The Devil Wears Prada (8 page)

 “She
didn’t say exactly,” Emily muttered as she picked up the phone.

 “Hi,
Jocelyn, it’s me. She wants a skirt, and I’ll need to have it on
Mrs. de la Renta’s flight tonight, since she’ll be meeting Miranda
down there. No, I have no idea. No, she didn’t say. I really don’t
know. OK, thanks.” She turned to me and said, “It makes it more
difficult when she’s not specific. She’s too busy to worry about
details like that, so she didn’t say what material or color or style or
brand she wants. But that’s OK. I know her size, and I definitely know
her taste well enough to predict exactly what she’ll like. That was
Jocelyn from the fashion department. They’ll start calling some
in.” I pictured Jerry Lewis presiding over a skirt telethon with a giant
scoreboard, drum role, and voilà! Gucci and spontaneous applause.

 Not
quite. “Calling in” the skirts was my very first lesson inRunway
ridiculousness, although I do have to say that the process was as efficient as
a military operation. Either Emily or myself would notify the fashion
assistants—about eight in all, who each maintained contacts within a
specified list of designers and stores. The assistants would immediately begin
calling all of their public relations contacts at the various design houses
and, if appropriate, at upscale Manhattan stores and tell them that Miranda
Priestly—yes, Miranda Priestly, and yes, it was indeed for herpersonal
use—was looking for a particular item. Within minutes, every PR account
exec and assistant working at Michael Kors, Gucci, Prada, Versace, Fendi,
Armani, Chanel, Barney’s, Chloé, Calvin Klein, Bergdorf, Roberto
Cavalli, and Saks would be messengering over (or, in some cases,
hand-delivering) every skirt they had in stock that Miranda Priestly could conceivably
find attractive. I watched the process unfold like a highly choreographed
ballet, each player knowing exactly where and when and how their next step
would occur. While this near-daily activity unfolded, Emily sent me to pick up
a few other things that we’d need to send with the skirt that night.

 “Your
car will be waiting for you on Fifty-eighth Street,” she said while
working two phone lines and scribbling instructions for me on a piece ofRunway
stationery. She paused briefly to toss me a cell phone and said, “Here,
take this in case I need to reach you or you have any questions. Never turn it
off. Always answer it.” I took the phone and the paper and headed down to
the 58th Street side of the building, wondering how I was ever going to find
“my car.” Or even, really, what that meant. I had barely stepped on
the sidewalk and looked meekly around before a squat, gray-haired man gumming a
pipe approached.

 “You
Priestly’s new girl?” he croaked through tobacco-stained lips,
never removing the mahogany-colored pipe. I nodded. “I’m Rich. The
dispatcher. You wanna car, you talka to me. Got it, blondie?” I nodded
again and ducked into the backseat of a black Cadillac sedan. He slammed the
door shut and waved.

 “Where
you going, miss?” the driver asked, pulling me back to the present. I
realized I had no idea and pulled the piece of paper from my pocket.

 First
stop: Tommy Hilfiger’s studio at 355 West 57th St., 6th Floor. Ask for
Leanne. She’ll give you everything we need.

 I gave
the driver the address and stared out the window. It was one o’clock on a
frigid winter afternoon, I was twenty-three years old, and I was riding in the
backseat of a chauffeured sedan, on my way to Tommy Hilfiger’s studio.
And I was positively starving. It took nearly forty-five minutes to go the
fifteen blocks during the midtown lunch hour, my first glimpse of real city
gridlock. The driver told me he’d circle the block until I came out
again, and off I went to Tommy’s studio. When I asked for Leanne at the
receptionist’s desk on the sixth floor, an adorable girl not a day older
than eighteen came bounding down the stairs.

 “Hi!”
she called, stretching out the “I” sound for a few seconds.
“You must be Andrea, Miranda’s new assistant. We sure do love her
around here, so welcome to the team!” She grinned. I grinned. She pulled
a massive plastic bag out from underneath a table and immediately spilled its
contents on the floor. “Here we have Caroline’s favorite jeans in
three colors, and we threw in some baby T’s, too. And Cassidy just adores
Tommy’s khaki skirts—we gave them to her in olive and stone.”
Jean skirts, denim jackets, even a few pair of socks came flying out of the
bag, and all I could do was stare: there were enough clothes to constitute four
or more total preteen wardrobes.Who the hell are Cassidy and Caroline? I
wondered, staring at the loot. What self-respecting person wears Tommy Hilfiger
jeans—in three different colors, no less?

