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  a plume book

  THE FIRST ASSISTANT

  clare naylor is the author of five previous novels, including Dog Handling and The Goddess Rules.

  mimi hare was the director of development for a Hollywood production company where she worked on feature films such as Jerry Maguire and As Good As It Gets.

  Praise for The Second Assistant

  “Your perfect spring fling . . . more fun than stargazing at Spago.”

  — People

  “Make sure it is at the very top of your beach bag.”

  — Chicago Tribune

  “This story of a power agent’s lowly second assistant has a lot of heart to go along with its smarts.”

  —Malcolm Jones, Newsweek

  “[A] wicked romp.”

  — Us Weekly

  “A high-spirited sprint.”

  — The New York Times Book Review

  Also by Clare Naylor & Mimi Hare

  The Second Assistant

  The First Assistant

  Clare Naylor

  &

  Mimi Hare

  A PLUME BOOK

  PLUME

  Published by Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3

  (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.) Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.)

  Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi – 110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Mairangi Bay, Auckland 1311, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Published by Plume, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Previously published in a Viking edition.

  Copyright © Clare Naylor and Mimi Hare, 2006

  All rights reserved

  registered trademark—marca registrada

  CIP data is available.

  ISBN: 1-4295-2987-3

  Original hardcover design by Spring Hoteling

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  The First Assistant

  Prologue

  I have just stepped out of the limo to my boyfriend’s movie premiere and I’m the happiest girl in Los Angeles. I am an impeccable fifteen minutes late and have arranged to meet him inside the theater. He has been on location in Prague. We haven’t seen each other for a month. I am wearing a black Azzaro cocktail dress. It’s the first time in my life I know what it means to feel like a million dollars. I manage my vehicular exit without a face-plant and when the driver closes the door behind me I see only the dazzling flashbulbs of the paparazzi ahead.

  “Hey, Lizzie, over here!” I hear someone cry out. It doesn’t sound like Luke. I look around and within seconds the call has escalated to a chorus of “Lizzie” ’s. It is the first time that the paparazzi, who always huddle by the door on these occasions, have known who I am. I wonder how they know who I am, too. Strangely it never crosses my mind to ask myself that one truly critical question, “Who am I, anyway?” If I had I would have remembered that I am Lizzie Miller, efficient, but not to the point of fame, first assistant to the head of a Hollywood agency. I have never won a talent show on national television. I am not famed for my inimitable way with Balenciaga and I was never the fiancée of Jude Law. There is no other con-ceivable reason why anyone would want to gaze at me in US Weekly as they wait for a fat transfer injection in their dermatologist’s office.

  Unfortunately when fame beckons my ego picks up the hem of its evening dress and runs headlong to meet it like a long-lost lover way be-2

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  fore my brain can pitch in and warn me what a hiding to nothing even minor, piffling celebrity is.

  “Give us a smile, Lizzie!” they call out again. So I take a deep breath and saunter up to the sidewalk in front of the metal railings that they use to separate the hunters from their prey. Now let me tell you something, if you’ve never seen an actress stand on the carpet and pose for the paparazzi you haven’t lived. The whole thing is hysterical. The glossy photos we get to see are no happy accident. They are the result of a ludicrous and humiliating process that no sane person would be party to. The first time I ever saw an actress posing for the cameras at a premiere I was morbidly horrified. She was a beautiful, English rose of a starlet one minute and the next she looked as if she’d caught sight of Medusa and been turned to stone. Either that or her Botox had just kicked in. She was petrified into such a ridiculous pout for such an ap-pallingly long time that it looked as if she might not blink again before the movie, or perhaps the millennium, was over. It was the first time in my life that I was glad I didn’t have skin the color of morning milk and a twelve-million-dollar paycheck.

  Only now, for the first time ever, it’s my turn. I resolve to just give a couple of discreet smiles, possibly verging on the coquettish if I can bring myself to abandon my inhibitions to such a degree, then be on my way. I pull my dress out of my undies where it has lodged on the car ride and launch myself toward the waiting photographers.

  “Come on, baby, give us a smile!” they call out. So I do. I stand on the sidewalk in front of them and begin to pose. And actually I might even trade places with the morning-milk skin chick after all because it is all terribly easy. I just pretend that I’m home in front of the mirror and replicate some InStyle favorite poses: the Happy Hostess on Prozac look; the Bored Ingénue after a big night; the Nymph in Raptures. I am actually quite enjoying myself until I am roused from the haze of my narcissism by one of the photographers yelling, “Hey you!” I open my eyes and see, not a hoard of adoring males, but a pack of irritated wolves who’ve just had their supper snatched away.

