The Devil Wears Prada (12 page)

 Oh.

 “For
the past four years.”

 Oh, my.

 “And
he absolutely loves it. Says he can’t imagine wanting to live alone in such
a big city when his mom and dad are such great company.”

 “Whoa!
Say no more. I don’t think we’ve ever had a seven-tenths fall all
the way to a zero after the first date. Your guy set a new record.
Congratulations. Your day was officially worse than mine.” I leaned over
to kick my bedroom door closed when I heard Shanti and Kendra come home from
work. I heard a guy’s voice with them and wondered if either of my
roommates had boyfriends. I’d seen them a combined total of only ten minutes
in the last week and a half, because they seemed to work longer hours than I
did.

 “That
bad? How could your day be bad? You work infashion, ” she said.

 There
was a quiet knocking on the door.

 “Hold
on a sec, someone’s here. Come in!” I called to the door, much too
loud for the tiny space. I waited for one of my quiet roommates to timidly ask
if I’d remembered to call the landlord to put my name on the lease (no)
or bought more paper plates (no) or had taken down any phone messages (no), but
Alex appeared.

 “Hey,
can I call you back? Alex just showed up.” I was thrilled to see him, so
excited that he’d surprised me, but a small part of me had been looking
forward to just taking a shower and crawling into bed.

 “Sure.
Tell him I say hi. And remember what a lucky girl you are for having completed
the fraction with him, Andy. He’s great. Hold on to that one.”

 “Don’t
I know it. The kid’s a goddamn saint.” I smiled in his direction.

 “‘Bye.”

 “Hi!”
I willed myself to first sit up, then stand up and walk over to him.
“What a great surprise!” I went to hug him but he backed away,
keeping his arms behind his back. “What’s wrong?”

 “Nothing
at all. I know you’ve had such a long week, and, knowing you, I figured
you hadn’t bothered to eat yet, so I brought the food to you.” He
pulled a huge brown paper bag from behind his back, one of the old-school
grocery style ones, and it already had some delicious-smelling grease stains on
it. All of a sudden, I was starving.

 “You
did not! How’d you know that I was sitting here this very second,
wondering how I was going to motivate to find food? I was just about to give
up.”

 “So
come here and eat!” He looked pleased and pulled open the bag, but we
both couldn’t fit on the floor of my bedroom together. I thought about eating
in the living room since there was no kitchen, but Kendra and Shanti had both
collapsed in front of the TV together, their untouched takeout salads open in
front of them. I thought they were waiting until theReal World episode they
were watching was over, but then I noticed that they’d both already
fallen asleep. Sweet lives we all had.

 “Hold
on, I have an idea,” he said and tiptoed to the kitchen. He came back
with two oversize garbage bags and spread them out over my blue comforter. He
dug into the greasy bag and brought out two giant burgers with everything and
one extra-large order of fries. He’d remembered ketchup packets and tons
of salt for me, and even the napkins. I clapped I was so excited, although a
quick visual of the imagined disappointment on Miranda’s face appeared,
one that said,You? You’re eating a burger?

 “I’m
not done yet. Here, check it out.” And out of his backpack came a fistful
of tiny vanilla tea lights, a bottle of screw-top red wine, and two waxy paper
cups.

 “You’re
kidding,” I said softly, still not believing that he’d put all this
together after I’d canceled our date.

 He
handed me a cup of wine and tapped it with his. “No, I’m not. You
think I was going to miss hearing about the first week of the rest of your life?
To my best girl.”

 “Thank
you.” I said, slowly taking a sip. “Thank you, thank you, thank
you.”

6

 “Ohmigod,
is it the fashion editor herself?” Jill mock-shrieked when she opened the
front door. “Come on over here and let your big sister genuflect a
li’l.”

 “Fashion
editor?” I snorted. “Hardly. Try fashion mishap. Welcome back to
civilization.” I hugged her for what felt like ten minutes and
didn’t want to let go. It was hard when she’d started at Stanford
and left me all alone with our parents when I was a mere nine years old, but it
was even harder when she’d followed her boyfriend—now
husband—to Houston. Houston! The whole placed seemed drenched in humidity
and infested with mosquitoes to the point of unbearability, and if that
wasn’t bad enough, my sister—my sophisticated, beautiful big sister
who loved neoclassical art and made your heart melt when she recited
poetry—had developed a southern accent. And not just a slight accent with
a subtle, charming southern lilt, but an all-out, unmistakable,
like-a-drill-through-the-eardrum redneck drawl. I’d yet to forgive Kyle
for dragging her to that wretched place, even if he was a pretty decent
brother-in-law, and it didn’t help when he opened his mouth.

 “Hey
there, Andy darlin‘, you’re looking more beautiful every time I see
you.”Yer lookin’ more beeyootiful avery time I see ya . “What
are they feeding y’all atRunway, huh?”

 I wanted
to stick a tennis ball in his mouth to keep him from talking anymore, but he
smiled at me and I walked over and hugged him. He might sound like a hick and
grin a little too openly and often, but he tried really hard and he clearly
adored my sister. I vowed to make a sincere effort not to visibly cringe when
he spoke. “It’s not really what I’d call a feeding-friendly
kind of place, if you know what I mean. Whatever it is, it’s definitely
in the water and not the food. But never mind. Kyle, you look great yourself.
Keeping my sister busy in the city of misery, I hope?”

 “Andy,
just come and visit, sweetie. Bring Alex along and y’all can make it a
li’l vacation. It’s not that bad, you’ll see.” He
smiled first at me and then at Jill, who smiled back and brushed the back of
her hand across his cheek. They were disgustingly in love.

