The Devil Wears Prada

 
Thanks to the four people who helped make it happen:

Stacy
Creamer—my editor. If you don’t enjoy the book, blame her…
she edited out all the really funny stuff.

Charles
Salzberg—writer and teacher. He pushed me hard to keep this project
going, so if you don’t enjoy it, blame him, too.

Deborah
Schneider—agent extraordinaire. She keeps assuring me she loves at least
fifteen percent of everything I do, say, or, especially, write.

Richard David
Story—my former boss. Easy to love him now that I no longer have to see
him before nineA.M . each day.

 And of
course a huge thanks to all those who offered no assistance whatsoever but who
promised to buy multiple copies for a name mention:

 Dave
Baiada, Dan Barasch, Heather Bergida, Lynn Bernstein, Dan Braun, Beth
Buschman-Kelly, Helen Coster, Audrey Diamond, Lydia Fakundiny, Wendy Finerman,
Chris Fonzone, Kelly Gillespie, Simone Girner, Cathy Gleason, Jon Goldstein,
Eliza Harris, Peter Hedges, Julie Hootkin, Bernie Kelberg, Alli Kirshner, John
Knecht, Anna Weber Kneitel, Jaime Lewisohn, Bill McCarthy, Dana McMakin, Ricki
Miller, Daryl Nierenberg, Wittney Rachlin, Drew Reed, Edgar Rosenberg, Brian
Seitchik, Jonathan Seitchik, Marni Senofonte, Shalom Shoer, Josh Ufberg, Kyle
White, and Richard Willis.

 And
especially to Leah Jacobs, Jon Roth, Joan and Abe Lichtenstein, and
Weisbergers: Shirley and Ed, Judy, David and Pam, Mike and Michele.

Beware of all
enterprises that require new clothes.

 —HENRY
DAVID THOREAU,WALDEN,1854

 The
light hadn’t even officially turned green at the intersection of 17th and
Broadway before an army of overconfident yellow cabs roared past the tiny
deathtrap I was attempting to navigate around the city streets.Clutch, gas,
shift (neutral to first? Or first to second?),release clutch , I repeated over
and over in my head, the mantra offering little comfort and even less direction
amid the screeching midday traffic. The little car bucked wildly twice before
it lurched forward through the intersection. My heart flip-flopped in my chest.
Without warning, the lurching evened out and I began to pick up speed. Lots of
speed. I glanced down to confirm visually that I was only in second gear, but
the rear end of a cab loomed so large in the windshield that I could do nothing
but jam my foot on the brake pedal so hard that my heel snapped off. Shit!
Another pair of seven-hundred-dollar shoes sacrificed to my complete and utter
lack of grace under pressure: this clocked in as my third such breakage this
month. It was almost a relief when the car stalled (I’d obviously
forgotten to press the clutch when attempting to brake for my life). I had a
few seconds—peaceful seconds if one could overlook the angry honking and
varied forms of the word “fuck” being hurled at me from all
directions—to pull off my Manolos and toss them into the passenger seat.
There was nowhere to wipe my sweaty hands except for the suede Gucci pants that
hugged my thighs and hips so tightly they’d both begun to tingle within
minutes of my securing the final button. My fingers left wet streaks across the
supple suede that swathed the tops of my now numb thighs. Attempting to drive
this $84,000 stick-shift convertible through the obstacle-fraught streets of
midtown at lunchtime pretty much demanded that I smoke a cigarette.

 “Fuckin‘
move, lady!” hollered a swarthy driver whose chest hair threatened to
overtake the wife-beater he wore. “What do you think this is? Fuckin’
drivin‘ school? Get outta the way!”

