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Alice

“Are you serious? This room is the size of my closet at my beach house. And my closet has more windows,” my boss Farrah, says cringing dramatically as she looks around the space.

It’s a beautiful room decorated in white with pops of pale yellow. The queen bed is layered with pillows and a crisp, bright-white duvet. A few framed vintage travel posters for coastal California are perfectly lined up on the walls.

“Check out that view, though.” I walk over and open the doors that lead onto a small balcony with two chairs and a tiny table, letting in the sound of the crashing waves.

She sighs, unimpressed. “Yeah, it’s nice. And I guess I won’t be in here much, anyway. I’ll be too busy with JP.”

“Exactly.” I side-eye the room’s small closet. “Which clothes are most important for the next few days? I’ll unpack what you’ll need and store the rest of the luggage in my room.”

Not that I have any extra space. The producers of Celebrity Love Malibu , the show Farrah is about to start filming here, balked when her agent told them she’d need a room for her personal assistant. The other fifteen celebrities on the show will all manage the five-week stay here without someone to bring them Starbucks and puree fresh fruit face masks, but not Farrah. And since it’s a sixteen-bedroom house and there are sixteen contestants, the producers had to squeeze me into the house’s staff quarters by moving a chef’s assistant to a hotel. My room is roughly the size of a postage stamp and it smells like fish.

“I don’t know yet.” Farrah shrugs. “The producers said they want their wardrobe people to dress me, but I’m thinking no. I’ll probably need Cara.”

My brows fly up in alarm. “Cara? Have you talked to her about it?”

Farrah laughs. “Of course not, that’s your job.”

I suppress a sigh and start typing out a text to Cara, a boutique owner who has been helping choose and order clothes for Farrah for more than a year. She’s in demand and her schedule is always booked, but Farrah expects her to be available anytime.

This is my own fault. I know how Farrah is about clothes. I should have asked her about it when she signed the contract to do the show.

“I’m starving,” Farrah says, sitting down on the bed to look at her phone. “Can you get me some tuna sushi? And a lavender water?”

“Of course. I’ll go right now.” I duck out of the room as quickly as I can, eager for a break.

Some people think actors hardly work, but the ones at the top of their game, like Farrah, work very hard. She starts her days at sunrise with yoga and meditation, which she insists I do with her. Then, a small breakfast and a ninety-minute workout. Those things are nonnegotiable unless she’s filming and the director can’t accommodate it.

When she’s not filming, her schedule is still full. She’s developing a line of cosmetics, and she has meetings for that and all sorts of other things, lunches and dinners with friends, and parties.

So freaking many parties. I’m an introvert and I hate everything about them. The cackling. The frivolity. The phoniness. Farrah rarely asks me to go to those with her because she doesn’t want to seem high maintenance.

Those are the evenings I recharge in bed with a book or catch up on her emails. Working for Farrah is demanding. We tried splitting it into two jobs--both of which were still a lot--but she complained so much about the other assistants that after going through several, she offered to triple my salary to work for her basically around the clock.

It’s not as bad as it sounds. When she’s filming, she’s sometimes occupied for sixteen hours a day or more, and I can pretty much do what I want as long as she can reach me by text. And it’s worth it to make the money I do at age twenty-six.

“Hey...Farrah’s assistant, right?” A middle-aged man with a baseball hat and a beard stops me as I’m about to walk out the beach house’s front door.

“Alice. Yes.”

“Can you ask her to meet us in the library for a production meeting at two?”

The what ? Did he just say there’s a library here? Is this heaven masquerading as a beach house?

“Sure can.” I smile and wave at him, texting Farrah on my walk to the car.

Occasionally Farrah likes to ride places with me, even though she has a driver. She needs to wear a hat and glasses to disguise herself when we go, but she still likes to get out. That’s why I always get a rental she’d enjoy, and this time, I went with a white convertible Bronco.

I had to park more than a quarter of a mile from the house because of the show’s filming and security zones, but the walk to the car is nice on this bright June day.

Sunny California is a welcome change from the Drakensberg Mountains in South Africa, where Farrah was filming a movie until it wrapped six days ago. We had to watch out for leopards there, and I couldn’t get the chai tea lattes I’m semidependent on.

When I reach the Bronco, I text my mom.

Alice: Hey, how is he today? And how are you?

I know she won’t respond immediately, so I tuck my phone into my bag. I tie my dark shoulder-length hair back into a ponytail so I can enjoy the ride without hair in my face. Then I take the car’s top down and look for a local sushi place on my phone.

There’s one that looks good about five miles away. I start my drive, admiring the modern, sprawling mansions around me. They’re all set far back from the road, landscaping and trees used to create privacy. This is exactly the kind of neighborhood people would drive through just to check out the houses--if they could.

