The Second Assistant

by Clare Naylor

  As I crammed a piece of toast into my mouth, I began to create a collage of Inspirational Hollywood Women. I plucked a bunch of trades from the garbage and found the one I was looking for. Here it was, the Hollywood Reporter heralding its “Power 100 Women in Entertainment.” I refused to see the fact that it was draped in a slippery banana skin as any kind of portent at all and wiped the cover down with my sleeve. And there, in glorious Technicolor—well, lots of black suits with a pink shirt thrown in for good measure, actually—were eight of the most serious female players in town.

  I imagined that when they’d shot this cover, they’d intended for it to be ten women, but two of them were simply too important to show up. When my turn came, I was going to be one of those two no-shows. While the black suits were in the studio, I was going to be on set in Prague, swathed in sheepskin, clutching a Styrofoam cup of Czech coffee and talking budgets with the director of Crime and Punishment. Ryan wasn’t even going to be able to draw a mustache on me when the copy plopped onto his desk with a thud as heavy as his heart would be when he read my blurb.

  As I carefully cut out the pictures of these almighty creatures, almost all of whom mentioned how they juggled three children with running a studio or a broadcasting network, I decided that hiking wouldn’t be such a bad string to add to my bow after all. Nearly all the Power Women claimed to do yoga for two hours a day before dawn. Hiking would help fill up the space in the profile that asked for your Balancing Act: “Oh, I get up at six every morning and go for a five-mile hike in Fryman Canyon. It’s so beautiful to see the world at that hour of the day. And besides keeping me fit and de-stressed, it injects some much-needed spirituality into my day.”

  But as I daydreamed about sitting in fifth place on the Power Women List, above the president of entertainment for Fox Broadcasting, I glanced at the clock and realized that I was late. My Success Secret, sadly, was going to have to wait until later. Possibly even until I’d actually achieved some success. Though that might have been like closing the stable door once the horse had bolted. Much better to have your strategy all worked out in advance. I pulled on the only piece of Gore-Tex I owned, which was a navy blue pac-a-mac, and decided to steal someone else’s Success Secret in the meantime. But they were all too long to remember, and I didn’t have time to jot one down on the back of my hand. So I simply picked Passion. Everyone had Passion somewhere in her Success Secret. And, thankfully, it wasn’t going to involve having to enroll at night school.

  “Sorry I’m late. Only I had no idea that there’d be traffic in the Hills this time of the morning,” I said as I raced up to where Jason was perched on the wooden gate at the bottom of a steep path.

  “I should have warned you. The breakfast crowd, the gym crowd, the dog-walking crowd.” Jason gave me a brief and friendly hug and didn’t seem as pissed off as I’d be if I’d been kept waiting for forty minutes.

  “So what happens here, then?” I tried to be perky to make up for it.

  “Well, we hike.”

  “Hike. Right. Well, let’s hike away.” I said as Jason folded up the L.A. Times he’d been reading and stood up.

  “Oh, my goodness,” I said in a surprised way, and stopped in my tracks as he got to his feet.

  “What?” He opened the gate to let me through first, but I didn’t move.

  “Well, it’s nothing. It’s just that you’re . . . tall.”

  “I’m actually only five-eleven. But I have on hiking boots.” He looked a little embarrassed.

  “No, I didn’t mean that. I just meant . . .” And I started to wish I’d never opened my mouth. This wasn’t a date, it was a business meeting. I didn’t want him to think that I did or didn’t like his physique, because it wasn’t an issue. Only he was blushing a brighter shade of ketchup right now, and I think he was probably worrying that I thought it could be a date. Oh, brother. “I just meant that I’ve never seen your legs before. Well, not properly.” Oh, Lizzie, how could you?

  “Right, well . . .” Poor, poor guy.

  “You see, you’re always cut off at the waist behind the counter of the coffee shop, and I suppose I have seen all of you like that before, but only in the coffee shop and only for a few seconds at a time, which doesn’t really count. And while you may not be exactly tall at five-eleven, you’re a darned sight bigger than the two feet I usually see of you.”

