by Zoey Dean
crash.
"But if you make one more mistake like this, I will let you go without a second's thought. Is
that clear?"
I nodded. Crystal. I stood very still on the plush carpet, afraid to move, as if I were literally on
thin ice.
"I have quite a day of damage control ahead of me," Iris said. A slight grimace came across her
pretty mouth as she probably imagined all the sucking up she'd have to do today.
There was a soft, polite knock on the door.
"Yes?" Iris called.
Kylie's face appeared in the doorway. "Iris, Quinn's on line two," she chirped. Her alert,
duplicitous green eyes bounced from Iris to me and back again. It wasn't hard to figure out
what had just happened. For a second, she almost seemed to smile.
"All right, tell her one moment," said Iris, running a hand through her perfectly coiffed red hair.
Kylie ducked out, and had I had anything in my hands, I swear I would have thrown it after
her. I had never felt so angry in my life, even when Magnolia's dachshund peed on my laptop
freshman year. Kylie had tried to ruin me.
"Taylor, do we understand each other?" Iris asked, her eyes finally softening.
"Yes," I said.
"You can go. I have to speak to my daughter now."
I thought then about Quinn and her haughty, adolescent attitude. Quinn would call Andy
Marcus a demented Neanderthal right to his face if she felt like it--I had no doubt about that.
She'd enjoy crushing his ego. But she never would have fallen for a trick like the one Kylie had
played on me. She was only in high school, but Quinn was way too sly. It had only taken an
hour of sitting in traffic, trying to get her to her tutor's house, to figure that out.
But then, maybe that was exactly it. Hollywood is like high school. I walked out toward my
desk, my mind racing. The Advil was kicking in, and I was starting to formulate a plan.
Dear Michael, I wrote on an imaginary postcard . I'm learning things already.
CHAPTER EIGHT
It wasn't hard to find Pinkberry; a line of teenage girls and yoga pants-clad moms snaked out of
the front door and onto the sidewalk. I contemplated joining them--I could use a little snack
myself. But I reminded myself that a) I wasn't here to eat, and b) I didn't even like Pinkberry.
(All that fanfare when you could just put a Dannon in the freezer.) So instead I walked slowly
along the length of the line, searching for a familiar face.
It was another gorgeous September day, and the stately oak trees and brick-faced buildings of
Larchmont Village made me feel, for a second, like I was back in Connecticut, before I'd even
dared imagine I'd move to L.A. But I was also aware of a kind of creeping anxiety that I'd
never had back then. The stakes were higher now.
A few girls in the Pinkberry line gave me dirty looks; they probably thought I was hoping to
cut in. Finally I spotted my quarry: three teenage girls in designer sunglasses and extremely
short gray kilts, one blonde, one a brunette, and one the redhead I was looking for.
"Oh my God, I'm so in love with that server," the blonde said, tossing her hair over her
shoulder.
"Adorable," said the brunette. She shrugged her distressed leather bag up higher on her
shoulder. "He's like, twenty-two?"
Quinn snorted. She wore gigantic Chanel wraparounds and a tight purple T-shirt with an
exploding heart across the chest. I was fairly sure that wasn't part of the Carleton School for
Girls uniform. "Oh come on," she said, her voice low and deadpan. "You're going to date a
guy who works at Pinkberry?" She stirred what looked like a white stew of crumbled Oreos
and Cap'n Crunch and then put a spoonful into her mouth.
According to the schedule outlined in my assistant's manual (aka bible, handbook, and list of
miscellaneous yet crucial information: the names of Iris's sister's children, for example, and her
favorite place to get cupcakes), Quinn Whitaker got out of class at the Carleton School for Girls
at three-thirty. Then, most days, she came here to Larchmont Village, a quaint cluster of shops,
yoga studios, and restaurants, for Pinkberry and shopping. At five, her driver--providing he
wasn't sick, of course, thereby forcing yours truly to perform his duties--picked her up and
took her home. After telling Kylie that I had a doctor's appointment, I'd come here today on a
mission. But now that I was in the same vicinity as Quinn, part of me wanted to crawl to my
Civic and hide in the trunk. Now or never, I told myself and took a deep breath.
"Hey Quinn," I called out. "Can I talk to you for a sec?"
Quinn turned toward me and froze. So did her friends.
I slipped off my sunglasses. "It's Taylor," I said. "We met last night?"
Quinn still didn't move, and she gave no indication that she recognized me at all. Remember
how you made fun of my car? I could ask. Remember how you sat in the backseat and sighed
at every red light? Her friends had their hands on their hips and were probably giving me
Medusa-like stares underneath their enormous D&G shades.
The brunette leaned over and whispered, "Was she at Hyde?"
Quinn apparently decided that playing dumb wasn't the answer. "It's my mom's assistant," she
said with an exasperated sigh.
I played with the zipper of my purse, trying to ignore the fact that a sixteen-year-old had just
referred to me as "It."
"Are you spying on me?" she demanded.
"No," I said in as firm a voice as possible. But really, my insides were quaking like a lactose
intolerant who'd just been force-fed a tub of Pinkberry. "I just need to ask you a question."
