The Second Assistant (33 page)

“No, Luke. I’m going home alone. Jake’s not my type. I like honest men.” I winked.

“Ouch.” He grabbed his heart as I shrugged playfully. “You know, I never lied to you, Lizzie, I just failed to mention something that I knew would never be important in the long run.”

“I’ll see you Thursday. And don’t keep me waiting.”

Hollywood lore: The more powerful you are, the longer you keep people waiting for a meeting.

I turned away, my feet barely touching the ground, and headed off into the crowded street of Universal City Walk to find myself a taxi.

How can all these things happen to just one person?

—Cary Grant as David Huxley
Bringing Up Baby

I
’d called Luke’s assistant the next day and confirmed the meeting at his office on the Universal lot. I had wondered whether we ought to meet in some café in town, which wasn’t quite so intimidating. But then I thought that if we did, I might find my mind drifting to romantic possibilities or, even worse, bitter recriminations. At least in his office I wouldn’t be tempted to slip a mickey into his coffee and leave him on the sidewalk afterward for people to trip over. Hopefully, in a fluorescent-lit environment, I wouldn’t be as likely to cry either, if I was unexpectedly blindsided by a memory of the hot tub or his loving words.

“At the lot is great,” I’d told Allison, Luke’s assistant, who I hoped would be a homely looking girl who wore glasses for close work. At least then I wouldn’t lose the last shred of respect I had for him.

“See you at eleven tomorrow,” she’d chimed. “Oh, and will Mr. Blum be joining you?”

“He’s going to come in halfway through the meeting to introduce himself to Luke,” I told her.

“Great. Look forward to meeting you.” She hung up.

I hoped that I came across as such a professional, polite assistant as Allison did when I answered The Agency phones, but I doubted it.
Then again, Allison didn’t have to contend with Victoria hovering like a vampire bat behind her every minute of the day, as I had recently. I suspected that Victoria had a new cocktail of hormones, because as well as her usual disorder, which I had diagnosed as a close cousin of Tourette’s—whereby she’d stick her head out of the office door and say things like, “I wish everyone at Disney would die”—she had now begun to perform primal screams in her office, too. Sometimes without bothering to close the door.

When I put my head in one day to check that she was okay after one of these episodes, she informed me that it was a technique developed by Arthur Janov for the curing of neuroses and for ridding herself of her primal pain. Which I suppose I ought to have applauded as a proactive foray into self-healing. The trouble was, she was just so bloody loud and difficult to explain to clients on the other end of the phones.

In fact, Victoria’s behavior had been so bad recently and her insults so biting that when I’d gone to see Dr. Vance last week I had asked her if it was possible to commit someone to an institution if you weren’t the next of kin.

“Of course it is, dear,” she said. “You just need to take the person to Cedars Sinai and get them to desk nineteen. It’s unmarked for that very purpose. Two doctors will talk to them and make the decision whether to section them under the mental-health act. Very simple.”

“Great,” I said, much encouraged by this news. I was certain that if Lara and I could lure Victoria there under the pretense of my having broken a thumb or something, we’d definitely score at least a short stay for her in an institution. And, really, that was all we wanted—a vacation from her festering bitterness and freaky ways.

But while the institutionalization of Victoria remained merely the stuff of my daydreams and not reality, I was inevitably going to be a little brusquer and sharper with our clients than sweet Allison was.

“Is Jason in, Alannah?” I asked the pretty Japanese girl behind the counter of the Coffee Bean when I went in to give him the good news and tell him to iron some pants for our meeting. I’d left him a message when I got home from the premiere, screaming the good news about our meeting with Luke Lloyd through the phone. This was what we’d been waiting for. This meeting was the break that Jason had wanted so badly since he’d first seen
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
and
fallen in love with cinema when he was a child. And for me it had become my labor of love, too, something that I was more passionate about than I ever had been about anything before, even politics.

“He’s not here today. Sorry,” Alannah said.

“I thought tomorrow was his day off,” I said. “Otherwise I wouldn’t have made the meeting for Thursday. I’d assumed he’d be free to come along.”

“Oh, he called me and asked me to swap shifts. Said he had something very important to do today.” She shrugged.

“Okay, thanks anyway, Alannah.”

