The First Assistant (19 page)

“Good to see you eating properly again.” I couldn’t believe he’d noticed I’d been starving myself. I guess that meant he’d been watching me for a while. I felt a flutter of excitement in my stomach as I wiped the egg off my chin and swallowed my mouthful.

“Trust me, I plan to make up for lost time,” I said as I noticed a few of the crew members watching us with silly grins on their faces. Location was like a coed boarding school and no one behaved much beyond adolescence. Chris had given me a run-down yesterday of who exactly was sleeping with whom, which was another reason I was excited to get on set this morning. I hadn’t noticed any of it before and was now longing to watch the dramas unfold before my very eyes. Apparently the married DP, director of photography, was having an affair with the makeup girl. The script superviser was in love with Ken so she frequently gave Carmen a hard time about continuity. The Second AD wanted the job of the First AD, but she was sleeping with him anyway to ensure that, if she didn’t get the promotion, she’d be brought along on his next film as Second AD. Then there were the two set PA’s who were inseparable but apparently not having sex, which baffled the en-tire crew. And now there were Chris and me. I leaned in and whispered, “Everyone is staring at us.”

Chris shrugged his shoulders and laughed casually. “It’s because those who didn’t see us together at my hotel pool just heard a story from your little bigmouthed boss about how she saw us raping each other by the palm tree.”

My jaw must have dropped because Chris literally closed it for me and ran a naughty finger across my lips.

“I can’t believe Emerald saw us!” I blabbered.

“Why does it matter? You’re a grown woman. You’re allowed to kiss whomever you please.”

And he was right but I had a sneaking suspicion that the reason I was being dismissed from the set had nothing to do with me hitting Emerald in the face with a Brussels sprout and everything to do with me kissing Chris. I saw one of the drivers pull up in his van and wave to me out the window. I waved back.

“Are you leaving?” Chris asked, confused.

“Yes. Obviously the rumor mill isn’t up to speed. I’ve been dismissed.” “What do you mean?”

“Emerald doesn’t want me on set today. She wants me at the hotel opening her fan mail.”

Chris gave me a look of complete understanding. We both nodded our heads in unspoken communication. Not bad for knowing each other a mere twenty hours.

“Will I see you tonight at the party?”

“I wasn’t invited to a party,” I said pathetically. Chris laughed. My insecurity must have been written all over my face.

“We’re all invited to the party, Lizzie,” he said as he held up the call sheet and pointed to the notes section at the bottom. I took it out of his hand and read it.

Come celebrate a month of hard graft with a little swing music and margaritas.

“Oh. Well then, of course I’ll be there. Sounds like fun,” I said, try-ing to sound nonchalant. A call came through on Chris’s walkie-talkie and he gave me a peck on the cheek and a wave.

“See you tonight,” he said, picking up his radio and launching into a discussion with his second in command about how to set up the next shot.

I was in the van riding back to the hotel and thinking about Emerald’s bad behavior. I wondered if maybe she had a crush on Chris. He had saved her from Ken’s bullying and she had mentioned him a couple of times in passing. I hoped that wasn’t the case because it would make the rest of my time in Thailand a nightmare. A spurned teen actress was not something any normal human should be expected to deal with. But her moods seemed to be as versatile as her wardrobe, and I reasoned that she was sure to get over it by tonight.

Anyway a day back at the ranch sorting through the backlog of paperwork and e-mails was actually not such a bad idea. There was a pile of scripts as high as my beach hut that Emerald had asked me to read and comment on. This was the opportunity I had hoped for to prove myself as more than just a glorified gopher. The scripts had the slick black cover and the silver writing of The Agency stamped across them, but I hadn’t had the time to crack a single spine. Emerald usually required twenty-four-seven hand-holding. She’d said it didn’t matter, anyway, because she wasn’t in the mood to decide on her next part yet. Her agents were chomping at the bit. One of Scott’s junior agents had even been leaving messages every day begging, pleading, and demanding that Emerald return her call.

Emerald was a producer on one of her upcoming films and every time we set a conference call with the writers, Emerald decided she needed a nap or wanted to do her nails. I felt a bit responsible for her avoidance tactics since she’d asked me to read the script and I’d commented honestly. It was crap. It was based on a novel about a young fe-male madam who set up a prostitution ring to pay for her student loans at Berkeley. The book was brilliant, but the writing team was just mak-ing a mess of the screenplay. They were dumbing down good material and that’s what I’d told Emerald. In my short tenure at The Agency I’d noticed that it was a constant problem in Hollywood. Anything slightly different was stripped of its originality and more often than not made to conform into the mold of the last big hit. She hadn’t hired the writers and was now doing a silent protest by not returning the producers’ calls. That reminded me I had to reschedule the conference call again.

