I swiveled immediately as he cringed in embarrassment, and, sure enough, there she was, sipping a glass of champagne and throwing her head back in laughter. I didn’t want to be impressed, but I couldn’t help it: she was one of my favorite actresses.
“James, darling, I’m so glad you could make it to my little party,” quipped a thin, beautiful man who came up behind us. “And who do we have here?” They kissed.
“Marshall Madden, color guru, this is Andrea Sachs. Andrea is actually—”
“Miranda’s new assistant,” Marshall finished, smiling at me. “I’ve heard all about you, little one. Welcome to the family. I do hope you’ll come visit me. I promise that together we can, um, smooth over your look.” He ran his hand lovingly over my scalp and picked up the ends of my hair, which he immediately held up against the roots. “Yes, just a touch of something honey-colored and you’ll be the next supermodel. Get my number from James, OK, sweetie, and come see me anytime you get a minute. Probably easier said than done!” he sang as he floated toward Reese.
James sighed and looked on wistfully. “He’s a master,” he breathed, “simply the best. The ultimate. A man among boys, to say the least. And gorgeous.” A man among boys? Funny. Whenever anyone had used that phrase before, I’d always pictured Shaquille O’Neal making a move toward the hoop against a small power forward—not a colorist.
“He’s definitely gorgeous, I’ll aGREe with you there. Have you ever dated him?” It seemed like the perfect match: the associate beauty editor ofRunway dating the most sought-after colorist in the free world.
“I wish. He’s been with the same guy for four years now. Do you believe it? Four years. Since when are hot gay men allowed to be monogamous? It’s just not fair!”
“Hey, I hear you. Since when are hot straight men allowed to be monogamous? Well, unless they’re being monogamous with me, that is.” I took a long drag from my cigarette and blew out a near-perfect smoke ring.
“So admit it, Andy. Tell me you’re glad you came tonight. Tell me this isn’t the GREatest party ever,” he said, smiling.
I’d grudgingly decided to go with James after Alex had canceled, mostly because he wouldn’t leave me alone. It seemed utterly impossible that a single interesting thing would transpire at a party for a book about highlights, but I had to admit that I’d been surprised. When Johnny Depp had come over to say hi to James, I was shocked that he not only seemed to have a full command of the English language, but had even managed a few funny jokes. And it was intensely gratifying to see that Gisele, the Ittest It girl of all current It girls, was downright short. Of course it would’ve been even nicer to discover that she was secretly squat, too, or had a major acne problem that had all been airbrushed out in her gorgeous cover shoots, but I’d settle for short. All in all, it hadn’t been a bad hour and a half so far.
“I’m not sure I’d go that far,” I said, leaning toward him to catch a glimpse of a GREat looking guy who appeared to be sulking in the corner near the book table. “But it hasn’t been quite as disgusting as I’d imagined. And besides, I’m up for anything after the day I’ve had.”
After Miranda had made her rather abrupt departure after her rather abrupt arrival, Emily informed me that that night would be the first time I would have to bring “the Book” to Miranda’s apartment. The Book was a large wire-bound collection of pages as big as a phonebook, in which each current issue ofRunway was mocked up and laid out. She explained that no substantial work could get done each day until after Miranda left, because all of the art people and editorial people spent all day long consulting with her, and she changed her mind every hour. Therefore, when Miranda left around five each day to spend some time with the twins, the real day’s work would begin. The art department would craft their new layout and input any new photos that had come in, and editorial would tweak and print any copy that had finally, finally, gotten Miranda’s approval—a giant, looping “MP” scrawled across the entire first page. Every editor would send all the day’s new changes to the art assistant, who, hours after nearly everyone else had left, would run the images and layouts and words through a small machine that waxed the backs of the pages and pressed them onto their appropriate page in the Book. It was then my job to take the Book up to Miranda’s apartment whenever it was finished—anywhere in the eight to elevenP .M. range, depending on where in the production process we were—at which point she’d mark it all up. She’d bring it back the next day, and the entire staff would go through the whole thing again.
