The Second Assistant

by Clare Naylor

  When I arrived buoyantly back at my desk, Scott had already gone to lunch. Lara was at work on her assignment with a pair of Virgin Atlantic Upper Class earplugs in, and there was a note on my screen saying that my sister had finally called. I’d been waiting impatiently for her call for days now, and when I saw Courtney’s mean scribble on the Post-it, my spirits went positively stratospheric.

  I dialed the number by her name. “Melissa?”

  “Elizabeth? Oh, my God, how are you?”

  “I’m great. How are you?”

  This continued for at least two minutes before either of us could begin a sensible conversation. I hadn’t actually spoken to my sister in four months. Not because we were too busy for one another or because she had married my high-school sweetheart and we were no longer close, but because she’d been in Sierra Leone on a peacekeeping mission with the UN.

  “So you’re home? You’re safe? You’re back?” I could hardly believe it. When I’d said good-bye to her in February, I had been convinced that I’d never see her again. And pretty quickly I had to get used to the idea that something terrible might happen to her while she was away. And that if it did, it would be because it was what she wanted. To help others, with her own life a secondary concern to her. Since that day my entire family had operated on the premise that no news is good news. We simply lived for the occasional e-mails she sent from some African schoolroom.

  “Not only am I back, I’m in town,” she announced, full of life.

  “You’re in D.C.?” I asked.

  “No, you total idiot, I’m in Los Angeles!” She laughed. “Which is culture shockola, let me tell you.”

  “You’re in L.A.?” I repeated incredulously until she finally managed to get through to me the fact that she was in town for one night on a layover and was planning on sharing my bed, the contents of my fridge, and a bottle of red wine with me tonight. Which suddenly made my life worth living. When I hung up, I realized that all the glamorous dates in the world couldn’t beat a night at home with my wonderful little sister. And I immediately began to plow through my work with the ease of a seasoned careerphile. In fact, that afternoon anyone who didn’t know me might have been mistakenly led to believe that I actually liked being a second assistant.

  And as I breezed through the minutes for the Monday meeting and chased up a $13 million check for my least favorite action hero’s last movie, I was even in the mood for a down moment with a couple of the other assistants.

  “What do you think?” Talitha asked me when I walked back in the room after picking up a parcel from the front desk.

  “About what?” I dropped the package straight onto Scott’s desk without opening it, as it was marked UBER-PRIVATE in pink felt-tip pen and didn’t appear to be either ticking or leaking anthrax.

  “About my eggs.”

  “Your eggs?” I swiveled my chair to face Talitha, who was flanked by a disapproving Courtney. “What about them?”

  “I’m going to sell them.”

  And it did occur to me for a split second that she might keep a hen in her apartment at El Royale, but deep down I knew that she didn’t mean that kind of egg. Sadly.

  “You are?” I braced myself.

  “Yeah, there was an ad in the Hollywood Reporter for egg donors. I heard from this girl over at New Line that you can get ten grand if you’re blond and have a college education.” Talitha was wearing a lime green poncho and somehow managed not to look like a giant vegetable. She flicked a long tendril of hair back and smiled enthusiastically.

  “Seriously?” I broke open a bottle of Evian and poured myself a glass. “Typical of my parents to palm me off with low-rent brunette genes. But how do you think you’d feel knowing that there was one of your babies out there? When you didn’t even have kids yourself yet?”

  “It’s an egg, Elizabeth. Not a baby,” Talitha informed me. “And I was also on the state volleyball team, which I’m guessing would make my eggs even more valuable, don’t you?”

  “Well, what do they do to you when they take your eggs?” I asked, suddenly not as hungry for my tuna salad sandwich as I had been two minutes ago.

  “Give you some hormone pills for a month and then harvest them. Personally I can’t think of an easier way to make ten thousand dollars. I’ve got an appointment on Tuesday for an interview with the clinic. Which is just a formality. I was thinking maybe I’d buy myself the pink Marni purse that Drew Barrymore has and go to Maui for a week on vacation. The guys there are supposed to be absolutely gorgeous. Michelle at Fox Searchlight met one called Storm.”

  “Well, as long as you’re selling your eggs for a good cause,” Courtney said sarcastically, but Talitha didn’t notice.

  Being around Talitha always made me think of the adage that the best thing a woman can be in life is a beautiful fool. How blissful must that state be? I always thought far too much about everything. Being smart was very overrated, I’d begun to believe.

  “I know, and some poor childless woman gets to have a lovely blond child who’s athletic and smart.” Talitha smiled. And all was perfect with her world. Which was more than could be said for mine, because something about the idea of selling your eggs to buy a Marni purse like Drew Barrymore’s, as pretty as the pink may be, as soft as the leather felt, made me unutterably depressed.

  “I heard that it’s not tax-deductible, though,” Courtney added as she blithely smoothed her hair behind her ear. “Which you may want to factor into your decision.”

