The Devil Wears Prada (54 page)

 She
whipped around and stared me straight in the eyes. “Do you think I care?
Go up there and accept it yourself.” And before I could say another word,
she was gone.

 Oh my
god. This wasn’t happening. I would surely wake up in my own,
unglamorous, negative-thread-count-sheeted bed in just a minute and discover
that the entire day—hell, the entire year—had just been a
particularly horrid dream. That woman didn’t really expect
me—thejunior assistant—to go up there and accept an award forRunway
‘s fashion coverage, did she? I looked around the room frantically to see
if anyone else fromRunway was attending the lunch. No such luck. I slumped down
in a seat and tried to figure out whether I should call Emily or Briget for
advice, or whether I should just leave myself since Miranda apparently cared
nothing about receiving this honor. My cell phone had just connected to
Briget’s office (who I was hoping could make it over there in time to take
the goddamn award herself) when I heard the words “… extend our
deepest appreciation to AmericanRunway for its accurate, amusing, and always
informative fashion coverage. Please welcome its world-famous editor in chief,
a living fashion icon herself, Ms. Miranda Priestly!”

 The room
erupted into applause at precisely the same moment I felt my heart stop
beating.

 There
was no time to think, to curse Briget for letting this all happen, to curse
Miranda for leaving and taking the speech with her, to curse myself for ever
accepting this hateful job in the first place. My legs moved forward on their
own,left-right, left-right, and climbed the three steps to the podium with no
incident whatsoever. Had I not been utterly shell-shocked, I might have noticed
that the enthusiastic clapping had given way to an eerie silence as everyone
tried to figure out who I was. But I didn’t. Instead, some greater force
prompted me to smile, reach out to take the plaque from the severe-looking
president’s hands, and place it shakingly on the podium in front of me.
It wasn’t until I lifted my head and saw hundreds of eyes staring
back—curious, probing, confused eyes, all of them—that I knew for
sure I would cease breathing and die right there.

 I
imagine I stood like that for no longer than ten or fifteen seconds, but the
silence was so overwhelming, so all-consuming, that I wondered if I had, in
fact, died already. No one uttered a word. No silver scraped plates, no glasses
clinked, no one even whispered to a neighbor about who was standing in for
Miranda Priestly. They just watched me, moment after moment, until I was left
with no choice but to speak. I didn’t remember a word of the speech that
I had written an hour earlier, so I was on my own.

 “Hello,”
I began and heard my voice reverberate in my ears. I couldn’t tell if it
was the microphone or the sound of blood pounding inside my head, but it
didn’t matter. The only thing I could hear for sure was that it was
shaking—uncontrollably. “My name is Andrea Sachs and I’m
Mir—uh, I’m on staff atRunway . Unfortunately, Miranda, um, Ms.
Priestly had to step out for a moment, but I would like to accept this award on
her behalf. And, of course, on behalf of everyone atRunway . Thank you,
um”—I couldn’t remember the name of the council or the
president here—“all so much for this, uh, this wonderful honor. I
know I speak for everyone when I say that we are all so honored.” Idiot!
I was stuttering and um-ing and shaking, and I was even conscious enough at
this point to notice that the crowd had begun to twitter. Without another word,
I walked in as dignified a manner as I could manage from the podium and
didn’t realize until I’d reached the back doors that I’d
forgotten the plaque. A staffer followed me to the lobby, where I’d just
collapsed in a fit of exhaustion and humiliation, and handed it to me. I waited
until she left and asked one of the janitors to throw it out. He shrugged and
tossed it in his bag.

 That
bitch!I thought, too angry and tired to conjure up any really creative names or
methods of ending her life. My phone rang and, knowing it was her, I turned off
the ringer and ordered a gin and tonic from one of the front desk people.
“Please. Please just have someone send one out. Please.” The woman
took one look at me and nodded. I sucked the entire thing down in just two long
gulps and headed back upstairs to see what she wanted. It was only two in the
afternoon of my first day in Paris, and I wanted to die. Only death was not an
option.

17

 “Miranda
Priestly’s room,” I answered from my new Parisian office. My four
glorious hours that were supposed to constitute a full night’s sleep had
been rudely interrupted by a frantic call from one of Karl Lagerfeld’s
assistants at sixA .M., which is precisely when I’d discovered that all
of Miranda’s phone calls were being routed directly tomy room for
answering. It appeared the entire city and surrounding area knew Miranda stayed
here during the shows, and so my phone had been ringing incessantly since the
moment I stepped inside. Never mind the two dozen messages that had already
been left on the voice mail.

 “Hi,
it’s me. How’s Miranda doing? Is everything OK? Did anything go
wrong yet? Where is she and why aren’t you with her?”

 “Hey,
Em! Thanks for caring. How are you feeling, by the way?”

 “What?
Oh, I’m fine. A little weak, but getting better. Whatever. How isshe
?”

 “Yes,
well, I’m fine, too, thanks for asking. Yes, it was a long flight to get
here and I haven’t slept for more than twenty minutes at a time since the
phone keeps ringing and I’m pretty sure it’s never going to stop,
and, oh! I gave a completely impromptu speech—after writing an impromptu
speech—to a group of people who wanted Miranda’s company but
apparently weren’t interesting enough to warrant it. Looked like a giant
fucking idiot, actually, and nearly gave myself a heart attack in the process,
but hey, other than that, things are just great.”

 “Andrea!
Be serious! I’ve been really worried about everything. There wasn’t
a lot of time to prepare for this, and you know that if anything goes wrong
over there she’s going to blame me anyway.”

 “Emily.
Please don’t take this personally, but I can’t talk to you right
now. I just can’t do it.”

