His Assistant - Alexa Land Page 0,4

everyone wanted a piece of them, so my job included fielding calls, answering emails, and handling their presence on social media. I also acted as their representative with journalists, publicists, lawyers, business managers—the list went on and on. I wondered who’d been handling all of that for Harper, since he hadn’t had an assistant for the last month or two.

I turned on the computer, so I could take a look at the scheduling program I’d set up for Harper before I quit. While I was waiting for it to boot up, a tiny beige devil darted into the room, spotted me behind the desk, and started barking at me. I said, “Cool your jets, Pepe, you know who I am.”

That just made the chihuahua bark louder, and then he ran over to me and latched onto the cuff of my jeans. When he tried to shake my leg, he mostly just succeeded in flinging himself around.

I tried to sound firm as I said, “No, Pepe! Let go.” That did nothing, so I ended up scrambling onto the desktop. He hung from my pant leg for a few moments before finally dropping onto the floor, and then he went right back to barking at me.

A few moments later, a golden retriever appeared in the doorway, and I called, “Hey, Buddy. Can you help me with your little pal here?” Buddy stepped into the room, and I said, “Good boy.” Then he took the handle in his mouth and pulled the door shut behind him, probably to block out the noise. I sighed, and Pepe went right on barking.

When Harper found me sometime later, I was sitting cross-legged on the desk with tissues sticking out of my ears, which didn’t help at all to muffle the barking. As soon as he opened the door, Pepe ran past him and disappeared down the hall, and Harper frowned and said, “I’m surprised he didn’t remember you.” He was cradling his favorite chicken in one arm, because of course he was.

“I’m sure he recognized me. He always acted like that.”

I pulled the tissues from my ears and tossed them in the trash can before climbing off the desk. Then I sat in the office chair and gestured at the blank calendar on the screen as I asked, “Where’s your current schedule?”

“I’ve just sort of been keeping it on my phone since my last assistant quit.” He looked apologetic as he dropped onto one of the two chairs on the other side of the desk. The scrawny white chicken just looked confused, but that was nothing new.

When he handed me his phone, I asked, “Same password?” Not surprisingly, his lock screen was a picture of the chicken he was currently holding. Harper nodded, so I typed in the chicken’s name and pulled up the calendar as I said, “Should I even ask what you did to get your last assistant to quit?”

“Nothing, really. I was just…me.”

I pulled up the calendar app on the phone and turned the screen to face him. “This is blank, too.”

“Yeah, I know. Whenever I need to remember something, I text it to myself.”

I stared at him long enough to make him fidget, then pulled up his texts. Sure enough, there were dozens of reminders, from buying toothpaste to RSVPing to Elton John’s Oscar after-party, and everything in between. The Oscars were a month ago, and I wondered if he’d ever actually RSVPed to that party. Not that it really mattered. All he had to do was show up and flash his dimpled smile, and he’d be welcomed just about anywhere with open arms.

I said, “This is a terrible system. You know that, right?”

“See why I was so desperate to hire you back?”

I put down the phone and turned to the computer. “I’m going to check the emails from your publicist so we can see what you’re supposed to be doing next week. Is this the same password?”

“No. I changed it to ‘password’ so I’d remember it.”

“You’re kidding.”

The hen was starting to squirm, so he put her on the desk. I changed the password and wrote the new one on a sticky note for Harper, and the chicken immediately pulled it off the pad. Then she got flustered, because it stuck to her beak. She squawked and half-flew, half-tumbled to the floor, then started dashing around with the neon yellow note flapping like a sail.

While he dove onto the floor to help the chicken, I told him, “You have over two thousand