 I
must’ve looked thoroughly confused, because Leanne quite purposely turned
her back while repacking the clothes and said, “I just know
Miranda’s daughters will love this stuff. We’ve been dressing them
for years, and Tommy insists on picking the clothes out for them
himself.” I shot her a grateful look and threw the bag over my shoulder.

 “Good
luck!” she called as the elevator doors closed, a genuine smile taking up
most of her face. “You’re lucky to have such an awesome job!”
Before she could say it, I found myself mentally finishing the sentence—a
million girls would die for it.And for that moment, having just seen a famous
designer’s studio and in possession of thousands of dollars worth of
clothes, I thought she was right.

 Once I
got the hang of things, the rest of the day flew. I debated for a few minutes
whether anyone would be mad if I took a minute to pick up a sandwich, but I had
no choice. I hadn’t eaten anything since my croissant at seven this
morning, and it was nearly two. I asked the driver to pull over at a deli and
decided at the last minute to get him one, too. His jaw dropped when I handed
him the turkey and honey mustard, and I wondered if I had made him
uncomfortable.

 “I
just figured you were hungry, too,” I said. “You know, driving
around all day, you probably don’t have much time for lunch.”

 “Thank
you, miss, I appreciate it. It’s just that I’ve been driving around
Elias-Clark girls for twelve years, and they are not so nice. You are very
nice,” he said in a thick but indeterminate accent, looking at me in the
rearview mirror. I smiled at him and felt a momentary flash of foreboding. But
then the moment passed and we each munched our turkey wraps while sitting in
gridlock and listening to his favorite CD, which sounded to me like little more
than a woman shrieking the same thing over and over in an unknown language, the
whole thing set to sitar music.

 Emily’s
next written instruction was to pick up a pair of white shorts that Miranda
desperately needed for tennis. I figured we’d be headed to Polo, but she
had written Chanel. Chanel made white tennis shorts? The driver took me to the
private salon, where an older saleswoman whose facelift had left her eyes
looking like slits handed me a pair of white cotton-Lycra hot pants, size zero,
pinned to a silk hanger and draped in a velvet garment bag. I looked at the
shorts, which appeared as though they wouldn’t fit a six-year-old, and
looked back to the woman.

 “Um,
do you really think Miranda will wear these?” I asked tentatively,
convinced the woman could open that pit-bull mouth of hers and consume me
whole. She glared at me.

 “Well,
I should hope so, miss, considering they’re custom measured and cut,
according to her exact specifications,” she snarled as she handed the
minishorts over. “Tell her Mr. Kopelman sends his best.”Sure, lady.
Whoever that is.

 My next
stop was what Emily wrote as “way downtown,” J&R Computer World
near City Hall. Seemed it was the only store in the entire city that sold
Warriors of the West, a computer game that Miranda wanted to purchase for Oscar
and Annette de la Renta’s son, Moises. By the time I made it downtown an
hour later, I’d realized that the cell phone could make long-distance
calls, and I was happily dialing my parents and telling them how great the job
was.

 “Um,
Dad? Hi, it’s Andy. Guess where I am now? Yes, of course I’m at
work, but that happens to be in the backseat of a chauffeured car cruising
around Manhattan. I’ve already been to Tommy Hilfiger and Chanel, and
after I buy this computer game, I’m on my way to Oscar de la Renta’s
apartment on Park Avenue to drop all the stuff off. No, it’s not for him!
Miranda’s in the DR and Annette’s flying there to meet them all
tonight. On a private plane, yes! Dad! It stands for the Dominican Republic, of
course!”

 He
sounded wary but pleased that I was so happy, and I came to decide that I was
hired as college-educated messenger. Which was absolutely fine with me. After
leaving the bag of Tommy clothes, the hot pants, and the computer game with a
very distinguished-looking doorman in a very plush Park Avenue lobby (so this
is what people mean when they talk about Park Avenue!), I headed back to the
Elias-Clark building. When I walked into my office area, Emily was sitting
Indian-style on the floor, wrapping presents in plain white paper with white
ribbons. She was surrounded by mountains of red-and-white boxes, all identical
in shape, hundreds, perhaps thousands, scattered between our desks and
overflowing into Miranda’s office. Emily was unaware that I was watching
her, and I saw that it took her only two minutes to wrap each individual box
perfectly and an additional fifteen seconds to tie on a white satin ribbon. She
moved efficiently, not wasting a single second, piling the wrapped white boxes
in new mountains behind her. The wrapped pile grew and grew, but the unwrapped
pile didn’t shrink. I estimated that she could be at it for the next four
days and still not finish.

