The First Assistant (26 page)

“Oh, yeah,” Luke said and suddenly the background noise vanished from his end of the phone and all I could hear was my beating heart. “I just wanted to know what the fuck you thought you were doing?” he said unceremoniously.

“What I thought
what?
” I scowled as Lara plumped up the cushions on her sofa before heading for bed and gave me a confused glance.

“So today I went to the pet spa and what do I find?” he asked aggressively.

“I have no idea,” I replied, feeling sure, for the second time today, that whatever it was he found, I was in the clear and this was some ridiculous misunderstanding. “I find,” he said, having clearly left Avalon and found some deserted wasteland near a Dumpster, it was so omi-nously quiet now, “that you have killed my fucking cat.”

“I’ve what?” I asked, mystified.

“When you took Charles into the pet spa, you delivered him dead.” “Don’t be so crazy,” I said, wondering happily if being apart from me

had already driven him to the very edge of sanity.

“I am not being crazy,” he iterated every word menacingly. “Because not only had Charles been strangled by a nylon stocking before you dropped him off, you then proceeded to tell the people at the spa that you’re Emanuelle’s assistant and that she’d been maimed by a plastic surgeon!” He was yelling now.

“Charles died?” I said, trying to get a handle on the drama that was unfolding here.

“He was murdered!” Luke shouted.

Lara had stopped her domestic fussing and was now sitting on the arm of the sofa in rapt attention. I shrugged my shoulders at her to de-note that I had no clue what was going on, either.

“Look, Luke, I’m really sorry that you think someone killed the cat, but I’m sure they’re really professional people at the spa and.. .”

“He arrived dead! Okay?” Luke yelled, and now I held the phone between Lara and myself so that she could hear his burgeoning insanity. “You strangled him with hosiery before dropping him off.”

“Really, Luke, I think you’re a little upset,” I said in what could have been construed by an upset person to be a patronizing tone. I mean, this really wasn’t my fault, was it? I thought back to the morning of my departure for Thailand, the hunt for Chucky, who’d insisted on hiding from me, the chaos ... and... oh God, my underwear drawer, I’d found him in my underwear drawer and he’d been chewing a stocking. “Oh God,” I suddenly said involuntarily. “I think Chucky committed suicide.”

“What?” Luke asked.

“Chucky. He must have wrapped the stocking around his neck on the way to the spa.”

“Chucky?” Luke said. “You called my cat Chucky?”

“It was a term of endearment.” I tried to get out of it while banging my forehead on the door at my own stupidity. “It’s a cute name.”

“And was it cute to tell them that Emanuelle had been disfigured un-der the surgeon’s knife?”

“Probably not,” I admitted meekly.

“Well, I’m unimpressed, Lizzie,” Luke said as Lara put her arm around me to comfort me. “I guess I’ll see you around.”

“But wait, Luke?” I pounced desperately, “Maybe we can ... ?”

“I don’t think so, Lizzie. Good-bye,” he said and the phone went dead in my hand. I looked at it like the harbinger of doom it was, then tossed it onto the sofa in despair.

Dear God, I will never again say bad things about cats or actresses, I vowed.

Fifteen

In Hollywood if you don’t have happiness you send out for it.

—Rex Reed

I wasn’t sure if I was the first person in the history of Universal Studios to do what I did but you’d have thought so from the crowd that gathered around my car as if I were the launch of Beyonce’s new fragrance. I had somehow managed to drive onto the studio lot through the wrong gate and had dramatically impaled my tires on the alligator teeth that are designed to stop terrorists and deranged fans of The Rock from breaking and entering. Much to the incredulity of the studio heads and D-girls heading out to lunch.

“Stop right there, ma’am.” A security guard came flying toward me with his hand fingering his holster rather too enthusiastically for my liking. When he saw that I was a mousy-haired girl with no cartoon-terrorist mustache, he thrust his head through my passenger window and barked at me. “This is not the entrance. This is the exit.”

“I noticed,” I said as I opened my door a crack to see my brand new Pirelli tires slowly deflating on the spikes like unsuccessful soufflés.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do it,” I said helplessly. “I’m tired and my mind just went blank.” Really I’d been listening to Coldplay in a daze, thinking about Luke. Nothing new there.