  “Yes, you! Move out of the way!” I am confused for a fraction of a second until I hear a woman’s voice behind me.

  The First Assistant

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  “How do you want me, boys?” she coos. I turn around and am confronted by the laudable cleavage of Lindsay Lohan.

  “Lindsay, you’re a doll!” yells the same photographer who’d just told me to stop ruining his picture. They hadn’t been calling for Lizzie.

  They’d been calling for Lindsay.

  I quickly scuttle inside the entrance to the theater and out of the way of a pro in action. The flashbulbs explode and Lindsay (who, along with everyone else, is wearing jeans and flip-flops; I appear to be the only person in a crystal-encrusted, floor-length evening gown) does her thing while I skulk in the doorway and contemplate my humiliation. I pause as my blush subsides and reassure myself that the foyer looks blessedly empty so at least the other two thousand people who’ve been invited to the premiere haven’t witnessed my crazed ego getting the better of me.

  Or so I delude myself until I walk into the buzzing theater in search of my seat and boyfriend. As I step through the double doors the whole place goes quiet. Heads turn in my direction and, thinking myself sensible in the extreme, I obligingly step out of the way, sure in the knowledge that Ms. Lohan can only be a few paces behind me again and everyone wants to check her out. But this time there’s no Lindsay behind me. Then I understand why—on the giant screen ahead, magnified to Olympian proportions, is Lindsay Lohan, still pouting and giggling for the photographers outside. As is traditional at premieres, they film the arrivals on the red carpet and show them on-screen to the waiting audience. It takes me approximately four seconds to understand that every last person in this theater has just witnessed my big

  “moment” on the red carpet.

  One

  In Hollywood the women are

  all peaches. It makes you long

  for an apple occasionally.

  —Rex Reed

  This morning my boyfriend, Luke Lloyd, called from location in Prague and told me that he loved me because I was normal. By this I know he means simply that I’m what he’s dreamed of since he arrived in Hollywood fifteen years ago. I’m the kind of girl who can read the newspapers on a Sunday morning without throwing a hissy fit if I’m not in them; I do not have a “relationship with food”; I know the difference between G8 and a G4; and while t
hat may not be asking too much of the rest of the world’s population, in this town it makes me as scarce as hen’s teeth.

  However there are many, more disturbing, reasons why I am not normal that I do not wish my boyfriend to find out about. They are: 1. In my wallet I have a platinum Amex card that does

  not belong to me. By that I mean it was given to me by

  my boyfriend to use as profligately as I choose. But de-

  spite spending my entire life dreaming of such a thing,

  thus far I haven’t even bought a tank of gas on it.

  2. I could have given up my meaningless job as First

  Assistant (aka slave who enables her boss in his forays

  into drink, drugs, pornography, and cheating on his

  wife, who happens to be one of my best friends) and

  gone to Prague for three months to keep my freckly,

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  doormat-haired producer boyfriend company (aka out

  of the foul clutches of his ex-girlfriend Emanuelle, who

  is playing the lead in his latest epic Dracula’s Daugh-

  ter). But I didn’t. I pretended to him that I was contractually bound by The Agency to stay.

  3. I cannot afford toilet paper for the house I live in so I have to steal it from the bathrooms at The Agency and

  various restaurants across town. This is because I have

  spent the equivalent of three paychecks on one dress.

  4. I have enrolled with a tennis coach who helps you

  to come to terms with the shadows of your personality.

  If you can master your backhand you can conquer your

  emotional demons. Tennis skills and mental health are

  one. And I happen to believe this to be true.

  5. I am addicted to a Japanese number puzzle called

  Su Doku. I have an entire book of these puzzles and

  hide them beneath the Hollywood Reporter on my desk.

  Last week I destroyed a month’s worth of filing that I’d

  neglected to do because of said addiction. It can only

  be a matter of time before I am found out.

  And while Luke was away in Prague, freezing his ass off on some god-forsaken, formerly Communist street corner, I was safe. He could harbor his delusions with me as the normal girl he loved back in Los Angeles—

  keeping his bed warm and his dreams intact. But since he touched down at LAX three hours ago for the premiere, it’s become increasingly likely that my whole house of cards is going to come crashing down.

  “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me,” I said to Luke as I glared furiously out the car window on the way home.

  “I’m sorry, but I didn’t know she was coming until the last minute.”

  His exasperation was palpable; he nearly drove us over the side of a canyon as we took a curve. The evening had gone from bad to worse when, post red-carpet humiliation, I finally climbed over an entire row The First Assistant

  7

  of seated, unhelpful people to reach my beloved boyfriend, only to discover that his ex-girlfriend Emanuelle Saix (pronounced Sex in some parts of France, apparently) was sitting in my seat. She then insisted on giving me three kisses and commiserated with me about my on-screen humiliation. Did I mention that she’d been the face of Lancôme since she was thirteen years old? Why he had finally dumped her for me was a matter for Luke and his psychotherapist.

