The Second Assistant

by Clare Naylor

  Yours truly,

  An Angel of Justice’

  “So apparently this tie-up-an-agent bullshit was them trying to teach me some kind of lesson. Yeah, really fucking useful lesson to learn. Actresses are crazy. Like I needed reminding.”

  I turned left and pulled into the tree-lined driveway that looped in front of the Four Seasons. The doorman looked at my car with horror.

  “Well, I’m glad you’re still alive” was all I could say to Scott. And I was. He was like a child who needed an awful lot of looking after, but he was also pretty easygoing for a boss. I knew that I could do much worse, and I didn’t want to lose him just yet. Especially not to some harebrained actress with a vendetta and, now, a shining new Porsche.

  “Do I look okay?” he asked as he ran his fingers through his matted hair.

  “The truth?” I blinked. He looked very far from okay.

  “Okay, does my breath smell?” He exhaled on me, and I almost collapsed.

  I grabbed my purse and pulled out some Tic Tacs. “Here, take them all.” I handed them over, and he popped a handful in his mouth.

  “Thanks, Lizzie-o,” he said, and leaned over to kiss my cheek. I tried not to let him see me flinch. “I’ll get a ride back with Daniel, but you can get me a rental. Hey, how about the new Mercedes convertible? No, make it a Ferrari. Black. Oh, and call my insurance, too. Say I was rolled.”

  “You were rolled.”

  “Don’t tell them it was chicks.”

  I watched as Scott stepped out of the car into the midday heat in brightest, cutest Ceylon blue with his short, short, tight, tight pants and crazy hair, and oddly enough I think he pulled it off. The doorman smiled at him like an old friend and opened the door. I’m sure that when he strolled into the dining room, Steven the director hugged him warmly, and I’m sure that as he tugged enthusiastically at his bread roll and talked about passion and commitment to clients, Daniel was proud to have him as a colleague. Because no matter what he did, Scott was cool.

  I, on the other hand, was 160 bucks down right now, getting evil stares from the valets, and due back in the office an hour ago to help Victoria out in a strategy meeting. Which basically meant to fetch coffee. But that was a moot point. Coffee fetcher or strategy maker, I was still going to get screamed at. All because I had been doing my job. There’s no such thing as justice in the world of the assistant, you see, only hope. And that takes a seat way, way back down the bus from experience every time.

  8

  He’s like an animal. He has an animal’s habits. There’s even something subhuman about him.

  —Vivien Leigh as Blanche Dubois

  A Streetcar Named Desire

  I picked up my phone, pencil poised. “Hello, The Agency.” “Lizzie?” Usually it was only Scott who called me Lizzie, but this voice did not sound as though it belonged to Scott. Besides which, I could see Scott, who was in his office shooting baskets.

  “Elizabeth Miller speaking.”

  “It’s Bob.” There was a silence as I filled in the blanks. Bob . . . Redford? Bob . . . De Niro? (Okay, I didn’t know them personally, but after a mere forty-eight hours in the film industry, everyone knows that these men are Bob and not Robert. It’s like a Masonic handshake that distinguishes the doyens of Hollywood from the readers of People magazine. Neither party has ever shared a restaurant table with either Bob or Robert, but the former like the world to assume that they do so on a weekly basis.)

  “Bob?” I was forced to ask for clarification.

  “From the party on Saturday night,” he informed me with a low, throaty growl.

  “Bob. Bob.” I’d been so frantically busy with all the calls and paperwork couriering for Scott’s new deal with Steven that it was as though Saturday had never happened. But suddenly it all came flooding back: the taste of cigars, the sausagey fingers.

  “Lizzie, honey.”

  “Can I, er, can I transfer you to Scott?” I asked hopefully. He was, after all, a huge producer. Or so he had told me sixteen times as I wove my fingers through his chest hair in the pool. It was therefore much more likely that he wanted to speak to my boss than to me. Most likely he’d taken the Jake Hudson route of once kissed, forever forgotten where I was concerned.

  “How ’bout you and I have dinner on Saturday night?” Obviously not the Jake Hudson route, then.

  “Saturday? Dinner?” I coughed a little to buy time, and when I glanced up, Scott was standing above me, looking quizzically. Not going away.

  “Who is that?” he was mouthing.

