The First Assistant (24 page)

“I got to see his face. His handsome, familiar face.” I did sound slightly demented, but then who cared, I’d been drugged. “Only the funny thing was, my sweet, loyal boyfriend was kissing someone else. His ex-girlfriend, to be precise. So, I thought, oh well, if he doesn’t love me then I’ll just run away to Thailand so that I never have to see him again. Only the goddamn taxi driver got my address wrong and here I am.” I gestured around me in bewilderment.

“Lizzie, you’ve got to understand. I’ve been trying to reach you since the day it happened,” he began with an agonized look in his eyes.

“Since the day it happened, Luke? Or the day that you realized the paparazzi had caught you and you were going to make the front pages of every sleazy gossip rag in America?” I asked.

“I’ve been going out of my mind.” “You seem very sane to me.”

“I love you, Lizzie.”

“That’s okay. I’m sure it’s perfectly normal to love two women.” I shrugged, then shouted, “in Utah!”

“Can I explain?”

“So it’s true? You were kissing her? It wasn’t just a trick of the light?” I asked helplessly.

“I didn’t know where I stood with you after that whole proposal debacle. Emanuelle was in love with me and she was familiar. It didn’t even feel as if I was cheating on you because it was only a few kisses. It wasn’t as if she was someone new I’d fallen in love with. It was too easy.”

“Are you engaged?” I asked, my chest as tight as a drum over my pounding heart.

“Of course I’m not engaged. What on earth gave you that idea?” He looked genuinely amused.

“I just thought that you had the ring . . .” I stammered.

“Lizzie, I wanted to marry you. I still do.” He reached out and took my hand for the first time as if he were my boyfriend and not a paramedic. “Really?” I asked, suddenly very confused. He
had
cheated
but
he

wanted to marry me.

“Yes,” he said. “What’s really changed?”

“What’s changed?” I thought about this very hard for a while before I replied.

“Yes?” he whispered as he moved closer to me, still holding my hand. Was Rohypnol a truth drug, I wondered, as I began to say some things I’d very likely regret later. I should have melted into his embrace, etc., and kept quiet. But foolishly I didn’t.

“Well, nothing. Which is probably the problem.” I took a deep breath. “When I was living with you I never felt that I could be myself. This whole thing,” I waved my arm carelessly at the cold, white-washed perfection of his contemporary art gallery of a house, “none of it was me. I wasn’t Lizzie anymore. People didn’t come up to me at parties and talk to Lizzie Miller. They came and asked questions about you. I was your girlfriend, and that was amazing for a while, until I realized that no matter what fabulous things I did on my own, I’d never be anything else because you were so successful, so hot, so important. And then when Emanuelle came back on the scene things got even worse. I was haunted by this dazzling couple you and she used to be, and I knew that everyone was disappointed by me.”

“No, sweetheart, please stop,” Luke said with anguish and tried to

catch hold of my arm, which was hitting my knee in a painful bid to illustrate my point.

“Oh, I don’t mean poor little me,” I quickly corrected him. “I don’t mind being me. I don’t mind that I have a job that I’m not remarkable at and that I don’t look like Emanuelle. Because I really think I’m fine and I know that you love me. It’s just that I want to earn my own money and do remarkable things, and I want people to ask me about them, and with you I’m not sure I’d ever get that,” I finished.

“But people love you,” Luke protested.

“Luke, people love me because they want to impress
you.
Really, they couldn’t give a rat’s ass about me because I’m not in the power one hundred.”

“But who gives a shit what those people think?” he asked angrily.

“I don’t know,” I said. I’d begun with such conviction and now he was making me feel lame. Who did care? Me? My fragile ego?

“I love you. We love each other. What the fuck else matters?” Luke was now pacing crossly in front of the sofa.

“But you kissed another woman,” I tossed into the fray.

“I didn’t love her. You weren’t ready to settle down, Lizzie. I was hurt.

Pissed off with you.”

“Then why didn’t you tell me?” I shouted.

“Why didn’t you tell me that you felt like you were living in my shadow? In a prison?”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“Me too.” Luke came and sat next to me. “I’m sorry I kissed Emanuelle and that I didn’t notice what was going on with you. And I promise that I’ll think about that stuff you’ve just told me.” Luke leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. “I really will.”

