The First Assistant (14 page)

I started to laugh and then noticed a man join the girl onstage.

“If those people start having sex on this stage I’m going to be sick and then the night will be over,” I said as Emerald glanced at the couple walking toward each other.

“Then let’s get out of here,” Jake said.

Emerald was less than pleased and Jake clocked it immediately. He gave me a quick wink before turning his full attention toward Emerald. With what sounded like genuine concern he patted her thigh where the dart had been. “Are you okay, baby? Poor little you. I’m going to tell the hostess downstairs that they better send that one back to target practice.” I stifled a laugh. But Jake continued. “Now we better get you out of here before anything else happens. I have to protect the studio’s investment, you know. Do you have any idea how much the insurance is on you? Lordy.”

Emerald preened at the attention and of course the allusion to her vast six-million-dollar-a-movie price tag. Jake took one of her arms as Freddie took the other. They supported her as she dramatically limped away from the stage and down the stairs. I gathered our bags and followed behind as I watched Emerald quickly forget her limp.

“Let’s go to the cigar bar. Lizzie, you won’t mind that, right?” she called out to me. “You come from Washington, D.C. I bet they don’t do anything at this place that Monica Lewinsky hasn’t tried,” Emerald said with a guffaw.

She was obviously fully recovered by the time we made it down to the bottom of the stairs, because she pulled away from the boys and headed toward the bar.

“But before we go, how about we all have one more drink? All that drama made me thirsty. Anyway, I need it to sterilize the wound.” Emerald looked up at Jake and batted her eyelashes, but Jake’s attention had shifted to a pretty blond student-type who’d just walked in the door. Emerald didn’t seem to care. She was a good sport, after all, and was

really just chasing a perennial good time. “You up for a cocktail, Lizzie? You know you need to sterilize your wound, too.” I didn’t have the heart to mention that it didn’t work from the inside out. So I just smiled and took the proffered drink.

When I opened my eyes the next morning, I was completely disoriented. I expected to see Chucky purring by my head and to smell the eucalyptus wafting in through the open window but instead there was the faint smell of last night’s cigar smoke and the gentle whirr of the air conditioner. I breathed a sigh of relief as my eyes adjusted to the gloom. There was nothing to worry about. It had been a great night and, though my head felt like a pinball and my mouth tasted like I’d been licking the pavement, I was alone in three-thousand-thread-count sheets, there was not an ounce of light aggravating my headache, and there was a steam room downstairs waiting to cleanse my polluted bloodstream. And as far as I could recall nothing disgraceful had happened. I looked under the covers and was pleased to see that I was still wearing Emerald’s little postage stamp of a dress. You never could predict what a lit-tle vodka could do to one’s judgment.

Oddly, heartbreak was having the opposite effect on me from what I’d expected. I would have thought that I’d have thrown myself in someone like Jake’s arms last night, if not for revenge at least for comfort, but I had no interest in romance or sex at the moment. If anything, I wanted to punish the male race. I knew this wasn’t the healthiest approach, but since I couldn’t take my broken heart out on Luke, I figured that I might as well work out my aggression on another man. And Jake had been the perfect target. He had skin like a rhinoceros and took pleasure in my verbal lashings. The more waspish I had become last night, the more bullish he had been. As I gave it a moment’s thought it actually all made sense. No one got to his position in Hollywood without enduring serious abuse on the way up. So in order to get his fix, he either paid some dominatrix in LA to dress him in a diaper and spank his bottom or he pursued whatever impossible challenge was available. And last night it was me. My guess was that Jake indulged in a bit of both.

I picked up the phone and dialed room service. I ordered eggs, pancakes, fruit, hash browns, coffee, orange juice, a smoothie, and a Bloody

Mary. It was enough food to feed a small army. And though it was decadent, at that moment I didn’t care. As I hung up the phone and wandered into the bathroom, I tried to understand why I couldn’t just do that when I was with Luke. What was the big deal? It wasn’t like he paid for anything himself. It was all expensed to the studio. It was all so meaningless to him, and I’d made it into a ridiculous drama. Why did I have such a difficult time taking anything from him? For some reason, I felt I needed to prove my worthiness.

