Miss Gracie steps into the living room, into the circle of emperors, and I know what’s next. She doesn’t need to say anything. I walk to meet her, to meet this, my fate. She sits and I sit across from her, our dueling positions the same as when I first sat with her in her home down the hill.
She says, “I can’t believe you’re doing this to us, dear.”
I say, “I’m sorry.”
“I’m here in a last effort to dissuade you from leaving.”
I don’t respond. There’s nothing more to say.
Miss Gracie is doing the math, sizing me up, readying herself for a scene. “Do you know why women have their period, dear?” Miss Gracie asks.
I manage a suspicious “No, ma’am.”
Miss Gracie says, “It’s because God wanted us to suffer for our children. I’ll take any suffering for my child—I have for years, and I don’t love her any less for it. I love her more for it, more than anything. What can I give you to stay? Money? Fame? Want to make movies with me? What? Anything. Kathi’s life is my life.”
But there is no stopping this bullet train, no sense telling Miss Gracie what she already knows.
I say, “I’m sorry, Miss Gracie.”
She nods rare defeat. It doesn’t suit her; she’s miscast in this role. But Miss Gracie acts as if she’s seen this all before, like she already knows the ending. Sometimes I forget there were other assistants—other secretaries—before me.
“Can I help you walk back down?” I ask.
“No, dear,” Miss Gracie says. “As you know, downhill is the easy part.” She stands slowly, and I rise in tandem with her. Miss Gracie doesn’t look at me again as she turns and begins her journey farther and farther away from me.
I watch Miss Gracie slowly walk away, out of the house and out of my life. I rub my hand across the front of my gray cardigan, my uniform gifted to me in the first days, now slightly weathered, slightly sun-faded from all the action, retiring with me.
I sit back down under the sparkle and glory of the great room in Kathi Kannon’s mansion.
I watch the sun begin to set, and that’s when Kathi comes home, maybe from Vegas, shopping bags in hand and soon out of hand—dumped on the floor, trinkets and jewelry and clothing spilling out—things for no one in particular, and yet things, eventually, for everyone, anyone.
“Want to write today?” I ask her, a final jest.
“Not today, Cockring. Maybe tomorrow,” she says. Is it a jab? Indeed, perhaps tomorrow she will begin her writing, finally putting pen to paper, finally helping me do my job, when it’s no longer my job.
I do my time, 10:30 A.M. until 6:01 P.M.
Our world is still warmed by fading Beverly Hills daylight when I go to find Kathi, to bid an awkward, feeble farewell.
She’s on the back porch, spraying vanilla perfume all over Roy. “Stand still!” she’s shouting, as Roy bucks and twirls, desperate to escape. Kathi doesn’t look up at me as I approach.
I say, “Well, it’s time.”
Roy spins and jumps under her arms.
She says, “Okay.”
I say, “Goodbye, Kathi.”
Kathi stops, turns from Roy to me, and stands. Roy stops his jittering and he watches, too. Kathi takes a couple steps over to me and we hug. And she says softly to me, muffled by my grasp but loud and clearly enough, “Goodbye, darling.”
Darling. Could it be any worse?
“I’m not good at this kind of thing,” she says.
“It doesn’t have to be a thing. We can just make it a see you later.”
She breaks from our hug but still holds my shoulders, looking me in the eyes.
“See you later, Cockring,” she says.
“See you later,” I say into those familiar eyes, those famous eyes, the gaze decades old, the one I’ve treasured since I was a boy, my idol, my living action figure.
With that, Kathi Kannon, film icon, lets go, turns, and walks away from me and back into her home. And dutifully following her into their unknown, Roy, trotting behind her loyally and rightfully through that doorframe, now a portal out of my universe. Their exit stirs the Beverly Hills air, the smell of vanilla pooling around me as I stand utterly alone on the back porch of the home of a hero, my heroine, the nearby water fountain made of her broken plates flowing beside me, draining, leaking, emptying—even the fountain reminding me nothing lasts forever.
Assistant Bible Verse 145: You can’t win. If you leave, you’ve left them. If you stay, you become them. No goodbye is ever good, or good enough.
On my way out, I sit at my desk for the last time. I open my laptop and pull up the sacred document, the one that took what feels like lifetimes to compose—my life, Kathi’s, Roy’s; I print the Assistant Bible for the new guy, whoever her business manager eventually decides to hire, whoever Kathi finally decides to approve and amuse and bless and beguile.
The pages of memories print beside me—so coldly and emotionless those pages tumble upon each other out of the printer, a collated collection of Kathi’s likes and dislikes and preferences and peculiarities: Don’t wake her before ten; she prefers the tall glasses in the bar; never leave any pale-blue pill cases lying around. As if those delicate details can be captured in black and white. I pull the pages into my hands and tap them on the desk to make a neat stack, a final effort to leave something tidy, some mark of order. I stack the Assistant Bible on the desk. After Kathi and Roy, it’s perhaps the hardest thing to leave behind. So many lessons, so much truth, such a big part of my life, now useless to me.
I twist her keys off my key ring—her shed, her pool house, her front door.
I hang the empty purple leather backpack on the chair.
I log out of Kathi Kannon’s iCloud, her contacts, her calendar.
And in an instant, at last, painfully, no more pink dots.
22
I’m standing alone at the same bar where it started a few years ago, the Village Scribe. I’m looking at their drinks menu—Truth, Self-Esteem, Inspiration—and wondering, Where’s mine: Where’s Lost? Where’s Worried? Where’s Insecure?
I do a lap, walking around and remembering when it was all new, the smell of the alcohol, the shape of the teardrop room in the back corner. Bruce led me here, guiding me, goading me with his high fade haircut and low-level anxiety.
My feet are planted in the same place I stood when I met West and Crooner and Titanic and the lot. Jasmine stood right here with me back then, toasting my life, my newfound power nestled in the heart of a complicated, beautiful film icon. Not far from this spot, she introduced me to her father. He tried to warn me.
I’m here to meet them all for drinks, for our last work drinks, but no one is here.
I sent the email invite a week ago, my last “fwd” in their long line of “fwds.” No one wrote back. I followed up again a couple days ago. Only Jasmine responded: “Sorry, Baby. Can’t make it. Good luck. Maybe next time.”
But I know there won’t be a next time—they have no time for a mere mortal. I get it. I’m no longer Kathi’s Baby. I’ve quit her, and they’ve quit me. For them to come now would be a violation of sorts, an affront to the purpose of this entanglement at its core. For them to come now would mean it isn’t work drinks, it’s just social drinks. No one has time for that. And I accept it. I left their world. I left that prima prison, where assistants are shadows, puppets, pawns, cogs in the wheel, known without autonomy and known only by the name of their employer. Who are they to come meet me now, in my own skin, my own clothes, a stranger before them, independent and powerless? And who am I to blame them, these souls who were my support for a time, these great people, unthanked, unappreciated, absurd pseudo-soldiers who give their lives—their time, their youth—to the lives of others who are wealthier, more connected, more famous? These assistants, who put up with abuse and long hours and screaming and harassment and heartless wages and whose names will be forgotten once they’re out of the Shine; these assistants, whose real names I don’t even know.