The Devil Wears Prada (51 page)

 “The
phone rings, Andrea, but when I pick it up—because you’re
apparently not interested in doing so—no one’s there. Can you
explain this phenomenon?” she asked.

 Of
course I could explain it, just not to her. On the rare occasion that Miranda
was in her office alone, she sometimes picked up the phone when it rang.
Naturally callers were so shocked to hear her voice on the other end that they
promptly hung up. No one was actually prepared tospeak with her when they
called, since the likelihood of being put through was next to nil. I’d
gotten dozens of e-mails from editors or assistants informing me—as if I
didn’t know—that Miranda was answering the phone again. “Where
are you guys???” The panicked missives would read, one after another.
“She’s answering her own phone!!!!”

 I
mumbled something about how I, too, received hang-ups every now and then, but
Miranda had already lost interest. She was peering not at me but at my cup of
soup. Some of the creamy green fluid was dripping slowly down the side. Her
gaze turned to one of disgust when she realized I was not only holding
something edible, but that I had clearly planned to consume it as well.

 “Dispose
of that immediately!” she barked from fifteen feet away. “The smell
of it alone is enough to make me ill.”

 I
dropped the offending soup in the garbage can and gazed wistfully after the
lost nourishment before her voice jerked me back to reality.

 “I’m
ready for the run-throughs!” she screeched, settling back into her chair
more easily now that the food she’d spotted atRunway had been discarded.
“And the moment we’re through here, call the features
meeting.”

 Each
word caused another adrenaline surge; since I was never sure what exactly she’d
be requesting, I was never sure if I’d be able to handle it or not. Since
it was Emily’s job to schedule the run-throughs and the weekly meetings,
I had to race over to her desk and check her appointment book. In the three o’clock
slot she had scribbled:Sedona Shoot run-through, Lucia/Helen . I jabbed
Lucia’s extension and spoke as soon as she picked up the phone.

 “She’s
ready,” I stated, like a military commander. Helen, Lucia’s
assistant, hung up without saying a word, and I knew she and Lucia were already
halfway to the office. If they didn’t arrive within twenty to twenty-five
seconds, I would be sent out to hunt them down and remind them in
person—just in case they might have forgotten—that when I’d
called thirty seconds before and said that Miranda was ready right then, I
meant rightthen . Generally this was a mere annoyance, yet another reason why
the enforced footwear of spiky stilettos made life even more miserable. Running
through the office, frantically searching for someone who was most likely
hiding from Miranda was never fun, but it was only really miserable when that
person happened to be in the bathroom. Whatever one does in a men’s or
ladies’ room, however, is no excuse for not being available at the exact
moment your presence is expected, and so I had to charge right
in—sometimes checking underneath the stalls for recognizable
footwear—and politely ask in whatever humiliated way I could manage that
they finish up and head to Miranda’s office. Immediately.

 Luckily
for everyone involved, Helen arrived within seconds, pushing an overflowing,
off-kilter wheeled rack in front of her and pulling another behind her. She
hesitated briefly outside Miranda’s French door before she received one
of Miranda’s imperceptible nods and then dragged the racks through the
thick carpeting.

 “This
is all of it? Two racks?” Miranda asked, barely looking up from the copy
she was reading.

 Helen
was clearly surprised at being addressed, since, as a rule, Miranda
didn’t speak to other people’s assistants. But Lucia hadn’t
shown up with her own racks yet, so there was little choice.

 “Um,
uh, no. Lucia will be here in just a moment. She has the other two. Would you
like me to, uh, begin showing you what we’ve called in?” Helen
asked nervously as she pulled her ribbed tank top down over her prairie skirt.

 “No.”

 And
then: “Ahn-dre-ah! Find Lucia. By my watch it’s three
o’clock. If she’s not prepared, then I have better things to do
than sit here and wait for her.” Which wasn’t exactly true, since
it appeared she hadn’t yet stopped reading copy and it was now only
approximately thirty-five seconds since I’d made the initial phone call.
But I wasn’t about to point this out.

 “No
need, Miranda, I’m right here,” sang a breathless Lucia, herself
pushing and pulling racks past me just as I stood to begin the search.
“So sorry. We were waiting for one last coat from the YSL people.”

 She
arranged the racks, which were organized by clothing type (shirts, outerwear,
pants/skirts, and dresses) in a half-circle in front of Miranda’s desk
and gave the signal for Helen to leave. Miranda and Lucia then went through
each item, one by one, and bickered over its place or lack thereof in the
upcoming fashion shoot that was to take place in Sedona, Arizona. Lucia was pushing
for an “urban cowgirl chic” look, which she thought would play out
perfectly against a backdrop of the red-rock mountains, but Miranda kept
announcing snidely that she’d prefer “just chic,” since
“cowgirl chic” was clearly an oxymoron. Maybe she’d had her
fill of “cowgirl chic” at B-DAD’s brother’s party. I
managed to tune them out until Miranda called my name, this time ordering me to
call in the accessories people for their run-through.

 Immediately
I checked Emily’s book again, but it was just as I thought: there was no
accessories run-through scheduled. Praying that Emily had simply forgotten to
put it in the book, I called Stef and told her Miranda was ready for the Sedona
run-through.

 No such
luck. They weren’t scheduled for their run-through until late afternoon
the following day, and at least a quarter of the things they needed
hadn’t been delivered yet from their PR companies.

 “Impossible.
Can’t do it,” announced Stef, sounding much less confident than her
words implied.

 “Well,
what the hell do you expect me to tell her?” I whispered back.