“Well, you can’t stay here forever. You’re causing a backup.” The security guard seemed more afraid of the burgeoning lunch hour line behind the barrier than the fact that I might have explosives strapped to my body. “It’s okay, I really have no intention of doing that if I can help it.” I grimaced and shut my door again hastily. A man in a suit got out of the

car in front of, or rather behind me, I couldn’t tell which it was as it wasn’t clear whether I was now coming or going. He made his way over.

“Have you been drinking, lady?” he asked. “No I haven’t,” I hissed.

“Well, it’s a pretty fucking dumb thing to do and I have a lunch with Spielberg at Orsino in fifteen minutes so you’d better get your sorry ass out of my way.”

“Okay, okay.” I fretted. “I didn’t do this on purpose, you know.” “Stupid bitch,” he mumbled as he strutted back to his car to abuse

the other security guard. I leaned half my body out the window and yelled, “Oh and by the way, I’m sure that Mr. Spielberg wouldn’t have wanted to do business with you, anyway; he seems like a nice man and you’re clearly an asshole! It would’ve been a bad match!”

I sat back in my car and resisted the urge to stick my finger in the cigarette lighter hole and electrocute myself. I’d come over to the Universal lot to have lunch with Jason, who now had a deal here and a bungalow that I’d yet to visit. We’d planned our get-together as part of his effort to cheer me up after my brush with the law and brutal treatment at the hands of Luke and as a way of celebrating the release of
Sex Addicts in Love
at twenty-three movie theaters nationwide.

“What should I do? Call Triple A?” I asked the security guard who was still staring at me as if I’d landed from the moon.

“We can’t allow them onto the lot without prior permission from a member of staff and security clearance.” He shook his head gravely.

“Okay, then, I’ll just call a friend,” I said as I dialed Jason’s office num-ber and ducked down behind my steering wheel in case anyone identified me and sold the story of the mentally ailing assistant to
Variety.

Thankfully Jason came to my rescue only a few minutes later in inimitable Blum style.

“Honey, just forget it,” he said as he levered me from the driver’s seat and told me that this was the most exciting thing that had happened at the gate since one of the town’s most desperado actresses had hand-cuffed herself to Sam Mendes’s golf cart.

“I’m sorry,” I said to the security guard for the umpteenth time. Thankfully there had been one nice security guard on duty who had been to West Point and he was taking great delight in the traffic filter system he’d

constructed out of six traffic cones and a fluorescent jacket, so Jason and I were able to eat our lunch without being honked at anymore.

“Never apologize,” Jason whispered as he kissed me hello. “I’ve brought some lunch for us to eat while we wait for Triple A,” he said, dumping a brown bag of Cinnabons and Cokes onto the hood of my car.

“Zac told me that, too,” I remembered.

“Zac’s where it’s at, baby,” Jason said and offered me a taste of his ic-ing. I bit in and smiled. “That’s better. No tears allowed this lunchtime because I have some good news for you.”

“Really?” I looked at him in disbelief; I was hardly on a lucky streak at the moment.

“We’re on the radar,” he said triumphantly.

“What radar?” I resisted the urge to turn around and look for it. “The studio’s radar,” he said, as if I was supposed to know exactly

what he was talking about. “
Sex Addicts,
baby. You know, that little movie that I wrote and directed that you’re producer on?”

“Oh my God,” I instantly perked up at the memory of something that wasn’t Luke or The Agency. “Really?”

“Well,” he said and leaned in conspiratorially. “I’ve heard that they’re discussing the marketing plans for the awards season and guess which movie they’re doing a major campaign for?”

“No!” I stared at him openmouthed. The last time I’d thought about
Sex Addicts in Love
it was with a sense of loss that a movie I considered to be wonderful could be so carelessly dismissed. And now the studios were in love with it, too. It seemed that they were going to promote it as one of their Academy Award contenders. For Jason things couldn’t get much better.

“Oh my God, why are we even sitting here on my hood?” I squealed. “Let’s go to the Ivy.”

“I’m so over the Ivy.” Jason shuddered. “If I see another one of their fishcakes I’ll hurl. I think I’ve been there every day for the last month.” “I feel the same way about Starbucks’ ham-and-mozzarella panini.” I

sympathized.

“I have a better idea.” Jason suddenly leaped off my car and got on his cell. “Let’s go and see this house I want to buy on Bluebird. We can celebrate by making an offer if you like it.”

