The First Assistant Read Online Free PDF Page A

and dragged me into his office, where his printer was dementedly spilling out page after page with a red car on it.
    “Isn’t she a beauty? Can’t you see me growling into the garage at the Peninsula for lunch in this baby? I get a boner just thinking about it.”
    “It’s a lovely car. Well, it’s not, actually, it’s kind of weird looking. But either way, you can’t swap me for it.” I was pleading now. I knew that
    Scott could in fact do anything he wanted. This town did not seem to recognize the labor laws that governed the rest of the United States. If your Hollywood boss didn’t like you, your Hollywood boss didn’t keep you. As it is with wrinkles and double chins and fat thighs and ugly noses in this town, so it is with employees. Erase them. Forget them. Pay to have them removed and ensure you never see them again.
    “It’s only for three months. You’ll hardly notice you’re gone.” Scott dismissed my fears, then me. “Get me a latte, would you Lizzie-o?”
    “Don’t worry. I’m sure you won’t have to stay in Thailand for three months, anyway,” Amber informed me when I walked out of Scott’s of-fice in a daze.
    “Why?” I asked, realizing that the bitch had well and truly screwed me when she’d suggested Emerald should bribe Scott.
    “Because nobody can stand her for more than a couple of weeks. Ei-ther she works them into a nervous breakdown with her petty demands or she sexually harasses them and they sue her.”
    “Well, I’m used to hard work and I’m a woman.” I picked up my purse to do the coffee run. At least the people in the Coffee Bean were friendlier than in my office.
    “That you’re a woman won’t bother her one tiny bit,” Amber nonchalantly informed me. For someone who appeared to work so hard, she clearly spent more than her fair share of time reading the V Pages on Variety ’s Web site.
    “She’s a lesbian?” I scowled.
    “She’s what my generation call bicurious.” Amber smiled. “Though the girls she’s slept with have always been really beautiful, so I wouldn’t worry.”
    And the pathetic thing is that it wasn’t until I was halfway across Beverly that I realized Amber had just insulted me.
    Naturally I stayed in the Coffee Bean for twenty minutes longer than it took to froth a latte, because I had to call Lara to complain. Not only about her insensitive husband who wanted to trade me for a car, but also about Amber, who had alarmingly become our most-oft-discussed topic. Something we were both aware was pathetic and made us feel like bitter, ageing crones, but nonetheless it was a habit we couldn’t seem to shake while the girl insisted on being such a prize bitch.
    “You’ll never believe what she’s done this time,” I spluttered at Lara as quietly as possible, because the place is full of, if not secret agents then certainly agents—short ones, tall ones, ones squeezed into their Zegna suits, ones yelling into cell phones about Brad—so I had to be careful because agents, like walls, have ears.
    “Tell me, tell me,” Lara demanded, and I figured at least this was more stimulating for her mushy mommy brain than repeats of the OC. “She’s trying to get Scott to send me to Thailand on location with
    Emerald. Do you think she’s after my job?” “Your job and my husband,” Lara said tersely.
    “Are we just being paranoid?” I asked, suddenly a little embarrassed by the fact that I was huddling in a corner telling tales on a twenty-two- year-old.
    “No, we’re just being realistic,” Lara said. “I’m coming over there. Now.” These were all the words I needed to propel me back to the of-fice and ensure that Scott wasn’t in any sort of compromising position that might alarm Lara.
    It wasn’t as if Lara wasn’t used to Scott’s appetites—in fact, not only had she been witness to them in her four years as his assistant, she’d also facilitated many of them—she’d picked up his Ritalin prescrip-tions, she’d kept his