The Second Assistant (12 page)

“And you look gorgeous,” I said, and slung one arm over her shoulder as I turned my key in the door. “Mel, you have no idea how excited I am to see you!”

We dumped Melissa’s backpack by the door, and she declined my offer of a shower.

“Oh, I’m completely used to going for days without showering,” she said as she checked out my apartment and poked her head out my window. “Besides, it’s a total waste of water to shower all the time. People in the West use water way too liberally. It kills me.”

“You’re right,” I said, and hastily turned off the faucet I’d just left running over the strainer of tomatoes in the sink.

“So have you volunteered yet?” She came and stood in the kitchen doorway as I prepared dinner. “There is so much poverty out here in L.A. It’s shocking. So much good that you can do—in fact, I kind of envy you. A real project to sink your teeth into.” She looked at me with wide-eyed expectation.

“No, I mean I’m going to. I was thinking of becoming a Big Sister, but I haven’t gotten around to it yet. You know, you owe it to these kids to be totally committed, so until I’m really settled in my job and know whether I’m even going to stay in town, I’m not sure I should.”

“Good point.” Melissa nodded.

I sighed at my narrow escape and tried not to think of needy poor kids with imploring eyes.

“So tell me about Sierra Leone,” I said later, as I poured red wine to the very top of Melissa’s glass and tucked in to the pasta I’d undercooked in my enthusiasm to feed her. We were sitting up on the roof of my apartment building, the sun was setting pink and apricot over the
ocean, and for the first time in days, I felt at peace. At peace with my decision to leave my job and at peace with my sister beside me. She was so energetic, so inspiring, that I couldn’t help but feel that there was a whole world out there that I could be of use in. Why was I wasting away here?

“Oh, God, where do I begin?” She laughed and raised her glass before she took a sip. “Well, it was incredible. Truly incredible. Terrible, too, you have to understand, Lizzie. But it was the most amazing thing I’ve ever done in my life.”

“More amazing than the time we ran away and slept in the park for a night?” I said jokingly, wanting to prove that we were still sisters who were bonded by love and life experience. But as she smiled and continued to tell me about her time away, about her brushes with death, about her sleeping rough with soldiers camped just feet away from her, about the atrocities she’d witnessed, I realized that what she had been through made her a very different person from the girl who’d gone away in February.

It also made her a very, very different person from me. The Hollywood assistant. The girl who’d spent months losing sleep over a call sheet, fretting as to whether she’d ever get invited to a premiere, someone who made it her daily business to marvel over Joel Schumacher’s amazing profit-making ability. And it showed. Melissa looked incredible. I don’t mean in that hair-color and skinnier-than-usual way—I mean really beautiful. She emanated passion for what she did. She was animated, she spoke confidently and with conviction about the social climate in Africa, she was vocal in her opinions on the U.S. government and the United Nations. She told me about political events and theories that I’d never encountered before. She looked like every heroine from history, with her hair longer and wilder than usual, her face and arms tanned, in her worn, scruffy jeans and frayed white T-shirt. And, most important, with a light in her eye. She was sort of burnished and golden. I was envious.

And when we were back downstairs later, when the air was still and the crickets were humming in the trees outside, when I went to the fridge to pull out the ice cream and caught my usual glimpse of myself in the door, I barely recognized the girl with the light hair, drab black pants and shirt, and the mean streak of red lipstick I’d added in a desperate bid for glamour. I looked bland, generic, uninteresting, and
most of all sad. I had nothing much to say for myself. I had no convictions. Only that I hated Victoria almost more than I hated the dictatorships of Africa. Which I realized was pathetic. I just couldn’t help it.

“Melissa, do you think that there’d be any vacancies at the UN if I were to apply?” I asked as I came back to the table and pulled the top off the Chunky Monkey tub.

“Why, do you know someone who wants a job?” she said as she took her spoon and dug in with a look of wonder on her face. “Jeez, it’s been a while since I attacked a pint of ice cream.”

“Well, me, actually.” I tried to sound nonchalant, but my misery ebbed out of me.

“Oh, my God, Lizzie. Poor you” was all my little sister had to say to show she understood. “I was wondering how you were surviving,” she said, now that she was able to be truthful. “I mean, your job sounds so horribly vapid. It’s not you. All those award ceremonies and self-congratulatory pricks making movies that corrupt society. I mean, how do you square the violence your profession purveys with your own sense of morality?” she asked.