I left and figured that Jason must be at home boning up on his meeting etiquette, refining his pitch for
Sex Addicts,
coming up with casting ideas. Not that he and I hadn’t spent the past few months doing just that, until we were literally word perfect. But I didn’t mind. I was glad that he was being so conscientious. Our meeting with Luke could potentially change both our lives, and Jason obviously realized that.

“Okay, Jason, I know that you’re there and that you’re doing grammar checks on the script and changing the margins so that it looks shorter, but you don’t need to. Luke loves it, and we can deal with the minutiae later.” I was back at my desk and trying to speak quietly so as not to broadcast my news. I’d told Lara about the
Sex Addicts
meeting, but I still hadn’t broken the news to Courtney and Talitha, and certainly not to Victoria. Not that there was any news to break yet, which made it worse. If Jason and I fell at the first hurdle, the delight on the girls’ faces would be unmitigated. “Jason, where are you? I just want to confirm with you the meeting with Luke Lloyd on the Universal lot tomorrow. Okay? Call me back.”

I put seven drops of Australian Bush Remedy, which Alexa had given me to instill calm, under my tongue and prepared to face my pile of letters.

“Elizabeth, I’ve got to run now, but I just wanted to wish you luck for tomorrow.” Lara leaned over and touched my knee. I looked at her hand with surprise—she was definitely not the most tactile person in the world and had never knowingly patted me before. Still, I was touched. In both senses of the word.

“Thanks,” I said. “Do you have a meeting with another literary agent?”

“Not exactly. But I have something really important to do, so I won’t be in.”

“Okay, well, do you think that I should get a temp in? Otherwise Scott’s going to be without both of us,” I asked.

“Oh, don’t worry, Scott’s not going to be here either,” Lara said, and she leaned back in her chair with what I can only describe as a beatific smile on her face. “So no need for a temp.”

“Okay, fine. I’ll put the phones on voice mail tonight when I leave, and I’ll come in straight after the meeting. Well, after the debriefing of the meeting with Jason. Which I promise to keep short.” I smiled. “By the way, you’re looking great. Is it that SK-II moisturizer you bought the other day? ’Cause if it is, I’m going to Saks to see if I can score a sample.”

“Thanks.” She stroked her cheek lightly. “Could be the SK-II, I guess.” Then she looked off into space with a goofy expression on her face. Which made me decide that it must be love, not face cream.

But lest I forgot, this was Lara, so even if she had softened enough to put her hand on my knee, I wasn’t about to grill her as to whether the married man had finally come through for her. It would just have been folly.

“Hello, The Agency.” I made an effort to be a perkier assistant.

“It’s Jason.”

“Thank God. Did you get my messages? Where have you been? Isn’t it exciting?”

“It’s great.” The line was crackling. “Well done, you.”

“No, well done
us
. We’re a team,” I laughed. “God, do I sound like a cheerleader?”

“No. I mean, yes. You sound fine.” Jason was suddenly sounding very Hollywood, very distracted, and as if he had much better things to do. I guess that was a portent. I smiled. I wondered if I’d develop the same traits when I was a fully-fledged producer.

“Hey, where are you, by the way? You don’t sound as though you’re in your apartment.”

“Oh, no, I’m not I’m . . . I’m out.”

“I’ll bet you’re in Fred Segal men’s department buying some suitably directorial-debut shirt, aren’t you?”

“Not exactly. But listen, Lizzie, what time did you say that meeting was tomorrow?”

“Eleven
A
.
M
. Do you want me to give you a ride? You can always hang out at the lot café or something until it’s your time to come in.”

“No, it’s fine. I’ll make my own way there. No problem. Listen, I have to go because I’m on someone else’s cell phone, okay?”

“Fine. See you in Luke Lloyd’s office, then. God, isn’t that weird? The next time I see you, we could be well on our way to getting a deal for the movie,” I said, forgetting my secrecy policy.

“Yeah. Gotta jump, Lizzie.” And Jason was gone. I put down the phone and took a cautious look around when I realized that the office had been dead quiet except for my verbal spazzing. Thankfully, the girls all seemed to have cleared out. Only Scott was around, and he was lying on his sofa watching a teaser for some teen-o-matic action-chick movie. Which was just about the best conceivable combination when it came to distracting him from the fact that he was paying me to sit on the phone and do deals on my own projects. I vowed to be more discreet in the future. I needed this job. Well, at least until tomorrow anyway.