 I called
her name over the eighties CD she had playing from her computer. “Um,
Emily? Hi, I’m back.”

 She
turned toward me and for a brief moment appeared to have no idea who I was.
Completely blank. But then my new-girl status came rushing back.
“How’d it go?” she asked quickly. “Did you get
everything on the list?”

 I
nodded.

 “Even
the video game? When I called, there was only one copy left. It was
there?”

 I nodded
again.

 “And
you gave it all to the de la Rentas’ doorman on Park? The clothes, the
shorts, everything?”

 “Yep.
No problem. It went very smoothly, and I dropped it all off a few minutes ago.
I was wondering, will Miranda actually wear those—”

 “Listen,
I need to run to the bathroom and I’ve been waiting for you to get back.
Just sit by the phone for a minute, OK?”

 “You
haven’t gone to the bathroom since I left?” I asked incredulously.
It had been five hours. “Why not?”

 Emily
finished tying the ribbon on the box she had just wrapped and looked at me
coolly. “Miranda doesn’t tolerate anyone except her assistants
answering her phone, so since you weren’t here, I didn’t want to
go. I suppose I could have run out for a minute, but I know she’s having
a hectic day, and I want to make sure that I’m always available to her.
So no, we do not go to the bathroom—or anywhere else—without
clearing it with each other. We need to work together to make sure that we are
doing the best job possible for her. OK?”

 “Sure,”
I said. “Go ahead. I’ll be right here.” She turned and walked
away, and I put my hand on the desk to steady myself. No going to the bathroom
without a coordinated war plan? Did she really sit in that office for the past
five hours willing her bladder to behave because she worried that a woman
across the Atlantic may call in the two and a half minutes it would take to run
to the ladies’ room? Apparently so. It seemed a little dramatic, but I
assumed that was just Emily being overly enthusiastic. There was no way that
Miranda actually demanded that of her assistants. I was sure of it. Or did she?

 I picked
up a few sheets of paper from the printer and saw that it was titled
“X-Mas Presents Received.” One, two, three, four, five,six
single-spaced pages of gifts, with sender and item on one line each. Two
hundred and fifty-six presents in all. It looked like a wedding registry for
the Queen of England, and I couldn’t take it in fast enough. There was a
Bobby Brown makeup set from Bobby Brown herself, a one-of-a-kind leather Kate
Spade handbag from Kate and Andy Spade, a Smythson of Bond Street burgundy
leather organizer from Graydon Carter, a mink-lined sleeping bag from Miuccia
Prada, a multistrand beaded Verdura bracelet from Aerin Lauder, a
diamond-encrusted watch from Donatella Versace, a case of champagne from
Cynthia Rowley, a matching beaded tank top and evening bag from Mark Badgley
and James Mischka, a collection of Cartier pens from Irv Ravitz, a chinchilla muffler
from Vera Wang, a zebra-print jacket from Alberto Ferretti, a Burberry cashmere
blanket from Rosemarie Bravo. And that was just the start. There were handbags
in every shape and size from everyone: Herb Ritts, Bruce Weber, Giselle
Bundchen, Hillary Clinton, Tom Ford, Calvin Klein, Annie Leibovitz, Nicole
Miller, Adrienne Vittadini, Michael Kors, Helmut Lang, Giorgio Armani, John
Sahag, Bruno Magli, Mario Testino, and Narcisco Rodriguez, to name a few. There
were dozens of donations made in Miranda’s name to various charities,
what must have been a hundred bottles of wine and champagne, eight or ten Dior
bags, a couple dozen scented candles, a few pieces of Oriental pottery, silk
pajamas, leather-bound books, bath products, chocolates, bracelets, caviar,
cashmere sweaters, framed photographs, and enough flower arrangements and/or
potted plants to decorate one of those five-hundred-couple mass weddings they
have in soccer stadiums in China. Ohmigod! Was this reality? Was this actually
happening? Was I now working for a woman who received 256 presents at Christmas
from some of the world’s most famous people? Or not so famous? I
wasn’t sure. I recognized a few of the really obvious celebrities and
designers, but didn’t know then that the others comprised some of the
most sought-after photographers, makeup artists, models, socialites, and a
whole slew of Elias-Clark executives. Just as I was wondering if Emily actually
knew who all the people were, she walked back in. I tried to pretend I
wasn’t reading the list, but she didn’t mind at all.