The First Assistant (5 page)

“Positive.” She smiled. “And I didn’t even have to raise my voice.

Come to lunch on Saturday?”

“Great,” I said as she hugged me good-bye. “And thanks for sorting that Thailand thing out. I’m not sure that Luke and I would have survived the two of us being on location at the same time.”

“Bye, Lizzie. Bye, Amber.” She smiled pointedly at our archenemy, who ignored her.

“It must be hard getting old in this town,” Amber said as she watched Lara get into the elevator with Scott. “But to be old
and
fat? I’d rather be dead.” Luckily the phone rang, because I didn’t have a nasty retort ready to fire back at Amber at that precise second.

“The Agency,” I answered.

“It’s me.” It was Scott, presumably from the elevator. “I didn’t bring my call sheet.”

“I’ll run it down,” I said and hung up. I went into his office and couldn’t resist a swift check under his desk for the pantyless one. She wasn’t behind his Space Invaders machine either. I even looked up to see if she might be hiding Spidey-style on the ceiling. I grabbed the

doodled-on call sheet from his desk and raced down to the parking garage with it.

“Here you are.” Scott was chatting with a very familiar-looking and very handsome actor by the valet booth as José, one of my two beloved valets, both of whom were named José, went to get his car.

“Great.” Scott took the call sheet and seamlessly continued telling the actor how stellar he’d been in the screening of his new movie. This was why the stars loved Scott—he was the most effortlessly charming guy in town. “So we need to get you a really big fucking movie next. You know, triple-A. You reminded me of a young Joaquin Phoenix. Y’know?” The actor nodded and believed every word of it.

Lara was on her cell phone nearby, talking to the nanny. She smiled at me and I was about to disappear back upstairs when there was an almighty screech of tires at the entrance to the garage. Suddenly a fire-engine red car drew up beside us and it’s horn exploded into an excited cacophony—as if its driver had just won the Grand Prix and was doing a lap of honor. José, who had just brought around Scott’s car, aged about five years in an instant. Lara glared and held her phone aloft in a fury and I took a step back.

“What the fuck?” Scott, who had been standing with his back to the car as it entered, turned around. But the look on his face turned from one of serious irritation to that of a five-year-old on Christmas morning as he saw where the noise came from.

Now, I hadn’t studied Scott’s printouts of the Gullwing Mercedes too closely, but I was in no doubt that this was she. This was the piece of tin that I was going to be exchanged for before my heroic Lara had intervened. I was in even less doubt about this fact when the sides of the car raised up like, well, like the wings of a gull, and Emerald Everhart stepped out in what appeared to be a white nightie and black over-the-knee boots with an indecent glimpse of brown thigh on display in between.

“Scottie, sweetie. Just the man I was looking for. What do you think?” She squealed even louder than the tires and rushed toward him for her hug.

“Holy Shit.” Scott stood and stared at the car as Emerald barreled

into him. He whistled loudly and took six awed steps nearer to the ob-ject of his desire. “Un-fucking-believable.”

“Scott?” Lara called out as she surveyed the scene. But he didn’t hear her. He didn’t hear anything except the low growl of the Gullwing’s en-gine as Emerald sat back in the driver’s seat and played footsie with the pedal.

“Wanna have a drive, sweetie?” Emerald purred, her new nylon blond hair tumbling around her shoulders like a pornographic Medusa’s.

“You bet I do,” Scott said and graciously shot his wife an apologetic look as he clambered in. Lara stood by, openmouthed, as Emerald hopped over the gear stick, flashed her lacy panties, and let Scott take the wheel. The next thing we knew the doors were closed and the car spun around on the asphalt and headed for the streets of Los Angeles with a jubilant honk of its horn.

“I think you might be going to Vietnam after all,” Lara said as I stood by speechlessly and my life as assistant to Emerald Everhart flashed be-fore me—the cigarette runs, the tantrums, the inevitable retrieval of plastic hair from shower drains and men’s zippers. Not to mention that I’d be thousands of miles away from my boyfriend and Dracula’s daughter herself, Emanuelle Saix.

“Thailand,” I corrected Lara. “I’m going to Thailand.”

Three

An associate producer is the only guy in Hollywood who will associate with the producer.