Quinn slowly looked me up and down. With a desultory shake of her head, she ambled over to
a newsstand a few feet away while her friends flounced down onto a nearby bench. A collegeaged Help for the Homeless volunteer in a red vest followed her with his eyes, momentarily
forgetting the petition he was trying to get passersby to sign.
"What is it?" she asked, pushing her wraparounds up to the crown of her head. Her eyes were
even colder than her mother's when she was contemplating firing me.
I straightened my shoulders; I had to make my pitch count. "Okay, here's the thing," I said.
"Last night you said I wasn't Metronome material. And you're right. I'm not. I'm so not that that
I almost got fired this morning."
Quinn raised a carefully plucked brow, and I thought I saw the glimmer of a smile play about
her lips. Meanwhile her friends on the bench were staring at us.
"You said you know Kylie, right?" I said. "And you don't exactly, um, love her?"
"Yeah," Quinn said, sounding more amused. "What'd she do?"
"She tricked me into doing something--I won't go into it--but I think she's going to get me
fired. She's certainly trying. And I can't let that happen. I just can't." I willed my voice not to
break as I thought of how close I'd come today. I couldn't lose my job. I'd worked too hard and
waited too long to get it.
Quinn crossed her arms in front of her chest. "What's this got to do with me?"
I took a deep breath. "Have you ever heard that saying 'Hollywood is like high school'?"
Quinn looked at me as if I'd just gotten up off Dr. Phil's couch.
"Okay, it doesn't matter. The point is, there are certain skills that my job seems to require--skills
that have nothing to do with typing or answering phones-
-that I don't have. People skills. But
not nice people skills. I think you could help teach me how to survive in this place. How to
be... I don't know. Mean."
Quinn gave a short, hard laugh that sounded more like a bark. "Man," she said. "You must be
desperate."
I nodded; I was. There was no use pretending.
She looked down at her quickly melting yogurt and swirled it contemplatively. "You've got it
all wrong," she said after a minute. "It's not about being mean. It's about being confident. Not
taking anyone's shit."
That certainly put a more positive spin on it. "Right," I said. "That's what I'm talking about."
Quinn was still calmly pondering her Pinkberry, swirling her Oreo bits around and around.
Finally she said, "So what's in it for me?"
I chewed on the end of my plastic tortoiseshell sunglasses. I hadn't really been expecting that,
but maybe I should have been. I mean, the whole helping-people-out-of-the-goodness-of-yourheart thing didn't seem all that popular here in L.A. I wasn't sure what to say. I couldn't really
offer her money--for one, I didn't have any, and for two, she had plenty--and I could hardly
offer to be her assistant too? One Whitaker was enough. And I was pretty sure she didn't need
me to buy her beer or get her into an R-rated movie. What did a sixteen-year-old girl who has
everything want?
"I'm not sure. Maybe if you ever need me to drive you somewhere...," I said lamely.
Quinn rolled her eyes. "Please," she said. "I have a real driver for that." She paused. "I can
come up with something better. How about we just say that you owe me a favor? Whenever I
need one."
This seemed reasonable, and I began to nod. "Any idea what sort of favor?"
Quinn shrugged. "I don't know yet. But I'll let you know when I figure it out."
I heard a tiny voice inside my head murmuring a warning, but I happily quieted it. "Deal," I
said, extending my hand.
Quinn ignored my hand and pulled the wraparounds back over her face like a mask. "We
should get one thing straight," she said. "Nobody knows about this. Nobody. And you can't
just come and find me when you want something. It's, like, stalker-y."
"Okay," I said, only slightly insulted. It wasn't like I was trying to hang out with her. I pulled
my card out of my purse and rubbed my finger over the raised Metronome logo, the ticking line
of the metronome running into the austere-looking M. I handed it to her. "Here's my e-mail, cell
phone, address, everything. What about you?"
Quinn held up her palm. "I'll call you, " she said, dropping the business card into her apple
green Hervé Chapelier shoulder bag. Then she walked over to a garbage can and dropped her
melted Pinkberry into the trash. "Are we done here?" she asked, and before I could answer, she
sauntered, on her scuffed ballet flats, back to her friends, who were now hanging out in front
of the LF store, looking snobbish and bored.
I squinted in the strong September sun with a mixture of relief and fear. Quinn had agreed to
help me, but was it a batshit-crazy plan in the first place? And what if Iris found out? I couldn't
think about that now, though, because right now I could see a tiny bubble of hope floating on
the horizon.
I stared at the newsstand, where copies of Vanity Fair lined the eye-level shelf from end to end.
Twenty shirtless Holden MacIntees with forty smoldering green eyes gazed back at me. Behind
me, the Help for the Homeless volunteer was practically begging a woman to sign a petition.
"It's a tough world out there, lady," the young man pled, "and everyone needs a little
assistance!"
I slipped my five-dollar sidewalk sale sunglasses back on. I had to get back to the office soon,
or Kylie would start to think the doctor had discovered something really wrong with me, like
gout or syphilis. Not that she'd really mind that, I thought. In fact, she'd probably be pleased.