 “Tell
her the truth: the run-through wasn’t supposed to take place until
tomorrow and a lot of the stuff isn’t here. I mean, seriously! Right now
we’re still waiting for one evening bag, one clutch, three different
fringed purses, four pairs of shoes, two necklaces, three—”

 “OK,
OK, I’ll tell her. But wait by the phone and pick up if I call you back.
And if I were you, I’d get ready. I’m betting she doesn’t
really care when it was scheduled for.”

 Stef
hung up on me without another word and I approached Miranda’s doors and
waited patiently for her to acknowledge me. When she looked in my general
direction and waited, I said, “Miranda, I just spoke with Stef and she
said that since the run-through wasn’t scheduled until tomorrow,
they’re still waiting for quite a few items. But they should all be here
by—”

 “Ahn-dre-ah,
I simply cannot visualize how these models will look in these clothes without
shoes or bags or jewelry and by tomorrow I’ll be in Italy. Tell Stef I
want her to give me a run-through of whatever she’s got and be prepared
to show me photos of whatever isn’t here yet!” She turned back to
Lucia and together they returned to the racks.

 Conveying
this to Stef gave new meaning to “don’t shoot the messenger.”
She freaked.

 “I
cannot fucking pull a run-through together in thirty seconds, do you understand
me? It’s fucking impossible! Four of my five assistants aren’t
here, and the only one who is here is a complete fucking idiot. Andrea, what
the fuck am I going to do?” She was hysterical, but there wasn’t
much room for negotiation.

 “OK,
great then,” I said sweetly, eyeing Miranda, who had a knack of hearing
everything. “I’ll tell Miranda you’ll be right here.” I
hung up before she dissolved into tears.

 I
wasn’t surprised to see Stef arrive two and a half minutes later with her
one fucking idiot accessories assistant, a fashion assistant she’d
borrowed, and James, also borrowed from beauty, all looking terrified as they
carried oversize wicker baskets. They stood cowering by my desk until Miranda
gave another imperceptible nod, at which point they all shuffled forward for
the genuflection exercises. Since Miranda obviously refused to leave her
office—ever—she required that all the overflowing racks of clothes
and carts full of shoes and baskets brimming over with accessories must be
schlepped to her.

 When the
accessories people finally managed to lay out their wares in neat rows on the
carpet for her to inspect, Miranda’s office morphed into a Bedouin
bazaar—one that just so happens to look more Madison Avenue than
Sharm-el-Sheik. One editor was presenting her with $2,000 snakeskin belts while
another tried to sell her a large Kelly bag. A third hawked a short Fendi cocktail
dress, while someone else tried to sell her on the merits of chiffon. Stef had
managed to assemble a near-perfect run-through with only thirty seconds’
notice and a whole lot of pieces missing; I saw she had filled the gaps with
things from past photo shoots, explaining to Miranda that the accessories they
were still waiting for were similar but even better. They were all masters at
what they do, but Miranda was the ultimate. She was the ever-aloof consumer,
coolly moving from one gorgeous stall to the next, never feigning any show of
interest. When she finally, blessedly, did decide, she pointed and commanded
(much like a judge at a dog show, “Bob, she’s chosen the Border
Collie…”), and the editors nodded obsequiously (“Yes, excellent
choice.”

“Oh,
definitely, the perfect choice”) and they wrapped up their wares and
scuttled back to their respective departments before she inevitably changed her
mind.

 The
whole hellish ordeal only took a few minutes, but by the time it was over, we
were all exhausted from anxiety. She’d already announced earlier in the
day that she’d be leaving early, around four, to spend a couple hours
with the girls before the big trip, so I canceled the features meeting, to the
relief of the entire department. At precisely 3:58P .M. she began packing her
bag to leave, a not-so-strenuous activity, since I’d be bringing anything
of any heft or significance to her apartment later on that evening in time for
her flight. Basically, it involved tossing her Gucci wallet and her Motorola cell
phone into that Fendi bag that she kept abusing. The past few weeks, the
$10,000 beauty had been serving as Cassidy’s school bag and many of the
beads—in addition to one of the handles—had snapped off. Miranda
had dropped it on my desk one day and ordered me to have it fixed or, if it was
impossible to fix, to just throw out. I’d proudly resisted all temptation
to tell her the bag was unfixable so I could keep it and instead had a
leatherworker repair it for her for a mere twenty-five dollars.

 When she
finally walked out, I instinctively reached for the phone to call Alex and
whine about my day. It wasn’t until I’d dialed half of his number
that I remembered we were taking a break. It hit me that this would be the
first day in more than three years that we wouldn’t talk. I sat with the
phone in my hand, staring at an e-mail he’d sent the day before, one that
he’d signed “love,” and wondered if I’d made a horrible
mistake in agreeing to this break. I dialed again, this time ready to tell him
that we should talk about everything, figure out where we’d gone wrong,
that I take responsibility for the part I’d played in the slow and steady
fading of our relationship. But before it even had a chance to ring, Stef was
standing over my desk with the Accessories War Plan for my Paris trip, pumped
up from her run-through with Miranda. There were shoes and bags and belts and
jewelry and hosiery and sunglasses to discuss, so I replaced the receiver and
tried to focus on her instructions.

 Logically,
it would seem that a seven-hour flight in steerage decked out in a pair of
skintight leather pants, open-toe strappy sandals, and a blazer over a tank top
would be the utmost in hellish travel experiences. Not so. The seven hours in
flight were the most relaxing I could remember. Since Miranda and I were both
flying to Paris at the same time on different flights—she from Milan and
me from New York—it appeared I’d stumbled on the single situation
where she could not call me for seven straight hours. For one blessed day, my
inaccessibility wasn’t my fault.

 For
reasons I still didn’t understand, my parents hadn’t been nearly as
thrilled as I thought they’d be when I’d called to tell them about
the trip.