“You’re buying a house?” I asked. “Have you found yourself a sugar mommy?” It was common knowledge that you couldn’t buy a walk-in closet in Los Angeles for under four million right now.

“Zac said I need to grow up,” Jason informed me as we started to make our way to his office to pick up his car. “I figure I need to stop renting a duplex on Sweetzer now. I’m going to throw dinner parties.”

“Great idea. But are you sure he didn’t just mean that you need to grow up figuratively? I mean he may have meant that sleeping with a different girl every night isn’t very grown up,” I ventured. “Not that there’s anything wrong with it. But it’s not exactly Zen.”

“You could be right. I’ll ask him next time I see him. So come on, honey, what are we waiting for?” Jason asked.

“Is my car going to be okay there until Triple A comes, do you think?” I took a backward glance at the tires that had cost me dearly.

“I have an assistant,” Jason said with the phone to his ear. “Tallulah, it’s me. Can you come to the front gate, please? And could you also book an appointment to view the house on Bluebird at one-thirty? Thanks.”

While it was true that Jason had an assistant and a bungalow on the lot, it was clear, as we made our way toward it, that he hadn’t had a real hit movie yet because his bungalow was a full twenty-minute walk from the Dreamworks building and when we got there we had to duck be-hind some bushes to get through the entrance.

“It’s great, isn’t it?” Jason said as we walked up the three rotting wood steps into what was effectively a beat-up trailer.

“And it’s all yours,” I said proudly.

“Well, actually, I share it with the guys who did
Rasputin Returns,
” he admitted quietly.

“They did what?” I asked, following suit and whispering in case they overheard.

“Well,
exactly.
” He gave me a look. “It cost seventy-five million and made about six million back. But they’ve still got a year left on their deal.”

“So they’ve been sent to bungalow Siberia?” I guessed. “Correct.” Jason smiled as we walked into his office.

It was just like his house—you could learn all there was to know about cinema just by looking at his posters and books. Every movement in film

history was represented and documented, every frame ever shot was written about on his shelves. Jason, despite his new director-about-town im-age was at heart still an intense film geek and that was clearly why
Sex Addicts in Love
was being so well received by people who knew about cin-ema. There wasn’t a shot in that movie that he hadn’t lovingly planned and imagined a thousand times in his head over the last five years.

“So this is where it all happens?” I asked as I sat in his office chair and banged my fists on the desk, in an imitation of power.

“Damn straight,” Jason said and lay back on his sofa. Then he leaned forward and hesitantly asked, “Lizzie, do you think we might win something? An award, I mean?”

“I have no idea,” I said as I looked at his desk, which was heaving with at least a hundred scripts. “But I know it’s a great movie and it deserves to. What are all these, by the way?”

“Projects I’m being offered,” he said with surprising modesty. “You’re really on your way, aren’t you?” I asked, suddenly realizing

that for all the overexcitable behavior he’d been indulging in for the past year, since he’d inked a very fine deal, he really was on his way to the big time.

“I hope so.” He shrugged. “So should we go and buy me a big-ass house so that if I get nominated I can have a party by my infinity pool?”

“In your pants, more like,” I said as we headed for his car.

“Those days are over,” he informed me. “I swear, Lizzie, the chicks in this town are overrated. Seen one you’ve seen them all.”

“That’s so insulting.” I shoved him in the ribs with my elbow as we strapped ourselves into his new Porsche Carrera, which was waiting outside in his very own parking space.

“Lizzie, do you have any idea how boring it is going on dates with women whose idea of a simple restaurant is Nobu Malibu because it doesn’t have tablecloths?” he implored.

“No, but I’m sure they’re worth the blackened cod.”

“They’re not. I went on a date with this actress the other night. You know, she was somebody’s girlfriend from ‘Nip/ Tuck’? Well we’re driving along the PCH to Nobu.”

“Naturally.” I nodded.

“I told you—she wanted simple.” He sounded pained. “And I hear this

cracking noise. First I think it’s the rocks by the ocean cause it sounds like an avalanche. Then I realize it’s
in
the car. So I assume that there’s something wrong with the bodywork,” Jason tells me as we’re leaving the lot and I cast a last, backward glance at my sorry Honda, which is being heaved by AAA onto their tow truck. Until I hear the actress making whimpering noises and I look over and she’s desperately clutching her head.”