“Oh, well, it’s not
so
bad,” I said, just slightly shocked at her lambasting of Hollywood. I mean, it wasn’t the Red Cross, but it wasn’t a fascist regime either. “I think the violence is quite important in that it’s a representation of the society we live in, sadly. And a lot of people in the business give tons of money to charity. There are benefits almost every night of the week. And some of the people I work with are very real, very compassionate in their own way. It’s just that . . .” I thought hard for a moment. “It’s just that I can’t seem to find my niche. I was always so happy in D.C., and I haven’t really settled in here. So I thought maybe I ought to go back to what I know. That’s all,” I said, a tad defensively.

“Well, I’ll see what I can do. I have lunch tomorrow with this guy who’s pretty powerful in Washington political circles, and I’ll definitely ask him.”

“Thanks,” I said, remembering the paper that I’d stolen from the office. And then remembering Victoria’s twisted face during our meeting today. “Wanna help me with my résumé?”

I believe, I believe. It’s silly, but I believe.

—Natalie Wood as Susan Walker
Miracle on 34th Street

T
he next morning, bleary-eyed from staying up until two, I dropped seventeen envelopes into my purse. Each contained a copy of my résumé along with a letter to a senator or someone similar, whose names and addresses Melissa and I had found online. Each letter pleaded for employment and dedicated only half a sentence to the hiccup that was my Hollywood career.

“Thanks, sweetheart. You were a total rock star.” I hugged my sister as I dropped her off outside the Beverly Center, where she was planning on joining a protest against mistreatment of asylum seekers before lunch.

“Well, I just hope it goes okay,” she said, slinging her backpack over her shoulder. “I’ll call you when I get into D.C. And good luck with the jobs.”

“Thanks. I’ll probably need it.”

She stood outside my car window and smiled at me like a latter-day Joan of Arc. “You’ll be great. You’re so cut out for a career in politics. This superficial bullshit doesn’t suit you. Remember when you attached yourself with your bicycle chain to the garden tree when you were little cause they were going to cut it down because it had Dutch elm disease? Well, that was the sister I know and love. The sister who inspired me. D.C. needs you.”

“You’re sweet, Mel. See you soon.” I waved and tried not to laugh at her earnestness as I pulled out into the stationary morning rush-hour traffic on La Cienega. In my rearview mirror, I watched my sister stumble along the sidewalk in the same clothes she had worn yesterday, with a backpack twice her body weight over her shoulders.

When I arrived at the office, I realized that if I wanted to go and have my usual chai latte, I’d have to read Jason’s script first. There was no way I wanted to show my face until I’d done so. Jason was one of the few people I felt were really decent in this town, and I knew that he’d be dying to have some feedback from me . . . well, from anyone, actually, so I pulled the copy of his script out of my bag and got into it while all the other assistants were perusing the latest analysis of box-office activity in
Variety.
Which there was really no point in my doing anymore, given that I would probably be leaving soon. Either with Victoria’s Charles David boot up my ass or to pursue a career where my coworkers wouldn’t be as likely to trade their eggs for pink purses and consider me a mutant because of my natural brown hair.

And for the rest of the morning, every spare moment I had, I read a few more pages. And a few more. It was actually really compelling. Which was a pleasant surprise, because the rule was that whenever someone you knew gave you a script to read, it would invariably be horrible. But this made me want to read on. And when Scott finally left for lunch, I pulled it out of my bottom drawer and settled down to finish the third act. Victoria had gone to Sedona for a couple of days to consult a shaman, and Lara was still ensconced in her novel-writing course and had her earplugs wedged in as usual, so I breezed through to the end of the story with no interruptions.

Jason’s screenplay was called
Sex Addicts in Love,
and it was about a kid from New Jersey who wanted to lose his virginity, so wound up going to Sex Addicts Anonymous meetings to get laid. I thought from the title that it was going to be an
American Pie
kind of deal, but actually the story was much more sensitively portrayed, and Dan, the main character, was one of the most sympathetic leads I’d ever read. And even though I had only a month of script-reading experience under my belt, thanks to the colossal workload that Victoria had unleashed on me, I definitely knew my onions. This would make a great movie, I thought excitedly. Really, truly great. I could see it—the deprived home
life, his Harvard career, his friends, his tragic mother, his porn-obsessed stepfather, and his remote real father. It was low budget, but with a great up-and-coming young actor in the lead. It was gritty, but with humor. It made you laugh and cry, and this was honestly the first screenplay I’d read that I could see working like magic on the big screen. And it was written by Jason Blum. The coffee frother. The guy across the road. Who wanted me to produce it. Which of course wasn’t going to happen, because I was D.C.-bound. But maybe if I helped him put it in the hands of the right person before I left, he’d invite me to the premiere. Good for Jason. I grinned as I picked up the script and my purse so I could finally go and have my latte and tell him the good news.

