Hollywood Is Like High School with Money

by Zoey Dean

  iPhone and started checking her e-mail.

  "Teaches tennis."

  "Perfect. Sign up for lessons." She popped the phone back in her bag, aimed her empty coffee

  cup at a garbage can, and tossed it in. "Two points."

  A gold Lexus hybrid convertible pulled up and idled outside of Starbucks. Really, was there

  any car they didn't make hybrid anymore?

  "But I already know how to play tennis, and anyway, how am I just supposed to--"

  Quinn stood up and pivoted around to face me. "Taylor," she asked, a strong note of

  impatience in her voice, "since we started this, when have I steered you wrong?" The setting

  sun threw a blood red rash into the sky above the Pacific, framing the edges of her coat and

  hair with rosy light.

  "You haven't," I admitted. And it was true. Quinn had been amazing, and I couldn't imagine

  how I was ever going to repay her.

  "Right. So do what you want. But just remember what Kylie would do." She picked up her

  colorful shopping bags. "The exact same thing." She walked away into the lot, leaving me

  alone on the bench. In the distance, the Pacific stretched out toward the horizon, and I sat

  quietly, watching the explosion of light above the water. I'd quickly learned that here in L.A.,

  no one above the age of twenty actually went to the beach. But now I wondered why. Why live

  so close to the ocean and not take a dip?

  Slowly I slid my iPhone out of my purse. I Googled and dialed. When you thought about it, it

  really was so simple.

  "Hi," I said when a woman picked up. "Is this the Beverly Hills Tennis Center? I just wanted

  to make an appointment."

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  The next morning, I rubbed a little Neutrogena sunblock into my face and some Dr. Hauschka

  SPF 20 lip balm onto my lips, grabbed my old Prince racquet out of my trunk, and made my

  way into the Tennis Center. At eight o'clock on a Sunday morning, half of the ten green courts

  were deserted, and on at least one of them the players were obviously still recuperating from

  the previous night's indulgence.

  The morning fog had yet to lift, and a cool breeze blew against my bare legs. My bare, very

  white legs. I'd slathered on the Bain de Soleil Deep Dark Self-tanner last night, but apparently it

  had done little to take down the glare. And then there was my outfit. I'd imagined walking onto

  the court in a cute little tennis dress, à la Maria Sharapova, but sadly there was no athletic gear

  in Quinn's bag of hand-me-downs, and I hadn't had time to go shopping. So it was a pair of old

  Nike running shorts and a Black Dog Martha's Vineyard shirt that I'd found balled up in my

  underwear drawer for me. (If Quinn could see me, she'd gag. But a) she didn't play tennis and

  b) she told me she never got out of bed before ten on a weekend.)

  In other words, there was very little hope of me seducing Mr. Kylie Arthur, aka Mr. Tennis

  Hottie, aka Luke Hansen, today. But the lesson itself was a step in the right direction. Today I'd

  aim to be funny and charming, and the next time I came in, I'd add the cute and the sexy. As

  best as I possibly could, of course.

  He wasn't hard to spot. He had tousled light brown hair that was sort of bleached gold at the

  ends--from the sun, of course, not from hairdresser-to-the-stars Ken Paves or whomever--and

  his skin was bronze against his tennis whites. He was tall, and his legs were long and

  muscular.

  I took a deep breath, reminded myself to forget years of tennis lessons (and to stop staring),

  and stepped onto the court. He turned around.

  "Taylor?" He walked over to me, his strong hand extended. "Hi, I'm Luke."

  In the rush of trying to find something to wear and my wrong turn on Santa Monica, I'd never

  stopped to think about the most nerve-wracking part of this plan: Luke himself.

  Now that he was right in front of me, I could see that his smile was a little crooked, and his

  ears stuck out slightly. Actually, he wasn't classically good-looking at all, and for a moment I

  was surprised Kylie would even go for him in the first place. But there was something

  decidedly striking about him, and suddenly my whole body felt as taut as the strings on my

  racquet.

