The Devil Wears Prada (45 page)

 “Duuuuuuude,no
issues here. Just havin‘ a little fun with Lily is all. She was all over
me last night at Au Bar—ask anyone, they’ll tell you. Fuckin’
begged me to come back with her.”

 “I
don’t doubt that,” Alex said soothingly. “She’s a
really friendly girl when she wants to be, but sometimes she gets too drunk to
know what she’s doing. So as her friend, I’m going to have to ask
you to leave now.”

 The
freak mashed his cigarette out and made a big show of throwing up his hands in
mock surrender. “Dude, no problem whatsoever. I’ll just take a
quick shower and give m’little Lily here a proper good-bye, and then
I’ll be on m’way.” He swung his legs over the side of the bed
and reached for the towel that hung next to her desk.

 Alex
moved forward, swiftly removed the towel from his hands, and looked him
directly in the eye. “No. I think you should leave now. Right now.”
And in a way that I’d never seen him do in the almost three years
I’d known him, he placed himself squarely in front of Freak Boy and
allowed his height to insinuate the threat that was clearly intended.

 “Dude,
no worries. I’m outta here,” he crooned after taking one look at
Alex and realizing he had to crane his neck to look at his face. “Just
get m’self dressed and out the door.” He picked up his jeans from
the floor and located his ripped-up T-shirt from underneath Lily’s still
exposed body. She moved when he pulled it out from under her, and a few seconds
later her eyes managed to open.

 “Cover
her!” Alex commanded gruffly, now clearly enjoying his new role as
threatening-man-in-charge. And without comment, Freak Boy pulled the cover over
her shoulders so that only a tangle of her black curls was visible.

 “What’s
going on?” Lily croaked while willing her eyes to stay open. She turned
to see me trembling in anger in her doorway, Alex hulking about doing manly
poses, and Freak Boy scrambling to tie his blue and canary yellow Diadoras and
get the hell out before things got really ugly. Too late. Her gaze stopped on
Freak Boy.

 “Who
the hell are you?” she asked him, bolting upright without even realizing
that she was now completely naked. Alex and I instinctively turned away while
she pulled the covers up, looking shocked, but Freak Boy grinned lecherously
and ogled her breasts.

 “Baby,
you tellin‘ me you don’t remember who I am?” he asked, his
thick Australian accent becoming less adorable with every passing second.
“You sure knew who I was last night.” He walked over to her and
looked like he was about to sit down on the bed, but Alex had already grabbed
his arm and pulled him upright.

 “Out.
Now. Or I’m going to have to carry you myself,” he commanded,
looking tough and very cute and not a little proud of himself.

 Freak
Boy threw up his hands and made clucking noises. “I’m outta here.
Call me sometime, Lily. You were great last night.” He moved quickly
through the bedroom door toward the living room with Alex in pursuit.
“Man, she sure as hell is a feisty one,” I heard him say to Alex
right before the front door slammed shut, but it didn’t appear that Lily
had heard. She had pulled on a T-shirt and managed to pull herself out of bed.

 “Lily,
who the hell was that? He was the biggest jerk I’ve ever met, not to
mention absolutelydisgusting .”

 She
shook her head slowly and appeared to be concentrating very hard, trying to
remember where he’d entered her life. “Disgusting. You’re right,
he is absolutely disgusting, and I have no idea what happened. I remember you
leaving last night and talking to some really nice guy in a suit—we were
doing shots of Jaeger, for some reason—and that’s it.”

 “Lily,
just imagine how drunk you had to be to agree to not only have sex with someone
who looks like that, but to bring him back to our apartment!” I thought I
was pointing out the obvious, but her eyes widened into surprised realization.

 “You
think I had sex with him?” she asked softly, refusing to acknowledge what
seemed certain.

 Alex’s
words from a few months before came back to me: Lily did drink more than was
normal—all the signs were there. She was missing classes regularly, had
gotten arrested, and now had dragged home the scariest-looking mutant of a guy
I’d ever laid eyes on. I also remembered the message one of her
professors had left on our machine right after finals, something to the effect
that while Lily’s final paper had been stellar, she’d missed too
many classes and handed things in too late to give her the “A” she
deserved. I decided to tread carefully. “Lil, sweetie, I don’t
think the problem is the guy. I think it’s the drinking that’s
causing it.”

 She had
begun brushing her hair, and it wasn’t until now that I realized it was
already six o’clock on a Friday night and she was just getting out of
bed. She wasn’t protesting, so I continued.

 “It’s
not that I have any issue with drinking,” I said, trying to keep the
conversation relatively peaceful. “Clearly, I’m not antidrinking. I
just wonder if it’s gotten a little bit out of control lately, you know?
Has everything been OK at school?”

 She
opened her mouth to say something, but Alex popped his head in the door and
handed me my shrieking cell phone. “It’s her,” he said and
left again.Argghhh! The woman had a very special gift for wrecking my life.

 “Sorry,”
I said to Lily, looking at the phone warily as the display screamed MP CELL
over and over again. “It usually only takes a second for her to humiliate
or reprimand me, so hold that thought.” Lily set down her brush and
watched me answer.

 “Miran—”
Again, I’d almost answered the line as though it were her own.
“This is Andrea,” I corrected, bracing for the barrage.

 “Andrea,
you know I expect you there at six-thirty tonight, do you not?” she
barked into the phone without a greeting or identification of any sort.

 “Oh,
um, you had said seven o’clock earlier. I still need to—”

 “I
said six-thirty before and I’m saying it again
now.Süüix-thüüirty . Get it?” Click. She’d hung
up. I looked at my watch. 6:05P .M. This was a problem.