  “Bob, would you mind holding the line for just one moment, please?” I put Bob on hold.

  “Bob Davies,” I told Scott, who had assumed, not unreasonably since this was The Agency and not The Dating Agency, that the call was for him.

  “Bob Davies?” Scott asked, a little confused.

  “Yeah.”

  “Isn’t he looking for new representation? Holy shit, Lizzie, does he want us to rep him? Man, this is my week! He’s just signed a six-picture deal at Warner Brothers. He must have read in the trades about our deal with Steven and wants a piece of the action. Put him through, right now.”

  “He wants to have dinner with me, actually.” I broke the news to Scott, expecting him to either get mad or tell me to conduct my sordid sex life outside the office.

  “Fan-fucking-tastic!” Scott high-fived me.

  “Yeah, but, Scott, I don’t think that—”

  “You have got to go. He’s hot, Lizzie,” Scott informed me excitedly.

  “He is not. He’s kind of gross and overweight and—”

  “I don’t mean hot hot. I mean hot. Just say the fuck yes.” This, clearly, was an order, and though I looked imploringly at my boss, though he was a major junkie who barely knew what day of the week it was, though I had donated my Juicy Couture tracksuit to him, he still expected me to go on a date with Bob. I switched my phone off hold.

  “Bob, I’m sorry about that. So you wanted to have lunch on Saturday?” I attempted to make the date a little less horrifying. Though meeting him in daylight hours was not necessarily going to take care of that problem.

  “Spago, Saturday at nine. Leave your car at home.”

  “Well, you see, Bob, the thing is that actually—”

  But the line had gone dead. Bob knew that he was a hot, if overweight, number. He also knew that a girl in my position was in no position to say no. Well, certainly not with her boss breathing down her neck. I took my pencil and wrote it in my calendar, hoping that something might happen between now and Saturday that would prevent me from having to go through with this. Hip-replacement surgery or a run-in with the bubonic plague would probably cover it. I crossed my fingers hopefully.

  Unfortunately, nothing happened between then and Saturday to alter my ghastly fate. Apart from the fact that I began to have recurring nightmares about turning up at Spago and being shown to my table only to discover that I had a date with a gorilla called Gazza who had escaped from the San Diego Zoo. Without fail I would wake up sweating at the precise moment that Gazza the Gorilla reached across the table and put his hairy-knuckled hand over mine and told me that I had hot titties.

  Needless to say, for my date I chose a tidy turtleneck number that would have left even the most eagle-eyed ogler uncertain as to whether I even owned a pair of titties. And pants so enormous and flapping in the wind that I could only be hiding the most gargantuan thighs in town. To cap off my sexless ensemble, I tied my hair back in a curt ponytail and donned a pair of pearl earrings that screamed respectability, not approachability. Good, good. I glanced at my reflection in my car door as I got in and headed to Spago. Not a mixed message in sight.

  “Honey, I thought I told you to leave your car at home.” Bob stood up and kissed me wetly on the lips as I arrived at the dinner table and ostentatiously jangled my keys down. (I couldn’t afford to valet-park until September next year due to the cost of the Hollywood Honey, so was still in possession of my keys.)

  �
�Oh, it’s fine.” I politely wiped his slobber from my lips and sat down. “I love to drive, and I need all the practice I can get. I’m forever getting lost on the freeway and ending up in South Central,” I laughed airily.

  “Not to worry. I have a driver. I’ll just have him drop you off, and you can collect your car tomorrow.” Bob was looking desperately for my breasts despite the needle-in-a-haystack scenario of my clever sweater, and any minute he was going to end up needing a chiropractor.

  “I’ve heard so much about this place. You know, I’ve never been before.” I had resolved to keep this encounter very breezy and professional, if that were possible. If I felt that I was doing this for work, to help out Scott, I’d survive, I had determined.

  “Oh, it’s not too bad.” Bob shrugged dismissively. “Heavy hitters, starfuckers. Such a scene.”

  I wondered why he’d brought me here if that was the case. But then I hadn’t been to enough Hollywood restaurants to learn that everyone always complained about “the scene,” the fact that this place was full of industry types, oh, such a pain in the ass, etc., etc. But that was the way the cookie crumbled in this town. You had to dis the industry to prove you belonged. Leaden-eyed ennui was par for the course with the movers and shakers.