  "So, they told me you're a beginner," he said in a friendly voice, tossing a ball up into the air

  and then catching it.

  "Pretty much." My palms were starting to sweat, even though it really wasn't that warm out.

  Maybe sucking at tennis wouldn't be so hard after all. "I've taken lessons before, though."

  "I can tell. That racquet of yours is pretty serious," he pointed out.

  I'd figured he'd notice my 1200 power-level Prince Ozone--a gift from my parents for my last

  year on the team in high school--and so I had my lie ready. "It's my roommate's," I chirped. "Is

  it a really good one or something?"

  Luke smiled. He didn't have perfectly straight teeth, and actually mine were whiter than his,

  thanks to Crest Whitestrips--an attempt to negate the effects of a lifetime of Diet Coke

  consumed over the last few months. Still, I felt dazzled, as if I were watching a Colgate

  commercial. "It's pretty nice," he said. "Why don't we hit a few? I'll get a look at some of your

  strokes, and we'll take it from there."

  He hopped the net and dashed to the other side. "We'll start with forehands," he called, drawing

  back his racquet. "You ready?"

  I nodded again, and he sent a ball flying over the net. Before I could stop myself, I hit the ball

  in the center of my racquet and sent it whizzing past him into the advantage court, where it just

  kissed the baseline.

  Luke gazed back from the ball to me, taken aback. "You sure you're just a beginner?"

  "Wow!" I said. "Must be beginner's luck."

  "Uh-huh," he said in a teasing voice. "Let's try a few more."

  For a second I thought he might be onto me--maybe women tried to fake cluelessness in front

  of him all the time. But he just grabbed another ball from his pocket and sent it flying over the

  net.

  A few courts over from us, four fortysomething women wearing pristine white dresses played

  a doubles match. The melodic thwap-thwap of tennis balls hitting the rackets' sweet spots lulled

  me into a familiar rhythm.

  As we hit more ground strokes and then volleys, I made sure to throw in as many mistakes as I

  could remember: clumsy foot-work, bad follow-through, open-faced racquet. Luke stopped and

  gently corrected me each time until, during a backhand volley, he ran around the net to check

  my grip.

  "Oh yeah, here we go," he said, placing his hand on my wrist. "The eastern is here," he said,

  gently moving my wrist over. His hands were warm and firm. "There. Feel that?"

  I held my breath and hoped he would keep adjusting my grip. The sun was starting to reach its

  highest point in the sky, and my body felt warm all over.

  "And then when you hit, it's like this," he said, snapping my wrist back and forth. "Feel that?"

  You have no idea, I thought. I was suddenly reminded of weekday afternoons in high school,

  waiting for the boys' team to finish practicing so the girls could take the courts. We'd sit on the

  benches, quietly doing our homework until we got bored and instead decided to distract the

  boys and make them double-fault. It always worked. Now if only I could remember my

  distraction techniques.

  "So i
t's like a stop sign when you hit," he said, holding my arm out in front of me. "Like you're

  just stopping the ball." His hand curled around my bicep.

  "Why aren't you an actor?" I blurted out.

  He blushed. "Excuse me?"

  "I said--oh, I'm sorry. I just meant... you're just so... I don't know... it seems like everybody

  here is, but you really seem like you'd have good stage presence." So much for funny and

  charming, I thought. Good one, Henning.

  Luke took a step away from me, looked down at the green surface of the court, and ran his

  hands through his hair. It was then that I realized that I had embarrassed him.

  "Thanks, but believe me, Pirates of Penzance in junior high was enough for me. And for my

  parents." He grinned wryly. "Luckily I had something else to fall back on."

  "Well, you're very good at what you do," I said. I wanted to pay him a compliment he'd enjoy-and also it was true. It was easy to see how patient he'd be with true beginners.

  "Thanks," he said. He spun his racquet on the tip of its head. "What do you do?"

  This lie too I had prepared in advance. Today I was Magnolia, and Magnolia was me. "I own a

  dog-sitting business. And I do a little personal grooming on the side."

