The Second Assistant

by Clare Naylor

  “But that’s my boss’s desk,” I insisted.

  “Then you’d better ask him,” a string bean with acne chipped in.

  “I could just follow you to see where you’re going,” I told them cockily, but they ignored me. Had Scott been fired? I wondered as I watched another team of men come in and remove his television set. Or were they the marshals? Had Mia bled his bank accounts dry, and these guys were the receivers impounding his property? I wondered if it was part of my job description to stop them as I watched the back of Scott’s plasma screen vanish out the door.

  I sat down at my desk while I still had one and wondered what in hell’s name was going on. I switched on my computer, hoping for e-mail enlightenment, but all that was there were two junk-mail offers to enlarge my penis and one e-mail from Jason. But before I could click on it to open it up, Courtney walked out of Mike’s office looking flushed.

  “Isn’t it wild?” she said as she sat back down at her desk and made no bid to turn on her computer. Or play her flashing messages.

  “What’s going on?” I hated admitting ignorance to her, but there was no getting around the fact that I appeared to be the only person in the building who didn’t know what was happening.

  “You mean Scott hasn’t told you?” She ought to get a job in a spa giving salt scrubs, she was so practiced at rubbing it into people’s wounds.

  “Well, no. He hasn’t.”

  “That guy is unbelievable.”

  “I know,” I agreed. “So what is going on, Courtney?”

  “Hostile takeover,” she said smugly.

  “What?”

  “Hostile takeover.” She slumped back, safe in the knowledge that she wasn’t going to be doing a scrap of work today. Then she reached into a drawer and pulled out a throat lozenge—oh, yes, because she planned on doing a lot of talking.

  “So where’s Scott? Has Daniel fired him?” I asked, not really understanding what she meant.

  “Elizabeth, you’re so naïve sometimes.”

  “Listen, will you just please tell me what’s going on? My boss is missing, his first assistant’s not here, and his furniture is being removed from the premises.”

  “It’s not being removed from the premises. It’s being taken to the fourth floor.” She took off her sandal and admired her pedicure. I wanted to throttle her.

  “Courtney.” I tried the warning tone that Scott and Luke used to such great effect on me.

  Weirdly, it seemed to work. She sat up straight, put her sandal back on, and explained, “Katherine Watson and Scott have formed an alliance with the backing of the board to take over The Agency. Daniel has been ousted as president, and there’s now a battle royale to lure clients. Daniel’s setting up his own management group and wants to take the big names.”

  I looked at her in disbelief. This meant that I never had to see Daniel Rosen again. I would never have to pass him in the corridors and hiss at him as if I were Othello and he my Iago. Though if I ever crossed his path on the red carpet at the Oscars, I might still be tempted to trip him up or shoot peas at him from afar.

  “Scott’s president?” I was flabbergasted.

  “He and Katherine are copresidents.”

  “Oh, my God! I had no idea.”

  “Nobody did. So for once you weren’t the only one in the dark.” She stared pointedly at Lara as she walked in through the door looking very casual in Joie pants and T-shirt, with her shades on.

  “Morning,” Lara said, and strolled on by to her station, where she tossed her khaki Marc Jacobs purse and began clearing out her desk.

  “Oh, some people don’t waste any time,” Courtney snapped. “Moving to the fourth floor already, are we?”

  “Actually, I’m moving to The Colony.” Lara smiled and winked at me. For once Courtney was speechless. “Elizabeth, can you and I have a word in private?” she asked and pointed to Scott’s erstwhile office.

  “Sure,” I said, and we wandered in and leaned against the few sticks of furniture left.

  The room had a hollow echo, and shafts of dust flickered in the sunlight. Nothing remained to suggest that Scott had ever been here. I wondered who would move in next. There was obviously going to be an enormous reshuffle.

  “You know that I couldn’t tell you about this, don’t you, Elizabeth?” Lara slipped her sunglasses up onto her head and looked imploringly at me. “I didn’t even really know that much about it myself. Just that Scott was really stressed and excited. And he only told me vaguely in the end, because I accused him of having an affair with Katherine Watson when they started going to meetings alone off the premises.”

