The Second Assistant (23 page)

“Good idea. I’ll get showered and swing by in about an hour,” I said, handing back her glass and praying we’d come up with something a bit sexier when we were out and about. “And thanks so much for the juice.”

“Namaste,”
she said as she left. I had no idea what it meant, but I smiled anyway. I had a friend. An off-hours, let’s-go-to-the-Beverly-Center friend. Try stopping me from smiling.

Any tour of duty in the Beverly Center begins at the Rexall Drug Store, where hours can pass in the contemplation of lime green diamanté hair clips and cocoa butter, and the shampoo conundrum can begin to feel as confusing as cracking the mysteries of the human genome. Then there’s Star Books, where compulsory paperbacks have to be purchased so that you can feel fully conversant on literary matters, even though your new acquisitions will simply top up your “unread” pile, which has Dickens somewhere at the bottom and the latest Salman Rushdie at the top. Also essential from Star Books are the latest copies of
InStyle, People,
and that other casualty of a too-busy life, the
New Yorker
. Unlike
InStyle,
with its delicious pages of tasteless weddings and red-carpet fiascos, which quickly becomes sun-bleached and waterlogged through excessive attention, the
New Yorker
remains pristine and important-looking on the coffee table until you realize that half the contributors have died and all the plays written up have ended their run.

Then it’s on to Old Navy for more brushed-cotton items that will never, ever see the light of a love affair but will get you through dark days with the flu. And somewhere in between you have to find time for your Gap basics, a couple of DVDs, and a trip to Victoria’s Secret, where you buy small things in red and lace and, if you’re feeling daring, purple—or midnight, as they like to call it. These are things that will
never see the light of a love affair either, because you don’t have that kind of life. Instead you just read about it in
InStyle
. Get it? Sometimes it feels so complicated it makes even
my
head spin.

After Alexa and I had completed our full-scale assault on the Beverly Center and I’d acquired a dreadfully obvious French maid’s outfit out of sheer desperation, we were badly in need of a pit stop to refuel our engines.

“Jamba Juice?” I asked, thinking that extra echinacea in a power shake would be exactly her thing. Oh, how nutritionally retarded I was.

“Sweetie, you don’t seriously drink those things?” she asked as we headed back to the car laden with bags.

“Are they bad?” I asked, avoiding her question. Personally, I lived for Jamba Juice. The head freeze was the closest I’d ever gotten to S&M, and I was always overwhelmed with delight whenever I contemplated a Peanut Butter Moo’d or a Mango A Go-Go. Not to mention the whirring of my mental cogs that was set in motion when I had to look up at the sprawling menu on the wall and decide between a Femme Boost or a Vibrant-C Boost. It was like a big waxed cup full of joy and possibilities, and it seemed to embody all that was best about L.A. as far as I was concerned.

“We’ll go to Urth,” she said, giving me an understanding smile. “They do smoothies, and you can get your vitamins from
real
fruit.” Right, so fruit was the only thing that was acceptable when real in this town.

“Okay.” I hoisted my bags into the back of the car. “Can we walk, or shall we drive?”

“We’ll drive.” Alexa was a born-and-bred Angeleno, and though her disposition was as sunny as the weather, her attitude to walking anywhere but on a treadmill or in a Canyon was as frosty as a winter morning in D.C. “Then we’ll swing by Polka Dots and Moonbeams and try on a bunch of outfits for your party, if you like.”

“I love,” I said, and we piled into my Honda and headed for Melrose.

Urth Caffé is possibly one of my favorite places on . . . well, Urth, I suppose. It’s an enclave of all that’s organic and delicious, and its sunny patio is a show-ground for people who look as wholesome and healthy as low-fat raisin-bran-and-honey muffins. There you see Los Angeles indulging in the hybrid of work and play that it loves the most. Writers sit with pens and notepads and find inspiration in a freshly
squeezed orange juice, and in the couple breaking up at the next table; actors peruse scripts while wearing fake eyeglasses to lend them an intellectual hue; producers brunch, and everyone stares at everyone with the unabashed curiosity of tourists in a safari park. This is another idiosyncrasy of L.A. that I’m only just beginning to get used to—everyone totally checks each other out. It could be the hot weather causing the sap to rise and everyone to look for a mate, or maybe it’s the population’s innate paranoia at not wanting to miss a single thing, in case it’s a big thing or, even better, a celebrity, I’m not sure. When you first arrive, it’s disconcerting to be so scrutinized, but then it just becomes license to stare at others, which is frankly heaven. And beneath the umbrellas at Urth Caffé, it’s open-season people watching.