  Luke raised his eyebrows and smiled. "That's interesting. I thought you were going to say

  something in entertainment."

  I gave him my best blank stare. "What do you mean? Was it my acting comment? I'm sorry

  about that."

  "Really, it's okay. I guess living here, after a while, you start to jump to conclusions," he

  explained. "It's funny. I moved out here thinking L.A. would be just what you see on TV. Fake

  boobs, fake blondes, dudes with hair implants wearing silk shirts. I mean, coming from

  Virginia, that's what you expect. But most of the people I've met here are great. Maybe it's

  because they're all from somewhere else," he said. He pushed his Oakleys on top of his head

  and looked at me with his intense blue eyes. "Even the ones I know in entertainment, some of

  them are pretty solid, you know?"

  "Um, have you spent time with any agents lately?" I challenged. "Because they would probably

  steal your dog, turn it into steaks, and then invite you over for a barbecue." I stabbed my

  racquet onto the court for emphasis.

  Luke laughed, and my heart thumped hard against my chest. "Okay, they're not all sane. But

  my girlfriend is, and she works at a studio."

  I flipped my bangs out of my eyes. Less than two minutes into the conversation, and he'd

  already brought up Kylie. Not a good sign.

  "She's not interested in that Hollywood stuff," he went on, pinching the strings of his racquet.

  "I mean, she just wants to make really great movies. I never thought I'd meet someone so... I

  don't know, cool, I guess. Just really cool."

  From the dreamy smile on his face, I learned everything I needed to know. Kylie had Luke

  good and whipped, and even in the cute little tennis dress that I was going to immediately go

  buy, I was going to have a hard time catching his eye. I wondered what sort of evil spell she'd

  cast over him that would make him so blind to her deviousness. And where she kept her evilspell book.

  "Well, that's sweet," I said limply. "I'm sure she feels lucky too."

  I swatted a stray ball across the net in defeat. The injustice of it all was really too much. There

  was no way that Kylie had any idea how lucky she was. Luke was sweet, modest, and freakily

  normal. I could imagine him barbecuing in the backyard with my dad, and then challenging my

  mom to a game of badminton.

  Which meant that he and Kylie couldn't have been more wrong for each other. Except for the

  fact that sweet, modest guys always seemed to fall for the mean girls. It was practically one of

  the Ten Commandments of Dating.

  "So what about you?" he asked, watching the ball I'd hit roll away into a corner of the hard

  courts. A tanned, fit-looking dad helped his son hit it back to us. "You have a boyfriend?"

  Luke had put his sunglasses on, so I couldn't look him in the eye. "No, not right now. It's hard

  to meet normal guys out here." I thought of Mark Lyder with a small shiver.

  "Yeah," he said noncommittally. "I'm sure." Then he looked at me and smiled, a crooked but

  encouraging one. "Let's try that new and improved grip, okay? You're going to see a big

  difference, I promise."

  He jogged away to the far side of the net, giving me another glimpse of his toned calves. As I

  stood waiting for him to serve, I felt a nagging sense of defeat. I had not been charming or

  funny, and I certainly hadn't been sexy. I tugged on my raggedy old shorts and held my racquet

  like the beginner he thought I was. At least he bought my lies, I told myself. I may be a bad

  seductress, but I'm not a horrible actress.

  "And what about the movie stars?" I called out to Luke. "They're not solid! I heard Catherine

  Zeta-Jones uses a face mask made out of kitten placentas and that Owen Wilson refuses to put

  on clothes before six p.m.!"

  Luke sent a yellow ball flying toward me. "You're funny, Taylor," he said.

  I smiled a little tiny smile. He thought I was funny. Next time I just had to add the charm and

  sex appeal. One down, two to go.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Oh, hey you! How was Vegas?"

  I watched Kylie make her entrance into the office, which was by now choreographed to

  perfection: BlackBerry glued to her ear, rapturous smile on her face, enormous Kooba bag

  flung to the ground as she slid into her chair and swiveled toward the window. All while

  pretending I wasn't sitting four feet away.

