The Devil Wears Prada (42 page)

 “I
guess,” she said slowly, regrettably, “you have no choice but to
ask her to clarify.”

 “Oh,
no, not that! However will she react?”

 Emily,
as usual, didn’t appreciate my sarcasm. “She’ll be in at
noon. If I were you, I’d figure out what you are going to say ahead of
time, because she is not going to be happy if you don’t have that review.
Especially since she asked for it last night,” she pointed out with a
barely suppressed smile. She was clearly delighted that I was about to get
abused.

 There
was little left to do but wait. It was my luck that Miranda was at her monthly
marathon shrink session (“She just doesn’t have time to go all the
way over there once a week,” Emily had explained when I asked why she
went for three straight hours), the only chunk of time during the entire day or
night when she wouldn’t call us and, of course, the only time I needed
her to. A mountain of mail that I’d neglected to open for the past two
days threatened to topple off the desk, and another two full days’ worth
of dirty dry cleaning was heaped under it, around my feet. Huge sigh to let the
world know just how unhappy I was, and I dialed the cleaners.

 “Hi,
Mario. It’s me. Yeah, I know—two whole days, no talk. Can I get a
pickup, please? Great. Thanks.” I hung up the phone and forced myself to
pull some of the clothes onto my lap, where I would sort through them and
record them on the computerized list I kept of her outgoing clothes. When
Miranda called the office at 9:45P .M. and demanded to know where her new
Chanel suit was, all I had to do was open up the document and tell her that
they’d gone out the day before and were due to be delivered the following
day. I logged today’s clothes in (one Missoni blouse, two identical pairs
of Alberta Ferretti pants, two Jil Sander sweaters, two white Hermès
scarves, and one Burberry trench coat), threw them in a shopping bag emblazoned
withRunway, and called for a messenger to take them downstairs to the area
where the cleaners would pick them up.

 I was on
a roll! Cleaning was one of the more dreaded tasks, because no matter how many
times I had to do it, I was still repulsed to be sorting through someone
else’s dirty clothes. After I finished sorting and bagging every day, I
had to wash my hands: the lingering smell of Miranda was all-pervasive, and
even though it consisted of a mixture of Bulgari perfume and moisturizer and
occasionally a whiff of B-DAD’s cigarette smoke and was not at all
unpleasant, it made me feel physically ill. British accents, Bulgari perfume,
white silk scarves—just a few of life’s simpler pleasures that were
forever ruined for me.

 The mail
was the usual, ninety-nine percent garbage that Miranda would never see.
Everything that was just labeled “Editor in Chief” went directly to
the people who edited the Letters pages, but many of the readers had gotten
more savvy and now addressed their correspondence directly to Miranda. It took me
about four seconds to skim one and see that it was a letter to the editor and
not a charity ball invitation or a quick note from a long-lost friend, and
those I just threw aside. Today there were tons. Breathless notes from teenage
girls and housewives and even a few gay men (or, in all fairness, maybe
straight and just very fashion-conscious): “Miranda Priestly,
you’re not only the darling of the fashion world, you’re the Queen
of my world!” one gushed. “I couldn’t agree more with your
choice to run the article about red being the new black in the April
issue—it was ballsy, but genius!” another exclaimed. A few letters
ranted about a Gucci ad being too sexual since it depicted two women in
stilettos and garters who lay together on a rumpled bed and pressed their bodies
together, and a few more decried the sunken-eyed, starvation-wracked,
heroine-chic models thatRunway had used in its “Health First: How to Feel
Better” article. One was a standard-issue post office postcard that was
addressed in flowery script to Miranda Priestly on one side and read, quite
simply, on the other: “Why? Why do you print such a boring, stupid
magazine?” I laughed out loud and tucked that one in my bag for
later—my collection of critical letters and postcards was growing, and
soon there wasn’t going to be any fridge space left. Lily thought it was
bad karma to bring home other people’s negative thoughts and hostility,
and she shook her head when I insisted that any bad karma originally intended
toward Miranda could only make me happy.