  “Really?” Talitha looked a little surprised, but not despondent. “In that case I’ll just ask for more money. Because I’m also five-nine. And height is such an asset in life, right?

  “Hey, Elizabeth, I know. Why don’t you come with me?”

  “Me?” I asked. “Well, I guess I’m all out of blond genes, and . . . well, I’m not sure that I’d be that comfortable with the procedures and all.”

  “Oh, don’t be silly. There are probably a lot of women out there who don’t mind at all what their babies look like. They’re really into having intelligent children, so you’d be perfect. I mean, your eggs may not be worth quite as much as mine, but you could definitely use a new wardrobe, so the money would be really useful.” She flashed her Laura Mercier pink-glossed lips at me. “And it’d be much funner if we went together. Don’t you think?”

  “I guess it might be more fun,” I said, trying to absorb all her insults at once. “I’ll think about it and let you know. Thanks, Talitha.”

  Thankfully, or so it seemed for a split second at least, Victoria chose that moment to appear in her office doorway, yell my name as though I were her Irish wolfhound, and summon me into her black hole.

  “Elizabeth,” she said sourly, “take a seat.” I perched, as was my wont, on the knife edge of a chair.

  “Thanks,” I said, so quietly that I could have been a mime. For, truth be told, I was terrified of Victoria. Since that first day when she’d so generously invited me to be mentored by her, she had used me as a slave. Or, as Lara had so indelicately put it, “It’s like the white version of Roots, honey.” Victoria had an uncanny way of knowing when Scott was out of the office, which was most of the time, given that he had major ADD and couldn’t sit still behind his desk for more than half an hour without losing his mind or getting out of it. Consequently Lara and I had an unofficial policy of getting him out and about as much as possible—visiting movie sets was a firm favorite, since he loved to hang with the actors and directors and shoot the shit. Brunches, teas, and cocktails filled the voids between breakfasts, lunches, dinners, and premieres. Marketing meetings at Dreamworks were a good diversion, because the offices there were done in a western theme and he always came back with a John Wayne swagger. And a trip on a Gulfstream to Vegas or Santa Barbara or Mexico never failed to make his eyes light up.

  So as Scott was mostly taken care of, Victoria made it her business to make sure that my idle hands weren’t being used for the devil’s work. (Just the devil’s spawn’s work.)
And when I should have been typing up Scott’s letters, updating phone lists, Xeroxing scripts for him, and generally being what I was paid to be, his second assistant, instead I was commandeered by Victoria. Who, though she had an assistant of her own, enjoyed the power trip of ensuring that I was at her disposal. At first I’d been grateful for the extra work she’d put my way, because it had felt as if I might be learning something. I’d read scripts and write coverage that she could then use to decide whether a project was worth her while. If I thought the script was good, she’d go on and read it herself before she recommended it to her clients. If it wasn’t, then she’d just have me write a rejection letter. I was a useful filtering process. Certainly I didn’t get that kind of experience working for Scott, because if there was a script to be read, Lara did it or he sent it out to a professional reader. Even when there were more scripts than I could carry home in one L.L. Bean monogrammed tote I didn’t complain, even to myself in my head.

  And neither did I mind the occasional hunting around town for a Barbie doll or two. I was an assistant, so that’s what I tried to do—make life easier for those I was assisting. Which was necessarily a broad and at times bizarre brief. But after my second week, when she’d asked me to dust out her trophy cabinets and have all the dolls’ outfits dry-cleaned, then yelled hysterically at me when it wasn’t same-day service, I began to feel that I was being taken advantage of. And that Victoria might not be entirely sane. Since then her schizophrenic bouts of praising me one moment and then moaning about my worthlessness the next had begun to get me down a bit. Especially as they usually came within the same fifteen-minute period.

  “Well, Elizabeth. Correct me if I’m wrong here, but I’m sensing a lack of commitment on your part.”

  “I see.” I took a deep breath and braced myself. Not praise this time, then.

  “Do you want to make it in this business or not? Or is this just a little vacation from politics for you?”

  “Not at all, no,” I said unconvincingly. Which wasn’t surprising, since I was lying through my teeth. But hey, actually I wasn’t lying. This was no vacation, it was a one-way ticket to hell on a tour bus with a broken toilet and a drunk driver.

  “I read the coverage that you did for me last weekend, and frankly, it was sloppy. There were four commas missing. Do you think I have time to waste mentoring somebody who doesn’t give a damn?” She peered at me over her drink. Prune juice was out, aloe vera was in.

  “I’m sorry, Victoria, but I—”

  “No excuses. You may think that as an agent you’ll never need to do coverage or understand the intricacies of the story, but to be the best around here you have to get a grasp of the entire business. Do you understand?”

  “Yes. That makes complete sense,” I mumbled, not adding that the top 10 percent of power players in this town most likely thought that a comma was what happened if you got hit by a truck.