When Emily overheard me tell James that I’d go to the party with him after all, she jumped right in. “Um, you know you can’t go anywhere until the Book’s finished, right?”
I stared. James looked as though he might tackle her.
“Yeah, I have to say, this is the part of your job I’m most happy to be done with. It can get really, really late sometimes, but Miranda needs to see it every single night, you know. She works from Home. Anyway, I’ll wait with you tonight and show you how to do it, but then you’re on your own.”
“OK, thanks. Any idea when it’ll be finished tonight?”
“Nope. Changes every night. You’d really have to ask the art department.”
The Book was finally ready on the earlier side, at eight-thirty, and after I’d retrieved it from an exhausted-looking art assistant, Emily and I walked down to 59th Street together. Emily was holding an armful of freshly dry-cleaned clothes on hangers, encased in plastic, and she explained to me that dry cleaning always accompanied the Book. Miranda would bring her dirty clothes to the office, where, as my luck would have it, it was my job to call the cleaners and let them know we had a pickup. They would send someone to the Elias-Clark building immediately, pick up the clothes, and return them in perfect condition a day later. We stored them in our office closet until we could either hand them off to Uri or take them to her apartment ourselves. My job was getting more intellectually stimulating by the minute!
“Hey, Rich!” Emily called brightly, fakely, to the pipe-chomping dispatcher I’d met my first day. “This is Andrea. She’ll be taking the Book every night, so make sure she gets a good car, OK?”
“Will do, Red.” He pulled the pipe out of his mouth and motioned toward me. “I’ll take good care of Blondie over here.”
“GREat. Oh, and can you have another car follow us to Miranda’s? Andrea and I are going separate places after we drop off the Book.”
Two massive Town Cars pulled up just at that moment, and the mammoth driver in the first car barreled out of the front seat and opened the back door for us. Emily climbed in first, immediately whipped out her Cell Phone, and called out, “Miranda Priestly’s apartment, please.” He nodded and threw the car in gear and we were off.
“Is it always the same driver?” I asked, wondering how he knew where to go.
She motioned me to be quiet as she left a message for her roommate. She then said, “No, but there are only so many drivers who work for the company. I’ve had them all at least twenty times, so they know their way by now.” She went back to her dialing. I looked behind us and saw the second empty Town Car carefully mimicking our turns and stops.
We pulled up in front of a typical Fifth Avenue doorman building: immaculate sidewalk, well-kept balconies, and what looked like a gorgeous, warmly lit lobby. A man in a tuxedo and hat immediately came to the car and opened the door for us, and Emily got out. I wondered why we weren’t just going to leave the Book and the clothes with him. As far as I understood—and it wasn’t a lot, especially when it came to this strange city—that’s what doormen were for. As in, that’s their job. But Emily pulled a leather Louis Vuitton key chain from her Gucci logo tote and handed it to me.
“I’ll wait here. You take the stuff up to her apartment, Penthouse A. Just open her door and leave the book on the table in the foyer and hang the clothes on the hooks by the closet. Notin the closet,by the closet. And then just leave. Whatever you do, don’t knock or ring the doorbell. She doesn’t like to be disturbed. Just let yourself in and out and be quiet!” She handed me the tangle of wire hangers and plastic and opened her Cell Phone again.All right, I can handle this. Why so much drama for a book and some pants?
The elevator man smiled kindly at me and silently pressed the PH button after turning a key. He looked like a battered wife, dejected and sad, as though he couldn’t fight any longer and had just made peace with his unHappiness.
“I’ll wait here,” he said softly, staring at the floor. “You shouldn’t be more than a minute.”
