by Zoey Dean
postponing our tête-à-tête, but I'd told him 7:30, and now it was 8:00.
I ran past the velvet rope and the bouncer and up the steps to the teak and bamboo patio. A
cluster of girls in minute skirts giggled over pastel-colored drinks in tall glasses. I knew that
Koi wasn't the hot spot it had once been, but it was still a far cry from the diners on
Middletown's main drag. The restaurant looked like a Japanese garden as imagined by some
modernist sculptor, its soaring ceilings and airy rooms somehow still intimate, dim, and leafy.
Candles flickered on every flat surface, lighting everyone (including me, I hoped) with a
flattering glow.
Across from the hostess stand, three tanned girls with caramel hair and pouty lips leaned
against the wall, drawing carnivorous looks from a couple of guys in open-necked shirts
sipping imported beers at the bar. To the guys' left was Mark, perched on a teak stool, busily
tapping into his iPhone. I tried to slip by him on my way to the bathroom to make sure I looked
less harried than I felt--he could wait three more minutes for me to put on a little MAC Creme
de la Femme, couldn't he?--but he looked up and saw me.
"Hey, tardy," he said, standing up. I swear his brown eyes twinkled as they took me in, and a
dimpled smile crept across his face. He leaned in and kissed me once on each cheek, and I
could feel the tickling brush of stubble against my skin. He was even cuter than I remembered
him being, and younger looking too. In his slightly too large suit, he looked less like an agent
and more like a college kid playing dress-up.
"I finally made it," I sighed, wiping imaginary sweat from my brow. "Thanks for waiting."
"I was starting to get worried you'd found another tour guide."
He scanned the room behind me, as if he were looking for this imaginary tour guide. I saw him
notice the three girls by the hostess stand.
"You think they're triplets?" I asked, nodding to the girls. "Or do they just have the same
hairdresser and the same plastic surgeon?"
"You're funny, tardy," Mark said. He glanced over at the Barbie look-alike behind the bar.
"One pitcher of cold sake and some edamame." He smiled back at me. "You drink sake, right?"
"Right now I would drink anything," I said, leaning back on my bar stool.
"I thought we agreed today was going to be a nine. Tell Dr. Mark what happened," he teased,
easing into his seat. "What was exciting?" He took a final swig of his beer and pushed it away.
I looked up at his open, smiling face. He seemed genuinely interested, and I was grateful to
him.
I shrugged, trying to remember what I'd even done today. I was still feeling rattled by my car
ride with Quinn, and work seemed like ages ago. "I worked the phones by myself while Kylie
was in a really long meeting."
"Well that's something," he said. "But it's not exactly what I'd call exciting. "
"Me either," I admitted.
The bartender placed a stoneware pitcher between us, along with two tiny ceramic cups. Mark
splashed a little sake into each, and we raised them in a toast. I tilted my head back and let the
clear liquid slide down my throat. The sake tasted like rubbing alcohol and burned on its way
down. I had to stop myself from making a face--I didn't want Mark to know I'd never had sake
before. I was more of a wine and vodka girl. But really, I thought, why would anyone drink
this? Iris's nasty green smoothie probably tasted better.
"Cheers," Mark said. "Now you've got to tell me something juicy. You must have at least one
good story."
I took another sip of sake. It didn't taste any better, but I thought if I kept drinking it, maybe it
would. That usually worked with cheap red wine, anyway, and I had the obligatory lampshade-on-my-head pictures to prove it.
"Well, there's this project you might be familiar with..." I could tell I'd piqued Mark's interest
by the way he sat back, looking only vaguely curious. Bad poker face, I thought. Or maybe he
just wasn't worried about fooling me.
I told him what Iris had said about the Dark Ages project, and the terrible writer. "I actually
drew a picture of a Neanderthal with an X through it," I laughed. "As if I'd ever forget."
Mark laughed, but I could tell he was surprised, and maybe a little bit bummed, by the news-after all, if Ingenuity repped Andy Marcus, Mark probably did feel some loyalty to him. He
refilled my cup, lost in thought. To change the subject, I asked him what he was working on.
He pushed the edamame bowl at me. "Here, have a little protein. I can't eat too much soy. It
makes dudes grow breasts."
I looked at the little green pods, sitting innocuously in their ceramic bowl. "You're lying."
"Scout's honor." He put a hand to his pin-striped chest, and the funny but endearing image of
Mark Lyder as an actual Boy Scout popped into my head. "But anyway, since you so politely
asked, I'll tell you that I'm working on the next Mission: Impossible. "
"Literally? Or, like, you're just working on an impossible project?"
"It's more like Mission: Impossible meets Casino Royale meets Ocean's Eleven. Think Will
Smith, the Afflecks, Jake Gyllenhaal, Colin Farrell, and George Clooney." Mark ticked the
names off an imaginary list.
I chewed a few edamame. "Are there any women in it?"
"Women?" Mark said. He knit his dark brows.
"Yes. Like, people without a Y chromosome?"
