The Devil Wears Prada (19 page)

 When
Emily overheard me tell James that I’d go to the party with him after
all, she jumped right in. “Um, you know you can’t go anywhere until
the Book’s finished, right?”

 I
stared. James looked as though he might tackle her.

 “Yeah,
I have to say, this is the part of your job I’m most happy to be done
with. It can get really, really late sometimes, but Miranda needs to see it
every single night, you know. She works from home. Anyway, I’ll wait with
you tonight and show you how to do it, but then you’re on your
own.”

 “OK,
thanks. Any idea when it’ll be finished tonight?”

 “Nope.
Changes every night. You’d really have to ask the art department.”

 The Book
was finally ready on the earlier side, at eight-thirty, and after I’d
retrieved it from an exhausted-looking art assistant, Emily and I walked down
to 59th Street together. Emily was holding an armful of freshly dry-cleaned
clothes on hangers, encased in plastic, and she explained to me that dry
cleaning always accompanied the Book. Miranda would bring her dirty clothes to
the office, where, as my luck would have it, it was my job to call the cleaners
and let them know we had a pickup. They would send someone to the Elias-Clark
building immediately, pick up the clothes, and return them in perfect condition
a day later. We stored them in our office closet until we could either hand
them off to Uri or take them to her apartment ourselves. My job was getting
more intellectually stimulating by the minute!

 “Hey,
Rich!” Emily called brightly, fakely, to the pipe-chomping dispatcher
I’d met my first day. “This is Andrea. She’ll be taking the
Book every night, so make sure she gets a good car, OK?”

 “Will
do, Red.” He pulled the pipe out of his mouth and motioned toward me.
“I’ll take good care of Blondie over here.”

 “Great.
Oh, and can you have another car follow us to Miranda’s? Andrea and I are
going separate places after we drop off the Book.”

 Two
massive Town Cars pulled up just at that moment, and the mammoth driver in the
first car barreled out of the front seat and opened the back door for us. Emily
climbed in first, immediately whipped out her cell phone, and called out,
“Miranda Priestly’s apartment, please.” He nodded and threw
the car in gear and we were off.

 “Is
it always the same driver?” I asked, wondering how he knew where to go.

 She
motioned me to be quiet as she left a message for her roommate. She then said,
“No, but there are only so many drivers who work for the company.
I’ve had them all at least twenty times, so they know their way by
now.” She went back to her dialing. I looked behind us and saw the second
empty Town Car carefully mimicking our turns and stops.

 We
pulled up in front of a typical Fifth Avenue doorman building: immaculate
sidewalk, well-kept balconies, and what looked like a gorgeous, warmly lit
lobby. A man in a tuxedo and hat immediately came to the car and opened the
door for us, and Emily got out. I wondered why we weren’t just going to
leave the Book and the clothes with him. As far as I understood—and it
wasn’t a lot, especially when it came to this strange
city—that’s what doormen were for. As in, that’s their job.
But Emily pulled a leather Louis Vuitton key chain from her Gucci logo tote and
handed it to me.

 “I’ll
wait here. You take the stuff up to her apartment, Penthouse A. Just open her
door and leave the book on the table in the foyer and hang the clothes on the hooks
by the closet. Notin the closet,by the closet. And then just leave. Whatever
you do, don’t knock or ring the doorbell. She doesn’t like to be
disturbed. Just let yourself in and out and be quiet!” She handed me the
tangle of wire hangers and plastic and opened her cell phone again.All right, I
can handle this. Why so much drama for a book and some pants?

 The
elevator man smiled kindly at me and silently pressed the PH button after
turning a key. He looked like a battered wife, dejected and sad, as though he
couldn’t fight any longer and had just made peace with his unhappiness.

 “I’ll
wait here,” he said softly, staring at the floor. “You
shouldn’t be more than a minute.”