 The last
letter of the massive pile before I’d begin tackling the two dozen
invitations Miranda received each day was addressed in the loopy, girly writing
of a teenager, complete withi ‘s dotted with hearts and smiley faces next
to happy thoughts. I planned to only skim it, but it wouldn’t allow
itself to be skimmed: it was too immediately sad and honest—it was
bleeding and pleading and begging all over the page. The initial four-second
period came and went and I was still reading.

 Dear
Miranda,

 My name
is Anita and I am seventeen years old and I am a senior at Barringer H.S. in
Newark, NJ. I am so ashamed of my body even though everyone tells me I’m
not fat. I want to look like the models you have in your magazine. Every month
I wait for Runway to come in the mail even though my mama says it’s
stupid to pay all my allowance for a fashion magazine. But she doesn’t
understand that I have a dream, but you do, dontcha? It has been my dream since
I was a little girl, but I don’t think it’s gonna happen. Why, you
ask? My boobs are very flat and my behind is bigger than the ones your models
have and this makes me very embarased. I ask myself if this is the way I wanna
live my life and I answer NO!!! because I wanna change and I wanna look and
feel better and so I’m asking for your help. I wanna make a positive
change and look in the mirror and love my breasts and my behind because they
look just like the ones in the best magazine on earth!!!

 Miranda,
I know you’re a wonderful person and fashion editor and you could
transform me into a new person, and trust me, I would be forever grateful. But
if you can’t make me a new person, maybe you can get me a really, really,
really nice dress for special occasions? I don’t ever have dates, but my
mama says it’s OK for girls to go out alone so I will. I have one old
dress but its not a designer dress or anything you would show in Runway. My
favorite designers are Prada (#1), Versace (#2), John Paul Gotier (#3). I have
many faves, but those are my first three I love. I do not own any of their
clothes and I haven’t even seen them in a store (I’m not sure if
anywhere in Newark sells these designers, but if you know of one, please tell
me so I can go look at them and see what they look like up close), but I’ve
seen there clothes in Runway and I have to say that I really, really love them.

 I’m
gonna stop bothering you now, but I want you to know that even if you throw
this letter in the garbage, I will still be a big fan of your magazine because
I love the models and the clothes and everything, and of course I love you too.

 Sincerely,

Anita Alvarez

 P.S. My
phone number is 973-555-3948. You can write or call but please do so before the
week of July 4 because I really need a nice dress before then. I LOVE YOU!!
Thank you!!!!!

 The
letter smelled like Jean Naté, that acrid-smelling toilet water–
spray preferred by preteen girls the country over. But that wasn’t what
was causing the tightness in my chest, the constriction in my throat. How many
Anitas were there out there? Young girls with so little else in their lives
that they measured their worth, their confidence, their entire existence around
the clothes and the models they saw inRunway ? How many more had decided to
unconditionally love the woman who put it all together each month—the
orchestrator of such a seductive fantasy—even though she wasn’t
worth one single second of their adoration? How many girls had no idea that the
object of their worship was a lonely, deeply unhappy, and oftentimes cruel
woman who didn’t deserve the briefest moment of their innocent affection
and attention?

 I wanted
to cry, for Anita and all her friends who expended so much energy trying to
mold themselves into Shalom or Stella or Carmen, trying to impress and please
and flatter the woman who would only take their letters and roll her eyes or
shrug her shoulders or toss them without a second thought to the girl
who’d written down a piece of herself. Instead, I tucked the letter into
my top desk drawer and vowed to find a way to help Anita. She sounded even more
desperate than the others who wrote, and there was no reason that with all the
excess stuff around I couldn’t find her a decent dress for a date she
would hopefully have soon.

 “Hey,
Em, I’m just going to run down to the newsstand and see if they
haveWomen’s Wear yet. I can’t believe it’s so late today. Do
you want anything?”

 “Will
you bring me a Diet Coke?” she asked.