The carpet in the hallways was a deep burgundy color, and I almost toppled over when one of my heels got stuck in the loops. The walls were papered in a thick, cream-colored fabric that had tiny cream pinstripes running the length, and there was a suede cream bench pushed against the wall. The French doors directly in front of me said PH B, but I swiveled and saw identical doors with PH A. It took every ounce of restraint not to ring the bell, but I remembered Emily’s warning and slid the key in the lock. It clicked right away, and before I could fix my hair or wonder what was on the other side, I was standing in a large, airy foyer and smelling the most amazing scent of lamb chops. And there she was, delicately bringing a fork to her mouth while two identical, black-haired little girls yelled at each other across the table and a tall, rugged-looking man with silver hair and a broad, face-encompassing nose read a newspaper.
“Mum, tell her that she can’t just walk in my room and take my jeans! She won’t listen to me,” one of them pleaded of Miranda, who’d set down her fork and was taking a sip of what I knew to be Pellegrino with a lime, from theleft side of the table.
“Caroline, Cassidy, enough. I simply don’t want to hear it anymore. Tomas, bring out some more mint jelly,” she called. A man I presumed to be the chef hurried into the room holding a silver bowl on a silver serving platter.
And then I realized that I’d been standing there for nearly thirty seconds, observing them all having dinner. They hadn’t seen me yet, but would as soon as I moved toward the hall table. I did so gingerly but felt them all turn to look. Just as I was about to offer some sort of GREeting, I remembered making a gigantic ass out of myself at our first meeting earlier today, stammering and stumbling like an idiot, and I kept my mouth shut.Table, table, table . There it was.Deposit book on table . And now for the clothes. I looked around frantically for the place I was supposed to hang the dry cleaning, but I couldn’t focus. The dinner table had grown silent, and I could feel them all watching me. No one said hello. It didn’t seem to bother the girls that there was a perfect stranger standing in their apartment. Finally, I saw a small coat closet tucked away behind the door, and I managed to get every twisted, slippery hanger on the rod.
“Not in the closet, Emily,” I heard Miranda call out, slowly, deliberately. “On the hooks that are provided for this exact occasion.”
“Oh, um, hi there.”Idiot! Shut up! She’s not looking for a response, just do what she says! But I couldn’t help it. It was just too weird that no one had said hello or wondered who I might be, or in any way acknowledged that someone had just let herself into their apartment and was prowling around. AndEmily? Was she kidding? Blind? Could she really not tell that I was not the girl who’d worked for her for over a year already? “I’m Andrea, Miranda. I’m your new assistant.”
Silence. All-pervasive, unbearable, never-ending, deafening, debilitating silence.
I knew I shouldn’t keep talking, knew that I was digging my own grave, but I just couldn’t help myself. “Um, well, sorry about the confusion. I’ll just put these on the hooks, like you said, and let myself out.”Stop narrating! She doesn’t give a shit what you’re doing. Just do it and get out . “OK, then, have a nice dinner. Nice meeting all of you.” I turned to leave and realized that not only was the mere act of talking ridiculous, but I was also saying stupid things.Nice to meet you? I hadn’t been introduced to a single one of them.
“Emily!” I heard just as my hand reached the doorknob. “Emily, let this not happen tomorrow night. We’re not interested in the interruption.” And the doorknob turned itself in my hand and I was finally in the hallway. The entire thing had taken less than a minute, but I felt like I’d just swum the entire length of an Olympic-size pool without coming up for air.
I slumped onto the bench and took long, controlled breaths. That bitch! The first time she called me Emily could’ve been a mistake, but the second was undoubtedly deliberate. What better way to belittle and marginalize someone than to insist on calling them the wrong name, after you’ve refused to so much as acknowledge their presence in your own Home? I knew I was the lowest-ranking life-form at the magazine already—as Emily hadn’t yet lost an opportunity to impress upon me—but was it really so necessary for Miranda to make sure I was aware of it, too?
It wouldn’t have been outside the realm of reality to sit there all night and shoot mental bullets at the PH A doors, but I heard a throat clearing and looked up to find the sad little elevator man watching the floor and patiently waiting for me to join him.
“Sorry,” I said as I shuffled aboard.
“No problem,” he near-whispered, intently studying the wood-paneled floor. “It’ll get easier.”
