The Devil Wears Prada (23 page)

 “I
left this information on the recording for you, Ahn-dre-ah. I suppose it would
have been too much trouble to write it down?” And even though the
yearning to make decorative paper-cut designs all over her face with the
aforementioned business card filled my entire being, I simply nodded and
agreed. It wasn’t until I looked down at the card that I noticed the
address: 244 East 68th Street. Naturally. East or west or Second Avenue or
Amsterdam wouldn’t have made a damn bit of difference, because the store
I’d just dedicated the past thirty-three working hours to locating
wasn’t even in the seventies.

 I
thought of this as I wrote down the last of Miranda’s late-night requests
before racing downstairs to meet Uri at our designated area. Every morning he
described where he parked in great detail so I could theoretically meet him at
the car. But every morning, no matter how fast I made it downstairs, he’d
bring everything inside himself so I wouldn’t have to race up and down
the streets searching for him. I was delighted to see that today was no
exception: he was leaning against a lobby turnstile, holding bags and clothes
and books in his arms like a benevolent, generous grandfather.

 “Don’t
you run to me, you hear?” he said in his thick Russian accent. “All
day long, you run, run, run. She makes you work very, very hard. This is why I
bring the tings to you,” he said, helping me get a grip on the
overflowing bags and boxes. “You be a good girl, you hear, and have a
nice day.”

 I shot
him a grateful look, glared at Eduardo semijokingly—my way of saying,
“I will fucking kill you if you eventhink of asking me to strike a pose
right now”—and softened a bit when he buzzed me through the
turnstiles, comment-free. I miraculously remembered to stop by the lobby
newsstand, where Ahmed piled all of Miranda’s requested morning papers
into my arms. Although the mailroom delivered each to Miranda’s desk by
nine each day, I was still to purchase a full second set every morning to help
minimize the risk that she would spend a single second in her office without
her papers. Same with the weekly magazines. No one seemed to mind that we
charged nine newspapers a day and seven magazines a week for someone who read
only the gossip and fashion pages.

 I dumped
all her stuff on the floor under my desk. It was time for the first round of
ordering. I dialed the number I’d memorized long ago for Mangia, a
gourmet takeout place in midtown, and, as usual, Jorge answered.

 “Hi,
pumpkin, it’s me,” I’d say, propping the phone against my
shoulder so I could start logging into Hotmail. “Let’s get this day
started.” Jorge and I were friends. Talking three, four, five times a
morning had a funny way of bonding two people rather quickly.

 “Hey,
baby, I’ll send one of the boys over right away. Is she there yet?”
he asked, understanding that “she” was my lunatic boss and that she
worked forRunway, but not quite understanding who exactly would be consuming
the breakfast I had just ordered. Jorge was one of my morning men, as I liked
to call them. Eduardo, Uri, Jorge, and Ahmed gave a decent as possible start to
my day. They were deliciously unaffiliated withRunway, even though their
separate existences in my life were solely meant to make its editor’s
life more perfect. Not a single one of them truly understood Miranda’s
power and prestige.

 Breakfast
number one would be on its way to 640 Madison in seconds, and the chances were
good I’d have to throw it out. Miranda ate four slices of greasy, fatty
bacon, two sausage links, and a soft cheese Danish every morning, and washed it
down with a tall latte from Starbucks (two raw sugars, remember!). As far as I
could tell, the office was divided on whether she was permanently on the Atkins
diet or just lucky enough to have a superhuman metabolism, the result of some
pretty fantastic genes. Either way, she thought nothing of devouring the
fattiest, most sickeningly unhealthy foods—even though the rest of us
weren’t exactly afforded the same luxury. Since nothing stayed hot for
more than ten minutes after it arrived, I’d keep reordering and tossing
until she showed up. I could get away with microwaving each meal one time, but
that bought me only an extra five minutes, and she could usually tell.
(“Ahn-dre-ah, this is vile. Get me a fresh breakfast at once.”) I
would order and reorder every twenty minutes or so until she called from her
cell phone and told me to order her breakfast (“Ahn-dre-ah, I’ll be
at the office shortly. Order my breakfast”). Of course, this was usually only
a two- or three-minute warning, so the preordering was necessary both because
of the short warning and in the rather common event that she didn’t
bother to call at all. If I’d done my job, by the time her actual call
for breakfast had come, I’d already have two or three on the way.