But the second that I stood up for my dash across to the Coffee Bean, the phone began ringing off the hook. And stupid me made the fatal mistake of answering it. Which I needn’t have, because the general rule in Hollywood was that once your boss had valet-parked at the restaurant of choice for his lunch, the office shut down and everything went to voice mail. But the persistent ringing was driving me crazy.

“Scott Wagner’s office,” I said impatiently.

“Scott,” a woman sniffed.

“No, this is Lizzie. Scott’s actually at lunch right now.”

“You need to find him for me.” More sniffing and possibly even something that could be classified as a whimper.

“Who’s speaking, please?”

“Jennifer.” Oh, God, one of Scott’s biggest clients. Who often rang in tears from Saks to tell us that she couldn’t get the Balenciaga Lariat bag in white. And it was my job to take her as seriously as she took herself. “Brett’s insisting on shooting me in profile. And it specifically says in my contract that I don’t do profile. I’ve tried to explain to him, but he just yells and calls me names.”

“Jennifer, please try not to worry too much. I’m going to try to get a hold of Scott. Where can you be reached?”

“I’m in my trailer. And I’m not answering the door.
Go away!
” she yelled at some unsuspecting person in the background, so hard my eardrum began to fizz. “He’s trying to ruin my career because I wouldn’t sleep with him. I know he is. I’ve always hated my nose from the side. And I won’t show it to anyone.”

“Okay. Well, don’t worry. Just sit tight, and I’ll have Scott call you.”

“Well, he better hurry, because I refuse to accept this abuse for much longer. It’s damaging to my inner child. I’m going to call my driver and have him take me home if Scott isn’t here in a minute.”

I hung up and reached for the other line, which was also ringing frantically. To be honest, I couldn’t believe that Lara’s earplugs, even if they were Upper Class, could be quite as soundproof as she made them seem. It was one thing to ignore a ringing phone because it was lunchtime, but when the thing was practically vibrating off the desk, it had to be quite urgent, I figured.

I grabbed the handset. “Yes, hello.”

“If you don’t get this fucking whore out of her trailer and onto my set in the next ten minutes, I’m going to sue her scrawny, overexposed ass.”

“Brett?” I took a wild guess.

“I’ve had it up to here with her prima donna ways, and I’m fucking sick of it. I never wanted that frigid, over-the-hill cunt in the first place, but the studio made me. And now she’s ruining my movie. So get her the fuck out of there. Do you hear me, Scott?”

Actually, Scott probably
could
hear him. Even though he was at the Ivy right now and probably three Bloody Marys to the wind.

“Sorry, Brett, this is Lizzie, Scott’s assistant. I’m trying to reach him at lunch right now. We’ll get back to you.” But before I could finish, the line hummed monotonously. Okay. Righto. Well, here we go again.

Scott’s cell phone was going straight to voice mail. He’d switched it off. He was at his table in the Ivy snacking on crab cakes, and he didn’t give a shit that right now, over at the Paramount lot, some dark things were about to go down. Sadly, not Jennifer, though, or we probably wouldn’t have this problem in the first place, I thought with all the cynicism of a seasoned industryite.

“Scott, it’s Lizzie. I’m really sorry to disturb you at lunch, but I need to speak to you urgently. I’ve programmed my number into your phone as Lizzie, Elizabeth, and Assistant Number Two. So you can call any of those and reach me. Thanks.”

I grabbed my car keys and thrust my cell phone into my purse.

“If anyone needs me, I’ve gone down to Paramount. There’s some kind of fracas on the set with Jennifer and Brett.” But I might as well have talked to myself as I hurried out the door. The only response was
from a winsome Talitha, who mumbled something about Fracas being Gwyneth Paltrow’s favorite perfume.

I tapped my foot impatiently on the accelerator as one of the Josés moved a Mercedes that was blocking my exit from the parking garage. The way I saw it, I had about five minutes to get to Paramount and talk Jennifer out of her trailer, or she’d get fired and so would The Agency. Whose fault it would clearly be, in her eyes, that she’d had to endure such torment at the hands of Brett. Because an agent was supposed to be a friend, mother, scapegoat, lover, baby-sitter, and acolyte. And a medieval knight where applicable, too. Charging full tilt to her side to defend her honor. Or side profile. The thing was, most of the time the agent was at lunch or a premiere. Or, in Scott’s case, stoned. So his responsibilities were mine. His Porsche was not, I noticed as a blue haze began to drift from under the hood of the Honda. I ignored it and hoped it would go away.

As Tall José maneuvered the Merc into a new space, Short José chatted calmly to me through the open window.