 “Really,
Andy, it’s a culture-rich place with a whole lot to do. We both wish
you’d come visit us more often. It’s just not right that the only
time we see each other is in this house,” she said, waving expansively
around our parents’ living room. “I mean, if you can stand Avon,
you can certainly stand Houston.”

 “Andy,
you’re here! Jay, the big New York City career girl is here, come say
hi,” my mom called as she rounded the corner coming from the kitchen.
“I thought you were going to call when you got to the train
station.”

 “Mrs.
Myers was picking Erika up from the same train, so she just dropped me off.
When are we eating? I’m starving.”

 “Now.
Do you want to clean up? We can wait. You look a little ragged from the train.
You know, it’s fine if—”

 “Mother!”
I shot her a warning look.

 “Andy!
You look dynamite. Come here and give your old man a hug.” My dad, tall
and still very handsome in his midfifties, smiled from the hallway. He was
holding a Scrabble box behind his back that he only let me see by flashing it
quickly by the side of his leg. He waited until everyone looked away from him
and pointed to the box and mouthed, “I’ll kick your ass. Consider
yourself warned.”

 I smiled
and nodded my head. Contrary to all common sense, I found myself looking
forward to the next forty-eight hours with my family more than I had in the
four years since I’d left home. Thanksgiving was my favorite holiday, and
this year I was set to enjoy it more than ever.

 We
gathered in the dining room and dug into the massive meal that my mother had
expertly ordered, her traditional Jewish version of a night-before-Thanksgiving
feast. Bagels and lox and cream cheese and whitefish and latkes all
professionally arranged on rigid disposable serving platters, waiting to be
transferred to paper plates and consumed with plastic forks and knives. My
mother smiled lovingly as her brood dug in, with a look of pride on her face as
if she’d been cooking for a week to sustain and nurture her babies.

 I told
them all about the new job, tried as best as I could to describe a job that I
didn’t yet fully understand myself. Briefly I wondered if it sounded
ridiculous to tell them how the skirts were called in and all the hours
I’d logged wrapping and sending presents, and how there was a little electronic
ID card that tracked everything you did. It was hard to fit into words the
sense of urgency each of these had taken on at the time, how when I was at work
it seemed that my job was supremely relevant, even important. I talked and
talked, but I didn’t know how to explain this world that may have been
only two hours away geographically but was really in a different solar system.
They all nodded and smiled and asked questions, pretending to be interested,
but I knew it was all too foreign, too absolutely strange sounding and
different to make any sense to people who—like me until a few weeks
earlier—had never even heard the name Miranda Priestly. It didn’t
make much sense to me yet, either: it seemed overly dramatic at times and more
than a little Big Brother–esque, but it was exciting. And cool. It was
definitely, undeniably a supercool place to call work. Right?

 “Well,
Andy, you think you’ll be happy there for your year? Maybe you’ll
even want to stay longer, huh?” My mom asked while smearing cream cheese
on her salt bagel.

 In
signing my contract at Elias-Clark, I’d agreed to stay with Miranda for a
year—if I didn’t get fired, which at this point seemed like a big
if. And if I fulfilled my obligation with class and enthusiasm and some level
of competence—and this part was not in writing but implied by a
half-dozen people in HR, and Emily, and Allison—then I would be in a
position to name the job I’d like next. It was expected, of course, that
whichever job that may be would be atRunway or, at the very least, at Elias-Clark,
but I was free to request anything from working on book reviews in the features
department to acting as a liaison between Hollywood celebrities andRunway . Out
of the last ten assistants who had made it through their year in
Miranda’s office, a full hundred percent had chosen to move to the
fashion department atRunway , but I didn’t let that concern me. A stint
in Miranda’s office was considered to be the ultimate way to skip three
to five years of indignity as an assistant and move directly into meaningful
jobs in prestigious places.

 “Definitely.
So far everyone seems really nice. Emily’s a little, um, well,committed,
but otherwise, it’s been great. I don’t know, to listen to Lily
talk about her exams or Alex talk about all the shitty things he has to deal
with at work, I think I got pretty lucky. Who else gets to drive around in a
chauffeured car on their first day? I mean, really. So yeah, I think
it’ll be a great year, and I’m excited for Miranda to come back. I
think I’m ready.”

 Jill rolled
her eyes and shot me a look as if to say,Cut the bullshit, Andy. We all know
you’re probably working for a psycho bitch surrounded by anorexic
fashionistas and are trying to paint this really rosy picture because
you’re worried you’re in over your head, but instead she said,
“It sounds great, Andy, it really does. Amazing opportunity.”

 She was
the only one at the table who could possibly understand, since, before moving
to the Third World, she’d worked for a year at a small private museum in
Paris and had developed an interest in haute couture. Hers was more of an
artistic and aesthetic hobby than a consumer one, but she still had some
exposure, at least, to the fashion world. “We have some great news,
too,” she continued, reaching across the table for Kyle’s hand. He
had set down his coffee and extended both his hands.

 “Oh,
thank god,” my mother instantly exclaimed, slumping over as if someone
had finally lifted the two-hundred-pound dumbbell that had rested on her
shoulders for the last two decades. “It’s about time.”

 “Congratulations,
you two! I have to say you’ve had your mother really worried.
You’re certainly not newlyweds anymore, you know. We were beginning to
wonder…” From the head of the table my dad raised his eyebrows.