“What? I’m sorry, I didn’t hear what you—”
“Nothing, nothing. Here you are, miss. Have a nice evening.” The door opened to the lobby, where Emily was loudly chattering on her Cell Phone. She clicked it closed when she saw me.
“How’d it go? No problem, right?”
I thought about telling her what had transpired, wished fervently that she could be a sympathetic coworker, that we could be a team, but I knew I’d just be setting myself up for another verbal lashing.So not interested right now.
“It was totally fine. No problems at all. They were eating dinner and I just left everything exactly where you said.”
“Good. Well, that’s what you’ll do every night. Then just take the car Home and you’re done. Anyway, have fun at Marshall’s party tonight. I’d definitely go, but I have a bikini wax appointment I just can’t cancel—do you believe they’re booked for the next two months? And it’s the middle of winter, too. It must be all the people who are going on winter vacations. Right? I just can’t understand why every woman in New York needs a bikini wax right now. It’s just so strange, but hey, what can you do?”
My head pounded to the tempo of her voice, and it seemed that no matter what I did or how I responded, I was sentenced to forever listen to her talk about bikini waxes. It may have been better to have her scream at me about interrupting Miranda’s dinner.
“Yeah, what can you do? Well, I’d better get going, I told James I’d meet him at nine and it’s already ten after. See you tomorrow?”
“Yep. Will do. Oh, just so you know, now that you’re pretty much trained, you’ll still get in at seven, but I don’t come in until eight. Miranda knows—it’s understood that the senior assistant comes in later since she works so much harder.” I almost lunged at her throat. “So just go through the morning routine like I taught you. Call me if you have to, but you should know the drill by now. ’Bye!” She hopped into the backseat of the second car that was waiting in front of the building.
“’Bye!” I trilled, a giant fake smile plastered on my face. The driver made a move to get out of the car and open the door for me, but I told him I was fine to let myself into the backseat. “The Plaza, please.”
James had been waiting for me on the stairs outside even though it couldn’t have been more than twenty deGREes. He’d gone Home to change and looked very, very skinny in black suede pants and a white ribbed tank top, which showed off his expertly applied midwinter bottle tan. I still looked appropriately amateurish in my Gap miniskirt.
“Hey, Andy, how’d the Book dropping-off go?” We waited in line to check our coats and I had immediately spotted Brad Pitt.
“Ohmigod, you’re joking. Brad Pitt’s here?”
“Yeah, well, Marshall does Jennifer’s hair, natch. So she must be here also. Really, Andy, maybe next time you’ll believe me when I tell you to stick with me. Let’s get a drink.”
The Reese and Johnny spottings had come back to back, and by the time oneA .M. rolled around, I’d had four drinks and was happily gabbing away with a fashion assistant fromVogue . We were discussing bikini waxes. Passionately. And it didn’t even bother me.Christ, I thought, as I weaved through the crowd looking for James, FLASHing a giant kiss-ass smile in the general direction of Jennifer Aniston when I passed by—this isn’t a half-bad party. But I was tipsy, I had to be at work again in less than six hours, and I hadn’t been Home in nearly twenty-four, so when I spotted James making out with one of the colorists from Marshall’s salon, I was just about to duck out when I felt a hand in the small of my back.
“Hey,” said the gorgeous guy I’d spotted earlier lurking in the corner. I waited for him to realize that he’d approached the wrong girl, that I must’ve looked the same as his girlfriend from behind, but he just smiled even wider. “Not so talkative, are you?”
“Oh, and saying ‘hey’ makes you articulate, I guess?”Andy! Shut your mouth! I berated silently.Some absolutely beautiful man approaches you out of the blue at a party full of celebrities and you tell him off right away? But he didn’t seem offended, and even though it didn’t seem possible, his smile increased in size to an all-out grin.
“Sorry,” I muttered while examining my nearly empty drink. “My name’s Andrea. There. I think that’s a much better way of beginning.” I stuck out my hand and wondered what he wanted.
