I look out, unsure if I’m seeing exactly what she’s seeing.
“Look at all these people we know,” she says. “If we could harness the full power of all assistants, we could own this town.”
“Is that your end game here?” I ask.
“End game? Fuck no. I don’t want this to ever end. I’m a lifer! I love being a gatekeeper. It’s better than the alternative, a fucking consumer. Can you imagine watching a movie and not knowing any names in the credits? Hell! Do you know Vanessa Redgrave’s mantra before she goes out onstage?”
“No,” I say, raising my eyebrows, bracing for a possible taste of genius.
“Her assistant told me that before every show, she closes her eyes, pictures the audience, and says, ‘Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you.’ She says ‘Fuck you’ to the people paying to see her! It’s almost like she’d rather be in an empty theater, like her art is the treasure, she’s not doing it for them, she’s doing it for her. Isn’t that amazing! That’s how I feel! I’m an assistant for my own pleasure.”
“But you don’t make art,” I say. “You’re an assistant to a publicist.”
“A famous celebrity publicist! That’s my art, baby!” Jasmine says, putting her martini to her lips and taking the last sip. “Oh, fuck,” she says. “There’s Poker Face. Do I look cuter than her?” Jasmine turns to me and fluffs her hair as a pop diva’s assistant passes us.
“Do you think it’s weird that I call you Jasmine and not a nickname?” I ask.
“Jasmine is my nickname,” she says.
I nearly drop my drink.
“Oh, careful, baby,” she says.
“Who are you guys?” I ask.
“I like the name Jasmine. It was inspired by a bag of jasmine rice, because that’s the first thing my boss ever made me buy and I spilled it all over the floor of her Bentley and two years later we still find bits of it stuck in our sandals.”
“Don’t be shocked,” West adds. “None of us have real names, or real lives.” She turns to a passing bartender. “I guess I’ll have a glass of champagne, please,” leaving out that it’ll be her third.
“Bruce?” I ask.
“Short for Bruce Wayne,” Jasmine says. “His fancy agent boss represents the old Batman.”
“Holy shit, what is real? What do you guys call me?”
Jasmine pauses.
Assistant Bible Verse 124: Never ask about your nickname.
“You can tell me,” I say.
“Baby,” she says.
“Baby!” I shout.
“Yeah,” Jasmine says. “Like ‘Kathi’s baby.’”
“What? Kathi’s baby?! That’s the best you could do? Baby?”
“Well, there was some debate,” Jasmine says.
“But we decided it’s sort of perfect since you nurse at her tit,” West says, her eyebrows cocked.
“Her—what?! I do not!” I yell.
“I can’t believe you’re so surprised,” Jasmine says. “We’ve been saying it to your face.”
“When you’ve said, ‘Hey, baby,’ to me, I thought you were just greeting me affectionately!”
“Well, we don’t all have great nicknames,” Jasmine says. “We’re all victims of what others think of us, of our identity based on our employer. It doesn’t matter who you really are, it’s how you’re perceived.”
“But I’m not Kathi’s baby,” I complain. “I’m her equal.”
“Oh, sweetie,” Jasmine says, putting her hand on my shoulder, giving me a gentle shake. “No, you’re not.”
“But we’ve been together a lot, and month and after month we’re getting closer. I’ve been a huge help for her mental illness,” I say.
“You’re lucky your boss admits she has mental illness. The rest of us mostly have to manage up,” West says.
“See what we mean,” Jasmine says. “You’re like a baby fearing Mommy will be unwell and hold back the milk.”
“It’s not about the mommy milk.” I say, cringing. “It’s just: Shouldn’t we help?” I ask, wringing my hands, feeling sweat on my forehead and back, the telltale signs my anxiety is piping up. “Shouldn’t we do something for them? Find better doctors or something?”
“Just take her money,” Jasmine says. “And don’t get too involved. Or, in your case, try to get less involved.”
“I’ll drink to that,” West says, her glass reloaded.
“But I’m helping her,” I insist. “I’m proud of that. I really do feel like family—not her baby, but her family.”
Hey, Siri, I want to be open, to be honest, to get credit. I want my colleagues to give me praise, which doesn’t come.
“These people will never be our family,” Jasmine says.
“But I’m so close,” I say.
“No, you’re not,” she says.
I smile, my lie, my default emotional setting, better than my default physical one: sweating and clawing at the (now longer) curl on the side of my head. No sense in arguing with Jasmine et al. Maybe they’re right. I hear my father screaming inside me: DO NO HARM! It’s a doctor’s oath, but Dad mistakenly thinks it’s the Boy Scout motto. He forced me to be a Scout and had fantasies of me going all the way to Eagle, but it was clear early on that I wasn’t destined for it. I was more obsessed with which of my handsome scout mates would be sleeping in my tent with me than how to start a fire with lawn clippings. He finally let me quit after I broke a glass in our kitchen. It slipped out of my hand and shattered. He was at work, and I didn’t want to get in trouble, so I gathered up all the broken bits, put them in a Ziploc storage bag, and threw them into a briar patch next to our house. When he got home, he happened to find the one tiny millimeter-sized sliver of glass I must have missed. “WHO DID THIS?” he screamed. “WHO BROKE THIS?” I copped to it, shyly, meekly, in a head-down kind of plea for mercy. He wasn’t violent with his hands—he never hit me or spanked me—he was violent with his words, which cut me and still labor in my head. “WHERE’S THE REST OF THE GLASS?!”
I told him it was in the briar patch and he exploded.
“WHAT IF A FUCKING RABBIT CUTS ITSELF ON THE GLASS?! DON’T THE SCOUTS SAY, ‘DO NO HARM’?! GO FUCKING GET IT! ALL YOU DO IS HARM EVERYONE AROUND YOU!” I spent hours inching my way into the briars to try to get the little baggie of glass. Fearing snakes and cuts and the sight of my own blood, I finally got one of his ladders from the basement and plopped it on top of the briars, walked across, and retrieved the contraband. No rabbits harmed.
DO NO HARM! His scream still rings inside me, still applies to my life—and now to Kathi’s—despite my best efforts to quash his violence. Therapista says a mature mind can decipher which thoughts to keep and which to ignore.
I’m thinking of Kathi as I drink beside these new friends, new colleagues. I’m thinking of how I can help her, free her from harm. The alcohol soothes me, the sharp taste and warmth in my throat remind me of times when my drinking and pot smoking were a regular ritual.