The Second Assistant Read Online Free PDF Page A

seemed to change his mind.
    “Oh, no, I can’t leave you here,” he said as he surveyed my bare, minuscule room. “Jesus, this is like Raskolnikov’s room!” He laughed.
    “You’ve read Crime and Punishment ?” I looked at him with new wonder. I was about to wave my novel in his face triumphantly, but then I realized that I must have left it back on the dog pee.
    “Sure. You think everyone in California’s a dumb-ass?” He laughed again.
    “I have no clue. I’m new in town.”
    “Would never have guessed.” He looked around the apartment for some sign of life or hope and, finding none, extracted his car keys from his pocket. “Which is why you’re coming with me. Oh, and for the record. I am the only smart guy in this town.” He laughed once more as he slammed the door on my room.
    Two minutes later and common sense was a distant memory. I was in his Porsche, zipping up the Pacific Coast Highway with the wind blowing the parts of my hair that weren’t plastered down with the Neosporin he’d borrowed from the Ashtanga teacher, whose name turned out to be Alexa and whose ability to sniff out a single man in a crisis was as finely honed as her pert little butt. Not that I cared about Alexa. Or anything. Jake could have been planning to strip me naked to star in a porno for all I knew. In fact, Jake could have done anything he wanted with me that day, because he was the best-looking man I’d seen in my entire life. He looked like a movie star. But tall.
    “Where are we going, by the way?” I yelled to be heard over the thudding bass of “Still” by Dr. Dre.
    “My place. I just think that we’d best keep you under observation.” He kept looking at my legs, as if he’d hit them with a hockey puck, too, and was searching for bruises.
    “I don’t want to be any trouble,” I mumbled. Not meaning it even slightly.
    And that’s how I came to spend one of the most blissful afternoonsI can remember. He drove me out to his house in Malibu. It was literally on the beach. You could jump off his deck and land in the sand. And he kept me under observation. Together Jake and I drank Coke and watched some of the World Series. We took a walk on the beach, he ordered takeout from Nobu, and every so often he’d touch the side of my head to make sure my brains weren’t spilling out. We talked about everything from books to politics, but it was only later that I realized we hadn’t discussed what either of us did for a living. I think possibly because I assumed from his perfect looks and seriously beautiful home that he was a very successful actor whom I’d never heard of. This was entirely possible since I barely ever went to the movies. So I simply didn’t ask for fear of embarrassment and exposure.
    When it finally got dark and the air out on the deck became damp, after we finished the last drops of red wine in our glasses he turned to me.
    “So, hot stuff, I guess that you’re not gonna die, then?”
    “It doesn’t look that way. Which is bad luck for you, ’cause it means you have to drive me home.” I shrugged. Meaning, “You could ask me to stay, though.” Clearly he wasn’t fluent in Shrug.
    “Oh, that’s no problem. The traffic’s not too bad at this time of night.” He stood up and, offering me a hand, pulled me to my feet. And then, thank Christ—otherwise I’d have thought he was gay or I was too unattractive for words—he kissed me. If I hadn’t gotten a hint of action in those movie-cliché surroundings—moon over the ocean, Trotanoy Pomerol ’75 flowing in our veins, me with my fragile concussed pallor, and he with large hands—I would have had to go back to politics and grow my leg hair in preparation for a life of same-sex crushes and chastity. Instead the waves crashed and I didn’t kick my empty wineglass over and it was a great, fabulous, spectacular kiss that made me forget my own name. Hurray for Hollywood, I thought. Not giving a flying fuck if this was The Truman Show