 I raised
a shaking hand to give him the finger and then turned my attention to the
business at hand: getting nicotine coursing through my veins as quickly as
possible. My hands were moist again with sweat, evidenced by the matches that
kept slipping to the floor. The light turned green just as I managed to touch
the fire to the end of the cigarette, and I was forced to leave it hanging
between my lips as I negotiated the intricacies ofclutch, gas, shift (neutral to
first? Or first to second?),release clutch, the smoke wafting in and out of my
mouth with each and every breath. It was another three blocks before the car
moved smoothly enough for me to remove the cigarette, but it was already too
late: the precariously long line of spent ash had found its way directly to the
sweat stain on the pants. Awesome. But before I could consider that, counting
the Manolos, I’d wrecked $3,100 worth of merchandise in under three
minutes, my cell phone bleated loudly. And as if the very essence of life
itself didn’t suck enough at that particular moment, the caller ID
confirmed my worst fear: it was Her. Miranda Priestly. My boss.

 “Ahn-dre-ah!
Ahn-dre-ah! Can you hear me, Ahn-dre-ah?” she trilled the moment I
snapped my Motorola open—no small feat considering both of my (bare) feet
and hands were already contending with various obligations. I propped the phone
between my ear and shoulder and tossed the cigarette out the window, where it
narrowly missed hitting a bike messenger. He screamed out a few highly
unoriginal “fuck yous” before weaving forward.

 “Yes,
Miranda. Hi, I can hear you perfectly.”

 “Ahn-dre-ah,
where’s my car? Did you drop it off at the garage yet?”

 The
light ahead of me blessedly turned red and looked as though it might be a long
one. The car jerked to a stop without hitting anyone or anything, and I
breathed a sigh of relief. “I’m in the car right now, Miranda, and
I should be at the garage in just a few minutes.” I figured she was probably
concerned that everything was going well, so I reassured her that there were no
problems whatsoever and we should both arrive shortly in perfect condition.

 “Whatever,”
she said brusquely, cutting me off midsentence. “I need you to pick up
Madelaine and drop her off at the apartment before you come back to the
office.” Click. The phone went dead. I stared at it for a few seconds
before I realized that she’d deliberately hung up because she had
provided all of the details I could hope to receive. Madelaine. Who the hell was
Madelaine? Where was she at the moment? Did she know I was to pick her up? Why
was she going back to Miranda’s apartment? And why on
earth—considering Miranda had a full-time driver, housekeeper, and
nanny—was I the one who had to do it?

 Remembering
that it was illegal to talk on a cell phone while driving in New York and
figuring the last thing I needed at that moment was a run-in with the NYPD, I
pulled into the bus lane and switched my flashers on.Breathe in, breathe out, I
coached myself, even remembering to apply the parking brake before taking my
foot off the regular one. It had been years since I’d driven a
stick-shift car—five years, actually, since a high school boyfriend had
volunteered his car up for a few lessons that I’d decidedly flunked—but
Miranda hadn’t seemed to consider that when she’d called me into
her office an hour and a half earlier.

 “Ahn-dre-ah,
my car needs to be picked up from the place and dropped off at the garage.
Attend to it immediately, as we’ll be needing it tonight to drive to the
Hamptons. That’s all.” I stood, rooted to the carpet in front of
her behemoth desk, but she’d already blocked out my presence entirely. Or
so I thought. “That’sall, Ahn-dre-ah. See to it right now,”
she added, still not glancing up.

 Ah,
sure, Miranda,I thought to myself as I walked away, trying to figure out the
first step in the assignment that was sure to have a million pitfalls along the
way. First was definitely to find out at which “place” the car was
located. Most likely it was being repaired at the dealership, but it could
obviously be at any one of a million auto shops in any one of the five
boroughs. Or perhaps she’d lent it to a friend and it was currently
occupying an expensive spot in a full-service garage somewhere on Park Avenue?
Of course, there was always the chance that she was referring to a new
car—brand unknown—that she’d just recently purchased that
hadn’t yet been brought home from the (unknown) dealership. I had a lot
of work to do.

 I
started by calling Miranda’s nanny, but her cell phone went straight to
voice mail. The housekeeper was next on the list and, for once, a big help. She
was able to tell me that the car wasn’t brand-new and it was in fact a
“convertible sports car in British racing green,” and that it was
usually parked in a garage on Miranda’s block, but she had no idea what
the make was or where it might currently be residing. Next on the list was
Miranda’s husband’s assistant, who informed me that, as far as she
knew, the couple owned a top-of-the-line black Lincoln Navigator and some sort
of small green Porsche. Yes! I had my first lead. One quick phone call to the
Porsche dealership on Eleventh Avenue revealed that yes, they had just finished
touching up the paint and installing a new disc-changer in a green Carrera 4
Cabriolet for a Ms. Miranda Priestly. Jackpot!

