The First Assistant (2 page)

One

In Hollywood the women are all peaches. It makes you long for an apple occasionally.

—Rex Reed

This morning my boyfriend, Luke Lloyd, called from location in Prague and told me that he loved me because I was normal. By this I know he means simply that I’m what he’s dreamed of since he arrived in Hollywood fifteen years ago. I’m the kind of girl who can read the newspapers on a Sunday morning without throwing a hissy fit if I’m not
in
them; I do not have a “relationship with food”; I know the difference between G8 and a G4; and while that may not be asking too much of the rest of the world’s population, in this town it makes me as scarce as hen’s teeth.

However there are many, more disturbing, reasons why I am
not
nor-mal that I do not wish my boyfriend to find out about. They are:

1. In my wallet I have a platinum Amex card that does not belong to me. By that I mean it was given to me by my boyfriend to use as profligately as I choose. But despite spending my entire life dreaming of such a thing, thus far I haven’t even bought a tank of gas on it.
   

2. I could have given up my meaningless job as First Assistant (aka slave who enables her boss in his forays into drink, drugs, pornography, and cheating on his wife, who happens to be one of my best friends) and gone to Prague for three months to keep my freckly,
   

   doormat-haired producer boyfriend company (aka out of the foul clutches of his ex-girlfriend Emanuelle, who is playing the lead in his latest epic
   Dracula’s Daughter
   ). But I didn’t. I pretended to him that I was contractually bound by The Agency to stay.
   

3. I cannot afford toilet paper for the house I live in so I have to steal it from the bathrooms at The Agency and various restaurants across town. This is because I have spent the equivalent of three paychecks on one dress.
   

4. I have enrolled with a tennis coach who helps you to come to terms with the shadows of your personality. If you can master your backhand you can conquer your emotional demons. Tennis skills and mental health are one. And I happen to believe this to be true.
   

5. I am addicted to a Japanese number puzzle called Su Doku. I have an entire book of these puzzles and hide them beneath the
   Hollywood Reporter
   on my desk. Last week I destroyed a month’s worth of filing that I’d neglected to do because of said addiction. It can only be a matter of time before I am found out.
   

And while Luke was away in Prague, freezing his ass off on some god-forsaken, formerly Communist street corner, I was safe. He could harbor his delusions with me as the normal girl he loved back in Los Angeles— keeping his bed warm and his dreams intact. But since he touched down at LAX three hours ago for the premiere, it’s become increasingly likely that my whole house of cards is going to come crashing down.

“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me,” I said to Luke as I glared furiously out the car window on the way home.

“I’m sorry, but I didn’t know she was coming until the last minute.” His exasperation was palpable; he nearly drove us over the side of a canyon as we took a curve. The evening had gone from bad to worse when, post red-carpet humiliation, I finally climbed over an entire row

of seated, unhelpful people to reach my beloved boyfriend, only to discover that his ex-girlfriend Emanuelle Saix (pronounced Sex in some parts of France, apparently) was sitting in my seat. She then insisted on giving me three kisses and commiserated with me about my on-screen humiliation. Did I mention that she’d been the face of Lancôme since she was thirteen years old? Why he had finally dumped her for me was a matter for Luke and his psychotherapist.

“And she was supercilious,” I informed him. “She felt bad for you.”

“Then, at the party. Your business partner mistook me for a Russian prostitute and offered to pay me two hundred dollars cash.”

“That’s because you looked so gorgeous.” Luke’s attempts at ap-peasement were less convincing than they had first been half an hour ago when we left the post-premiere party. I rolled down the window for some air as we drove up the hill toward home. The car filled with the scent of sagebrush and distant skunk. I tried to calm down because I knew that if we had a massive fight tonight when he was leaving for Prague again tomorrow I’d spend every minute of the next six weeks till I saw him again regretting it. But the humiliation was too raw to bury just yet.

“You could have told me that the dress code was casual, though.”

“I had no clue. Didn’t my assistant send you an invite?” He scowled. “I told her to save the trees. Those things come with so much cardboard.” I lamented my respect for the environment almost as much as I regretted being the only woman there who was dressed like an Eastern European hooker. “Did I look completely ridiculous walking down the

red carpet in a floor-length black dress?” I grinned.