—Fred Allen

It was a rare treat to see Jason Blum these days. Since he’d written, directed, and produced
Sex Addicts in Love,
he’d been too hot to be in touch. But now his film had wrapped and he had time between edits and rewriting the ending and buying himself a house in Santa Barbara to call me.

“Hi, doll,” he said when I picked up the phone. Jason had gone overnight from being one of the most intense film geeks UCLA had ever produced to a guy who wore his pants lower than his underwear and had a regular table at the Chateau. It was Sunday morning and I was trying to do a million chores around the house. Luke’s long-term cleaning woman, Mrs. Mendes, was coming in on Monday and for some bizarre reason I deemed it necessary to tidy up
before
she came in case she reported my slovenly domestic habits to him. I didn’t really want to delve into the reasons why I felt my boyfriend might be compelled to take his maid’s side over his girlfriend’s and what that said about our relationship, so I scrubbed the bathtub instead.

“Jason Blum,” I panted into the phone as I stood up and stretched my aching back.

“Were you having sex?” he asked. The old Jason didn’t look as if he knew what frottage was, but the new Jason probably made love sixteen hours a day with a chocolate box of beauties.

“No, Luke’s in Prague,” I said. “You do know who Luke is, don’t you? I mean I’ve been dating him for a year now, but I’m not sure we’ve spo-ken for a while.”

“You’re such a wit, sweetheart. Of course I know who he is. The old guy went out with that hot French chick. Right?”

“He’s not old. He’s thirty-five,” I said and wrung out my sponge as if it were Jason’s neck. I ignored the reference to Emanuelle altogether.

“Maybe he just seems older because he’s no fun,” Jason ventured. “Probably seems older because he’s so powerful,” I shot back.

Jason used to be my closest friend in Hollywood in the days when I didn’t know anyone except Lara and I thought
she
was a semipro because she was secretly dating Scott and always had new shoes. He’d worked in the Coffee Bean across the street from The Agency and I’d helped him get an agent for
Sex Addicts in Love,
the screenplay he’d written. I’d long since forgiven him for how foully he’d screwed me over when his big moment came and my promised coproducer credit never materialized. But our friendship was still laced with a pretence of amicable hatred. After all, Jason and I had spent every evening for the bet-ter part of a year eating takeout and doing our laundry together. And if he hadn’t been so off-puttingly earnest in those days, we may even have got together. That said, I would certainly have been dumped by now for something altogether cuter with a more impressive chest measurement than my own. It was actually really good to hear his voice.

“Touché.” Jason laughed. “Now when can I see you, sweetie?” “Well, how about Monday? Or Tuesday? Or, hey, maybe Wednesday.

I’m free on Thursday,” I said. “That’s tragic.”

“I know, but I date an important man. That’s the price I pay,” I said, suddenly realizing that it actually
was
tragic. I hadn’t been to dinner with anyone other than Lara and my yoga-teacher friend, Alexa, since Luke left for Prague. I’d had a cocktail with Katherine Watson’s assistant, Georgia, because she was having a nervous breakdown, but that was the sum of my social life. It really was a bummer having the person I most wanted to spend time with halfway around the world.

“Well, then, you can come with me to the screening of my movie tomorrow evening,” Jason offered.

“Oh, really. You’ve made a movie? That’s great. What’s it about?” I asked sarcastically. Then laughed.

“Not funny.” Jason sounded bruised. “You know how bad I still feel

about that and how I still have nightmares about the day Daniel Rosen gave me a contract to sign and your name wasn’t on it.”

“I know, but the three-million-dollar deal made it an easier blow to bear,” I reminded him. “Don’t worry, I understand.” And I really did. Ja-son had been under enormous pressure from one of the most devious men in the world to sign that contract and there was no way Daniel would have wanted me tagging along in any way whatsoever. I was an assistant at his agency; he’d much rather save the producer credits to hand out like Halloween candy to his own people.

“It’s at Universal City Walk at four
P
.
M
. I’ll meet you outside Theater 3,” he said.

“Can’t wait,” I said as I hung up and resumed my tub-scrubbing. I thought about calling Luke and telling him that I missed him, but he’d doubtless be out to dinner somewhere candlelit, eating suckling pig on a Sunday night in Prague, so I desisted.

“Great, great. I thought you’d be late.” Jason looked pale and was dragging hard on a cigarette as I approached him at the Universal City Walk the next afternoon.