I bent down to fill the enormous bathtub and dumped the delicious-smelling bubble bath in. I looked at the label, jo malone. lime, basil and mandarin. I inhaled deeply and reminded myself to steal all available travel products when I left. I unhooked the dress and instead of falling to the floor like a Dove ad, it seemed to just stick to my boobs like a drowning man to a life preserver. I gave the material a hard yank and it came off in my hand, leaving two pieces of double-sided tape on my bos-oms. I tired to pick at the tape, but it wasn’t budging. I resolved to never let Emerald dress me again as I closed my eyes and gave the most almighty yank, taking half the skin and part of my nipple with me. I al-most passed out with the pain and had visions of being called Cyclops for the rest of my life. The other piece would have to wait. I wasn’t married yet and there were no longer any prospects in the hopper so I was going to need my one remaining nipple. I shook my head and tried to think positively. At least I’d made it through the night with the head of the biggest studio in LA, a famous basketball player, and the most talked-about teenage movie star of the decade without embarrassing my-self. That was a first. Maybe I was learning the Hollywood ropes after all. As I walked away from the mirror I stopped in my tracks. There was something on my behind. I walked backward toward the mirror. It was writing. What did it say and how had it gotten there? I got as close to the mirror as possible. Whatever it said was written in a black Sharpie.

I looked at it closely and read out loud.

“Luke. Wish you were here. All the best, Freddie Murray.”

I started hyperventilating and grabbed the bathroom phone dialing Emerald’s room. “Hello.” A sleepy Emerald answered.

I breathed a sigh of relief. “Em. It’s Lizzie. I was just getting into the bath and I seem to have Freddie’s autograph on my ass.”

Emerald started to laugh and then to cough. “You were so cool last night, Lizzie. I just love you. Hold on for a second.” I could hear her talking to someone in the background. “Freddie, will you be a doll and order me some breakfast on the other phone?”

“Emerald, how did I get the autograph?” I demanded.

“You don’t remember? I can’t believe that. You hold your booze really well. I’d never have known. Well, after the orgy we—” she began as I started choking. Emerald quickly put me out of my misery. “Jesus, Lizzie, take a breath, I was just kidding! God, you are so not the type. You were banging on about your nasty ex who was engaged to some French tart and how he was a huge fan of Freddie’s and would have died for an autograph.”

“Oh, Emerald, was I embarrassing?” I hated to ask but it needed to be out in the open.

“No. You were cute,” she assured me. I wasn’t sure how the tables had been turned so terribly but I promised myself not to let it happen again. “Anyway. Freddie suggested he autograph your butt and then we’d take a picture so Luke would know what a good time you were having and that you’d moved on with your life. Both Jake and Freddie said that they’d be eating their arm with jealousy if their girlfriend sent a photo like that.”

“So we took photos of my naked butt?” I screeched in horror. “Don’t worry, it was only with my cell phone.”

“Erase it, Emerald! Now! Please!” I begged.

“Okay, okay. Hold on.” She called out again. “Jake, honey, can you bring me my phone?” I did a double take and practically dropped the phone. Jake? But she’d just had Freddie order breakfast. “It’s erased. Okay? Now call me when you’re heading down to the spa. Bye.”

I hung up the phone and climbed into the marble bathtub. It was enormous, easily big enough for two, or three for that matter. As I sunk down into the water, I began to fear that I might be completely out of my depth.

Nine

That’s the trouble with directors.

Always biting the hand that lays the golden egg.

—Samuel Goldwyn

Southern Thailand was one of the most beautiful places I’d ever been to in my life. The tropical climate made you feel like you were living in a magical greenhouse. And the balmy humidity left you fantastically lethargic, though this made life even more challenging as I’d hardly had a chance to sit down since we’d arrived two weeks ago. Jake had delivered us safely to the set, said his hellos, and then disappeared the next day on the company jet off to some other film set in an equally glamorous location, leaving us to get on with the work at hand.
The War Fields
had begun with a bang that very morning, thrusting Emerald and me into ten-hour days. She barely had a moment to adjust to the jet lag before she immersed herself into her character, Betsy, an American nurse during the Vietnam War. My job was to support Emerald in all things. So I had spent the two weeks getting hyperorganized. I even had the snake bite extractor kit in the trailer as part of her own first aid kit. I had every hour of her day tightly scheduled, and everything was running like clockwork.