I fended off a cell-phone-clutching studio executive (I could tell this because of the deafening mentions of his studio, his hectic premiere and star-fucking schedule, and his second-only-to–Brad Pitt salary) with a rapid-fire machine-gun voice and secured a three-foot-square piece of prime West Hollywood real estate of a table, while Alexa stood in line to order our soup and salad.

As I stretched out my pale legs in the sun and pushed aside the left-behind napkins and foam-rimmed coffee cups of the newly departed from our table, I felt a tap on my shoulder.

“Elizabeth, I thought it was you.” I hastily re-covered my legs and turned around.

“Hi.” I tried to stand up, but my knees crashed into the tabletop and the cups clattered, and so I sat back down and looked up at Luke Lloyd. Who was smiling down on me once again.

“Oh, don’t get up,” he said. “You alone?”

“No, actually, I’m with a friend,” I explained, knowing that I had some serious ground to make up from our last encounter in the dog park, when I’d been useless and rude. Yet my mind was so devoid of anything to say and any words to say it in that I wished for a waiter to spill a latte on him to give me time to think.

“Cool, well, that’s nice.” He looked around, as if to find my friend and verify my story. “You managed to ditch the bitch, then?”

“Alexa?” I asked, rubbing my bruised knee. “No, she’s inside getting soup and salad.”

“The dog.” He looked quizzically at me, doubtless searching for a sign of life.

“Oh, Anastasia.” I nodded. “No, I’m with a yoga teacher today.” I hated myself at this point.

“Great. So how’s Scott?” He waded on valiantly, my Lancelot.

“Scott? Scott’s great. You know, a little too much poker, and he’s discovered Ritalin, which has been interesting. But generally Scott’s Scott.” Did they give out Academy Awards for Most Scintillating Second Assistant? With a crush, I might add. A second assistant with a hopeless, burgeoning crush on a AAA-list producer. He was trying, God bless him, but I wished that he just wouldn’t. I wished that he’d just leave me alone with my empty brain so that I could cut out pictures of him from
Entertainment Weekly
looking ruffled and handsome on the set of his latest blockbuster. I wished he’d just go off and do what it is that types like him did in this town and not indulge his stupid southern good manners near me.

And guess what? He did.

“Hey, Lukey.” A girl who can’t have been more than eighteen years old, with the rangy legs of a foal and one of those broad, apple-biting smiles that can command love from babies and billionaires alike, appeared by his side with the idle countenance of someone who knows that the world will wait for her. And though I hate to sound 138 years old, she had on preshrunk clothes of such microscopic proportions that you’d be forgiven for thinking that there’d been a fire in her apartment building that morning and she’d had to leave in a hurry. Without dressing first.

“Hi, honey.” Luke turned and looked at her with delight as she sucked noisily from a cup of orange juice. “Did you find us a table?”

“Yeah, it’s, like, in the shade over there.” She gestured with her straw.

“Cool. Well, it was good to see you, Elizabeth. Have a good one.”

And that was all it took. A slip of jailbait whose gingham panties were peeking out above her denim skirtette to lure him away from me and my endlessly fascinating conversation.

“Who was that?” Alexa returned and dropped her neat bottom into the seat next to me. She handed over my lemonade, into which I automatically dumped four packets of organic brown sugar for comfort.

“Oh, that was Luke Lloyd.” I stirred my drink and refused to look behind me. “He’s one of those too-handsome, too-successful men who mess with your heart for kicks.”

“Cute,” she said, and turned her chair so that she could watch him. “Clearly his girlfriend has a daddy complex, though.”

“Do you really think that’s his girlfriend?” I asked, voicing my darkest concerns. “Isn’t she a little young for him?”