  “So all I really want to know, Elizabeth, is whether this is a commitment that you’re up to taking on?”

  Oh, God, now she was beginning to scare me. Did her long dark hair and shape-shifting ways mean that she was actually a witch? That she knew that I was planning to leave? Was I completely busted?

  “Commitment . . . well . . .”

  “Let me tell you a thing or two about commitment.” She leaned forward and rested her chin on her bony hands. “Are you happy at The Agency, Elizabeth?”

  “Yes,” I lied.

  “Well, aren’t you the lucky one?” She gave me a foul smile and then the benefit of her wisdom: “I’ve worked here for fifteen years, and I’ve hated every minute of it. I have been passed over so many times they don’t even consider me anymore. I watch these stupid, arrogant dicks walk in here and make partner before they’re out of diapers. Cocksure know-it-alls who’ve never seen a movie made.”

  It occurred to me at this point that she hadn’t been taking her anti-depressants. But what could I do?

  “I was married, you know. I was married to a surgeon. He loved me and wanted to have kids with me, but every time I got pregnant, it just wasn’t the right time. You see, there’s never a right time in this town. Not when you know that if you left to give birth, one of your male colleagues would look after your clients and slowly but surely steal them, until the only thing you had to come back to was an empty office and a pink slip. But, you see, now I want a baby, I can afford a baby, my clients are loyal. Only . . .” She took a sip of the aloe vera juice. “I don’t have a husband anymore. And my gynecologist says that I only have a fifteen percent chance of getting pregnant.”

  I looked at her and was about to sympathize. To feel compassionate for her fate when her only crime had been to be a successful woman. Or something like that. But just as I was about to say my piece, she beat me to it.

  “I haven’t seen a single spark of initiative from you, young lady. Your coverage is shoddy, your telephone manner distinctly graceless, and you seem to be remarkably lacking in talent of any kind.” Which was rich given that she had quoted verbatim at least four of the comments from my script coverage in the Monday meeting yesterday. And I ought to have known—I was there taking the minutes. “So I think you should go and reevaluate your position here. Don’t you?” And with that she smiled her Evil Dead smile.

  That was my cue to leave. Which I just about managed to do without tripping over a single piece of office furniture despite the tears rushing into the corners of my eyes.

  “Oh, God, Elizabeth, don’t mind her. She’s a cunt on wheels,” Lara said, and threw me her packet of Virgin Upper Class tissues as I stumbled across the floor with my head down.

  “But she’s right,” I said, furiously swiping my tears away with my knuckles. “I’m not good enough. I’m not cut out for this job. I’m useless.”

  “Oh, yeah, and she’s been the president of The Agency for the past five years.” Lara rolled her eyes sarcastically. “Elizabeth, she only has the three clients she does because they actually mistakenly believe she’s a carpet muncher, and so they see it as a political principle to be represented by a dyke. It’s a cachet thing. She hates herself. That’s why she attacked you. You’ve got to get over it.”

  “I’m not sure I can,” I said. “I spent my entire weekend working on that coverage. I read sixteen scripts. I didn’t see the sky once on Sunday—I just sat in my apartment and read. It was the best I could do, and it wasn’t good enough.”

  “Christ, Elizabeth, you’re not getting this, are you? The woman’s insane. Fucking Shakespeare couldn’t submit coverage that would live up to her standards. Get the fuck over it.”

  And I realized that Lara was probably right. In her abrasive but well-intentioned way. Though she was really starting to remind me of Scott in the way she spoke, which I guess happened if you worked for someone for so long.

  “I’m over it,” I said as I stuffed the tissues into my purse, stole a wedge of expensive cream Conqueror writing paper from the stationery closet, and wondered whether my little sister would be okay sleeping on the sofa tonight or whether she would want to share my bed, like the old days. And with that thought wiping Victoria from my mind, I logged off my computer and headed home. A whole half hour early, but frankly, who gave a damn? Not me.

  When I arrived back at my apartment, Melissa was already waiting for me in the hallway outside my door. She was sitting on a vast khaki backpack reading a Christopher Hitchens book with a can of fair-trade orange soda beside her.

  “Melissa, oh, my God!” I ran toward her, my script bag slapping my thigh, and she stood up and threw open her arms.

  “Lizzie! How great to see you!”

  We hugged for so long that I forgot where my arms ended and hers began. It had been ages since I’d hugged a person that I loved, and I couldn’t bear to let go.

  “Shall we go inside?” Melissa laughed, and we disentangled ourselves, and I wrested my keys from the bottom of my purse. “You look so different.” She actually appeared a little shocked as she took in my
new appearance.

  “Oh, the hair.” I laughed unsurely.

  “Everything.” She spun me around so she could check me out properly. “You look so slick, so chic, so . . . so L.A., I guess.”

  I was privately pleased by Melissa’s assessment, even though I suspected that she didn’t mean it to be quite the compliment I took it for.

  “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.