 The
phone rang. It had to be her, too early to be anyone else.

 “Miranda
Priestly’s office,” I chirped, bracing myself for the iciness.

 “Emily,
I’ll be there in ten minutes and I’d like my breakfast to be
ready.”

 She had
taken to calling both Emily and me “Emily,” suggesting, quite
rightly, that we were indistinguishable from each other and completely
interchangeable. Somewhere in the back of my mind I was offended, but I’d
grown accustomed to it at this point. And besides, I was too tired to really
care about something as incidental as my name.

 “Yes,
Miranda, right away.” But she had already hung up. The real Emily walked
into the office.

 “Hey,
is she here?” she whispered, looking furtively toward Miranda’s
office as she always did, without a hello or a good morning, just like her
mentor.

 “Nope,
but she just called and she’ll be here in ten. I’ll be back.”

 I
quickly transferred my cell phone and cigarettes to my coat pocket and ran. I
had only a few minutes to get downstairs, cross Madison, and jump the line at
Starbucks—and suck down my first precious cigarette of the day while in
transit. Stamping out the last embers, I stumbled into the Starbucks at 57th
and Lex and surveyed the line. If it was fewer than eight or so people, I preferred
to wait like a normal person. Like most days, however, the line today was
twenty or more poor professional souls, wearily waiting in line for their
expensive caffeine fix, and I had to jump in front of them. It was not
something I relished, but Miranda didn’t seem to understand that the
latte I presented to her each morning could not onlynot be delivered but could
easily take a half hour at prime time to purchase. A couple weeks of shrill,
angry phone calls on my cell phone (“Ahn-dre-ah, I simply do not
understand. I called you a full twenty-five minutes ago to tell you I’d
be in, and my breakfast is not ready. This is unacceptable.”), and I had
spoken to the franchise manager.

 “Um,
hi. Thanks for taking a minute to talk with me,” I said to the petite
black woman who was in charge. “I know this sounds absolutely crazy, but
I was wondering if we could work something out in terms of me having to wait in
line.” I went on to explain, as best I could, that I work for a rather
important, unreasonable person who doesn’t like to wait for her morning
coffee, and was there any way I could walk ahead of the line, subtly, of
course, and have someone prepare my order immediately? By some stroke of dumb
luck, Marion, the manager, was going to FIT at night for a degree in fashion
merchandising.

 “Ohmigod,
are you kidding? You work for Miranda Priestly? And she drinks our lattes? A
tall? Every morning? Unbelievable. Oh, yes, yes, of course! I’ll tell
everyone to help you right away. Don’t worry about a thing. She is, like,
the most powerful person in fashion,” Marion gushed as I forced myself to
nod enthusiastically.

 And so
it came that I could, at will, bypass a long line of tired, aggressive,
self-righteous New Yorkers and order before those who had been waiting for
many, many minutes. It didn’t make me feel good or important or even
cool, and I always dreaded the days I had to do it. When the lines were
hellishly long like the one today—snaking around the entire counter and
pushing its way outside—I felt even worse and knew I’d be walking
out with a full load. My head was pounding at this point, and my eyes already
felt heavy and dry. I tried to forget that this was my life, the reason
I’d spent four long years memorizing poems and examining prose, the
result of good grades and lots of kissing up. Instead, I ordered
Miranda’s tall latte from one of the new baristas and added a few drinks
of my own. A grande Amaretto Cappuccino, a Mocha Frappuccino, and a Caramel
Macchiato landed in my four-cup carrier, along with a half-dozen muffins and
croissants. The grand total came to $28.83, and I made sure to tuck my receipt
into the already bulging, specially designated receipt section of my wallet,
all of which would be reimbursed by the always reliable Elias-Clark.