“You didn’t walk, baby, you sashayed.” A slow grin spread across Luke’s face.

“I did
not.
I wouldn’t know how to sashay if I tried.” His amusement was contagious. I began to see the funny side.

“Did I look completely ridiculous in front of the cameras?” I ventured. “You looked like you’d been practicing.”

“Oh God.”

“But it wasn’t so much the dress. Or the paparazzi. It was more, well it was more the limo.”

“Ah yes, the limo.” Everyone else had arrived in a vast, black SUV. I had unwittingly gone retro apparently.

“It was very classy.”

“It cost me a fortune. Well, it cost Scott a fortune. I expensed it.” “Oh shit.” Luke laughed as the gravel of our driveway crunched under the wheels, signaling home. “Well, it’s good to be back.”

“Good to have you home.” I leaned over and kissed him. Though it’d been six months since I moved out of my one-room apartment in Santa Monica, I still hadn’t really lived with him for more nights than I would if we’d been having a torrid affair. Which made it all the more exciting as we shrugged off our seat belts and hastened toward the house.

“How come the security lights aren’t on?” Luke asked as he stubbed his toe on a surprise step.

“Brownout?” I guessed, grabbing the back of his sweater so I wouldn’t stumble in the dark.

“Can’t be. Every house in the canyon’s lit up like a Christmas tree.” “Hmmm.” At this stage it hadn’t even occurred to me that I might

have something to feel guilty about. So I remained blithely curious. “Maybe it’s a burglar. Do you have that Mace I bought for you on

your key ring?” Luke asked.

“No. I kept having bad dreams about it accidentally going off in Ralphs in the checkout girl’s face. So I left it by the bed.”

“It’s probably a burglar armed with your Mace, then.” Luke stopped abruptly. “I’ll go in first.”

“But what if he escapes and kills me on the way out?” I asked nervously. “I’ll come in with you. Here, let’s take a brick.” I picked up a stone from the rockery and handed it to Luke.

“I have a gun in the car. Wait here.”

“You have a gun?” I was stunned. What was my boyfriend doing with a gun? “Are you a member of the NRA?”

“Honey, I’m from the South. I’ve always carried a gun. Now will you just quiet down and let me deal with this?” Luke marched back to the car while I sat down on the garden steps and tried to come to terms with the fact that I may be dating a Republican. He returned from the car, presumably with the weapon concealed about his person.

“Have we never discussed my issues with bearing arms?” I asked, like

the impassioned student of politics that I used to be before I arrived in the moral vortex that is Tinseltown.

“Would you stop being so goddamn earnest and help me out here?

We may have a burglar, okay? So just let me deal with it.”

Now despite my fears for the future of my mixed-politics relationship, I recognized that maybe I should do just that. So I followed Luke’s shadow closely as he stole toward the house with his hand on his gun. But no sooner had it dawned on me that we really could be facing a life-threatening situation, vis-à-vis the burglar, than I realized what I’d done.

“Luke.” I stopped still as his shadow tiptoed on without me. “Sssshhhh,” he whispered. “I think I heard something.”

“You didn’t, actually.” I grimaced apologetically, still in an habitual whisper.

“What?” he asked distractedly as he slowly moved his face toward the kitchen window to see if he could glimpse our intruder.

“We haven’t got a burglar. I forgot to pay the electricity bill,” I confessed at normal volume. Luke turned to me with a look of relief, rapidly replaced by one of bewilderment.

“Oh honey, you didn’t?” He wanted to be pissed off, but he knew he couldn’t be. He laughed as he put his arm around me. “So I guess we have to check into the Four Seasons, then. Or was that your plan all along?”

Yes, I know, this kind of talk would be manna to the soul of most girls, but since I’d started dating a rich man it had become somewhat of an issue for me. Like every other woman on the planet, I’d always assumed that it would be great to be with a rich man, and even more fabulous to be with a man you were madly in love with who also happened to be able to afford to check into the Four Seasons every time you had a power outage. But to my irritation I found it didn’t work like that.