“Okay,” I said weakly. Suddenly all my remaining strength evaporated and my eyes began to close with the relief of having finally said what I’d needed to say for so long. “Can I go to sleep now, please?”

Fourteen

I’m a Hollywood trainwreck.

—Christine Anderson

When I opened my eyes the next morning, the sense of happiness I felt was overwhelming. Even before I’d computed what had happened the previous night, I knew that I was in a safe place. The pillows were airy and light, the way Luke’s pillows always were. The blinds were closed but the sunlight was forcing its way through the cracks, and the sheets smelled of my boyfriend. I hadn’t felt so complete in a very long time. I could hear him singing “California Here We Come” in his terrible tune-less way in the kitchen as the clatter of dishes chimed in occasionally. I knew that there was still stuff to sort out between us and we had to address some unpleasant truths, but as I lay there none of that felt daunt-ing. Just easy. What would we do today, I wondered. It was Saturday and I hadn’t had him home on a Saturday for a very long time.

First of all we’d make out, that was for sure. I noticed that I was still wearing his robe from last night so he certainly hadn’t taken advantage of the date-rape drug whizzing around my bloodstream. I stretched and sighed loudly.

“Luke?” I shouted out.

“You awake, Elizabeth?” he called out and the dishes stopped chim-ing. I loved it when he called me “Elizabeth.” It made my stomach lurch with anticipation.

“I am!” I replied as I sat up in bed and adjusted the pillows behind my head.

“Hey.” Luke appeared at the bedroom door in his shorts and an old surf-ing T-shirt. He was barefoot and holding a tray with my breakfast on it.

“You look like you’ve been up for hours.” I smiled.

“Oh, only since five o’clock.” He raised his eyebrows. “The joys of jet lag.”

“Of course.” I nodded happily.

“I made you some breakfast.” He raised the tray an inch or so in the air as if proof might be needed.

“Thanks,” I said as he walked across the dark wood floor toward me. I liked the gloss of formality that seemed to exist between us right now, it made me feel as if we were excited strangers who’d just spent our first night together.

“Yeah, it’s a good time to think, five in the morning.” He placed the slightly surgical-looking tray onto my lap.

“So what were you thinking?” I asked flirtatiously as I put the cup of bitter espresso to my lips.

“Plenty.”

“Oh good.” I smiled and bit into a strawberry. “Lovely breakfast, by the way.”

“You’re welcome,” Luke said as he settled at the foot of the bed, on the other side. I offered him a piece of pineapple but he just shook his head and bit his lip. “So the thing is, I have been thinking. And I think you’re right.”

“You do?” I said in a satisfied way. I wasn’t sure what exactly I’d been right about, but I always liked being right.

“We rushed into this without thinking about the practicalities.” He wasn’t looking at me but I was watching him intently, suddenly a little unsure where this was leading. “We met, we fell in love, we moved in together. I thought that was the way it was supposed to be, but clearly I’d been too simplistic about it. I thought that love conquered all, but I was being inconsiderate to you. I didn’t stop to think how it might be for you, just coming into my world—my house, my parties, my friends. You’re right, you’re young and you want to climb the ladder for yourself. I got to do that and so should you.”

“No, that’s not exactly what I meant,” I interrupted before this could go any further down a road that I did not like the look of.

“But it’s true. You should experience those thrills for yourself. It’s the greatest time of your life doing all this stuff, finding your way, struggling. I did it. I loved it. And I think that because you seemed so smart, I never noticed the age gap or the lifestyle gap. But it’s there. And there’s nothing I can do about that. It breaks my heart, but you really have a valid point.”

I picked up another strawberry and held on to it for dear life.

“But I am old enough,” I protested like a true fourteen-year-old. Did this mean that Emanuelle, who was all of thirty, though she only admitted to twenty-eight, was more his age? I panicked.