“Are you kidding? She’s perfect. Look at her shoulders, though, very closed. She’s holding a lot of her energy in her Muladhara chakra and not releasing it. Which probably means she’s a tiger in bed but not able to be open in love.”

“I think that’s what these boys like,” I said, and sank another sugar packet into my glass.

“Only the unenlightened ones,” Alexa assured me. “And, really, you don’t want to go near them with a ten-foot pole.”

The waiter arrived with our salads, and I sneaked a look behind me at the table where Luke was listening intently to whatever tale of pop stars and teen woes his child bride was telling him. I turned back around and scowled, my shopping euphoria dissolving along with the sugar crystals in my lemonade.

“Do you have a little crush?” Alexa asked as she bisected some smoked tofu.

“I think I have an enormous crush. He’s so goddamn nice to me that it kills me. I wish he’d stop reaching out,” I spit. I hadn’t quite realized the weight of my feelings for Luke before, but now there they were in the harsh light of day. I must have looked alarmed, because Alexa reached over and stroked my arm.

“It’s okay. We all have feelings, and they’re always better out than internalized,” she reassured me. “We could go over and talk to him now, if you like.”

“Why would we want to do that?” I scowled.

“It’s good to tell someone you love them,” said Rent-a-Cute-Saying. “You never know, he may feel the same.”

“He doesn’t, Alexa, trust me.” I glanced again at Luke and Lolita.

“Nothing ventured, nothing gained,” she said.

“I know. But that statement only applies if you have something to offer. So far I’ve only come across as a total twit in Luke Lloyd’s presence. The first time I met him, I was cavorting in my boss’s swimming pool accessorized only by a G-string, someone else’s diamond necklace, and a legendarily sleazy producer. The second time I interrupted his lunch and insulted his movie. The third time I was mopping
squirrel blood off my shoes in the dog park, and today I established my credentials as a witless bore. So even if I turned into a cross between Miss Orange County and a NASA scientist, I think the rot is so irretrievably established that there’s no hope,” I said histrionically, pushing my soup to one side. I had lost my appetite.

“Right,” said Alexa thoughtfully. “But I still think you should go say good-bye to him.”

“Maybe when we leave, I’ll wave in his direction,” I conceded, but only on professional grounds. I couldn’t afford to be too obnoxious to one of Scott’s friends.

“Good, go on, then.”

“What do you mean? You haven’t finished.” But then I looked at her plate of smoked tofu salad and noticed that she’d polished it off already. I suppose yoga must be good for the appetite. And there was no way that I was going to eat another bite of mine.

“I’m done. You’re done. So go say good-bye,” she said.

“We have to get the check first.”

“I already paid inside. Remember?” She picked up her purse and smiled. “It’s a fait accompli, Elizabeth. Now, go on, or I’ll march you over.”

“Do you have German blood?” I asked, glaring evilly at her.

“Too goddamn right I do. On my mother’s side. Now, shoo.”

So as Alexa stood watching and monitoring me, I dragged my feet over to where Luke Lloyd was sitting eating ice cream with his adolescent honey. I was so reluctant to go anywhere near him that I might actually have zigzagged toward his table. Less as the crow flies and more as the stoned crow might fly. I finally made it, with a few livid glances back toward Alexa.

“Hey, Luke,” I said. But he didn’t look up. An LAPD car chose that moment to tear along Melrose with its siren blaring. I cleared my throat to try again. But before I could get the words out, Lolita had spotted me and elbowed Luke in the ribs.

“It’s that chick from before,” she said as the siren trailed into the distance and allowed her to be heard.

“Oh, hey, Elizabeth.” Luke took off his sunglasses and stood up. “Did you want to join us? Did your friend not show up?” he asked, looking genuinely concerned. Clearly he hadn’t spent the last twenty minutes staring at me across the crowded café, then. Otherwise he’d
have known that my friend had indeed shown up and that we’d been watching him as avidly as a peep-show ever since.

“Yeah, she’s over there.” I flicked my hand behind me. “But actually, I was just leaving, so I thought I’d come and say good-bye.” I avoided his eyes and talked to his shirt, which was white and fraying around the cuffs.