Free The Second Assistant by Clare Naylor, Mimi Hare

are planning to humiliate them all at Daniel’s home by bringing in strippers. Honestly, Elizabeth, I’m shocked.”
    “What?” I asked with a suddenly dry throat.
    “Glad I’m not in your cheap shoes.” Ryan laughed evilly into my ear.
    “Ryan, wait . . . you told me to order Crazy Girls,” I stammered.
    “Did I?” Ryan asked. “I must have made a mistake. Oops.” Then there was radio silence.
    I looked around in a blind panic to see what I could do to stop the strippers stripping, but George had just arrived, guests were on the grounds, and I couldn’t escape from the door. What could I do except pray that I still had Ryan’s e-mail instructions on my computer in case I was required to explain myself? I pushed the thought to the back of my mind.
    “That’s some fine ice, baby.” Nick, one of the heat-packing bouncers, winked at me as he clocked my courtesy-of-Lara necklace. I looked down, and despite the fact that my face was melting and my hair was wilting and my spirits were evaporating and I was most likely about to lose my job, I immediately felt pretty special thanks to my diamonds. Which were caressing my chest as no man ever had. I thoughthow impressed Jake Hudson would be when he saw me, or at least how improved I was from our last encounter, with my greasy clumps of hair and dazed expression.
    “Thanks. Not mine, of course.” I smiled at Nick. “Oh, look, here they come.” I pulled a nervous face as the first of the guests poured from the procession of cars that had begun to drift toward the house. I scoured my list for the bigwigs I’d never heard of and smiled politely as I checked them off and ushered them through. The hair, the ice, the chiffon, the haute couture. Never were so many people so plump of lip and blank of expression. It was all I could do to stop myself from elbowing Nick in the ribs with astonishment every time I saw a remarkable pièce de surgerie cosmétique, as I discreetly liked to call it.
    All this, though, was par for the course. I had anticipated the fabulousness of the guests. What I didn’t know about was the foulness of the Uninvited. Not, I hasten to add, the hundreds of people who had begun arriving at Daniel’s gate that afternoon with their sandwiches and baseball caps and cameras in hopes of catching a glimpse of an idol or two. Or the women from Mississippi with their sign that read BABES FROM BILOXI BARK TO BANG BEN . No, their screams were nothing compared to those of the professional gate-crashers.
    I have to point out here that everyone in Hollywood is desperate to be invited to parties—they differ merely in the degree of their desperation. Some well-adjusted folk will only call in a favor from a producer friend if it’s a Charlie’s Angels premiere. Others have a more pathological need to be seen at everything, and their wiles will necessarily be more drastic. They might use the name of someone they know to be on the list to get into a party, while some other desperados might date a marketing girl at Universal to ensure that they can get onto any list at any time. Because wangling an invite is a popular pastime in Los Angeles. They start young, too. A big-time producer in town was once virtually disowned by his daughter because he couldn’t get her tickets to a Harry Potter premiere. “What’s the matter, Dad, got no juice at Warner Brothers?” she said scornfully before faxing the studio head herself. And scoring, I might add.
    And now, all of a sudden, I was the girl with the golden list. Initially I hadn’t expected my duties as party planner to be quite so extensive, and Ryan was supposed to be sending someone to take over from me, but, for the time being, the tiny bit of power I wielded was beginningto amuse me. Movie stars slipped by without a hitch, and I’d become quite adept at flicking through the alphabetically ordered pages to find those I had never heard of. I was like St. Peter at the gates of heaven. Until, that is, Veronica