“Going somewhere nice?” he asked, oblivious to my panic.

“Paramount lot. How long do you think it’ll take me to get there?” I asked.

“You mean the secret fast route? Or the slow, heavy-traffic, long way?” He grinned slyly and smoothed his jet-black hair down.

“Oh, my God, José, you know a shortcut?” I asked needlessly as he began to jot down some cryptic instructions for me. “I love you, José, you know that don’t you?”

“A falta de hombres Buenos, a mi padre hicieron alcalde.”
He nodded as he handed over my lifeline.

“ ‘Since there were no good men, they made my father mayor’?” I asked, scraping the bottom of my schoolgirl-Spanish barrel.

“Go now,” he said as I smiled at him and sped off into the bright sunlight of the day with a screech of breaks and a coughing engine.

I drove down Melrose and deeper into Hollywood in search of the famous Paramount gates. I’d never seen them before in real life, but I had spotted them at the beginning of a hundred movies, so I vaguely knew what I was looking for. But between watching my clock and wondering whether Jennifer would have hurled herself histrionically into the back of her car and left already, and also watching my cell phone to
see whether Scott had called and following José’s directions, which were taking me through many a luxe-y neighborhood, I didn’t have much time to appreciate the fact that I was about to set foot for the first time on the hallowed earth of a legendary Hollywood studio.

And I certainly didn’t stop to marvel that these would have been the very streets that Lucille Ball and Greta Garbo and Tom Cruise had driven along on their way to work. Because right now I simply had a visual of Scott’s tonsils flaring at me if I didn’t prevent Jennifer from committing professional suicide. The reputation of The Agency was at stake. Scott’s reputation was at stake. And perhaps most important, as I was planning to drop my seventeen letters into a mailbox at some point today, I didn’t want my reason for leaving this position to be the fact that I was fired faster than a bullet from a gun. So I dried my damp palms off on my black skirt, held tight onto the steering wheel, and bore down on the speed bumps like a veteran stuntman.

Until finally my phone rang. Great, Scott at last. I eased off the pedal and answered it.

“Lizzie, it’s me.” But it wasn’t the me I was hoping for. It was Melissa.

“Hi, babe,” I said, turning down the radio.

“I’m in a bit of trouble, Lizzie,” she announced.

“What kind of trouble?” I braced myself.

“I’ve been arrested. I was on the march for asylum seekers, and I sort of chained myself to some railings.”

“I see. Are you okay? Do I need to come and bail you out or something? Do you want me to tell Mom and Dad? Do you need a lawyer?” I could always be counted on to be practical in a crisis, something I should have put on my résumé but had forgotten.

“No, I’m fine,” she reassured me airily. “All I really wanted was to tell you to watch the evening news on CNN, because they’re going to interview me about the human-rights abuses against asylum seekers. And if you could send out an e-mail circular to people letting them know, then it’ll spread the word. Isn’t it fantastic?” She sounded as high as a kite.

“I guess. I mean, will they take you to court? You have been arrested, sweetheart,” I said, unable to help myself from playing the older-sister role.

“Not at all. I’m in a cell now, and this is my one phone call, but I’ll be out at six and on the air at seven, so be sure to tune in,” she said. And obviously her quarter ran out, because the line went dead.

At that precise second, I realized just how different Melissa and I actually were. I had always thought that we were cut from the same cloth in terms of our principles: that we both worried about trees, prisoners of conscience, dolphins, and poor women who got stoned to death for adultery. But while I did genuinely care and maybe I had once inspired my little sister with my militant childhood tendencies, I honestly couldn’t pretend that I cared as much as Melissa did. I would not have given up my lunch and liberty and reputation as a blameless citizen of the United States of America by tying myself to a railing and getting arrested. CNN or no CNN. I would sign a petition, I would forward an e-mail to a hundred people, and I would join the ranks of a peaceful protest. But I was not the kind of girl to go and risk my life in either Sierra Leone or the Beverly Center. It just wasn’t my cup of tea anymore. It may have been when I was younger, but not now. It all seemed too idealistic, too naïve. I was sure that if Scott or any of the Hollywood honchos had driven by Melissa’s protest this morning, they’d simply have cursed her for fucking up the traffic flow. They wouldn’t have cared if she was marching for world peace or to stop inhumane treatment of guinea pigs—she would have no impact on their lives. Which made her noble deeds pointless, really. They only served to make her feel good about herself and feel like she belonged. Which I had to admit would be a great feeling. I just knew that it wouldn’t work like that for me anymore. I was looking for something else. Though I had no idea what. I glanced back down at my map and hit the gas again. If José’s calculations were right, I was just about at the Paramount lot.