“Actually, I liked your way just fine. Name’s Christian. A pleasure to meet you, Andy.” He pushed a brown curl out of his left eye and took a swig from a bottle of Budweiser. He looked vaguely familiar, I decided, but I couldn’t place him.
“Bud, huh?” I asked, pointing to his hand. “I didn’t think they served something so lowbrow at a party like this.”
He laughed, a deep, hearty laugh instead of the chuckle I’d expected. “You sure do say what you think, don’t you?” I must’ve looked mortified, because he smiled again and said, “No, no, that’s a good thing. And a rare thing, especially in this industry. I couldn’t bring myself to drink champagne from a straw out of a minibottle, you know? Something fairly emasculating about that. So the bartender dug one of these out of the kitchen somewhere.” Another curl push, but it fell back in his eye the moment he took his hand away. He pulled a pack of cigarettes from the pocket of his black sport coat and offered it to me. I took one and proceeded to drop it immediately, seizing the opportunity to examine him while I reached down to retrieve it.
It landed a few inches from his shiny, square-toed loafers that sported the irrefutable Gucci tassel, and on the way up I noticed that his Diesel jeans were the perfect parts faded, long, and wide enough at the bottom that they dragged a little behind the shiny loafers, the ends frayed from repeated interaction with the soles. A black belt, probably Gucci but thankfully not recognizable, kept the jeans riding in the perfect low spot below his waist, where he had tucked in a plain white cotton T-shirt—one that even though it easily could have been a Hanes was definitely an Armani or a Hugo Boss and was put in place only to offset his beautiful complexion. His black blazer looked just as expensive and well cut, perhaps even custom-made to fit his average-size but inexplicably sexy frame, and it was his GREen eyes that commanded the most attention. Seafoam, I thought, remembering the old J.Crew colors we’d loved so much in high school, or perhaps just a straightforward teal. The height, the build, the whole package looked vaguely like Alex, just with a whole lot more Euro style and a whole lot less Abercrombie. Slightly cooler, slightly better looking. Definitely older, right around thirty. And probably much too slick.
He immediately produced a flame and leaned in close to make sure my cigarette had caught. “So what brings you to a party like this, Andrea? Are you one of the lucky few who can call Marshall Madden her own?”
“No, I’m afraid not. At least not yet, although he wasn’t all that subtle in telling me that I probably should be.” I laughed, noticing for a brief moment that I wasdesperate to impress this stranger. “I work atRunway . One of the beauty guys dragged me here.”
“Ah,Runway magazine, huh? Cool place to work, if you’re into S&M and that sort of thing. How do you like it?”
I wasn’t sure if he meant S&M or the job itself, but I considered the possibility that he got it, that he was enough of an insider to know that it wasn’t exactly how it appeared to those on the outside. Perhaps I should charm him with the nightmare involved in dropping off the Book earlier that night? No, no, I had no idea who this guy was . . . for all I knew he also worked atRunway in some far-flung department I hadn’t even seen yet, or maybe for another Elias-Clark magazine. Or maybe, just maybe, he was one of those sneakyPage Six reporters that Emily had so carefully warned me against. “They just appear,” she’d said ominously. “They just appear and try to trick you into saying something juicy about Miranda orRunway . Just be aware.” Between that and the tracking ID cards, I was quite sure thatRunway ’s surveillance put the mob to shame. TheRunway Paranoid Turnaround was back.
“Yeah,” I said, trying to sound casual and noncommittal. “It’s a strange place. I’m not so into fashion—I’d actually rather be writing, but I guess it’s not a bad start. What do you do?”
“I’m a writer.”
“Oh, you are? That must be nice.” I hoped I didn’t sound quite as condescending as I felt, but it got to be really annoying when anyone and everyone in New York anointed himself or herself a writer or actor or poet or artist.I used to write for the paper in college, I thought to myself,and hell, I even had an essay published in a monthly magazine once in high school. Did that make me a writer? “What do you write?”