  “I see.” He was mortified.

  My shoulders sagged despondently under my ugly Gore-Tex. “Jason, I’m sorry. I was just surprised. Good surprised. Not ‘Great, I now have a crush on you’ surprised, but just pleased for you that you have legs. And a whole body. You see.”

  And I must have appeared so pathetic that he forced himself to understand. And then he patted me on the back, hard enough to convince me that this was a friendly work thing and not a date, and also to make my tongue fly forward in my head and briefly choke me. I wondered if there was any culture in which such misunderstandings might be perceived as an auspicious start to a business relationship. Apart from the backward world of satanism, and that was a cult.

  As we walked up a sandy incline so steep that it might as well have been the north face of the Eiger as far as I was concerned, I wanted to tell Jason that I wasn’t what he might call fit. I wasn’t what anyone might call fit. But I thought better of it because what was undoubtedly called for now was for me to unveil my Success Secret. My stolen and abbreviated Success Secret, I grant you, but I had to salvage our working relationship before it even began.

  “It’s about Passion,” I said as I panted around the bend and saw another hill, several thousand degrees steep, before me.

  “Yup.” Jason waited without judgment, but perhaps not without a little trepidation, for me to continue.

  “Passionate commitment to the project. And the thing is that I love this material,” I said, tripping to keep up with him.

  “I’m so pleased. I mean, nobody else has read this, Elizabeth. And I’m not entirely sure why I gave it to you in the first place.” He looked at me with an earnest crease between his eyes. “But it felt right, and now I’m glad I did, because even though I don’t know a lot about your background, I think that the way you’ve handled that job at The Agency is pretty heroic. I also think it’s going to take the same qualities to make a great producer for this movie.”

  “Cool,” I said. I was going to have to bone up on the vernacular used by successful people, too.

  “So where do you think we should start?” Jason said as we reached the top of the hill and were rewarded with a breathtaking vista of Hollywood. It occurred to me then that perhaps the term “breathtaking” had been devised by an unfit person such as myself at a moment not dissimilar to this one, perhaps hundreds or even thousands of years ago. As the unfit person climbed as far as he could manage up a hill, he suddenly seized an opportunity to stop and take a breath so he could pretend to be staggered by the beautiful view. Hence “breathtaking view.” I couldn’t be sure, of course, but with all the oxygen spiraling around my body and affecting my brain, it seemed a very legitimate theory. Anyway, regardless of the origins of the phrase, what lay before us was quite simply stunning. And, of course, an excuse for a pause.

  On the one side was the Valley stretching all the way down to the ocean in Malibu. The sky was a milky morning blue, and I shielded my eyes from the sun with my hand. Though they were swathed in mist, I could just make out the low ranch houses that had been confirmed hippie enclaves until the eighties, when the rich and the groovy had moved in and sunk their swimming pools into the ground. On the other side were the Canyons, with what looked like Frank Lloyd Wright houses perched high on promontories. I imagined that 1930s movie stars and famous recluses had once wandered around these white-walled, glass-fronted buildings clutching at martinis and wondering if this was it. You lived in the highest house in Hollywood, and still you just felt farther from God than ever.

  “I’ve got mine picked out,” Jason told me as I gazed out at these rarefied abodes. “
It’s behind that hill. It used to belong to a silent-movie director, and every time he had another child, he added another annex to his house. So the house kind of swirls up the hillside, and it’s surrounded by sagebrush. It’s kind of run-down, but I once went there to a dinner party and fell in love with it. It has a great fireplace.” He pointed back toward Laurel Canyon.

  “I think I’d like to live by the ocean,” I said, thinking of Jake Hudson’s house and the perfect evening I’d spent there. It still stung a little to think about how resoundingly I had been forgotten by Jake. But I couldn’t afford the luxury of dwelling on my fractured heart. “So let’s get serious about this project,” I said, breaking away from the view and turning my attentions to the path ahead.

