The Assistants(47)
I wondered what Robert would think if he heard about our launch party, or when he heard about it, because Robert heard everything. Would he be proud of me, say, Good job, shooter? Would he become suspicious? And once the website went live, would it alter the way Robert looked at me? Would it force him to see something he hadn’t seen before? Maybe he would sit me down for a drink in his office, and someone else would cut the limes. Imagine that. Maybe he would trust me a little less but respect me a little more. That was a trade-off worth making.
Ginger was on the phone with someone new. “You want a meeting with him? I’ll put you on his calendar for this Wednesday morning, right after his massage so he’ll be in a good mood, but only if you can deliver us no less than five donors. And I’m talking significant donors, like the Rockefeller kids, or the offspring to some oil mogul, or a Russian metals tycoon.”
“What about George Clooney? Can’t we get him involved somehow?”
I had the urge to go to the kitchen to remind Emily of that one altercation Robert and Clooney had on a Long Island golf course, the one where Robert made Clooney rerake his dune dirt or whatever—but I resisted. Perhaps Clooney’s assistant would want to bury the hatchet, or the rake, as it were, and help us out.
My lord, this was blowing up fast. Fast as small-town gossip. Faster than a prairie fire with a tailwind.
How much money could we raise from real donors? I hadn’t truly considered the possibilities, but all of a sudden it seemed like there was so much money all around us.
“Fontana!” Emily shouted in the direction of my bedroom door. “What are your measurements? I want to call you in a proper dress for the party.”
I turned off my lamp and threw my covers over my head.
Maybe there was such a thing as too much money. Imagine that, ceiling rain bubble, imagine that.
20
IT WAS PRETTY CRAZY, how everyone hopped on the Tina Fontana train. How there was a Tina Fontana train. Emily and I (and sometimes Ginger, Wendi, and Lily, too) started going to Bar Nine after work, taking over the back room to make plans, talk things over. And each night that we went, more Titan assistants showed up. They’d linger for a while near our table before making a move, but then it would be: Hi, I’m so-and-so, assistant to so-and-so. Hi, Tina! You probably don’t know me, but I’m so-and-so’s assistant. Hey there, my name is so-and-so and I assist so-and-so.
I need help, each of them said.
These were the assistants to some of the most influential men in the world. They ran their boss’s high-powered lives with formidable efficiency. And so, so many of them wept.
I’ve been perma-lance with no health insurance for four years, and he spends my year’s salary on a jaunt into Prada on the way back from lunch.
I live with two roommates in a one-bedroom just to get by, while my boss takes a cab to the Hamptons every weekend. Do you know how much a cab to the Hamptons costs?
Most of them addressed me, not Emily, even though she was prettier. I had a hunch it was because I was the Big Boss’s assistant, so by proxy I was the big boss of whatever this was. We were all defined by whom we assisted. On e-mail chains among us with bosses of the same name it was: My Jeremy can do Tuesday at ten a.m. Does that work for your Jeremy? But Robert was always just Robert. I was queen bee assistant.
All of the women who came to us had their own story, but it was the same story, and not so different from Emily’s or mine. Student-loan debt coupled with shit pay had driven them all to desperation—okay, desperation might be an overstatement. We were assistants, not coal miners, not janitors at a nuclear power plant—but I’m talking serious frustration here.
After two straight weeks of this, I finally took Emily aside in a quiet corner of the room, pushed a fresh mojito into her hands to keep her calm, and said, “What the hell is going on? Why are all of our lives so utterly f*cked up? We’re college-educated white women, for f*ck’s sake.”
She didn’t have a ready answer, for once. She only suckled her mojito.
“Do you even realize what this has become?” I gestured toward the flock of women converged at our table, awaiting our return. “This started as a means to an end, but it’s not anymore. We should be preparing.”
Emily got serious then. “You’re right, we should get facials. And you definitely need to get your teeth whitened. They do it with a glow-light now, it only takes an hour.” She moved past me to return to our table, but I caught her by her bracelet.
“We might have to make a statement,” I said. “Like publicly. These girls are already looking to us for—”
“They’re looking to us for money, Fontana. That’s it.” Emily freed her wrist from my grasp and rubbed at it dramatically. “Don’t flatter yourself.”
I took a pause. Was I flattering myself? Was I putting myself at the center of this, egocentrically?
I thought back to my years at NYU’s Women’s Center. Egocentrically was a term used ad nauseam there, along with gaze (e.g., “the male gaze”) and voice. Voice was huge. There was one girl who sang to herself all the time—like, constantly—and if anyone asked her to please be quiet, we’re trying to plan a Take Back the Night rally here, she would scream out, “Don’t try to silence me! This is my voice!” And the room would concur, because the Women’s Center, if nothing else, was a place where everyone had a right to their voice no matter how annoying and disruptive it may have been. Was that me now? Flattering myself into thinking I could sing and should be singing aloud when other people were present, and believing I had anything worth singing about?