“Not in a million years.” I smiled breezily. At least being left out of the movie hierarchy meant that I didn’t have to be nervous right now. If the movie was a dog, I wasn’t going to be laughed out of town. “Is this the first time you’ve seen it with an audience?” I asked as I looked around us at the milling people who were clearly a test audience—a huddle of students who’d probably come in the hope of free popcorn; some vagrants who’d been rustled up from the pier in Santa Monica; and single mothers who wanted a break from their six tonsil-flashing kids. They were a motley bunch to say the least, and I wasn’t sure I’d want the fate of my movie in their hands. Since this was a test screening, these people got to give their views on everything from the lead character’s outfits to the ending of the story. And the studio would lis-ten to them. I shuddered for Jason.

Out of the hordes a man in a suit sailed toward us.

“Jason.” He had the shaven head so beloved of receding men, which gave him a thuglike quality even in Armani.

“Hey.” He and Jason hugged each other in a macho way.

“Nervous?” “Excited.” “Perfect.” “Yup.”

“Enjoy.”

“Sure.”

“Wow,” I said as Jason and I made our way into the movie theater, “that was a scintillating conversation.”

“I can live without the pithy comments, thanks, Lizzie.” Jason shot me a warning look.

“Sorry, I was trying to relax you,” I said, chastened. I stroked his arm reassuringly instead. “Who was he, anyway?”

“He’s the senior VP in charge of the project.” Jason looked around the room in terror. “Fuck, the head of Marketing’s here, too.”

“That’s great. It means they’re really into it, right?” I said, but Jason just grunted.

We took our seats in the middle row and I sunk excitedly into the red velveteen chair. The last I’d seen of
Sex Addicts in Love
had been just before Jason signed the deal. I’d worked on at least thirty-eight drafts of the script with him but imagined that a lot of it had changed since then. I didn’t even know who the actors were, as Jason had diplomatically not really mentioned anything about the project to me again, except when he called from the outdoor hot tub at the Post Ranch Inn with one of his prettier cast members and told me how tough the shoot was.

“It’s going to be great, Jase. I know it is.” I patted his hand. “I feel like a whore,” he said.

“Don’t be silly.”

“It’s like I’m naked and everyone’s staring and wants a piece of me.” His face was screwed up in anguish. “I didn’t know it’d be like this. I wish I still worked at the Coffee Bean.”

“Shhh. It’s starting. It’s gonna be great,” I whispered. “Look, here are the credits—oh my God, it’s you; they’re going to have your name up there.”

But Jason was too stone-faced to be excited with me. I suppose this was his life’s work, his reputation, his bread and butter, and his entire future. Not to mention that if this was a flop and he had to go back to

the Coffee Bean, his love life might go up in froth, too. There was a lot at stake. Still, I did squeeze his hand very tightly when

jason h. blum

came on-screen in big black letters on the vast screen before us. It gave me goose bumps. Jason just looked as if he might throw up. In fact, it came on three times: directed by, written by, and produced by. I have to confess that I did hold my breath through the producers credit in case

elizabeth b. miller

had somehow been slipped in there in a moment of sloppiness, but alas, it hadn’t.

Sex Addicts in Love
was every bit as incredible a movie as I’d hoped it would be. And as I sat and watched the brilliant performances, the incredible eye of the director, the lighting, the moving story lines, I forgot that I’d ever been involved with it and became carried away with what was quite simply a wonderful movie. I laughed, cried, and from time to time thought to myself, “Dammit, I’d be a great producer.” The only sour note in the proceedings, apart from the perfume of the woman in front of me, was the balding studio executive Jason had met before-hand, who spent the entire screening playing with his BlackBerry.

He was sitting right in front of us, and by the middle of the second act I was ready to kill him with my bare hands.

“Some people are so rude,” I hissed, but some people were obviously deaf as well because he didn’t flinch. He just kept on drilling away with his little stick on his screen, doubtless telling some other writer/director/producer how “fucking phenomenal” he thought they were and how he wanted to buy their latest movie, utterly oblivious to the fact that another phenomenal writer/director/producer whom he’d raved at and about for months was having his big moment behind him. And if this was how bored and fickle these men were when it came to work, imagine how horrifying their behavior was when it came to women. I shuddered and tried to ig-nore his demented tapping and the eerie glow from his screen.