“Of course you’re old enough. But I’m holding you back, Lizzie. That’s why we were fighting so much. You resent me for not allowing you to grow and make your own mistakes. And for overshadowing you with my career. Though Christ knows I don’t give as much of a fuck about what I do as everybody else does,” he said with a note of bewilderment in his voice. And it was true—he didn’t—which had always been the reason I felt as if he were the only man in Hollywood for me. The only man in the world for me, in fact. He had his priorities in place, he didn’t drive a dick-on-wheels of a car, he lived in an art gallery because he liked paintings not so he could show off, he loved me when my ass was fatter than usual, he preferred staying in to schmoozing at parties. He was a real person. And I was beginning to feel as if I might have made some irrevocable, horrific mistake. He was dumping me and I was to blame.

“I know you don’t,” I said regretfully. “But that’s not what I meant really. I love living with you, I’m as proud of your career as you are of the fact that I have a master’s in political science.” God, I remembered, that was another of his amazing traits, someone at the Golden Globes could be sitting next to him, droning on about how great they thought his last movie was, and he’d be telling them about me. About how much I knew about Middle Eastern politics and then he’d call me over from the other side of the table to get me to explain the Intifada to some guy who thought it was a new high-end furniture shop on Melrose.

“I’ve been thinking about it for a while. And I guess I knew it when I came back last time. Which is probably why I did what I did with Emanuelle.” He looked confused. I wasn’t. He’d done what he’d done

with Emanuelle because she was a fang-toothed vampire with lips like pillows and breasts like a bouncy castle.

“But that’s okay. We can forget all that and move on together,” I promised desperately. “You’ll be back from Prague for good in a couple of months, won’t you?”

“Actually, I’m back now,” Luke informed me. “I came back last night so that I could come and find you. I started wrapping things up there weeks ago when I couldn’t get ahold of you. I left Randy in charge and came back to be with you.”

“Then let’s be together,” I said as I cast my breakfast tray clumsily to one side and tried to extricate my feet from the sheets. “I had no idea.” “I hated what you said last night. I wanted to put that ring on your finger in your sleep and have you as my wife when you woke up. But in the cold light of day it was true. If you love somebody, set them free,

right?” he said.

“No,” I protested as I finally made it to Luke’s side and lay my head on his broad, familiar shoulder. “We should be together.”

“It won’t work, Lizzie.” Luke gently took my face in his hands and looked at me. “It was too difficult. We’d lost the joy.
You
know that.”

“But we could get it back,” I pleaded.

“Sweetheart, I love you. But this is the right decision. And you’ll thank me one day.”

“But—” I protested. Luke kissed me on the lips and stood up.

“I’m going into the office to catch up on some paperwork. Don’t worry about double-locking the door, I won’t be out for too long,” he said as he grabbed a sweater from the back of a chair and walked out the door.

If I thought that my life couldn’t get any worse after breaking up with Luke, I arrived back at The Agency on Monday morning and found the police waiting to interview me.

“Miss Miller?” demanded the rather mean-spirited looking member of the LAPD.

“Yes?” I replied. Thank God I still seemed to know my own name. I’d spent the better part of the past two days crying so hard into Lara’s

guesthouse pillows that it was a miracle I hadn’t washed my brain away in the deluge.

“We’d like to ask you some questions,” he said, tapping his notebook menacingly.

“What about?” I scowled as I looked around my office for the first time since I’d left for Thailand. At least it
used
to be my office; it wasn’t exactly the familiar place I used to call work anymore. For starters, Amber was comfortably ensconced in
my
cubicle, watching me unsmilingly from behind my computer.

“We’ve had a burglary,” she informed me gravely.

“When?” I asked, looking for upturned filing cabinets and any other textbook signs of a breakin.

“We don’t know, miss,” said the cop, who seemed to be looking very suspiciously at me. “We suspect it’s an insider job.”

“Oh, I see.” I felt a small surge of relief, because even though I knew that the burglary had nothing to do with me, I had the sort of built-in guilt mechanism that always kicked in when a store alarm was activated and I began to suspect myself of walking out of Victoria’s Secret with a six pack of thongs without paying. “Well, you probably don’t need to talk to me, officer, because I’ve been away over a month.”

“We don’t base our work on facile assumptions, Miss Miller,” he said condescendingly. “And besides, we believe that this theft predates your departure from the country.”

“Oh, I see,” I said, slightly alarmed. “Well, where would you like to speak to me?”