  The air was still fresh, as the sun was barely above the horizon, and beneath our feet the sand had given way to a forest floor covered in splinters of bark, which smelled like the most exclusive bath products available in the little hip stores on Melrose. Well, this was L.A., after all. Even the air came expensively scented.

  “The guy who lives across the street from me went to USC, and he said that he can do a budget and owns Movie Magic,” I told Jason as we resumed our walk.

  “Where does he work? Maybe I know him.”

  “He washes cars on the Paramount lot and bartends at Jones at night. His name is Peter.”

  “Great.” Jason was nodding in time to his walking. He was also paying attention to what I was saying, which was an experience that I hadn’t had for a while. Funnily enough, though, it made me a bit nervous, because when you’re surrounded by people who don’t listen to a word you say, you begin to wonder if you actually have anything worth sharing with the world. Jason seemed to still be with me, though, so I took a chance and continued.

  “But I think that first of all we need to find you representation. We need some financing, even if we’re going to go for a really low budget. And if you have an agent or a manager, we can get it out to some of the smaller production companies. What do you think?”

  “I think I’d kill to have representation.” Jason scuffed his feet into the bark as we walked. “I’ve tried before—hundreds of times, in fact—but I’ve always been turned down. So how do we do that?”

  “I thought that I could ask some of the junior agents at The Agency,” I said. “Slip them the script and see what they think. And just so we’re clear: You won’t just sell the material; you’re determined to direct as well?” I wanted to clarify the point with Jason, knowing that it was going to be easier for my unexercised butt to pass through one of the cracks in the fence we were walking by than to get any financier in his right mind to agree to let a film-school graduate direct his first movie. Especially given that I and said butt were supposed to produce. Which would just make getting a deal even harder. It necessarily followed that the more people you had attached to a movie before it even began, the more cumbersome and expensive it was and, ultimately, the more unlikely it was to be made.

  “I won’t do it if I can’t direct. And I know what you’re thinking, but likewise I won’t do it if you’re not attached as producer. Okay? I’m loyal to a fault.”

  “Great. But you know that you could just give me an associate-producer credit and ditch me at the first post if you like. Just tell me now,” I said, meaning it but secretly hoping that he wouldn’t. After all, I already felt as though I were becoming emotionally involved with this project. Typical woman. One date and I was hooked.

  “No way. If you’re in, you’re in. Trust me on that one, Elizabeth.” Jason stopped by a water fountain and offered me the first drink. I bent down and took a sip. Naturally it tasted better than Evian. “So when do you think we can get it to an agent?”

  “I think it’s best to choose carefully,” I said, wiping the water from my mouth. “I’ll ask around tomorrow and try to figure something out. But I guess we can get this to someone by the end of the week, no problem.”

  “Cool.” Jason bent for his water and I looked down over the Canyon. The sun was higher in the sky, and it was getting hot. I was thinking how nice it would be to head back for some brunch now that we’d had our Sunday-morning hike and I’d survived.

  “So I was thinking that we could go over a few notes that I have on the script first,” I said. “Now, if you like.”

  “Perfect.” Jason took off his fleece, revealing a seriously sporty T-shirt. “Since I’m warmed up, I’ll be a lot more receptive to ideas. Another five miles and I might actually have something to add.” He turned and slapped me on the back again. This time I merely heard the hollow sound of my stomach reverberating through my body. Five miles more meant five miles back, too. I took off my Gore-Tex and reconciled myself to the fact that my fantasy of giving him notes over an organic smoothie and huevos rancheros at the Newsroom Café was at least ten miles away.

  17

  This is the sort of day history tells us is better spent in bed.