  “I suppose I do understand.” I shrugged. “But it was a bit hard to bear Courtney’s smugness.”

  “Oh, God, I know. And she’s going to be even harder to live with when she finds out that she’s being promoted to a junior agent under the new regime.” Lara rolled her eyes to the ceiling.

  “She is?” Poor unsuspecting clients, was all I could think.

  “Scott wants to keep Mike happy and on the same side, so he promised he’d do that for him.”

  Lara and I looked at one another and both said “Whatever” at the same time.

  “Anyway, it’s all good, I guess,” she laughed.

  “Yeah, now when you marry Scott, you’re going to be one of the most powerful wives in Hollywood,” I told her. But she already knew that.

  When Lara left for a busy morning of shopping and a pregnancy yoga class, I idled back to my desk and wondered what was going to happen to me now. Would I still be working for Scott? Would I still be an assistant? I tried not to listen to Talitha and Courtney, who were bitching in the kitchen next door about Lara’s new purse and trying to make head or tail of The Colony comment. At least for once I knew something that they didn’t. Was this how it felt to be important?

  No sooner had I sat down than I heard a terrible keening sound from behind me. I turned around when I realized that it was coming from Victoria’s office.

  “Get your filthy hands off my things!” she was shrieking.

  “Sorry, Miss, but I’ve got orders to pack up all your things and escort you from the premises,” a security guard was telling her.

  “How dare you?” Victoria yelled, and then she emerged into the main office area with her arms full of Barbies. “How dare you hold my dolls by their hair?”

  “Sorry, Miss, I’ll be more careful with them. I just have to get them, and you, out of the building,” he said. Courtney slid out of the kitchen and materialized beside me.

  “Victoria’s going with Daniel to set up the management group. She told Scott this morning that she would rather live in her car than work for a no-talent junkie like him.”

  “Wow, go Victoria!” I said. “I didn’t think she had it in her.”

  “Go Victoria is right,” Talitha said as she joined us, and we all three watched in amazement as Victoria exited with her armload of little friends. “And if you touch me or my dolls again, I will murder you!” she said. Then she screamed at the poor, horrified security guard till he backed off.

  “Oh, well, good to know that all that primal-screaming practice was useful for something, hey?” Talitha giggled as the door slammed shut behind my banshee of a mentor.

  With nothing much else to do other than marvel openmouthed over recent events, I went to my e-mail to see what Jason had sent me. Another creepy apology would do me very nicely. I wasn’t noble enough not to want to get my pound of flesh from him. What I read was actually worth much more:

  TO: SCOTT WAGNER

  CC: ELIZABETH MILLER

  FROM: JASON F. BLUM

  SUBJECT: REPRESENTATION

  Dear Scott:

  It was good to meet with you yesterday evening, and I thank you for taking the time to see me at what I know is a critical juncture for you. It was much appreciated. I simply wanted to confirm my decision to remain with The Agency as a client of yours rather than transfer with Daniel Rosen to another management company
. This, as we discussed, is entirely due to my allegiance and respect for your colleague Elizabeth Miller. I have had extensive dealings with her and have found her to be exceptionally inspiring, hardworking, and, in short, extraordinary. To forgo the professional guidance of Elizabeth would, I feel, be detrimental to my career.

  Therefore I hope that The Agency will agree to manage my career as a writer and director henceforth.

  Yours truly,

  Jason Blum

  Ha, I thought. Then I was overwhelmed by gratitude toward Jason. I picked up my phone and called his cell.

  “This is either my agent Scott Wagner or Elizabeth Miller calling me.” He’d obviously programmed The Agency into his phone already, presumably so that he could speak with Daniel, though. “I’d know that number anywhere.”

  “It’s Lizzie.” I smiled.

  “I knew it was you, darling.” Darling? That was new. And very un-Jason.

  “Where are you? Are you busy?” I asked, wondering if he was over at Revolution in a creative meeting.