  "Oh my God, you are so gross, " Kylie said loudly to the window. "No!" she shrieked. " No!

  Shut up! Shut up! "

  My right knee began to jerk uncontrollably under my desk. I wrapped my fingers around a

  pencil, considered breaking it, and then instead wrote, under Bad Things: Kylie on BlackBerry

  sounds like cross between Valley girl and squealing piglet.

  "Oh my God, Troy," she gasped after a long peal of laughter. "You are too funny."

  Ever since the baby shower, Kylie had unleashed a new and surprisingly effective tactic: act as

  if you've already won. Iris had so far refrained from making any kind of announcement, but as

  far as Kylie was concerned, she was already promoted. From nine-thirty on Monday morning,

  when Kylie walked into the office declaring, "Of course we can discuss final cut!" into her

  phone, to now, Tuesday afternoon, as she shrieked with sycophantic giggles, Kylie played the

  part of Metronome's newest junior creative exec. She spoke to Troy's agent about rewrites and

  plot points and deal memos. She went to meetings with junior production executives across the

  lot. She spent her lunches having meetings in the green leather booths at the Grill.

  And not once did she acknowledge me, verbally or otherwise. Though the other assistants

  continued to drop by her desk to trade gossip, it was as if I were so trivial, so unimportant, that

  I had frankly ceased to exist.

  I pretended to type an e-mail while I listened to Kylie finish her call. "We are totally doing

  karaoke this weekend," she announced giddily. "And you are so singing Bon Jovi, it's not even

  funny."

  I gritted my teeth and drew a little picture of Kylie's face and then put a big X through it. If

  Luke could see his girlfriend now! I had another lesson with him tomorrow,
and there was a

  part of me that wondered why I'd made it. Luke was clearly in love with this skinny phony in

  her Celine dress, and so, as deluded as the poor guy was, my hopes of seducing him were faint

  at best. But I'd enjoyed my lesson on Sunday, and there were worse ways to spend an hour

  than getting some exercise on the court. At least I could work on my serve.

  "I'll talk to you later," Kylie cooed into her BlackBerry. "You are sooo bad."

  I got up and went to the kitchen, where I found Julissa on a step stool, one hand thrust into the

  upper cabinets. While the rest of Metronome was glossy and chic, the kitchen, like all the

  rooms our hotshot clients never saw, was desperately in need of an upgrade. The checkered

  floor reminded me of my high school cafeteria, and the hinges on all the cabinets creaked.

  There wasn't even an ice machine.

  "Do you know who keeps hiding the candy?" she asked, groping around blindly in the

  disorganized cabinet.

  "I think it's Lisa Amorosi. She's trying to stay on Tom's diet. You know, with those sludgecolored smoothies he's always drinking in staff meetings? Now she's having them too."

  "Gross," Julissa said. Then she hollered, "Yes!" and produced a basket of Hershey's Christmas

  Kisses and minibags of M&M's.

  "I can't take it anymore in there," I sighed. "I'm going to do something desperate."

  "You mean Ms. Michael Eisner?" Julissa rolled her eyes toward Kylie's desk. "Well, you won't

  have to listen to it long. They're making the announcement on Friday," she said casually and

  proceeded to rip open a brown packet of M&M's with her teeth.

  "What?" I dropped the Diet Coke I'd been reaching for in surprise. It rolled across the floor and

  nestled in the dark space under the cabinets.

  "That's what I heard." Julissa popped a handful of candy into her mouth. "Troy and his people

  sign their contracts tomorrow at some big lunch meeting, and then Iris is going to make it

  official."

  "Shit." I picked up the can and popped the top, even though I knew it would probably spray

  me. And it did: Diet Coke drops rained onto my cute little Marni cardigan. "Shit again," I

  hissed. But really, who cared? It was black. And it was the least of my problems.

  "So when you get promoted to first assistant, they'll need to fill your spot, so"--Julissa fidgeted