  “Well, the food looks delicious.” I admired a pizza that was being served up to the white-leather-clad peroxide blonde with an orange face at the next table. I began to scan my menu as Bob ordered the wine. “So, Bob, I hear you’ve just signed a great deal over at Warner Brothers.”

  “Oh, Christ, let’s not talk business. It’s Saturday night.” Bob knocked back the inch of red wine in his glass and proclaimed it drinkable. “It’s just a deal, when all is said and done. Six pictures for the next three years. Minimum budget of a hundred mil per picture. I’ve bought thirty specs and the options on seven novels, and we’ll most likely only do the ones that have major players attached. I love a good movie. I hate that foreign shit. Really, I’d rather eat a fried-okra sandwich than pay to see some art house piece of shit. I’m one of the rare producers in this town who isn’t ashamed to say that he’s motivated by box office. Man, I love that stuff, I love the figures. I mean, someone’s got to pay for my house in the Palisades and the lodge in Sun Valley and I have a G4. Did I mention, Lizzie, that I have a G4? You should totally come and have a trip in it one day. Have you ever been to the Post Ranch? Man, that place is awesome for a romantic weekend away. It’s just kinda too far to drive, so I prefer to fly. Though Christ knows there are usually too many dissolute industry types hanging out there, so I usually just stay in my room with the lady in question and hang.”

  Do you get the picture?

  By the time Bob turned to me and asked me what I did at The Agency, I was on my second spoonful of my mint-tea sorbet. Dessert, in other words.

  “Me?” I asked, genuinely surprised. Miraculously, Bob hadn’t drawn breath for the last hour and a half. And in a feat worthy of the circus, he had simultaneously put away a three-course dinner and a side of stuffed-zucchini-flower tempura.

  “Yes, you pretty little thing. What is it that you do over there at the Evil Empire?”

  “You mean The Agency?” I corrected him. Though it wasn’t the first time I’d heard my workplace called that.

  “Oh, don’t tell me you’re an assistant, or I’ll cream my underpants,” he groaned.

  Okay, I’m not prissy. I am not wildly shockable (let’s remember that I was on this date with Bob because I had gotten naked in my boss’s pool with the man), but this made me choke up my last mouthful of sorbet.

  “Oh, honey, the look on your face is priceless.” Bob leered. “You are an assistant, aren’t you?”

  I nodded hastily and made sure that my car keys were still on the table.

  And there I’d been just staring at him as he’d talked away and away, thinking, Okay, well, he’s not exactly attractive, and he’s a super-self-absorbed pain in the ass, but he’s not a bad man. He just looks a little like Shrek. But I was wrong—the man was a monster. There was no denying it.

  “You’re an assistant, and it has to be said I have a bit of a thing for assistants. And D-whores. Sorry, D-girls.” He laughed artificially. “So right now I’m a very happy man, Lizzie.”

  “I’m so glad,” I replied crisply, and took a large sip of my water, in preparation for the drive home. I’d steered as clear of the claret as possible and was quite sober.

  “A digestif?” Bob leaned over and, very much in the manner of Gazza the Gorilla, clutched my hand in his clammy palm. “Waiter, two large glasses of calvados, please.”

  “I actually have to go home soon,” I attempted.

  “Why don’t you go to the bathroom and freshen up while I take care of the check, and then I’ll make sure that Alfredo takes you home. After your calvados.”

  Bob ushered me away from the table, and I gratefully stayed in the bathroom as long as was decently possible. A moment washing my hands was, after all, a moment I didn’t have to worry about having to dodge Bob’s kisses again. But finally I tore myself away from the comfort of the hand dryer and went to face my fate.

  Now, I have not lived my life on a secluded island brought up by Carmelite nuns with only a mute sister for companionship. Neither were my parents overprotective religious zealots who made me read the Old Testament instead of watching televison. In other words, I have not led an especially sheltered existence. So, really, I ought to have known that something was wrong. I should have smelled a rat when I took my first sip of calvados and noticed that it seemed to be fizzy. And I ought to have been even more suspicious when I started behaving like a more loquacious version of Anna Nicole Smith right after I’d taken my first mouthful. But I didn’t suspect a thing. I just thought, Oh, look, fizzy calvados. Happy me. How weird. But no weirder than the rest of my life in this crazy place.