 The
carpet in the hallways was a deep burgundy color, and I almost toppled over
when one of my heels got stuck in the loops. The walls were papered in a thick,
cream-colored fabric that had tiny cream pinstripes running the length, and
there was a suede cream bench pushed against the wall. The French doors
directly in front of me said PH B, but I swiveled and saw identical doors with
PH A. It took every ounce of restraint not to ring the bell, but I remembered
Emily’s warning and slid the key in the lock. It clicked right away, and
before I could fix my hair or wonder what was on the other side, I was standing
in a large, airy foyer and smelling the most amazing scent of lamb chops. And
there she was, delicately bringing a fork to her mouth while two identical,
black-haired little girls yelled at each other across the table and a tall,
rugged-looking man with silver hair and a broad, face-encompassing nose read a
newspaper.

 “Mum,
tell her that she can’t just walk in my room and take my jeans! She
won’t listen to me,” one of them pleaded of Miranda, who’d
set down her fork and was taking a sip of what I knew to be Pellegrino with a
lime, from theleft side of the table.

 “Caroline,
Cassidy, enough. I simply don’t want to hear it anymore. Tomas, bring out
some more mint jelly,” she called. A man I presumed to be the chef
hurried into the room holding a silver bowl on a silver serving platter.

 And then
I realized that I’d been standing there for nearly thirty seconds,
observing them all having dinner. They hadn’t seen me yet, but would as
soon as I moved toward the hall table. I did so gingerly but felt them all turn
to look. Just as I was about to offer some sort of greeting, I remembered
making a gigantic ass out of myself at our first meeting earlier today,
stammering and stumbling like an idiot, and I kept my mouth shut.Table, table,
table . There it was.Deposit book on table . And now for the clothes. I looked
around frantically for the place I was supposed to hang the dry cleaning, but I
couldn’t focus. The dinner table had grown silent, and I could feel them
all watching me. No one said hello. It didn’t seem to bother the girls
that there was a perfect stranger standing in their apartment. Finally, I saw a
small coat closet tucked away behind the door, and I managed to get every
twisted, slippery hanger on the rod.

 “Not
in the closet, Emily,” I heard Miranda call out, slowly, deliberately.
“On the hooks that are provided for this exact occasion.”

 “Oh,
um, hi there.”Idiot! Shut up! She’s not looking for a response,
just do what she says! But I couldn’t help it. It was just too weird that
no one had said hello or wondered who I might be, or in any way acknowledged
that someone had just let herself into their apartment and was prowling around.
AndEmily? Was she kidding? Blind? Could she really not tell that I was not the girl
who’d worked for her for over a year already? “I’m Andrea,
Miranda. I’m your new assistant.”

 Silence.
All-pervasive, unbearable, never-ending, deafening, debilitating silence.

 I knew I
shouldn’t keep talking, knew that I was digging my own grave, but I just
couldn’t help myself. “Um, well, sorry about the confusion.
I’ll just put these on the hooks, like you said, and let myself
out.”Stop narrating! She doesn’t give a shit what you’re
doing. Just do it and get out . “OK, then, have a nice dinner. Nice
meeting all of you.” I turned to leave and realized that not only was the
mere act of talking ridiculous, but I was also saying stupid things.Nice to
meet you? I hadn’t been introduced to a single one of them.

 “Emily!”
I heard just as my hand reached the doorknob. “Emily, let this not happen
tomorrow night. We’re not interested in the interruption.” And the
doorknob turned itself in my hand and I was finally in the hallway. The entire
thing had taken less than a minute, but I felt like I’d just swum the
entire length of an Olympic-size pool without coming up for air.

 I
slumped onto the bench and took long, controlled breaths. That bitch! The first
time she called me Emily could’ve been a mistake, but the second was
undoubtedly deliberate. What better way to belittle and marginalize someone
than to insist on calling them the wrong name, after you’ve refused to so
much as acknowledge their presence in your own home? I knew I was the
lowest-ranking life-form at the magazine already—as Emily hadn’t
yet lost an opportunity to impress upon me—but was it really so necessary
for Miranda to make sure I was aware of it, too?