He took some edamame out of the bowl, inspected the little green pods thoughtfully, and then
placed them on his napkin. "Jessica Biel has a small part, I believe. But this is a heistkidnapping-action thing--it doesn't need women, unless you count female extras with large
breasts in tight dresses they're only too happy to take off. It needs good explosions and fast
getaway vehicles, which it's got in spades. I predict two hundred mil at the b.o."
"Sounds... blockbuster-y." I couldn't help but think about Journal Girl, which had no big stars,
a budget of seven million, and scenes that could still make me cry even though I'd seen it fifty
times and knew every line of dialogue forward and back.
"That's the plan. So why were you so late tonight, anyway? Did you break the copier again?"
His eyes were laughing but in a flirty way.
"Oh, no." I took another small sip of sake, wishing I could subtly send a Call copier repair
guy e-mail to myself on my Black-Berry. "It's just that Kylie totally spaced and sprang this
errand on me at the last minute."
Mark was looking past me toward the door again. The surgically enhanced triplets were gone,
replaced instead by two girls who could have been their cousins. "I'm pretty sure she didn't
space."
"What do you mean?"
His BlackBerry--yes, I realized, he had a BlackBerry and an iPhone--rang on the bar. After a
quick glance at it, Mark turned it off, but its red message light blinked on and off like a
warning. "She did that on purpose," he said lightly. "She didn't space."
I frowned--I had a hard time imagining Kylie being so devious. And after all, she did have
those notes to type up. "How are you so sure?"
Mark smiled, as if I were extremely amusing. "Hollywood is like high school," he said gently.
"What are you talking about?" I asked, confused. After all, according to Hollywood, even high
school wasn't like high school. I mean, really, did pretty boys like Zac Efron dance around in
your hallways?
"It's one of those clichés that's actually true," Mark said. "The jocks and the cheerleaders rule
the school. They're the ones who get their movies made. They find the best projects, they sign
the best clients, and they end up on top."
I raised my eyebrows. I wasn't really buying it. "What about everyone else?"
"They don't survive. They get weeded out." He took a long sip of sake.
"So you're saying that people don't succeed because they're not cool?"
"Because they're not tough, " Mark corrected as he poured both of us more of that rubbing
alcohol they were trying to pass off as a delicious Japanese beverage.
"But what about talent?" I asked. "Isn't that why people get ahead?"
Mark shook his head. "Most of the time talent's not that important, Taylor. Sometimes it's not
important at all. Attitude is where it's at. And a sense of style doesn't hurt either." He looked,
rather pointedly I thought, at my humble mall garb.
I considered his argument and quickly dismissed it. "But at Wesleyan--," I began, ready to
share my "they come around eventually" theory, but Mark cut me off with a laugh.
"I know what you're going to say, and yeah, I went to Vassar, but Hollywood's a different
world. The self-righteous b.s. doesn't work here. You went to school with people who were
losers in high school. Now you're with the popular kids, and they do care about things other
than talent." He pronounced the word talent like it was a ridiculous, outdated notion, like I'd
just asked about the tooth fairy.
"You're just being cynical," I said finally. "Also, come on. What about the AV nerds? Don't
they get to become camera guys or something?"
Mark laughed again. "Look, you seem like a nice person, Taylor, and that's only going to hurt
you. You've got to be tougher and a lot less nice. Take it from a captain-of-the-football team
type."
I raised an eyebrow, amused. Is that what you think you are? And if he was captain of the
football team, what was I?
The fact was, I had never been all that cool. I wasn't uncool, but I wasn't homecoming queen
either. In fact, I hadn't even gone to my own prom. If there were two types of girls in the
world--those who were nice and those who were not--I'd always been in the first camp. I'd
been friendly with almost everyone in my high school class, even the goths and the loners and
the kid who wore a suit to school because he traded stocks on the Web in his free time.
"I just had a thought. I live right around the corner from Mulberry Street. Best pizza in L.A.
You want to get out of here?" Mark's eyes searched mine as if nervously gauging my reaction.
But the look behind them said he didn't doubt for a second I'd say yes.
"Thanks," I said carefully, "but I should probably be getting home. I have another big day
ahead of me. Hopefully it'll be a nine." I smiled tightly. The idea of going back to Mark's
place--even being in the vicinity of Mark's place--was about as appealing to me right now as
sitting through two hours of every action star on the planet blowing stuff up. With a wet dog
on my lap.
"Okay," he said shortly, standing up. "Then we'll do it another time."
He kissed me again, but this time it felt forced. And he only hit one cheek. As I threaded
through the crowd, I was already imagining the letter I'd write to Michael Deming. Remember
that joke you told on Letterman? How the difference between a pit bull and a Hollywood agent
is just jewelry? I thought of that tonight. Not that the guy was a pit bull, really. He was more
like a Lab--you know, sort of enthusiastic and undiscerning--crossed with a...
God, I said to myself, you sound like Magnolia.
As I exited Koi and the cool September air hit my cheeks, I almost-- almost--felt a little sorry
for Mark. How often did the captain of the football team get turned down by the head of the
yearbook committee?
CHAPTER SEVEN
Iris Whitaker's office, can you hold for a minute?"