When I met Luke I was on the bottom-most rung of the Hollywood ladder. Some sort of single-celled algae in the pond. My boyfriend was a dolphin, a high-flying, AAA producer. But even though my life was a torment down there with the sea cucumbers, I had clawed my way to a promotion. I was now First Assistant to Scott Wagner, who had miraculously pulled off a coup that only Beelzebub could have shed light upon, and become president of The Agency, the town’s most illustrious

percentery. And I was actually proud of what I had achieved. I mean, I was well aware that the world wasn’t a better place because of my endeavors, but I was just biding my time until I made interesting, entertaining, or important movies that would delight the world. I wanted to produce movies, to prove myself.

What I didn’t want, which would be so easy right now, with Luke and his beautiful house and expense account on hand to rescue me like the Julia Roberts character in
Pretty Woman,
was to give up my career and spend the rest of my life having lunch and taking Pilates classes. Because as divine as that may sound when you’ve spilled coffee all over the letters you just printed up and scalded yourself because your boss crept up and screamed in your ear that you’d forgotten to book him a hotel room in Cannes and now he’ll have to sleep on Leo’s floor at the du Cap, in your heart you know that being a kept woman is never going to make you happy.

“No, Luke, that wasn’t my plan. In fact it’s the opposite. Do you know why I haven’t paid the electricity bill?” I suddenly felt the damp night air grip me.

“Because you’ve been busy and you forgot?” Luke asked, clearly a bit pissed that the idea of fluffy robes and breakfast in bed at the Four Seasons hadn’t propelled me into paroxysms of ecstacy.

“No, because I didn’t have any money.”

“But you had my credit card. Why didn’t you just—”

“I couldn’t. I’m sorry. It just felt too weird using someone else’s card.

Especially when you don’t really know me very well and—”

“Honey, what the fuck are you talking about?” Luke was now totally pissed.

“I like my job. I know to you it might seem pointless and menial, but it’s a stepping stone.” I sat down on the porch. I’d been needing to say this for a while and now that I’d turned on the tap there was no stopping me. Luke’s face began to twitch. He’d just gotten off a twelve-hour flight and here I was, unleashing six months’ worth of neuroses on him. “Right. Well, I’m glad you like your job,” he said in a tone that suggested he couldn’t give a rat’s ass right now. “But I fail to see what that

has to do with getting into a hot bath together at the Four Seasons.”

“I won’t be a trophy girlfriend, Luke. I just won’t.” And the way he

looked at me I knew he was thinking that I shouldn’t worry because even in a four-thousand-dollar dress I was unlikely to make the grade. Or maybe I was just being paranoid. Maybe he was just thinking that if he wanted “normal,” he should have gone out with Courtney Love.

“Right,” he said matter of factly. “Well, why don’t I go to the Four Seasons, you can sleep in your car with a newspaper for a blanket, and when I get back to Prague tomorrow afternoon, you can write and tell me how cheap and degraded it makes you feel when I pay my own electricity bill.”

“That’s not what I mean.” I looked at him and wondered if I’d successfully alienated him yet or whether I’d have to strangle a pet before I convinced him of my burgeoning insanity.

“I just want to make it on my own. I don’t want people to think that I’m going out with a powerful man to further my career. Or even worse”—my eyes must have been wide with the horror of my fate at this point because Luke took a step backward as if in fear—“that I’m with you because I don’t
want
a career. I don’t want to be like the shoe-buying fembots in Saks. I don’t want to have lips like a fish. I want to be successful in my own right. Even if I only ever make it to a junior agent. I just want to prove myself.”

“Oh, honey, you’ve more than proved yourself,” Luke said ambiguously. And I held my breath, wondering if subconsciously I wanted to end this relationship because I didn’t feel worthy of his love or something. I’d have to ask Zac, my soon-to-be tennis coach when I could af-ford a lesson. I couldn’t read his look.

“You don’t think I’m normal anymore, do you?” I asked, which translated meant, “You don’t love me anymore, do you?”

“No. I don’t,” Luke said, and tossed his car keys thoughtfully in his hand.

“You think I’m a hellish freak and you’re afraid that you ever gave me keys to your house let alone your credit card and you’re wishing that you could shoot me and bury me under the patio and go out with Emanuelle again. Aren’t you?” I said.

“No.” Luke shook his head. “No, I’m not.”

“Well, I wouldn’t blame you.” I paused for thought. “What then? What are you thinking?” I stood up as a challenge to him to tell me the