  “Is that good?” Bob asked as I finally replaced my empty glass on the table.

  “That was . . . actually very good.” I nodded. And it was. I was feeling a whole lot more relaxed about Bob now. And my ride home. Or not. And the more I looked at Bob, the cuter he seemed. He was clearly one of those men whose looks grew on you, I remember thinking.

  “You’re so lovely.” I smiled across the table at him and took his hand. “You really are.”

  “Great, well, so are you, honey. And I was thinking, I know a little place nearby where we can go.” He stood up and, like a gentleman, eased me into my jacket.

  “Oh, goody. Can we dance there?” I asked, my feet suddenly aching for a groove.

  “We can do whatever you like there,” Bob said. “It’s a really chill joint.”

  “Fan-tastic.” I giggled and snuggled up to Bob’s shoulder affectionately as we left the restaurant.

  As I climbed with Bob into the back of his Lincoln Town Car, I was feeling very free and easy, so I didn’t mind a bit when the charming Alfredo drove us to Burbank. Which is not where I live. Neither is it the Standard or White Lotus. Nor is it even Les Deux. All of which would be passable venues for a Shrek-like producer about town to take a date to on a Saturday night after dinner. But no, we were in Burbank. In the Valley. And as we got closer to our destination, as Alfredo put on his blinker to indicate that we were going to pull over and stop, I realized that this was Dimples Supper Club. Not, you understand, that I had ever heard of Dimples Supper Club. I sincerely doubt that anyone apart from the manager and bar staff of Dimples had ever heard of it. It’s just that it was in Burbank, it was located in a shiny strip mall, and in flashing lights it promised that most horrible of mistakes, karaoke.

  I cannot sing. I cannot hold a tune, in neither a paper bag nor a supermarket trolley. But that particular evening, karaoke seemed to me to be the best idea anyone had ever had in the history of good ideas.

  “Bob, this is awesome!” I practically sprinted from the smooth, cool leather seats of the car and into Dimples. And as Bob handed over the twenty-buck entrance fee to the cashier, I was already wigglin
g my hips to “It’s Raining Men,” which was being sung by an accountant from Long Beach and was pulsing through the darkness and tinsel.

  “I’m glad you like it.” Bob smiled.

  I tried to take his hand and drag him toward the shabby but sparkling stage. But he seemed to have a purse with him.

  “Put your purse down and come dance with me,” I demanded shrilly.

  But instead Bob put his purse down and then began to take something out of it.

  “What are you doing? I want to dance.” I waved my arms about a bit and moved to the music. “Do you think I can take my turn on the karaoke next?”

  “I’m sure you can, baby. But first let me set up my little piece of equipment here. I’d hate to miss your moment of glory,” Bob said calmly.

  “You’re going to take a photo?” I asked as I looked down at the camera he seemed to be assembling.

  “Oh, it’s just a little digital home movie. For fun.”

  “Okay. Well, just hurry up.” I sailed off onto the dance floor and began to get very into some wordless anthem. Which was highly uncharacteristic behavior for me. I do not dance voluntarily. I have never been to Ibiza, and, most significantly, as I’ve already mentioned, I cannot sing.

  But for some reason, which would become horribly clear to me later, I didn’t let any of this stop me from getting up onto the stage at Dimples some three minutes later and belting out “I Don’t Want No Scrub” by TLC. It was the most appalling rendition of that cool song that anyone, anywhere, ever, has heard in their lives. And this is not a case of me being modest when really I have the voice of a nightingale or Aretha Franklin. For I do not.

  After my moment of glory, after I had fondled Big Bob on the dance floor a little, after I’d cozied up to him in the back of his Town Car while he made a phone call on the way home, Alfredo dropped us off at the afore- and oft-mentioned house in the Palisades. Which I had to admit was pretty spectacular. But nothing I hadn’t seen a hundred times on Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. Bob brought me a glass of wine, and I aimlessly looked at his paintings and the framed photographs of him with Bill Clinton (every home in Hollywood, it seemed, had one) and with Barbra Streisand and Nicole and George. There was also a white Steinway piano in the corner of the room overlooking the Olympic-size swimming pool.