 “She
wants me there in twenty-five minutes,” I stated out loud to no one in
particular.

 Lily
looked relieved for the distraction. “Let’s get you moving then,
OK?”

 “We’re
midconversation here, and this is important. What were you going to say
before?” The words were right, but it was clear to both of us that my
mind was already a million miles away. I’d already decided there was no
time to shower, as I now had fifteen minutes to zip myself into black-tie and
get into a car.

 “Seriously,
Andy, you’ve got to move. Go get ready—we’ll do this
later.”

 And once
again I was left with no choice but to move quickly, heart racing, climbing
into my gown and running a brush through my hair and trying to match some of
the names with the pictures of the evening’s guests that Emily had
helpfully printed out earlier. Lily watched the whole thing unwind with mild
amusement, but I knew she was worrying about the incident with Freak Boy, and I
felt terrible I couldn’t deal with it right then. Alex was on his phone
with his little brother, trying to convince him that he really was too young to
go to a movie at nine o’clock and that their mother wasn’t cruel in
forbidding him to do so.

 I kissed
him on the cheek as he whistled and told me that he’d probably meet some
people for dinner but to call him later if I wanted to meet up, and ran as best
one can in stilts back to the living room, where Lily was holding a gorgeous
piece of black silk fabric. I looked at her questioningly.

 “A
wrap, for your big night,” she sang, shaking it out like a bedsheet.
“I want my Andy to look just as sophisticated as all the big-money
Carolina rednecks she’ll be serving tonight like a common waitress. My
grandmother bought it for me years ago to wear to Eric’s wedding. I
can’t decide if it’s gorgeous or hideous, but it’s black-tie
enough and it’s Chanel, so it should do.”

 I hugged
her. “Just promise if Miranda kills me for saying the wrong thing that
you’ll burn this dress and make sure I’m buried in my Brown
sweatpants. Promise me!” She grabbed the mascara wand I was waving about
and started working on me.

 “You
look great, Andy, really you do. Never thought I’d see you in an Oscar
gown going to one of Miranda Priestly’s parties, but, hey, you look the
part. Now go.”

 She
handed me the dangling, obnoxiously bright Judith Leiber bag and held the door
as I walked into the hallway. “Have fun!”

 The car
was waiting outside my building and John—who was shaping up to be a
first-class pervert—whistled as the driver held the door open for me.

 “Knock
‘em dead, hottie,” he called after me with an exaggerated wink.
“See ya late-night.” He had no idea where I was going, of course,
but it was comforting that he thought I’d at least be coming home.Maybe
it won’t be that bad, I thought as I settled into the cushy backseat of
the Town Car. But then my dress slid up over my knees and the back of my legs
touched the ice-cold leather seats, and I lurched forward.Or, maybe, it will
suck just as much as I think it will?

 The
driver jumped out and ran around to open the door for me, but I was standing on
the curb by the time he’d made it around. I’d been to the Met once
before, on a day trip to New York with my mom and Jill to see some of the
tourist sights. I didn’t remember any of the actual exhibits we saw that
day—only how much my new shoes had hurt by the time we got
there—but I recalled the never-ending white staircase out front and the
feeling that I could climb those stairs forever.

 The
stairs stood where I remembered them but looked different in the haze of dusk.
Still accustomed to the short, miserable days of winter, I thought it seemed
strange that the sky was just darkening and it was already six-thirty. That night
the stairs looked positively regal. They were prettier than the Spanish Steps
or the ones outside the library at Columbia, or even the awe-inspiring spread
at the Capitol building in D.C. It wasn’t until I’d made it to
about the tenth one of those white beauties that I began to loathe them. What
cruel, cruel sadist would make a woman in a skintight, floor-length gown and
spiked heels climb such a hill of hell? Since I couldn’t very well hate
the architect or even the museum official who’d commissioned him, I was
forced to hate Miranda, who could usually be blamed for directly or indirectly
causing all the misery and bad will in my life.

 The top
felt like a mile away, and I flashed back to the spinning classes I used to
take when I still had time to go to the gym. Some Nazi instructor would sit
atop her little bike and bark out orders in perfect military staccato:
“Pump, pump, and breathe, breathe! Climb, people, climb that hill.
You’re almost at the top! Don’t lose it now! Climb for your
life!” I closed my eyes and tried to envision pedaling instead, the wind
in my hair, running over the instructor, but climbing, still climbing. Oh,
anything to forget the fiery pain that shot from little toe to heel to back
again. Ten more steps, that was all that was left, just ten more, oh, god, was
that wetness in my shoes blood? Would I have to walk before Miranda in a sweaty
Oscar gown and bloody feet? Please, oh please, say that I was almost there
and… there! The top. The feeling of victory was no less than that of a
world-class sprinter who’d just won her first gold medal. I inhaled
mightily, clenched my fingers to fight off the urge for a victory cigarette,
and reapplied my Fudgsicle Lipsmackers. It was time to be a lady.

 The
guard opened the door for me, bowed slightly, and smiled. He probably thought I
was a guest.

 “Hi,
miss, you must be Andrea. Ilana said to have a seat right over there, and
she’ll be out in a minute.” He turned away and spoke discreetly
into a microphone on his sleeve and nodded when he heard a response through his
earpiece. “Yes, right over there, miss. She’ll be here as soon as
she can.”

 I looked
around the enormous entryway but didn’t feel like going through the
dress-adjustment hassle of actually sitting. Besides, when would I ever again
have the chance to be in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, after hours, with
apparently no one else there? The ticket booths were empty and the ground-level
galleries dark, but the sense of history, of culture, was awesome. The silence
itself was deafening.