But it’s gated. I had to submit my driver’s license and get a background check just to be able to come in. Farrah’s face gets her into places like this. She just smiles and waves and is immediately recognized as one of the most famous actresses in the world.

I don’t resent it. Being recognized and approached everywhere sounds terrible to me. I’m lucky--I get to experience a lot of things alongside Farrah, but I don’t have to deal with being the famous person myself.

Experiences like hiking in the Drakensberg Mountains which was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. My parents were floored when I FaceTimed them so they could see a vervet monkey in a tree one day, so close I could make out the tiniest details of its face.

I’ve also been sailing on mega yachts, had dinner at the Eiffel Tower, and skydived. Being Farrah’s assistant is exhausting at times, but it’s never boring.

Parking is impossible near the sushi place, so I end up walking a couple of blocks. When I step inside, there are people waiting for their orders, but no one is in line to place an order.

I smile at the guy behind the counter.

“What can I get you?” he asks.

“Is your tuna sashimi grade?”

“Yes. Yellowfin.”

“Great. I’ll take a tuna roll, please. No sauce, wasabi or ginger, not even on the side. And I only want two pieces of the roll in the container. And no Styrofoam. You can put it in a paper cup if you need to.”

He lowers his brows, clearly questioning my sanity. I’m used to it.

“Only two pieces?” He gestures to a case of already-prepared individual pieces of sushi.

I shake my head. “No, I need it freshly made, please. I’ll pay for the entire roll, but I only want two pieces.”

He shrugs. A guy in line shoots me a judgmental glance, probably over Farrah’s neurotic sushi order.

Having an entire roll in the container is too tempting, she says. She finds two pieces “satisfying”. But if I get an entire roll so she can save some for later, it doesn’t feel like a real meal to her.

That’s because two pieces of sushi aren’t a meal, but I don’t argue with her. She’s expected to look perfect and that creates a lot of pressure.

Once I have the sushi, it takes me almost thirty minutes to get to Whole Foods, with traffic getting heavier as it gets later. I know Whole Foods sells Voss water, though, and that’s the only kind Farrah drinks. I pick up two dozen large glass bottles of it and the store’s entire stock of organic lemons and dried lavender.

When I get back to the beach house, I’ll prepare enough waters to last Farrah today and tomorrow. That’ll take all the lemons I bought because I slice up three for every water and add in a couple sprigs of lavender.

Hopefully I can hit up a farmers’ market tomorrow when she’s working and get more lemons.

I check my phone before leaving the Whole Foods parking lot and see that Farrah has texted me three times.

Farrah: Sushi???

Farrah: Wilting away here...

Farrah: the show’s MUA asked if she can pluck my brows!! Can you even?? I don’t even know you, rando MUA, but sure, go ahead and potentially ruin my entire face...

I shake my head, smiling at her overly dramatic reaction, and text back.

Alice: Whole Foods was a long drive. Heading back to the house now.

Farrah: Okay, hurry.

Farrah: I saw JP!! His smile made my ovaries quiver. Sooo glad you taught me that football stuff!

I set my phone down without responding because traffic is looking nightmarish at this point and I don’t want to waste any time.

When Farrah’s agent told her who the other contestants on the show were, she immediately decided to end up with JP Covington, a pro football quarterback. I made her study guides about the game and quizzed her for hours until she had it down. Then we started watching old games and I explained things to her and then made her explain things to me.

It only takes me twenty minutes to get back to my previous parking place. I replace the Bronco’s top and load the water and lemons into empty tote bags I keep in my purse. Everything just barely fits, and the bags are heavy.

“Badge?” a guy monitoring the security perimeter asks me.

It’s in my purse, so I set my bags down and get it out to show him.

After scrutinizing it, he says, “You need to wear that at all times, please.”

“Okay.” I put the lanyard over my head and pick my stuff back up.

A woman jogs past us and I recognize her as Misty Meyers, an Olympic gymnast. The security guy ignores her. But I guess that tracks because she’s one of the contestants on the show.

When the beach house’s entrance comes into view, I see a couple of cars in the unloading zone. I head for the side entrance where the kitchen is, hoping to avoid running into people on my way into the house. My shoulders are burning from the weight of all the glass bottles.

“Go long!” a deep male voice calls out. Then he laughs and says, “Jesus, Lorenzo. Is that what hockey players consider long?”

“Your mom says it’s the biggest she’s ever had!” The man who responds is huge, and he’s running in reverse so he can keep his eyes on the football arcing toward us.

Like directly toward us. Everything seems to be in slow motion as I realize what’s about to happen.

“Hey!” I cry in alarm. “You’re g--”

It’s too late. He barrels into me, knocking the bags from my arms and sending me flying.