I hit the orange hold button and ripped open the packet of Advil with my teeth. My head felt
like someone had put it in a vise and was slowly and maliciously turning the lever to tighten it.
Sake, it turns out, is dreadful to drink and worse to recover from. I'd only had a couple glasses
of it, but I should have eaten something besides a handful of edamame if I wanted to avoid a
hangover.
It was still early, before eight-thirty, and Kylie wasn't in yet. I picked up the line. "Thanks for
holding, may I take a message?"
The line was dead. "Shit," I said. Dropping a call was even worse than saying Iris was out of
the office. I'd heard of people getting fired for that, though maybe that was Cici trying to scare
me.
Then I heard high heels clicking down the hallway toward me. Iris. She was early--usually she
came in at nine-thirty--and, from the sound of it, in a serious hurry.
I put a bright smile on my face as Iris blew into the room like a well-heeled hurricane. "Good
morning," I said as cheerfully as possible.
Iris didn't smile back. "Can you come into my office please?" she said flatly, then disappeared
behind her wall of plants.
I panicked, figuring she'd somehow found out I dropped the call. But how? Maybe she had the
room on surveillance camera, or maybe she had a special superpower that alerted her whenever
one of her assistants did something stupid. Though admittedly, if that were true, she'd have
called me into her office long before this morning. Besides the copier incident, I had also a)
walked into the men's room again, b) lost half a script that I'd talked Kylie into letting me read,
necessitating a slightly embarrassing call to the agent repping it, and c) called Tom Scheffer
"Tim," much to his dismay. Anyway, I stood with some difficulty--the Advil sure wasn't
kicking in yet--and entered the jungle of Iris's office.
She sat behind her desk, calmly reading the Los Angeles Times. "Close the door," she said
tonelessly, her eyes on the paper.
I obeyed her, closing it with a gentle but ominous click. "For some reason the phones have
been going crazy this morning," I said, "but I've almost gotten everything on the call sheet."
Iris looked over at me. Her eyes seemed especially glittery this morning, cold and hard like
agates. "I've been an executive at this company for fifteen years," she said, carefully folding the
Calendar section. "Longer than even I expected. Do you know how many assistants I've had in
all that time?" She cocked her head slightly.
It was a rhetorical question, but the eerily composed tone of Iris's voice made it seem important.
I tried to do the math. "Twenty-five?"
"Almost thirty-two." Iris smiled faintly at the number. Then she leaned forward and clasped her
hands, as if she were about to share a secret. "Sometimes they leave of their own volition. But
most often they are asked to leave."
I gulped and could almost feel the Advil still lodged in my throat. I didn't like where this
conversation was going at all.
Iris stood up and walked to the window, looking out over the soundstages, her back facing me.
In a dark tailored suit, she cut a crisp silhouette. "Did you tell someone at Ingenuity that I said
Andy Marcus was a deranged monkey, or whatever it was I said?"
Demented Neanderthal, I thoug
ht but didn't say. And yes, I had. Oh God. Mark Lyder. That
sake-drinking pretty boy with his Aveda hair and his too-large suit. He'd gone and blabbed
what I'd told him.
"This business is run on relationships, Taylor," Iris said icily, still not facing me. "We have to
preserve goodwill at all times. We never, never tell someone that we hate their project. We tell
them that it's great but that we're overcommitted. We tell them that we love it but that we've got
something similar in the works. We tell them it's genius but we're just not bold enough to pick
it up. But we most emphatically do not tell people things that make them angry. We do not
insult people to their faces, and when we insult them behind their backs, we expect that insult to
remain confidential. Is that clear?"
I nodded, but then I realized that she couldn't see me. "Yes, Ms. Whitaker," I whispered.
"You're my assistant, Taylor. Of anyone here, I need to trust you. I thought you understood
your responsibility."
"I'm so sorry," I said. "I didn't mean it. I didn't...," I stuttered. I didn't know what else to say.
Still Iris faced out over the studio lots, her hands laced behind her back. And as I stood there,
waiting for her to turn around and fire me, I felt a sudden swelling of self-defense. I am a nice
person, I thought. I never would have said those mean things about Andy Marcus... if Kylie
hadn't told me to. Kylie. Her moment of sisterly advice in the kitchen replayed itself in my head
with a flash. Trade info. Honesty is pretty much always the best policy. I winced involuntarily.
But what pained me most about the memory wasn't Kylie's manipulation--it was how easy a
target I'd made myself. She'd handed me the rope, but I'd tied the noose and brought my own
step stool. How could I have been so stupid?
"You know," I said, my voice stronger. It was simple--I'd just explain to Iris what Kylie had
said, and we'd start over. "It wasn't my idea. Kylie--"
"I don't want to hear it." Iris cut me off with a raised, steady hand. "I am not a referee, Taylor.
And if the two of you can't get along, this is not going to work out." She let out a deep breath
and finally turned to face me. "Now, I'm not going to fire you," she said calmly.
My heart lurched at the word, like a runaway roller coaster that at the very last second doesn't