"Come on, give us a hand," the volunteer shouted as the woman walked away. "It's a crazy
world!"
I marched back to my blue Civic with as much confidence as I could muster. Nowhere was as
tough and crazy as Hollywood, I thought. I just hoped the help I'd recruited would be enough.
CHAPTER NINE
Magnolia!" I shrieked.
There was a little dog doing figure-eights on the faded blue carpet of my bedroom. It looked
like a dust bunny or a filthy mop head come to life, except that it wasn't even as cute as that.
When I yelled for Magnolia, it paused for a moment, gave me a querying look, and then went
back to racing around the room with one of my socks in its mouth.
"Magnolia! What the hell is this?"
Its gray hair was long and greasy. From its general direction wafted up a scent so offensive that
I was almost impressed. Our apartment building wasn't the cleanest I'd ever been to--the halls
had dirty old Astroturf, and certain indigent West Hollywood men occasionally slept on our
stoop--but this was taking things to a whole new level.
Magnolia appeared in the doorway in her bathrobe, her pretty heart-shaped face pink from a
shower. "Oh, that's Cabbage! Isn't he cute?" she said, smiling at him with a look that could
only be called loving.
"Cabbage?"
"Yes, he was found in the back of a cabbage truck--isn't that crazy? No one knows how he got
in or where he came from. I just pulled him from the shelter. Sorry, I meant to e-mail you about
it. It's just until the weekend," she said, casually scooping him up. "Until my friend has her
adoption fair." She nuzzled his ratty, smelly head. "Do you want a bath, mister? Huh? Do
you?"
I grabbed a bottle of perfume from my dresser and sprayed some into the room. Kate Spade's
eau de parfum meets Magnolia's eau de rat-dog. "But what's he doing in my room?"
Magnolia looked up at me over Cabbage's odiferous head. "He just seems to like it in here,"
she said, as if that explained everything. She turned to cart the scrambling dog in her arms out
of the room.
"I had a terrible day," I called, hoping for a little sympathy.
Magnolia made kissing noises into Cabbage's fur. "You know what they say," she said. "Some
days you're the dog, and some days you're the hydrant. Oh, and your boxes arrived." Maybe
this didn't seem sympathetic enough, so she added, "And there's Poquito Mas in the fridge."
I flopped down onto my bed, which Garbage--or Cabbage, whatever--had thankfully avoided.
I'd have to hunt down the bottle of Febreze I'd bought last week, but right now I was just too
exhausted. Ever since Wednesday, when I'd almost gotten fired, I'd felt like even more of an
outcast at Metronome. No one spoke to me or smiled at me. Whenever I went to grab a Red
Bull from the kitchen or to the bathroom (the last stall was good for a quick cry), I felt the eyes
of the other assistants silently watching, assessing me, looking for confirmation that my days
were numbered. I felt like some kind of ghost. Like pretty soon some shaman or something
was going to come along and exorcise me from the office. Kylie simply observed my struggles
from her desk, mildly looking over her aromatherapy candle and occasionally murmuring
falsely sympathetic things in French. Tant pis, I heard her say once when I lost a phone
message I'd written on a scrap of paper instead of typing it into my computer. Too bad.
I
pulled on a pair of Wesleyan shorts and the old tank top I used to play tennis in and dragged
myself out to the living room to attack my boxes. What a way to spend a Friday night. There
weren't that many packages, really--I'd been a ruthless editor of my possessions. As I cut the
boxes open with a dull bread knife, it suddenly seemed as if I hadn't even sent myself enough
to make my room here feel like my own. There were some books I'd thought might prove
useful ( Independent Feature Film Production: A Complete Guide; Woody Allen on Woody
Allen; The 101 Habits of Highly Successful Screenwriters; Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide,
etc.), a few trinkets (a framed still from Gray Area Professor Pinckney had given me; some
pictures of my dad looking goofy and my mom looking patient, which were typical expressions
for them both), some decorating items (curtains from Ikea; cute new pillows from West Elm),
and the rest of my clothes, all of which looked cheap and unfashionable after a week at
Metronome.
As I struggled to hang up my cheerful yellow curtains, I thought about what a crappy day it
had been. Kylie had pawned call-rolling duties off on me so she could grab a leisurely lunch
with a junior executive in production. Call-rolling was one of the most nerve-wracking duties
of an assistant. It entailed sitting at a separate desk in Iris's office and lining up calls for her to
return, one after another, with no breaks or waiting in between, because executives in the film
industry had no time or patience for breaks or waiting. While on each call, Iris would
communicate, via strange and sometimes baffling hand signs, to tell me when to get the next
call ready. A circling wrist meant About to wrap up. A waving wrist meant Get the next one on
hold. Wiggling fingers meant something like Pretty soon I'm going to tell this person to shut
the hell up. It was incredibly stressful--I felt like a referee who didn't know the right signals.
And God help me if someone got bored of being on hold and just hung up. That only happened
once. Iris had simply said, "There's no one there, Taylor," and turned to her computer. But of
course I felt horrible. Iris barely looked at me anymore. It was like I was a dumb, untrainable
dog who wasn't even worth scolding.