The First Assistant (41 page)

It had all happened in about two and a half minutes flat. I had gone from being Lizzie Miller, erstwhile First Assistant at The Agency to Academy Award–Winning Producer Elizabeth Miller. I barely knew myself. I had no concept of the implications that this prize might have on my life from here on in. All I knew was that I needed to use the bathroom. Badly.

Twenty-four

Strip away the phoney tinsel of Hollywood and you find the

real tinsel underneath.

—Oscar Levant

The
Vanity Fair
party was a blur. We’d briefly dropped by the Governor’s Ball and refueled and passed around our little gold men as if they were newborn babies, but the pressure to be anywhere other than the party you were at was intense. No sooner had we laid hands on a drink than we were ushered by our overenthusiastic NBF publicists who told us that to miss the eight-thirty slot at Morton’s was professional suicide and the traffic on Melrose was now so backed up that we’d be lucky to make it there before Labor Day. So we took their advice and spent yet another half hour of the “most memorable night of our lives” sitting in the back of a car resisting the urge to just get out and walk.

When we eventually arrived at the hallowed party, I managed to find Lara in the crowd, by judicious use of cell phone, and with different celebrities as our pole stars, we made contact.

“Okay, I’m to the right of Elizabeth Hurley and south of the super skinny one from
Desperate Housewives
!” I yelled into my phone.

“Where’s that in relation to Jennifer Aniston?” Lara inquired.

“I have no clue, but, do you see Oprah?” I asked, waving at Luke who was chatting nearby to some business acquaintances he ran into. He smiled back at me and rolled his eyes in mock horror at being trapped. “You must be able to see Oprah.” I groaned. “She’s talking to Debra Winger.”

“Okay, I see her,” Lara said. “But you’re not there.” “Yes I am. Here, right next to Debra.”

“So not,” Lara complained. “God, she looks fatter than she did in

Alien.
”

“No you idiot. That was Sigourney Weaver!” I shouted so loud that Oprah turned around. “I’m here, by the buffet.”

“Oh, well why didn’t you just say?” Lara said, appearing at my side two and a half seconds later and helping herself to a barbecued shrimp. “You knew I wouldn’t be far from the food.”

But despite Lara and I having more fun than was decent for two women over sixteen, by midnight we were running out of steam. We’d seen every celebrity, even staying for the later slots of the party so we could check out the really great D-list stars who were always the most interesting anyway because they were the ones you had hung in your locker at school; the ones your parents would be most excited to hear about; and the ones most likely to smile at you and chat if you told them how much you loved X movie or Y TV show that they’d been in.

We’d also tried every single cocktail on the menu, we’d done as many things as it was publicly decent to do with an Oscar statuette— including using it as a back-scratcher and a Liberty torch—Lara had managed to lose Scott, and I had managed to avoid dancing with Bob the Producer, whom I’d made the mistake of going on a date with when I first arrived in town. Back then he had spiked my drink in a bid to have sex with me and videotape it. Bob’s tape collection was more prolific even than Rob Lowe’s back in the eighties. He’d even had special labels printed up with his own Bob logo. When he sidled up to me earlier and offered me a fizzy Mojito, I had grabbed Lara’s hand and escaped to the dance floor. In short, we’d exhausted the party and ourselves by the time our carriage was due to turn into a pumpkin. But we really weren’t ready to admit that it was time to go home.

Luke came up behind me and touched my arm. “Honey, I’m going to head off.” I was leaning back staring at the remains of the party, with tissue paper peeling off the pillar behind me and blisters on my feet, my bedraggled hair sticking to my tired lipgloss.

“Already?” I turned to him.

“It’s pretty late,” he said gently. I must have looked as if I was about to burst into tears because he quickly added, “If you like I can drop you off at Patrick’s party. This one’s done but I’m sure his is just starting.

And there’s a swimming pool. I think it’s traditional to swim in your party dress if you win an Oscar, right?”

“Is it?” I cheered up immediately. Hurray! There was life after
Vanity Fair.

“That’s what I heard,” Luke assured me.

“Great. Well, I’d love a ride in that case.” I perked up. “I’ve just got to find Lara to say good-bye,” I said, scouring the balding party for my friend.

“Oh, she left with Scott a while ago,” Luke told me as we headed toward the door, where Jason was helping Paige into her jacket.