  “And she was supercilious,” I informed him.

  “She felt bad for you.”

  “Then, at the party. Your business partner mistook me for a Russian prostitute and offered to pay me two hundred dollars cash.”

  “That’s because you looked so gorgeous.” Luke’s attempts at ap-peasement were less convincing than they had first been half an hour ago when we left the post-premiere party. I rolled down the window for some air as we drove up the hill toward home. The car filled with the scent of sagebrush and distant skunk. I tried to calm down because I knew that if we had a massive fight tonight when he was leaving for Prague again tomorrow I’d spend every minute of the next six weeks till I saw him again regretting it. But the humiliation was too raw to bury just yet.

  “You could have told me that the dress code was casual, though.”

  “I had no clue. Didn’t my assistant send you an invite?” He scowled.

  “I told her to save the trees. Those things come with so much cardboard.” I lamented my respect for the environment almost as much as I regretted being the only woman there who was dressed like an Eastern European hooker. “Did I look completely ridiculous walking down the red carpet in a floor-length black dress?” I grinned.

  “You didn’t walk, baby, you sashayed.” A slow grin spread across Luke’s face.

  “I did not. I wouldn’t know how to sashay if I tried.” His amusement was contagious. I began to see the funny side.

  “Did I look completely ridiculous in front of the cameras?” I ventured.

  “You looked like you’d been practicing.”

  “Oh God.”

  “But it wasn’t so much the dress. Or the paparazzi. It was more, well it was more the limo.”

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  Clare Naylor & Mimi Hare

  “Ah yes, the limo.” Everyone else had arrived in a vast, black SUV. I had unwittingly gone retro apparently.

  “It was very classy.”

  “It cost me a fortune. Well, it cost Scott a fortune. I expensed it.”

  “Oh shit.” Luke laughed as the gravel of our driveway crunched under the wheels, signaling home. “Well, it’s good to be back.”

  “Good to have you home.” I leaned over and kissed him. Though it’d been six months since I moved out of my one-room apartment in Santa Monica, I still hadn’t really lived with him for more nights than I would if we’d been having a torrid affair. Which made it all the more exciting as we shrugged off our seat belts and hastened toward the house.

  “How come the security lights aren’t on?” Luke asked as he stubbed his toe on a surprise step.

  “Brownout?” I guessed, grabbing the back of his sweater so I wouldn’t stumble in the dark.

  “Can’t be. Every house in the canyon’s lit up like a Christmas tree.”

  “Hmmm.” At this stage it hadn’t even occurred to me that I might have something to feel guilty about. So I remained blithely curious.

  “Maybe it’s a burglar. Do you have that Mace I bought for you on your key ring?” Luke asked.

  “No. I kept having bad dreams about it accidentally going off in Ralphs in the checkout girl’s face. So I left it by the bed.”

  “It’s probably a burglar armed with your Mace, then.” Luke stopped abruptly. “I’ll go in first.”

  “But what if he escapes and kills me on the way out?” I asked nervously. “I’ll come in with you. Here, let’s take a brick.” I picked up a stone from the rockery and handed it to Luke.

  “I have a gun in the car. Wait here.”

  “You have a gun?” I was stunned. What was my boyfriend doing with a gun? “Are you a member of the NRA?”

  “Honey, I’m from the South. I’ve always carried a gun. Now will you just quiet down and let me deal with this?” Luke marched back to the car while I sat down on the garden steps and tried to come to terms with the fact that I may be dating a Republican. He returned from the car, presumably with the weapon concealed about his person.

  “Have we never discussed my issues with bearing arms?” I asked, like The First Assistant

  9

  the impassioned student of politics that I used to be before I arrived in the moral vortex that is Tinseltown.

  “Would you stop being so goddamn earnest and help me out here?

  We may have a burglar, okay? So just let me deal with it.”

  Now despite my fears for the future of my mixed-politics relationship, I recognized that maybe I should do just that. So I followed Luke’s shadow closely as he stole toward the house with his hand on his gun.

  But no sooner had it dawned on me that we really could be facing a life-threatening situation, vis-à-vis the burglar, than I realized what I’d done.

  “Luke.” I stopped still as his shadow tiptoed on without me.

  “Sssshhhh,” he whispered. “I think I heard something.”

  “You didn’t, actually.” I grimaced apologetically, still in an habitual whisper.

  “What?” he asked distractedly as he slowly moved his face toward the kitchen window to see if he could glimpse our intruder.