The Second Assistant Read Free Page A

letters. These were stacked up on every available surface, every square of carpet tile, and often in the hands of an overburdened, buckling teenage intern on the way to the copy room. Each had a title in wonky black felt-tip lettering scribbled on the spine. Nobody had ever heard of any of these movies. In time I learned that unless Julia Roberts fell in love with one of them, nobody ever would.
    It was late Friday afternoon of my very first week, and I had just put a call from the president of Universal Studios through to the mailroom instead of to Scott. Thankfully Scott didn’t notice, because he was watching the trailer for one of his client’s new movies in his office and laughing uproariously.
    “Hey, you guys, get in here. Check this out,” he yelled. His door was open, so Lara and I took off our phone headsets and shuffled into his office. We perched on the arms of his leather sofa.
    “Isn’t it the fucking best?” Scott hit the play button on his remote control and spun around delightedly in his chair. Lara and I watched the trailer.
    It wasn’t the best. It was the worst. But it starred one of Scott’s biggest clients, who had just been on the diet of the century. She actually looked great on the multiplex-size plasma screen on his office wall. Though when she’d walked into the office a couple of days ago, trailing her stylist and half a dozen Barneys bags, you could see the bones on her shoulders through her sweater, and her face was covered in all those little blond hairs that anorexics sprout.
    “Joined the ’rexy files.” Lara had rolled her eyes heavenward.
    “But she looks like a total rock star,” Talitha, another of the assistants had sighed enviously.
    Scott rewound the tape and paused it at a part where the actress was doing push-ups in a tank top.
    “Great, huh?” he marveled again but didn’t really pay much attention when I said, “Yeah, I think it looks like a lot of fun. I’m sure it’ll do great box office. She’s so bankable.” I’d been reading what were popularly known as “the trades”—those movie-industry rags Variety and the Hollywood Reporter —that land on every single desk in this town each morning of the week and detail Hollywood’s every breath, from photosof heavy hitters at premieres to domestic box-office profits. Consequently I had picked up moviespeak almost as quickly as I’d mastered the art of wearing black.
    “Look at her rack.” Scott slapped his thigh. “Lara, go get her on for me.” I followed Lara back out toward our desks. Though just as I was about to sit down and update the call sheet, my phone rang.
    “Is this Elizabeth?” A woman’s voice inquired.
    “Speaking.”
    “This is Victoria.”
    “Victoria?” Who the hell was Victoria? Was she the new Angelina or Uma, who required no last name, and I hadn’t yet read about her in the trades?
    “Elizabeth, I’ve been watching you.” Oh, hey, I thought, my first stalker. But typical—it’s a woman.
    “You have?”
    “I’d like you to come into my office.”
    “Okay, well . . .”
    “Preferably now.” And she hung up.
    I sat at my desk for a moment and looked around me for clues. All the other assistants had their heads down, bent as if at prayer. Lara was listening in on a call as Scott told the shrunken actress how fucking fabulous her movie looked. One of the millions of things I still had to get used to in this job was the listening in on phone conversations. It betrayed all my polite instincts, and I was usually so embarrassed that I forgot I was supposed to be making notes of script titles, actors’ names, restaurant details, and the like, so that Scott could read Hustler and pick his nose safe in the knowledge that he didn’t have to remember a thing.
    Lara was chewing her pen and smiling to herself as she eavesdropped. Scott had his feet up on the desk and was watching MTV as he chatted to the actress. But nowhere could I see a Victoria. I leaned over to ask