But now that the flurry of the initial setup was finished, I started to understand what life was really like for an assistant on location. Boring. Today I had been assigned a very important task by Emerald. It required me to sit in her dark air-conditioned trailer all day by myself and pour a bottle of Evian through a Britta water filter. When the bottle was empty, I poured the filtered water back into the old bottle. Then I took a red

Sharpie and placed a red check mark over the label. I’d been doing this for two hours and had only managed to complete eighteen bottles. Someone on the set had gotten sick from an amoeba in the water and Emerald was desperately afraid she’d be next. She only drank Evian. And though I tried to reassure her that there were no amoebas in France, she’d said in a tone that clearly stated “no debate” that the water wasn’t in France but in Thailand. What if the production, in order to save money, filled the Evian bottles with tap water? There was no arguing with that level of paranoia. I’d tried to palm the job off onto a lowly PA, but Emerald said he might not be clean enough. If she were worried about cleanliness, she shouldn’t have gone to bed with Jake Hudson.

There was a knock at the trailer door. “Come in!” I yelled.

I’d been so busy getting Emerald’s life set up that I hadn’t had much of a chance to get to know any of my coworkers. And though everyone was friendly, they all seemed to keep their distance. So I was thrilled to see Kathy and Fred, our married producer team, pop their heads in the door. But my joy quickly faded to dread when I saw their anxious faces. “Hi, Lizzie. We know you’re incredibly busy, but do you have a mo-ment?” Kathy asked as I saw her register the Evian bottles and filter. I was midpour and blushed, mortified by my position, or lack thereof. I quickly shoved the Evian bottle to the side and then bustled around like

a fifties housewife welcoming her guests.

“Please come in. Can I get you any tea? Coffee?” I plumped some cushions as they shook their heads somberly. Ken let out a big sigh and then collapsed onto the sofa like the weight of the world was on his shoulders. What had Emerald done now? I wracked my brains but for the life of me I couldn’t think of anything. She hadn’t touched a drink or even a guy since we’d left Bangkok. Emerald was so exhausted after the long days of shooting that she went straight to her bungalow and passed out. And I knew that for a fact because she made me come with her to sweep the house for boogie men each night as she brushed her teeth and climbed into bed. Kathy picked up a bottle of the red-checked Evian and looked at it absentmindedly.

“She’s paranoid of amoebas.” I felt the need to explain.

“Maybe you should put tap water into those bottles, then,” Fred suggested with a wry smile. So did Fred not like Emerald, hence his desire to give her the runs? Things were so complicated on location.

“I thought it was a religious thing,” Kathy said with an awkward laugh.

“Nope. So what can I do for you guys?” They were making me nervous and though Emerald’s trailer was a two-bed two-bath monstrosity, it was starting to feel claustrophobic.

“Nothing, really,” Kathy said as she continued to touch everything. “Just seeing how you’re adjusting. If she’s happy, that sort of thing?”

“We’re great. Tired. That hour commute back and forth to the hotel every day is a bit of a trek. But I think she’s fine,” I said with a reassuring smile, waiting for the true nature of the visit to rear its undoubtedly ugly head. And then it hit me. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to realize the issue when Kathy picked up the empty jar of Nutella on the kitchen counter and gave Fred a meaningful look.

“Oh I get it. You wish Emerald had an amoeba because she’s been putting on a little bit of weight?” I said. They looked relieved at not hav-ing to mention it themselves and I was relieved that Fred wasn’t trying to kill Emerald. We all breathed a collective sigh of relief.

You see, Fred and Kathy Klein were a different breed of producer. No strippers, drug habits, or fetishes in sight. They’d met at Princeton and fallen in love at a lecture given by Germaine Greer. Instead of throwing a bouquet at their wedding, Kathy had tossed her well-worn copy of
The Female Eunuch,
and off they drove to Hollywood in their Volvo wagon to conquer the town. With their principles still intact and a daily morning run with their chocolate Lab, Einstein, they were Hollywood’s version of the intellectual. And it could be deemed pretty un-PC at the moment to be seen to encourage anorexic tendencies, especially in a teen starlet. But with a ninety-million-dollar budget and a monsoon prediction in the forecast, the cracks were starting to show.