“Mostly literary fiction so far, but I’m actually working on my first historical novel.” He took another swig and swatted yet again at that pesky but adorable curl.
“First historical” implied that there other were nonhistorical novels. Interesting. “What’s it about?”
He thought for a moment and then said, “It’s a story told from the perspective of a young woman, about what it was like to live in this country during World War Two. I’m still finishing my research, transcribing interviews and things like that, but the little writing I’ve done so far has come along. I think . . .”
He continued talking, but I’d already tuned him out. Holy shit. I recognized the book description immediately from aNew Yorker article I’d just read. It seemed the entire book world was eagerly anticipating his next contribution and couldn’t shut up about the realism with which he depicts his female heroine. I was standing at a party, casually chatting with Christian Collinsworth, the boy genius who’d first been published at the ripe old age of twenty from a Yale library cubicle. The critics had gone crazy over his first book, hailing it as one of the most significant literary achievements of the twentieth century, and he’d followed it up with two more since then, each spending more time on the bestseller list than the one before it.The New Yorker piece had included an interview in which the author had called Christian “not only a force for years to come” in the book industry, but one with “a hell of a look, a killer style, and enough natural charm that would ensure—in the unlikely event that his literary success did not—a lifetime of success with the ladies.”
“Wow, that’s really GREat,” I said, all of a sudden feeling too tired to be witty or funny or cute. This guy was some big-time author—what the hell did he want with me, anyway? Probably just killing time before his girlfriend finished up her $10,000 per day modeling assignment and made her way over.And what does it matter either way, Andrea? I asked myself harshly.In case you conveniently forgot, you do happen to have an incredibly kind and supportive and adorable boyfriend. Enough of this already! I hastily made up a story about needing to get Home right away, and Christian looked amused.
“You’re scared of me,” he stated factually, FLASHing me a teasing smile.
“Scared of you? Why on earth wouldI be scared ofyou ? Unless there’s some reason I should be . . .” I couldn’t help but flirt back; he made it so easy.
He reached for my elbow and deftly turned me around. “Come on, I’ll put you in a cab.” And before I could say no, that I was perfectly fine to find my own way home, that it was nice to meet him but he’d better think again if he thought he was coming Home with me, I was standing on the red-carpeted steps of the Plaza with him.
“Need a cab, folks?” the doorman asked us as we walked outside.
“Yes, please, one for the lady,” Christian answered.
“No, I have a car, um, right over there,” I said, pointing to the strip of 58th Street in front of the Paris Theatre where all the Town Cars had lined up.
I wasn’t looking at him, but I could feel Christian smiling again. One ofthose smiles. He walked me over to the car and opened the door, swinging his arm gallantly toward the backseat.
“Thank you,” I said formally, not a little awkwardly, while extending my hand. “It was really nice to meet you, Christian.”
“And you, Andrea.” He took the hand I’d intended him to shake and instead pressed it to his lips, leaving it there just a fraction of a second longer than he should have. “I do hope we see each other again soon.” And by then I’d somehow made it into the backseat without tripping or otherwise humiliating myself and was concentrating on not blushing even though I could already feel that it was too late. He slammed the door and watched as the car pulled away.
It didn’t seem strange this time that even though I hadn’t so much as seen the interior of a Town Car two months earlier, I had personally had one chauffeuring me around for the past six hours, and that even though I’d never really met anyone even remotely famous before, I’d just rubbed elbows with Hollywood celebrities and had my hand nuzzled—yes, that was it, he’d nuzzled it—by one of the undisputed most eligible bachelors in New York City.No, none of that really matters, I reminded myself over and over again.It’s all a part of that world, and that world is no place you want to be. It might look like fun from here, I thought,but you’d be in way over your head. But I stared at my hand anyway, trying to remember every last detail about the way he’d kissed it, and then thrust the offending hand into my bag and pulled out my phone. As I dialed Alex’s number, I wondered what exactly, if anything, I would tell him.