“But if it’s any consolation, she didn’t look too happy about leaving. I think I heard the word ‘divorce’ mentioned.”

“Hmmm.” I pondered. “Then maybe I’ll let her off the hook for not saying good-bye. Hey, Jason?” I said as we approached him.

“Good-night, sweetie,” he said, raising his Oscar in lieu of a wave. (Use number 583 for an Academy Award.) “Congratulations, my coproducer.” He hugged me.

“Are you going to Luke’s friend Patrick’s party?” I asked, certain that I had at least one person who would jump into the pool with me at dawn, even if it wasn’t Lara or Luke.

“Oh, we’re going home. We’re going to celebrate in private.” Jason kissed me on the cheek. “We’ve got a lot of catching up to do.”

“Well,” I said, trying to hide my disappointment like an Oscar win-ner, “it was lovely to meet you, Paige,” I said and gave her a kiss good-night, too. “Maybe see you soon?”

“Definitely,” Jason assured me as he and Paige headed out and jumped into the back of a waiting limo and began to kiss like teenagers. As it happened that was the last limo we saw all night.

Luke and I had been standing outside Morton’s for twenty minutes, at the back of a line many-drunk-people long, when we decided that unless we wanted to watch the sun come up here, we were going to have to walk.

“We can’t walk back to Lara and Scott’s,” I told him as I looked down reluctantly at my shoes. “It’s miles.”

“We could go to mine and I could give you a lift—” Luke began, then remembered—“but my car’s at your place.”

“Hmmm,” I thought. “Well, I guess you could give me a piggyback to yours and then we could call a taxi.”

“Sure.” He smiled gamely. “Hop on board.”

“Okay.” I removed my heels, transferred them to my hand, and held on tight to Oscar.

“One two three hup.” Luke bent down and I attached myself to his back like an ancient, battered barnacle. Minutes later we were walking away from the party along Melrose, as the people in the limo line broke into a round of applause. It was much sweeter music to my ears even than the Oscar cheers had been. I was on Luke Lloyd’s back and he was carrying me home.

Oh well, a girl can dream. Two blocks later he was groaning so much that I stopped using my statuette as a riding crop. “Okay, you can let me off if you’re too much of a wimp,” I said as he ground to a grateful halt.

“I’m sorry.” He huffed as I slid to the floor.

“You know I’m going to get a complex about my weight and it’ll be all your fault,” I teased him as he shook out his numb arms.

“It’s not you, it’s the Oscar,” he said.

“It’s not you, it’s me.” I laughed. “Wasn’t that what you said when we broke up?”

“I did not!” Luke sounded incredulous as we walked side by side along the deserted street, with only the occasional car speeding by. “I would never have been so lame.”

“You were,” I informed him.

“Well, I guess I was lame enough to break up with you, so anything’s possible,” he said, shaking his head in disbelief.

“Do you think it was lame, really?” I stopped in my tracks.

“Come on, Elizabeth Miller, we’re not having this conversation now.

Or here. We’re going home. We’ve still got two miles to go.”

“Why not?” I protested. “Just tell me one thing. Do you really think you made a mistake?”

“Go.” He laughed as he smacked me on the backside. “Move.” “Spoilsport,” I complained as we strode along at an ungodly pace up

the hill to Lookout Mountain.

Finally Luke and I arrived back at his house, our aching feet forgotten in all the laughing and talking we’d done and spying in people’s houses and wondering which we’d most like to live in.

“Oh no, your porch.” I winced as I flashed back to the last night I’d been there. “Did you ever find that diamond?”

“No,” Luke said forlornly as he put the key in the lock.

“I bet Mrs. Mendes found it.” I sniffed. “Has she been dressing bet-ter lately? Showing up for work in a Porsche?”

“You’re so mean to Mrs. Mendes.” He laughed.

“I bet she told you about the time she found me and Jason in bed together.”

“Well . . .” He shrugged as we piled through the front door into the familiar room, the smell of beeswax and detergent mingling with the mag-nolia blossom outside on his veranda. I almost swooned I breathed in so deeply. “She did mention that you had been less than faithful to me.”

“No? But you know I wasn’t, don’t you? You know that I had all my clothes on and wouldn’t have wanted Jason if he’d . . . well, even if he’d been you.” I rushed to get through the sentence.