What a strange thought. Would I, could I, really give up my job if the film looked like it was going to get made? The one truth about movies is that they’re never a sure thing. Getting a green light is a pretty good indicator that you may be about to shoot some reel, but there are so many banana skins lying around waiting to trip you up—from a lead actress getting sunburn, to your location of choice turning into a war zone, to foreign financing falling through because some German playboy gambled away his inheritance, to . . . well, just about anything you would care to lose sleep over. They’re all legitimate concerns. So, really, no matter what Luke Lloyd said tomorrow, I was never going to give up the day job. Short of, “Here, take this five million dollars and bring me back a movie.” Or that other bon mot that I pretended even to myself had not crossed my mind: “I can’t live without you. Let’s go to my house in the mountains and have babies together.” Exactly! Which is why I never thought it in the first place.

The other thing I hadn’t really dwelt upon, surprisingly enough, was my fantasy of what life would be like if the movie did ever get made. What my future would entail. I’d been too busy wondering whether the character motivation of Dan was solid enough and whether his arc was as dramatic as it might be to indulge my silly dreams. That was a good thing. New shoes and a couple of weeks in Bali were just not places my
mind would go to right now. Besides which, the work seemed to be proving to be its own reward. After a day of learning about budgets from a book I’d bought or looking up line producers and location costs, I was invariably so happy that simply cooking spaghetti made me grin as if I’d fallen in love. Truly, I’d never experienced this feeling of professional fulfillment before—even when I was absorbed in a campaign in Washington, I merely felt stimulated and valued. Now I felt the kind of unbridled delight in this project that I thought could only come from winning the lottery or giving birth. Or having sex in a hot tub with a wonderful man and
not
discovering afterward that he was a cheating liar.

The Universal lot was in the Valley, so on Thursday I set off early. But not so early that I’d get caught up in the morning rush and sit there for hours until my clothes resembled scrunched-up love letters. On the drive I tried to focus on the project and not on what Luke’s office might look like. Or what it’d be like to see him again. The other night I’d been caught off guard. Now I had all the time in the world to fixate on the fact that my stomach felt like a tied-up sack of ferrets. I turned on the radio and felt the scorching morning sun on my face as I drove with Elton John on the radio singing about how Daniel was a star and he missed him so much.

I, on the other hand, didn’t miss Daniel this morning as I sped along the Ventura Freeway. He still hadn’t responded to the script, though I was afraid of what he’d say if he found out that Luke wanted to buy the project. I’m sure I’d be branded a traitor, or even sued. He’d sued an enterprising employee before, apparently. On what grounds, I wasn’t sure. Possibly just on the grounds that he had very powerful lawyers. Allegedly, one of the receptionists had written a screenplay and then sold it to Fox for $1.2 million (which is the apocryphal sum that other people’s screenplays always seem to sell for. When it’s your own or one of your clients’, it invariably goes for about $40,000 if you’re lucky). Daniel had been livid and completely taken the poor girl to the cleaners after they were able to prove that she’d used The Agency’s computers to type up her ticket to a better life.

I wondered whether he’d try to bring a case against Lara, too, if he ever found out about her novel—certainly he’d be entitled to ask for some of her salary back, as she hadn’t exactly been the most diligent of employees since inspiration had struck. Then again, I’d like to see him
try
to sue her—she’d probably bite off his nose and then shred it, so that nobody could put it in a bag of frozen peas and have it stitched back on later. Lara was like that when provoked.

“Hi, Allison, I’m Elizabeth Miller,” I said as I entered the door of Luke’s office. When I say “office,” it sounds misleading—for most Hollywood production companies that have studio deals are consigned to a building that is little more than a glorified trailer. They’re called bungalows, and if you punched one of the walls, you couldn’t guarantee that your fist wouldn’t go through it. There are exceptions that prove the rule, of course—Spielberg’s company, Amblin, is made of bricks and mortar, even though it’s on the lot; most of the Paramount walls can safely be kicked, which they frequently are, apparently; and some companies that have self-financing or are really riding high might rent offices in other parts of town, like Santa Monica or on Melrose, for instance. Often these belong to more style-conscious (frequently gay) producers who have “space” rather than offices and often a water feature, either in the form of a Zen fountain or the Pacific Ocean. Drew Barrymore’s company, Flower Films, has a great office nowhere near a studio—with a view that stretches for miles and a meeting room wittily called the War Room, with maps and model planes strewn around. If you have a personality in this business, it’s a shame not to show it.