 I
ordered a Town Car to take me to the dealership, where I turned over a note
I’d forged with Miranda’s signature that instructed them to release
the car to me. No one seemed to care whatsoever that I was in no way related to
this woman, that some stranger had cruised into the place and requested someone
else’s Porsche. They tossed me the keys and only laughed when I’d
asked them to back it out of the garage because I wasn’t sure I could handle
a stick shift in reverse. It’d taken me a half hour to get ten blocks,
and I still hadn’t figured out where or how to turn around so I’d
actually be heading uptown, toward the parking place on Miranda’s block
that her housekeeper had described. The chances of my making it to 76th and
Fifth without seriously injuring myself, the car, a biker, a pedestrian, or
another vehicle were nonexistent, and this new call did nothing to calm my
nerves.

 Once
again, I made the round of calls, but this time Miranda’s nanny picked up
on the second ring.

 “Cara,
hey, it’s me.”

 “Hey,
what’s up? Are you on the street? It sounds so loud.”

 “Yeah,
you could say that. I had to pick up Miranda’s Porsche from the
dealership. Only, I can’t really drive stick. But now she called and
wants me to pick up someone named Madelaine and drop her off at the apartment.
Who the hell is Madelaine and where might she be?”

 Cara
laughed for what felt like ten minutes before she said,
“Madelaine’s their French bulldog puppy and she’s at the vet.
Just got spayed. I was supposed to pick her up, but Miranda just called and
told me to pick the twins up early from school so they can all head out to the
Hamptons.”

 “You’re
joking. I have to pick up a fuckingdog with this Porsche? Without crashing?
It’snever going to happen .”

 “She’s
at the East Side Animal Hospital, on Fifty-second between First and Second.
Sorry, Andy, I have to get the girls now, but call if there’s anything I
can do, OK?”

 Maneuvering
the green beast to head uptown sapped my last reserves of concentration, and by
the time I reached Second Avenue, the stress sent my body into meltdown.It
couldn’t possibly get worse than this, I thought as yet another cab came
within a quarter-inch of the back bumper. A nick anywhere on the car would
guarantee I lose my job—that much was obvious—but it just might
cost me my life as well. Since there was obviously not a parking spot, legal or
otherwise, in the middle of the day, I called the vet’s office from outside
and asked them to bring Madelaine to me. A kindly woman emerged a few minutes
later (just enough time for me to field another call from Miranda, this one
asking why I wasn’t back at the office yet) with a whimpering, sniffling
puppy. The woman showed me Madelaine’s stitched-up belly and told me to
drive very, very carefully because the dog was “experiencing some
discomfort.” Right, lady. I’m driving very, very carefully solely
to save my job and possibly my life—if the dog benefits from this, it’s
just a bonus.

 With Madelaine
curled up on the passenger seat, I lit another cigarette and rubbed my freezing
bare feet so my toes could resume gripping the clutch and brake pedal.Clutch,
gas, shift, release clutch, I chanted, trying to ignore the dog’s pitiful
howls every time I accelerated. She alternated between crying, whining, and
snorting. By the time we reached Miranda’s building, the pup was nearly
hysterical. I tried to soothe her, but she could sense my insincerity—and
besides, I had no free hands with which to offer a reassuring pat or nuzzle. So
this was what four years of diagramming and deconstructing books, plays, short
stories, and poems were for: a chance to comfort a small, white, batlike
bulldog while trying not to demolish someone else’s really, really expensive
car. Sweet life. Just as I had always dreamed.

 I
managed to dump the car at the garage and the dog with Miranda’s doorman
without further incident, but my hands were still shaking when I climbed into
the chauffeured Town Car that had been following me all over town. The driver
looked at me sympathetically and made some supportive comment about the
difficulty of stick shifts, but I didn’t feel much like chatting.