I walked into Emerald’s bungalow and went straight to the phone. I was going to order in a masseuse for my lunch break, maybe I’d even have time for a facial. Emerald’s punishment wasn’t so bad after all. At least I’d look good for the party tonight. I picked up the handset but someone was already on it.

“Hello? Hello? Emerald?” A woman was saying. I immediately recognized Amber’s voice on the other end of the line. I stayed silent for a second trying to think up some horrible practical joke I could play. But Amber stuck her foot right in it without any help from me. “I’m so glad I finally got you. Scott is so looking forward to talking with you. Lizzie

is really useless, isn’t she? I mean, you’d think she could at least man-age to put you through to your agent on a regular basis. She’s so lucky to have a job with you, Emerald, because I really doubt if she’d have lasted at The Agency.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Amber would stop at nothing. “Hi, Amber. It’s Lizzie. Put Scott on the phone.” For once I had the

upper hand.

“Oh, Lizzie. You know, you shouldn’t pretend to be Emerald. It’s really—” I took a page out of Emerald’s book and cut Amber off mid-sentence.

“Amber, is this a bad line? I told you to put Scott on
now,
” I barked. I could almost hear the expression of shocked horror on the other end of the line. It was very satisfying.

“No need to get uppity, Lizzie. Here’s Scott,” she said in her cut glass English accent. But the blinders were well off and no English accent was going to fool me into believing that Amber had a thimbleful of class. “Lizzie. Where the fuck have you been? We miss you here,” Scott’s

voice pinged in, and I really hoped Amber was still on the phone. “Oh? Amber said you wanted to fire me,” I said innocently. I heard a

distinctly female choking sound on the line. Amber was obviously still on the call. I smiled at my little bit of petty revenge.

“Don’t be an idiot. I need you here,” he said, and I blushed with pride. He was obviously appreciating my superior assistant skills. Finally! “No one keeps Lara out of my hair as well as you do.” I deflated into a dollar-sized pancake. “Anyway, I crashed her stupid car. So feel free to come back anytime. But before you do, be useful and get her to commit to one of those million fucking projects that are sitting on her bedroom floor. Christ, I’m sure she’s dumped them on you. So pick the Warners’ project. You know, the action one. I owe the head of production a favor and they’re desperate for her. Script sucks so don’t bother reading it. Just tell her it’s genius and she’ll believe you. You’ve got an Ivy League education, for fuck sake. She should trust you. Okay, got to go. But get me an answer by the end of the week.”

“Okay, Scott but—” the line was already dead. I put the phone down and was about to go and try to dig the Warner script out of the pile when the phone started ringing again.

“Hello,” I answered professionally, determined not to make the same mistake twice. It was Kathy calling from the set.

“Lizzie, where are you? Emerald is here on set and she’s furious.” Kathy sounded incensed.

“Kathy, what are you talking about? I just got back to the hotel ten minutes ago. Emerald sent me home from the set,” I stammered, completely confused.

“Well, I’ve just left her side, and she was very angry. She said she needed you to run an errand for her and apparently it’s only an errand
you
can run. So you’d better get back here right now.”

I shook my head in frustration. I could handle crazy insecure Emerald but bipolar bitchy Emerald was beyond the pale.

“Did she mention what she needed, Kathy? I just want to make sure it’s something we have on set because I wouldn’t want to come all the way back and then have to send a driver all the way back here again to get whatever it might be.”

“Hold on, I’ll check.” Kathy disappeared for moment as I quickly started shoving my notebook, laptop, and industrial-strength Advil into my bag. “She said it’s private and none of my business. There’s a driver on his way now from the production office at the other hotel. He’ll be with you in five. Hurry! She’s picking fights with Ken and we’re already a week behind schedule and if she walks off set today I may just slit my wrists. Do you want my blood on your hands, Lizzie?”

If she were dead, at least it would be one more person off my back. All I wanted to do was scream. But primal scream therapy wasn’t really my thing. I was much more of the internalize-it-all Waspy mentality that was certain to give me an ulcer and then cancer later in life. I rif-fled through the pile of scripts I hadn’t even taken out of the latest box from LA and found the Warner one, slipped it in my bag, and ran out the door. I needed to make sure I had a job to come home to just in case Emerald decided not to forgive me.

