should we dress you in?” Lara looked around the bathroom hopefully as I cottoned on to the enormity of the problem.

  “I could go home and change?” I offered. “I only live twenty minutes away.”

  “It’s eleven o’clock, Elizabeth,” she said, taking a long drag. “Even the best Hollywood parties end at midnight. The executives have to get home to read their specs for breakfast meetings, the actors need to get enough sleep to handle their morning Pilates, and the agents and managers? Well, no one stays at a party for them.”

  “Can’t I just duck out of Nadia’s way and stay for the last hour?” I pleaded, not wanting to miss out on a minute of my first Hollywood party. Even the assaults hadn’t taken the fairy dust off my thrill at being here.

  “Perfect! I knew I’d find something,” Lara called out from a huge glass-fronted dresser where she’d been foraging furiously. “Here.” She held up a mermaid green piece of silk with lace edging and examined the tag. “La Perla, you’re in luck.”

  “I can’t wear that,” I said in horror. “First off, it belongs to Daniel’s wife. Secondly, it’s lingerie.”

  “Josie will never notice. She’s very well medicated. Just put it on.”

  “But it’s underwear!” I wailed.

  “No one will ever know. Just try it on.” Before I could protest, she had slipped it over my head and was scrutinizing me. “Great. Now, just take your bra off and we’re A-okay.”

  “Lara, I need a bra. I have C-cup breasts. They’re not meant to stand up on their own.”

  “You look hot, come on,” she said, and led me back out into the party, grabbing a couple of cocktails on the way and insisting that I drink both before I moved another inch. “Now, you go and have fun.” And with that she vanished. Leaving me alone wearing underwear in public.

  Fortunately or unfortunately—and there are two points of view here—the slip was a hit. It took another cocktail to unglue me from behind the white pillar at the foot of Daniel’s staircase and propel me out toward the pool. I couldn’t see anyone that I knew, not even Lara, Scott, or Daniel. But as I looked around, Cameron tapped me on the shoulder.

  “I love your dress. It’s neat,” she said, and I felt myself buckle in the presence of her sheer starriness. Tonight she was not wearing Kmart pants. She had a white rose behind her ear, the promised pink dress, and a friendly smile on her face.

  “Thank you,” I managed to say as I gazed at her and marveled at just how unequal human beings were created. For that moment I wished that my fairy godmother had ticked the charisma box instead of the brain box. Because how much fun would life be if you were Cameron?

  “There’s a guy over there who I once kissed but who’s way too smart for me. He makes me feel like an intellectual ant. But I’m sure you’d love him,” Cameron whispered conspiratorially to me, moving in close. “Great, great kisser, too. Or I wouldn’t recommend him,” she added, as if she were urging me to try a smoked-salmon canapé.

  “Okay, I’ll remember that,” I told her gratefully. Though I wasn’t tall enough to see the guy she was pointing to over the ocean of guests and wouldn’t have had the courage to pursue him anyway. “Thanks.”

  “No problem,” Cameron said before being swept away as dizzyingly as she’d arrived.

  Our encounter, though, had mysteriously given me the courage to make my way to where a friendly looking group of people was sitting by the adobe pool house. I said hi and attempted to sit down on the floor beside them in an elegant way, but because I was as drunk as a skunk by this point, I thudded down with the grace of a sack of Idaho potatoes.

  “Hi, there,” I hiccupped, and noticed, too late, that Bob was one of the friendly looking people.

  “Must say I prefer this dress much better,” he laughed. He had stripped down to his swimming trunks, and the girls around him were all wearing bikinis. Moments later some beautiful young boy movie star whom I didn’t recognize sat down on a nearby bench, and the girls dissolved like lumps of sugar, only to resurface at his side. Leaving me alone with Bob.

  “So, honey, are you enjoying yourself?”

  I was tempted to tell him irritably that at this moment the only thing I was enjoying was myself, but when I looked up again, he was smiling in an almost appealing way at me.

  “Yeah, I’m having a lovely time,” I said.

  “As you should be. You’re definitely the prettiest girl here.” He winked.

  “It must be almost midnight.” I said, changing the subject, though I was a bit warm from the flattery.

  “Actually, it’s ten of,” he said. “Still a little time for fun before we all hit the hay.”

  “Oh, I’ve had so much fun,” I said, realizing that it was actually true. That for all the drama and all my shattered Jake Hudson dreams and the like, I suddenly felt part of something. As if I belonged in a small way. Not that I mattered in an important-person-in-town way, just that I had my own niche finally. And I smiled to myself. I was very far from D.C., but it was all okay.

  “Let’s swim.”

  In my reverie I hadn’t noticed that Bob was standing above me, holding out his hand. But I was relaxed enough to take it, and the water looked delicious, so I allowed him to pull me to my feet, and before I had time to ponder whether this was a sensible career move, I leaped headlong into the pool with Bob.

  Moments later, splashing around in the blissful warmth of the water, I was giggling away and Bob watched as I demonstrated my famous underwater handstand.

 
; “You gotta lose the dress, babycakes,” he said when I spluttered to the surface with a noseful of chlorine. “It could be dangerous swimming in that thing. Might sink you.”

  And because I am very stupid and obedient when drunk, I shuffled my billowing dress off my body and wriggled out of it. I drifted toward the deep end, in just my G-string and diamonds, with my breasts bobbing excitedly in the water. And moments later Bob was also bobbing excitedly in the water, right beside me. And I think I must have been affected by the headiness of cocktails and jewels and water and sadness, because after another moment Bob was kissing me. And I didn’t mind. Jake had gone home with his living doll, and they were doubtless making beautiful, magical love together right now in his Malibu beach house. And anyway, there was something comforting about the way Bob tasted of cigars and gently stroked the back of my neck. The water lapped against my shoulders, and reality seemed about a million miles away.

  It was only a few minutes later, when there was a huge splash in the pool, followed by another and another, that I suddenly realized what I’d done. Everyone had followed my lead, and four of the Crazy Girls were splashing around with untethered boobs in the water, and where the Crazy Girls went, the hopeful boys followed. So the next moment the water was alive with managers and directors and producers in boxer shorts, or disturbingly less. In fact, the whole party seemed to be in the swim. Except for Daniel, who was standing at the edge of the pool above me, having a Howard Hughes moment over the contamination of his beautiful pool and the vile bodies swimming around in it. He was pale with horror, and it was all my fault. Oh, well, I thought pragmatically as I crawled out, dripping diamonds and water and praying that the taxis were still running, Hollywood is a jungle, so I suppose the only way to survive is to throw yourself in at the deep end.

  7

  The boss doesn’t have to give you a reason. That’s one of the wonderful things about being the boss.