 It
wouldn’t have been outside the realm of reality to sit there all night
and shoot mental bullets at the PH A doors, but I heard a throat clearing and
looked up to find the sad little elevator man watching the floor and patiently
waiting for me to join him.

 “Sorry,”
I said as I shuffled aboard.

 “No
problem,” he near-whispered, intently studying the wood-paneled floor.
“It’ll get easier.”

 “What?
I’m sorry, I didn’t hear what you—”

 “Nothing,
nothing. Here you are, miss. Have a nice evening.” The door opened to the
lobby, where Emily was loudly chattering on her cell phone. She clicked it
closed when she saw me.

 “How’d
it go? No problem, right?”

 I
thought about telling her what had transpired, wished fervently that she could
be a sympathetic coworker, that we could be a team, but I knew I’d just
be setting myself up for another verbal lashing.So not interested right now.

 “It
was totally fine. No problems at all. They were eating dinner and I just left
everything exactly where you said.”

 “Good.
Well, that’s what you’ll do every night. Then just take the car
home and you’re done. Anyway, have fun at Marshall’s party tonight.
I’d definitely go, but I have a bikini wax appointment I just can’t
cancel—do you believe they’re booked for the next two months? And
it’s the middle of winter, too. It must be all the people who are going
on winter vacations. Right? I just can’t understand why every woman in
New York needs a bikini wax right now. It’s just so strange, but hey,
what can you do?”

 My head
pounded to the tempo of her voice, and it seemed that no matter what I did or
how I responded, I was sentenced to forever listen to her talk about bikini
waxes. It may have been better to have her scream at me about interrupting
Miranda’s dinner.

 “Yeah,
what can you do? Well, I’d better get going, I told James I’d meet
him at nine and it’s already ten after. See you tomorrow?”

 “Yep.
Will do. Oh, just so you know, now that you’re pretty much trained,
you’ll still get in at seven, but I don’t come in until eight.
Miranda knows—it’s understood that the senior assistant comes in
later since she works so much harder.” I almost lunged at her throat.
“So just go through the morning routine like I taught you. Call me if you
have to, but you should know the drill by now. ‘Bye!” She hopped
into the backseat of the second car that was waiting in front of the building.

 “‘Bye!”
I trilled, a giant fake smile plastered on my face. The driver made a move to
get out of the car and open the door for me, but I told him I was fine to let
myself into the backseat. “The Plaza, please.”

 James
had been waiting for me on the stairs outside even though it couldn’t
have been more than twenty degrees. He’d gone home to change and looked
very, very skinny in black suede pants and a white ribbed tank top, which
showed off his expertly applied midwinter bottle tan. I still looked
appropriately amateurish in my Gap miniskirt.

 “Hey,
Andy, how’d the Book dropping-off go?” We waited in line to check
our coats and I had immediately spotted Brad Pitt.

 “Ohmigod,
you’re joking. Brad Pitt’s here?”

 “Yeah,
well, Marshall does Jennifer’s hair, natch. So she must be here also.
Really, Andy, maybe next time you’ll believe me when I tell you to stick
with me. Let’s get a drink.”

 The
Reese and Johnny spottings had come back to back, and by the time oneA .M.
rolled around, I’d had four drinks and was happily gabbing away with a
fashion assistant fromVogue . We were discussing bikini waxes. Passionately.
And it didn’t even bother me.Christ, I thought, as I weaved through the
crowd looking for James, flashing a giant kiss-ass smile in the general
direction of Jennifer Aniston when I passed by—this isn’t a
half-bad party. But I was tipsy, I had to be at work again in less than six
hours, and I hadn’t been home in nearly twenty-four, so when I spotted
James making out with one of the colorists from Marshall’s salon, I was
just about to duck out when I felt a hand in the small of my back.