 “Why?
Is something wrong? How did her meeting go yesterday? Did she get there on
time? Do you have everything you need? Are you making sure to wear appropriate
clothes? Remember, you’re representingRunway over there, so you always
have to look the part.”

 “Emily.
I need to hang up now.”

 “Andrea!
I’m concerned. Tell me what you’ve been doing.”

 “Well,
let’s see. In all the free time I’ve had, I’ve gotten a
half-dozen or so massages, two facials, and a few manicures. Miranda and I have
really bonded over doing the whole spa thing together. It’s great fun.
She’s really trying hard not to be too demanding, says she really wants
me to enjoy Paris since it’s such a wonderful city and I’m lucky to
be here. So basically we just hang out and have fun. Drink great wine. Shop.
You know, the usual.”

 “Andrea!
This is really not funny, OK? Now tell me what the hell is going on.”
With every degree more annoyed she sounded, my mood improved a notch.

 “Emily,
I’m not sure what to tell you. What do you want to hear? How it’s
been so far? Let’s see, I’ve spent most of my time trying to figure
out how best to sleep through a phone that won’t stop ringing while
simultaneously shoving enough food down my throat between the hours of two and
sixA .M. to sustain me for the remaining twenty hours. It’s like fucking
Ramadan here, Em—no eating during daylight hours. Yeah, you should be
really sorry you’re missing this one.”

 The
other line began blinking and I put Emily on hold. Every time it rang my mind
went quickly, uncontrollably, to Alex, wondering if he just might call and say
that everything was going to be just fine. I’d called twice on my
international cell since I’d arrived and he’d answered both times,
but like the expert prank caller I’d been in junior high, I’d hung
up the moment I’d heard his voice. It’d been the longest we’d
ever gone without talking and I wanted to hear what was going on, but I also
couldn’t help feeling like life had gotten significantly simpler since
we’d taken a break from the bickering and the guilt-mongering. Still, I
held my breath until I heard Miranda’s voice screeching from across the
wires.

 “Ahn-dre-ah,
when is Lucia due to arrive?”

 “Oh,
hello, Miranda. Let me just check the itinerary I have for her. Here it is.
Let’s see, it says here that she was flying in directly from the shoot in
Stockholm today. She should be at the hotel.”

 “Connect
me.”

 “Yes,
Miranda, just a moment, please.”

 I put
her on hold and switched her back to Emily. “That’s her, hold
on.”

 “Miranda?
I just found Lucia’s number. I’ll connect you now.”

 “Wait,
Ahn-dre-ah. I’ll be leaving the hotel in twenty minutes for the rest of
the day. I’ll need some scarves before I return, and a new chef. He
should have a minimum of ten years’ experience in mostly French
restaurants and be available for family dinners four nights a week and dinner
parties twice a month.Now connect me to Lucia.”

 I knew I
should’ve gotten hung up on the fact that Miranda wanted me to hire her a
New York chef from Paris, but all I could focus on was that she was leaving the
hotel—without me, and for the entire day. I clicked back to Emily and
told her that Miranda needed a new chef.

 “I’ll
work on it, Andy,” she announced while coughing. “I’ll do
some preliminary screening and then you can talk to a few of the finalists.
Just find out if Miranda would like to wait until she gets home to meet them or
if she’d prefer if you arranged for a couple to fly there and meet with
her now, OK?”

 “You
can’t be serious.”

 “Well,
of course I’m serious. Miranda hired Cara when she was in Marbella last year.
Their last nanny had just quit and she had me fly three finalists to her so she
could find someone right away. Just find out, OK?”

 “Sure,”
I muttered. “And thanks.”

 Just
talking about those massages had sounded so good, I decided to book one for
myself. There wasn’t an appointment available until early evening, so I
called room service in the meantime and ordered a full breakfast. When the
butler delivered it to me, I’d already crawled back into one of the plush
robes, donned a pair of the matching slippers, and prepared myself to feast on
the omelet, croissants, Danishes, muffins, potatoes, cereal, and crepes that
arrived smelling so good. After devouring all the food and two cups of tea, I
waddled back to the bed I hadn’t really slept in the night before and
fell asleep so quickly that I wondered if someone had slipped something in my
orange juice.

 The
massage was the perfect way to top off what had been a blessedly relaxed day.
Everyone else was doing my work for me, and Miranda had only called and woken
me once—once!—to request that I make her a lunch reservation the
following day.This isn’t so bad, I thought, as the woman’s strong
hands kneaded my twisted neck muscles. Not a bad perk at all. But just as I
started to drift off once again, the cell phone that I’d grudgingly
brought along began its persistent ring.

 “Hello?”
I said brightly, as if I weren’t lying naked on a table covered in oil,
half-asleep.

 “Ahn-dre-ah.
Move my hair and makeup earlier and tell the Ungaro people I can’t make
it tonight. I’ll be attending a small cocktail party instead, and I
expect you to come with me. Be ready to leave in an hour.”

 “Um,
sure, uh, sure,” I stammered, trying to process the fact that I was
actually going somewhere with her. A flashback from yesterday—the last
time I was told at the very last minute that I was to go somewhere with
her—flooded my brain, and I felt as though I would hyperventilate. I
thanked the woman and charged the massage to the room even though I’d
made it through only the first ten minutes, and I ran upstairs to figure out
how to best maneuver around this newest obstacle. This was getting old.
Quickly.

 It took
just a few minutes to page Miranda’s hair and makeup people (who,
incidentally, were different from my own—I was pieced together by an
angry-looking woman whose look of despair on seeing me for the first time
haunted me still, while Miranda had a pair of gay guys who looked like they
stepped directly out of the pages ofMaxim ) and change her appointment.