  “I’m at this great spa. Shame you have to work, or you could come join me.”

  “Okay, don’t rub it in, buddy,” I warned. “I just called to say thank you for sending that e-mail to Scott. It was really good of you.”

  “Yeah, well, I didn’t want to fuck you over and not redeem myself.” I could hear rushing water in the background and the strains of a woman’s laughter. “ ’Cause I’ve seen what happens to people who screw with you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, look at Daniel Rosen. He does one tiny deal behind your back, and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse come to seek vengeance against him on your behalf.” Jason laughed.

  “You’re so dramatic, Jason.” I shook my head and sighed. “But I like it.”

  “So what’s going to happen to you in the shake-up?” Jason asked while multitasking in some indiscernible way. But I knew distraction when I heard it at the other end of the phone.

  “I guess nothing. I mean, I’ll move to the fourth floor. Scott will be president, and things will carry on pretty much as normal. Don’t you think?” I hadn’t really had time to assimilate the events of the day, let alone predict what might become of us all. Although Courtney as a junior agent was pretty encouraging—if she got a promotion, then there was always hope for me.

  “Are you crazy, Lizzie?” Jason said. “I sent that e-mail to give Scott a heads-up on how great you are. Also he has to appreciate that thanks to you The Agency now has an extra three million dollars’ worth of business, and . . . well, I hate to sound conceited, but according to Entertainment Weekly, today I am one of the hottest properties in young Hollywood. I am a Spielberg of the future. So he should be grateful to you that he has my business.”

  “Jason, you are so far up your own ass already.” I laughed. “Does it really say that in Entertainment Weekly, by the way?”

  “Oh, and much more besides. Let me tell you, I am what they call a prestige client. The fact that I went with Scott and not Daniel in this takeover will mean that The Agency is now seen as the hot, in place to be. Others will follow.” Jason laughed loudly. I sort of knew that he was telling the truth.

  “Okay, well, since you’re such a rock star, you better go and make out with a chick in a hot tub or something,” I told him. “I’ll call you later so you can slum it and say in interviews how you still keep in touch with your old friends and haven’t changed a bit.”

  “Darling, I’ll take you to L’Orangerie for the best chocolate soufflé you’ve ever tasted,” he said. “Warm love coming from the West, okay?”

  “Okay,” I said as Jason hung up. I had a feeling that in the future Jason might become my most amusing friend. Already the scratchy sweaters had gone, he was suddenly cognizant of every sleazy Hollywood phrase and expensive restaurant, and I suspected that he was not multitasking alone in the Jacuzzi. He’d always been sweet and easy to be around, but rich, famous, powerful, successful, Academy Award–nominated Jason was going to be too much fun to miss.

  I clicked onto the Hollywood Reporter online to see whether there was any breaking news on our takeover. Clearly, the embargo on information was still in effect, because there wasn’t a hint anywhere. I knew, though, that it would be huge news in the industry. It was also the sort of piece that Vanity Fair would write a feature on one day. They’d make it seem like a den of vipers and then talk about the constellations of stars we managed and whose loyalties had lain where and what carnage of egos had ensued.

  I thought back on my part in these historic occurrences. Really, I’d been as clueless about this takeover as I had about so many other things in my time here. Though I suspected that if I were ever in the same situation again, knowing all that I know now, I would be a much more savvy operator. Certainly the likes of Ryan would never be able to get one past me again. Especially if I found him with his head in my boss’s filing cabinet. Next time I’d just close it on him. I even felt that I could handle an abusive harpy like Victoria if one ever happened to cross my path in the future. Also, after seeing the merit in Sex Addicts in Love, I felt more confident of my ability to spot good material.

  I looked at my computer clock—half an hour to go until we all had to report to the boardroom. I was looking forward to seeing Katherine and Scott, the new captains of our ship, deliver their news. I wondered whether Scott would have shaved.

  I decided to go and get a Diet Coke from the kitchen. Now that Daniel wasn’t here, we could all rebel and fill the fridge with cans of soda whose labels didn’t face outward. But as I stood up, my phone rang.