I got to the set in fifty minutes, record time, jumped onto my valiant steed, the dusty baby blue moped I’d been given for the duration of my stay, and zipped down the dirt road to the set. The walk from base camp to the set took twenty minutes and Emerald was constantly sending me back and forth to fetch little bits and pieces, so, instead of having to call

for a ride every time, Kathy and Fred had ordered me a Vespa. I loved it, as it provided me with a legitimate escape and a bit of independence. The journey back and forth down the beautiful dirt road was usually rejuvenating, but today nothing looked particularly thrilling. There were ominous clouds hovering low over the set and a strange fog was rolling in. I arrived on set midshot and watched as Emerald worked with Carmen cutting away at a bamboo cage with a makeshift knife. Chris was standing just out of shot and we caught eyes and exchanged smiles. Thank God for him or things would have seemed totally unbearable.

Emerald noticed me just as Chris and I were in the midst of a bit of sign language flirtation. She stopped middelivery and walked off camera. “Ken. Your camera is on Carmen. Don’t waste my time to improve your girlfriend’s reel.” Then she stalked off like a little tornado, flattening everyone in her path. But the eye of the storm was saved for me, and she made sure everyone heard her.

“Lizzie. You’re supposed to be my assistant. If you’re not on set, you can’t assist me now, can you?” she said, putting her hands on her hips.

“Emerald, you told the First AD that I should go home.”

“No I didn’t. Don’t make excuses for your laziness. And when you are on set, I expect you to behave like a professional, not spend your time flirting with the crew.” I was blushing with the sheer humiliation of it all as everyone on set was cringing, embarrassed to be witnessing such abuse.

I decided the path of least resistance was the only approach, otherwise this would become a four-alarm battle. I swallowed the fury that was building up in the back of my throat and gritted my teeth. “You’re right, Emerald,” I said as quietly as possible. “What can I get you?”

“I want a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich. I’m wasting away here.” “Okay,” I said slowly, “but Kathy said you wanted something special,

something you couldn’t discuss with the PA?”

“That’s what I wanted. It’s not up to you or Kathy to decide who gets what for me, now, is it?” And with that she stalked to her director’s chair and sat down. “Makeup. I need makeup now!” she yelled.

So off I went on my moped to get the caterer to whip up a sandwich. I was back half an hour later with the most deliciously juicy-looking PB&J a girl could imagine but when she saw it she looked at me with total disdain. “I told you to cut the crusts off, Elizabeth. How hard is it

to remember that?” She watched me carefully and seemed well pleased with my look of stupefaction and then the blush that followed, which, in twenty-odd years I still hadn’t managed to get under control. I looked around at the thirty or so cast and crew members who were watching her little power-hungry display and wanted to dive into a rice paddy. “I can’t eat that,” she continued. “Go back and get me another.”

First, she’d never mentioned anything about crusts, and second, what nineteen-year-old needed her crusts cut off? But I wasn’t there to argue and I guarantee if I’d come down with the crusts cut off she would have sent me back to base camp to get the crusts put back on. So I got back on my Vespa and was five minutes into the drive when the heavens opened. The rain came pouring down in sheets as I drove at breakneck speeds taking my fury, humiliation, and powerlessness out on the road. I hated everything about this business: Amber, Emerald, Scott, and even Luke. Not one of them had an ounce of integrity. Why couldn’t more people be like Chris? At this rate I was never going to be a producer. I was going to stay the whipping post for people with the intelligence level of rodents for the rest of my life. Right at that moment a wet chicken came running out into the middle of the road and I in-stinctually swerved out of the way. I really wasn’t trying to end it all, but I think the chicken might have been. My moped hit a wet pothole and over it went, pulling me along through the mud before we both came to a grinding halt. I lay in the mud in the pouring rain and realized that I really needed to reevaluate my life. I pushed the bike off me and tried to stand up but a shooting pain seared through my ankle. I sat back down on the side of the road and checked my limbs to make sure they were intact. Besides a really bad case of road rash up and down my left leg and arm, all seemed to still be attached. I looked at my ankle, which was already starting to swell in my Converse sneaker, and burst into tears. Just then Chris appeared in the pouring rain on his moped. He saw my bike on the side of the road and literally jumped off his moped in midmotion and ran toward me.