 I had to
hurry now, as it was already twelve minutes since Miranda had called and I knew
she’d probably be sitting there, seething, wondering exactly where I
disappeared to every morning—the Starbucks logo on the side of the cup
didn’t ever clue her in. But before I could pick up all the stuff from
the counter, my phone rang. And as usual, my heart lurched. I knew it was her,
absolutely, positively knew it, but it scared me nonetheless. The caller ID
confirmed my suspicion, and I was surprised to hear that it was Emily, calling
from Miranda’s line.

 “She’s
here and she’s pissed,” Emily whispered. “You’ve got to
get back here.”

 “I’m
doing everything I can,” I growled, trying to balance the carrying tray
and the bag of baked goods on one arm and hold the phone with the other.

 And thus
the basic root of the hatred that existed between Emily and me. Since she was
in the “senior” assistant position, I was more of Miranda’s
personal assistant, there to fetch those coffees and meals, help her kids with
their homework, and run all over the city to retrieve the perfect dishes for
her dinner parties. Emily did her expenses, made her travel arrangements,
and—the biggest job of all—put through her personal clothing order
every few months. So when I was out gathering the goodies each morning, Emily
was left alone to handle all of the ringing phone lines and an alert,
early-morning Miranda and all of her demands. I hated her for being able to
wear sleeveless shirts to work, where she wouldn’t ever have to leave the
warm office six times a day to race around New York fetching, searching,
hunting, gathering. She hated me for having excuses to leave the office, where
she knew I always took longer than necessary to talk on my cell phone and smoke
cigarettes.

 The walk
back to the building usually took longer than the walk to Starbucks, since I
had to distribute my coffees and snacks. I preferred to hand them out to the
homeless, a small band of regulars who hung out on stoops and slept in doorways
on 57th Street, thumbing the city’s attempts to “clean them
up.” The police always hustled them away before rush hour kicked into
high gear, but they were still hanging out when I was doing the day’s
first coffee run. There was something so fantastic—invigorating,
really—in making sure that these overpriced, Elias-sponsored coffee faves
made it into the hands of the city’s most undesirable people.

 The
urine-soaked man who slept outside the Chase Bank got a daily Mocha
Frappuccino. He never actually woke up to accept it, but I left it (with a
straw, of course) next to his left elbow each morning, and it was often
gone—along with him—when I returned for my next coffee run a few
hours later.

 The old
lady who propped herself up on her cart and set out a cardboard sign that readNO
HOME/CAN CLEAN/NEED FOOD got the Caramel Macchiato. I soon found her name was
Theresa, and I used to buy her a tall latte, like Miranda’s. She always
said thank you, but she never made a move to taste it while it was still hot.
When I finally asked her if she wanted me to stop bringing them, she vigorously
shook her head and mumbled that she hates to be picky, but she’d actually
like something sweeter, that the coffee was too strong. The next day I had her
coffee flavored with vanilla and topped with whipped cream. Was this better? Oh
yes, it was much, much better, but maybe now it was a touch too sweet. One more
day and I finally got it right: it turns out Theresa liked her coffee
unflavored, topped with whipped cream and some caramel syrup. She flashed a
near-toothless smile and began guzzling it each and every day, the moment I
handed it to her.

 The
third coffee went to Rio, the Nigerian who sold CDs off a blanket. He
didn’t appear to be homeless, but he walked over to me one morning when I
was handing Theresa her daily fix and said, or, rather, sang, “Yo, yo,
yo, you like the Starbucks fairy or what? Where’s mine?” I handed
him a grande Amaretto Cappuccino the next day, and we’d been friends ever
since.