“Well, that’s a compliment ...I think.” Luke laughed to dismiss the subject. “Of course I know it wasn’t what it seemed. Though I have to say when you and Blum became an item later, it crossed my mind,” he said. But before I could scream I looked at him and saw that he was grinning evilly. He just knew that I wasn’t interested in Jason when I was with

him. In fact, I wasn’t really interested in Jason when I was with Jason. “Now what can I get you to drink?” He walked over to his drinks

table and studied the bottles carefully.

“Not champagne,” I stipulated. “Anything but champagne.”

“Okay, tequila it is.” He reached for a couple of shot glasses, then wandered into the kitchen to find a lemon while I sat on the edge of his familiar moss green armchair and examined my feet.

“I’m turning on the pool lights in case you want to get traditional!” he shouted from the back of the house somewhere.

“Great!” I yelled. I guess he wasn’t calling me a taxi just yet, then.

While Luke pottered around the poolside, I reached into my purse and checked my cell phone. I had twenty-eight missed calls.

“Shit.” I groaned. I had of course called my parents and sister from the

bathroom at Morton’s as soon as I’d arrived. I’d then been passed on to my grandmother, three cousins, and a grade-school teacher I’d forgotten existed but who was very sweet in her congratulations and delighted because, well, “based on your drawings we were never sure that you weren’t going to end up a social misfit,” she told me. I thanked her and told her that’s exactly what a producer was and how smart of her to notice all those years ago. My parents, of course, were in tears and my grandmother kept asking what Rita Hayworth was like. They were all coming to visit me and Oscar in a couple of weeks, so I didn’t feel too bad that they hadn’t been able to make it here for the ceremony owing to granny’s new hip.

I scrolled through the text messages, saving most of them for later, apart from the one from Cingular Wireless telling me that I was over my monthly spending limit; that one I deleted recklessly. Then I picked up the voice mail. Lots of party sounds and incomprehensible shrieking; I guessed these were from Alexa, my old neighbor, Talitha, and assorted other friends. But among those was a remarkably sober-sounding one, with no party interference in the background. I had to play it twice be-fore I heard it. At which point Luke walked back into the room.

“What are you looking so serious for?” he said as he set down two shot glasses, a saucer of salt, and some lemon slices on the coffee table, “I’m not sure,” I said, staring at my phone. “Will you listen to this and tell me what it says? I think my brain’s so overstimulated it’s stopped

functioning.”

“I’m listening.” Luke perched on the edge of the table opposite me as I switched my cell to speakerphone.

“Hello, Elizabeth, this is Elspeth Cowan. I just wanted to congratulate you on tonight’s success. Your speech was wonderful. I also wanted to be the first person to offer you a job.” Luke looked at me and raised one eyebrow. “I’d like to make a formal offer on Monday, but in the meantime I’d be delighted if you’d consider accepting the post of president of production with the studio.”

I turned the cell off and Luke looked at me in faint disbelief.

“That was Elspeth Cowan,” he said, as if I hadn’t a clue who she was. “CEO of the studio.”

“I know,” I said, with similar skepticism. “She wants you to be president.”

“I know.”

“That’s . . .” Luke struggled to find the word.

“Unbelievable?” I still couldn’t connect with my brain. Somewhere along the way tonight I’d been short-circuited.

“It calls for a celebration,” Luke said, but similarly without a hint of celebration in his voice. We were both confounded.

“I know.” I reached over and doused the back of my hand in salt be-fore closing my eyes and pouring the tequila down my throat. It burned. Luke followed suit.

“So you’ll be running a studio. You’ll be the prexy.” “I’ll be the prexy,” I repeated.

“Luke?” I asked as I bit my lip in concentration. “Yes?” He frowned.

“That’s pretty weird, isn’t it?” “It is, yes.” Luke admitted.

It was several minutes before Luke and I managed to shake off the reverie of contemplation that we’d been plunged into by Elspeth’s message. When we finally lifted our heads from our prayerful poses and looked at each other it was still with a sense of unreality. I had been fired from my job as First Assistant, even if it had been erroneous, and when my job was offered back to me, I’d turned it down. I had coexecutive-produced a movie, which meant that I had found agents and talked numbers and budgets and all that jazz before Jason had stitched me up when he finally made his deal with the studio. And then I had been reinstated. But that didn’t mean that I could run a studio. I had been a political intern in D.C. for about five minutes.