  “Lizzie.”

  “Scott?”

  “How you doing down there, Lizzie-o?”

  I was flattered that in the midst of what was doubtless chaos, he found time to remember me.

  “I’d love it if you could come up here and tune in my plasma for me,” he said. I might have known that he wouldn’t think to fill in his second assistant—who he wasn’t fucking—on developments.

  “Sure. I’ll be up in a minute. Where are you, exactly?”

  “My new office.”

  I loved how Scott was so instinctively a survivor. He wouldn’t have dreamed of saying he was in Daniel’s old office. That would have been to acknowledge that Daniel had once worked here. But under the new order, Daniel might as well have never existed. You had to be ruthless to get ahead in this Mickey Mouse industry.

  “I’ll be there,” I said, reading between the lines and assuming that it was Daniel’s old office. Though I’d be billyclubbed by the thought police for even having that cross my mind.

  On my way through the lobby, I caught sight of a diminutive figure with a balding head standing outside with the pack of journalists. At first I wasn’t sure if my eyes were deceiving me. It looked like Daniel. I took a slight detour via the vase of flowers on the reception desk so that I could get a better look through the glass doors. And, curiously enough, it was Daniel. He was speaking into a boom in front of a TV camera. Talking animatedly. I knew that it would all be a lot of horseshit about amicable partings and wanting to explore new frontiers. Only today he looked smaller and older. I suppose he was just stripped of his power. The suit was the same, and the smooth attitude was the same—he just looked very ordinary. I was overcome with the urge to bounce peanuts off his shiny pate, but, fortunately for him, I was all out of bar snacks, so I went on my merry way to Scott’s new floor. The king was dead, long live the king.

  As I rode the elevator up, I wondered what Scott had in store for me. Except to get me to tune his plasma, of course. Could Jason be right? Might I be in line for some new challenge at The Agency? I mean, I wasn’t expecting anything, but it would be nice to have some sort of recompense for what I’d lost out on when Jason screwed me.

  “Lizzie, come in.”

  As I stepped out of the shining elevator doors onto the fourth floor, Scott was standing in his office down the hall. All Daniel’s country-house antiques were gone, and in
place of the Stubbs paintings and the red, leather-bound rows of books on the library shelves were a Space Invaders machine, a jukebox, and Scott’s multiplex-size entertainment center.

  “Whaddayathink?”

  “I think it’s going to be great,” I said truthfully, walking past a row of small glass offices and wondering who’d be filling them. At the other end of the corridor, I noticed Katherine dressed in heavenly shades of caramel arranging an orchid on her desk. Her room was literally deluged with congratulatory bunches of flowers. On the back of her promotion alone, the stock price on lilies must have skyrocketed. I suspected that together these two were going to be a pretty dynamic duo, and I genuinely looked forward to working under them—in some capacity.

  “Come on down!” Scott yelled along the hallway. “It’s in here. It’s kinda fuzzy.”

  “Don’t you have an electrician or someone who can do that for you?” I asked as I approached a bunch of wires hanging out of the back of the screen.

  “I don’t trust anyone like I trust you,” he said as he tested his chair wheels out across the new long-length floor of his office. On parquet flooring. For the thrill of whizzing on his chair across his new office alone, I was sure that Scott’s hostile takeover had been worth it.

  “Congratulations, by the way,” I said as I flicked his aerial until the screen was as clear as day. “I mean, I don’t know the full details of the takeover, but the changes all seem to be good.”

  Scott moved his chair back into its rightful place behind his desk. Then he folded his hands and rested them on the familiar cherry wood in front of him. “Can you close the door, Elizabeth?” he suddenly said as he transformed himself into the head of this insanely powerful Hollywood company. I did as I was told. “Take a seat,” he told me.

  “Thanks.” This felt a bit too reminiscent of my firing episode. I pulled up a chair and sat down.

  “See, here’s the thing, Elizabeth.” He paused momentarily. “Here at The Agency, we really appreciate what you do.”