 “Sure.
Just a minute,” I said, and weaved quickly through the racks and past the
doorway to the service elevator, where I could hear Jessica and James sharing a
cigarette and wondering who would be at Miranda’s Met party that night.
Ahmed was finally able to produce a copy ofWomen’s Wear Daily, which was
a relief, and I grabbed a Diet Coke for Emily and a can of Pepsi for me, but on
second thought, I took a Diet for myself as well. The difference in taste and
enjoyment wasn’t worth the disapproving looks and/or comments I was sure
to receive during the walk from reception to my desk.

 I was so
busy examining the front page’s color photo of Tommy Hilfiger, I
didn’t even notice that one of the elevators had opened and was
available. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a quick glimpse of green, a
very distinct green. Particularly noteworthy because Miranda had a Chanel suit
in just that shade of greeny tweed, a color I’d never really seen before
but liked a whole lot. And although my mind knew better, it couldn’t stop
my eyes from looking up and into the elevator, where they were sort of not
really surprised to find Miranda peering back. She stood ramrod straight, her
hair pulled severely off her face as usual, her eyes staring intently at what
must have been my shocked face. There was absolutely no alternative but to step
inside the elevator with her.

 “Um,
good morning, Miranda,” I said, but it came out sounding like a whisper.
The doors closed behind us: we would be the only two riding for the entire
seventeen floors. She said nothing to me, but she pulled out her leather
organizer and began flipping through the pages. We stood side by side, the
depth of the silence increasing tenfold with every second that she didn’t
respond.Does she even recognize me? I wondered. Was it possible that she was
entirely unaware that I had been her assistant for the past seven months—or
perhaps I really had whispered so softly that she hadn’t heard? I
wondered why she didn’t immediately ask me about the restaurant review or
whether I’d received her message about ordering new china, or if
everything was in place for the evening’s party. But she acted as though
she were all alone in that elevator, that there was not another human
being—or, to be precise, not one worth acknowledging—inside that
small vestibule with her.

 It
wasn’t until nearly a full minute later that I noticed we weren’t
progressing through the floors. Ohmigod! Shehad seen me because she’d
assumed that I would press the button, but I’d been too stunned to move.
I reached forward slowly, fearfully, pressed the number seventeen, and
instinctively waited for something to explode. But we immediately whisked
upward, and I wasn’t even sure if she had noticed we hadn’t been
moving all along.

 Five,
six, seven… it felt as though it took ten minutes for the elevator to
pass each floor, and the silence had begun humming in my ears. When I worked up
enough nerve to steal a glance in Miranda’s direction, I discovered that
she was looking me up and down. Her eyes moved unabashedly as they checked out
first my shoes and then my pants and then my shirt, and continued upward to my face
and hair, all the while avoiding my eyes. The expression on her face was one of
passive disgust, the way the desensitizedLaw & Order detectives appear when
they’re faced with yet another beaten and bloodied corpse. I did a quick
review of myself and wondered what exactly had triggered the reaction.
Short-sleeve, military-style shirt, a brand-new pair of Seven jeans I’d
been sent free from their PR department simply for working atRunway, and a pair
of relatively flat (two-inch heels) black slingbacks that were to date the only
nonboots/nonsneakers/nonloafers that allowed me to make four-plus trips to
Starbucks a day without shredding my feet to bits. I usually tried to wear the
Jimmy Choos that Jeffy had given me, but I needed a day off every week or so to
allow the arches in my feet to stop aching. My hair was clean and assembled in
the kind of deliberately messy topknot that Emily always wore without comment,
and my nails—though unpainted—were long and reasonably well shaped.
I had shaved under my arms within the last forty-eight hours. At least as far
as the last time I’d checked, there were no massive facial eruptions. My
Fossil watch was turned around so the face was sitting on the inside of my
wrist just in case anyone tried to catch a glimpse of the brand, and a quick
check with my right hand indicated that no bra straps were visible. So what was
it? What exactly had made her look at me that way?