  —Louis Calhern as Uncle Willie

  High Society

  Ritalin is not just a drug for hyperactive children, apparently. It’s also prescribed for adults who exhibit traits of attention deficit disorder. It helps them to focus. It had certainly been providing Scott with endless hours of fun since his shrink had handed over a monster-size orange vial of the stuff three days ago. Being Scott, though, he had swiftly dispensed with the notion of prescribed dosage. Instead he discovered that while one or two Ritalin did a fine but generally imperceptible job of reigning in his attention, ten or eleven, pulverized between a Yankees paperweight and a piece of clean white paper, then snorted, yielded much more joy and hours more focus.

  “Morning, Scott.” I put my head around his door when I arrived at the office on Wednesday morning. “I’m going to the Coffee Bean. Can I get you anything?”

  “Triple espresso,” he said without looking up from his computer.

  Frankly, I was amazed by his newfound productivity. He was glued to his screen every minute of every day lately. He was getting in before us all and was still here when we left in the evenings. In fact, I was beginning to wonder if he’d been home at all. There was a faint whiff in the room, and his five o’clock shadow was darkening to a distinct shade of beard.

  “Scott, are you okay?” I asked. I took a couple of steps into his office and heard the familiar Texas Hold ’Em shuffle. There was also an array of credit cards scattered across his desk. Presumably to fund his little habit—the poker, that is, not the drugs.

  “How’s the game going?” I asked.

  “Yeah.” He tapped his index finger on his mouse and blinked his dry, purple-rimmed eyes at the screen. I retreated out the door and back into the assistant pool.

  Courtney and Talitha were at their desks nursing hot drinks and leafing through the trades.

  “Has anyone spoken to Lara?” I asked. She had been away since last week and was never contactable during the day. She simply left messages in the dead of night saying that she had strep throat and would be away again tomorrow. But I didn’t mind too much, as Scott showed no sign of being pissed about her protracted absence. Plus, since he was doing his Howard Hughes impression and not leaving his four walls, there was barely anything for me to do anyway. Except ward off all comers. Which was actually easy, once you mastered the knack of lying without simultaneously ducking down to avoid the crash of the thunderbolt. I was able to tell a blatant whopper these days without so much as flinching. It made me a far, far more efficient assistant than any secretarial course ever could.

  “Ryan saw her last night at Les Deux with some agent from William Morris,” Courtney said, loudly enough to disturb Scott’s poker reverie.

  “Where’s my fucking espresso?” he yelled.

  “Coming.” I started to leave the office. “Do you think that maybe he needs help?” I lowered my voice and moved toward the other girls. For while I’d never ordinarily ask for so much as the time of day from either of them, Lara wasn’t around and I was concerned that Scott might be suffering so
me sort of breakdown.

  “Oh, hello?” Courtney said in such a patronizing way that it made me want to shove pencils up her nostrils.

  “I know he should be in Promises, but do you think it’s urgent? Is he going to go into cardiac arrest with all that stuff, or what?” I addressed Talitha instead.

  “What’s he doing in there?” Talitha stuck her head out from behind her desk and took a peek into Scott’s office.

  “Playing online poker. I think he’s lost a shitload of money,” I said.

  “And he hasn’t slept or eaten in three days?” she asked.

  “Well, he must have, mustn’t he? I mean, I haven’t ordered him in any food and I haven’t seen him sleeping, but I’m assuming he must. Right? I mean, he’s a man, not a camel.”

  “He’s on Ritalin, honey.” Talitha shook her head in a concerned way. “It’s speed. It’s calming, and it creates concentration like all hell. A speed freak can water a plant for three days. You can bet your left tit that Scottie hasn’t moved since Monday morning.”

  “Oh, my God, that’s gross!” I said, my nice-girl, middle-class roots showing through about as clearly as my Bumblefuck Mouse roots were at the moment, given that I was too poor to have a touch-up done. “Won’t he get bedsores or something?”

  “Well, if he hasn’t blown every red cent he has on poker or died before Friday, then yes, I guess he might get bedsores. But I think they’re the least of his worries right now.”