The First Assistant by Clare Naylor, Mimi Hare Read Free Book Online Page B

weirdly. I’m an assistant here.”
    “Not anymore, darling girl. You’re a producer,” Jason said triumphantly as we careered through the door of Katherine’s office.
    “Jason. Elizabeth. Come in.” Katherine rose from her seat, resplen-dent in a DVF wrap dress, smiled and shook our hands as if she’d invited us to tea and we’d arrived with cream cakes and a bunch of sweetpeas. That was the thing about Katherine Watson—she was so unflappable that I couldn’t bear to be in her presence. It made me feel so ruffled and useless and unpoised that I wanted to shoot myself. Being drunk in her presence was unimaginably horrible. Even Jason was shamed into sobering up somewhat and hitching his jeans above his butt crack.
    “Katherine, we just stopped by because I’d like to make an amendment to the credits of Sex Addicts if that’s okay?” he said.
    “Well, let’s see, shall we? Why don’t you both take a seat?” Katherine went to her computer and began to look things up. I took the farthest seat from her in case she caught a whiff of my whiskey breath, not that my bloodshot eyes and mangled hair weren’t a giveaway that I was plas-tered. “It’ll depend on the studio somewhat, and the nature of the deal, but since you have sole producer credit, I think we’ll be able to arrange that for you. Who’s your lawyer?” she asked.
    “Karl Austen.” Jason was now sitting upright like an obedient schoolboy.
    “Good, I’ll get him on the phone. Hold on,” Katherine said. How she managed to make it to the end of the day with her hair still attached to her head, let alone wearing a dash of lipstick and immaculate mascara,
    I had no clue. Having Scott as my business partner would certainly have made me tear my hair out.
    As Katherine talked business with Jason’s lawyer, I made the mistake of closing my eyes for a moment. Seconds later I was spinning ever faster, around and around in my head. I opened my eyes and saw the room was still in the same place.
    “I’ve got the spins,” I whispered to Jason, who now seemed to be engaged in a serious discussion with Katherine about back-ends and ceil-ings and bonuses. Or they could have been discussing what their grannies gave them for their birthdays, for all I could tell.
    “I’m sorry, Elizabeth, what was that?” Katherine looked at me expectantly, as if I were about to announce the reinvention of the wheel.
    “So we’re all agreed that this is not a financial amendment?” she asked. “Oh, that all sounds just fine to me,” I improvised. She looked relieved.
    “Okay. And Jason. You’re happy with all this? I’ll call the studio in the morning to okay it, and we can get the paperwork to you tomorrow, if so. Karl said he’d expedite it. Obviously with screenings going on at the moment, you’ll want to get Elizabeth’s name in lights sooner rather than later.” She began to stand up, her charming way of ushering us like dust balls from her office so she could get on with some real work for clients who weren’t drunken retards. “Then Elizabeth can share all the glory.” She smiled sweetly. God, could it really be that she didn’t have a bad bone in her perfect body?
    “Exactly,” Jason said, with a tone in his voice that I began to recognize as my haze of alcohol burned off with the heat of shame.
    Jason was being devious. I knew how he acted when he was doing something sly—after all, I’d witnessed it many times as his erstwhile— and now it seemed, reinstated—producing partner. I’d seen him use and abuse a few people along the way. And now it dawned on me what he was doing: He didn’t want to share the glory with me, he wanted to share the blame. He wanted someone to be by his side and suffer, too. “Thanks for your time, Katherine. We gotta have that lunch sometime soon,” Jason said, kissing her on both cheeks.
    “We will. And Elizabeth, see you in the morning.”
    “Yesshhhh,” I said as I tried to slide away unnoticed down the