“He said, ‘Welcome to the dollhouse, baby.’ I swear. How cool is that?”
She looked at me, mouth hung open, spoon suspended in midair.
“You have the coolest job I’ve ever heard of,” said Lily, who always talked about how she should’ve worked for a year before going back to school.
“It does seem pretty cool, doesn’t it? Definitely weird, but cool, too. Whatever,” I said, digging in to my oozing chocolate brownie. “It’s not like I wouldn’t rather be a student again than doing any of this.”
“Yeah, I’m sure you’d just love to work part-time to finance your obscenely expensive and utterly useless Ph.D. You would, wouldn’t you? You’re jealous that I get to bartend in an undergrad pub, get hit on by freshmen until fourA .M. every night, and then head to class all day, aren’t you? All of it knowing that if—and that’s a big, fat if—you manage to finish at some point in the next seventeen years, you’ll never get a job. Anywhere.” She plastered on a big, fake smile and took a swig of her Sapporo. Lily was studying for her Ph.D. in Russian Literature at Columbia and working odd jobs every free second she wasn’t studying. Her grandmother barely had enough money to support herself, and Lily wouldn’t qualify for grants until she’d finished her master’s, so it was remarkable she’d even come out that night.
I took the bait, as I always did when she bitched about her life. “So why do you do it, Lil?” I asked, even though I’d heard the answer a million times.
Lily snorted and rolled her eyes again. “Because I love it!” she sang sarcastically. And even though she’d never admit it because it was so much more fun to complain, she did love it. She’d developed a thing for Russian culture ever since her eighth-grade teacher told her that Lily looked how he had always pictured Lolita, with her round face and curly black hair. She went directly Home and read Nabokov’s masterpiece of lechery, never allowing the whole teacher-Lolita reference to bother her, and then read everything else Nabokov wrote. And Tolstoy. And Gogol. And Chekhov. By the time college rolled around, she was applying to Brown to work with a specific Russian lit professor who, upon interviewing seventeen-year-old Lily, had declared her one of the most well read and passionate students of Russian literature he’d ever met—undergrad, graduate, or otherwise. She still loved it, still studied Russian grammar and could read anything in its original, but she enjoyed whining about it more.
“Yeah, well, I definitely aGREe that I have the best gig around. I mean, Tommy Hilfiger? Chanel? Oscar de la Renta’s apartment? Quite a first day. I have to say, I’m not quite sure how all of this is going to get me any closer toThe New Yorker, but maybe it’s just too early to tell. It’s just not seeming like reality, you know?”
“Well, anytime you feel like getting back in touch with reality, you know where to find me,” Lily said, taking her MetroCard out of her purse. “If you get a craving for a little ghetto, if you’re just dying to keep it real in Harlem, well, my luxurious two-hundred-and-fifty-square-foot studio is all yours.”
I paid the check and we hugged good-bye, and she tried to give me specific instructions on how to get from Seventh Avenue and Christopher Street to my own sublet all the way uptown. I swore up and down that I understood exactly where to find the L-train and then the 6, and how to walk from the 96th Street stop to my apartment, but as soon as she left, I jumped in a cab.
Just this once,I thought to myself, sinking into the warm backseat and trying not to breathe in the driver’s body odor.I’m a Runwaygirl now .
I was pleased to discover that the rest of that first week wasn’t much different than the first day. On Friday, Emily and I met in the stark white lobby again at sevenA .M., and this time she handed me my own ID card, complete with a picture that I didn’t remember taking.
“From the security camera,” she said when I stared at it. “They’re everywhere around here, just so you know. They’ve had some major problems with people stealing stuff, the clothes and jewelry called in for shoots; it seems the messengers and sometimes even the editors just help themselves. So now they track everyone.” She slid her card down the slot and the thick glass door clicked open.
“Track? What exactly do you mean by ‘track’?”
She moved quickly down the hallway toward our offices, her hips swishing back and forth, back and forth in the skintight tan Seven cords she was wearing. She’d told me the day before that I should seriously consider getting a pair or ten, as these were among the only jeans or corduroys that Miranda would permit people to wear in the office. Those and the MJ’s were OK, but only on Friday, and only if worn with high heels. MJ’s? “Marc Jacobs,” she had said, exasperated.
“Well, between the cameras and the cards, they kind of know what everyone’s doing,” she said as she dropped her Gucci logo tote on her desk. She began unbuttoning her very fitted leather blazer, a coat that looked supremely inadequate for the late-November weather. “I don’t think they actually look at the cameras unless something’s missing, but the cards tell everything. Like, every time you swipe it downstairs to get past the security counter or on the floor to get in the door, they know where you are. That’s how they tell if people are at work, so if you have to be out—and you never will, but just in case something really awful happens—you’ll just give me your card and I’ll swipe it. That way you’ll still get paid for all the days you miss, even if you go over. You’ll do the same for me—everyone does it.”
I was still reeling from the “and you never will” part, but she continued her briefing.
“And that’s how you’ll get food in the dining room also. It’s a debit card: just put on some money and it gets deducted at the register. Of course, that’s how they can tell what you’re eating,” she said, unlocking Miranda’s office door and plopping herself on the floor. She immediately reached for a boxed bottle of wine and began wrapping.
“Do they care what you eat?” I asked, feeling as though I’d just stepped directly into a scene fromSliver.
“Um, I’m not sure. Maybe? I just know they can tell. And the gym, too. You have to use it there, and at the newsstand to buy books or magazines. I think it just helps them stay organized.”
Stay organized? I was working for a company who defined good “organization” as knowing which floor each employee visited, whether they preferred onion soup or Caesar salad for lunch, and just how many minutes they could tolerate the elliptical machine? I was a lucky, lucky girl.
Exhausted from my fourth morning of waking up at five-thirty, it took me another five full minutes to work up the energy to climb out of my coat and settle down at my desk. I thought about putting my head down to rest for just a moment, but Emily cleared her throat. Loudly.
“Um, you want to get in here and help me?” she asked, although it was clearly no question. “Here, wrap something.” She thrust a pile of white paper my way and resumed her task. Jewel blasted from the extra speakers attached to her iMac.
Cut, place, fold, tape:Emily and I worked steadily through the morning, stopping only to call the downstairs messenger center each time we’d finished with twenty-five boxes. They’d hold them until we gave the GREen light for them to be fanned out all over Manhattan in mid-December. We’d already completed all of the out-of-town bottles during my first two days, and those were piled in the Closet waiting for DHL to pick them up. Considering each and every one was set to be sent first-day priority, arriving at their locations at the earliest possible time the very next morning, I wasn’t sure what the rush was—considering it was only the end of November—but I’d already learned it was better not to ask questions. We would be FedExing about 150 bottles all over the world. The Priestly bottles would make it to Paris, Cannes, Bordeaux, Milan, Rome, Florence, Barcelona, Geneva, Brugges, Stockholm, Amsterdam, and London. Dozens to London! FedEx would jet them to Beijing and Hong Kong and Capetown and Tel Aviv and Dubai (Dubai!). They would be toasting Miranda Priestly in Los Angeles, Honolulu, New Orleans, Charleston, Houston, Bridgehampton, and Nantucket. And those all before any went out in New York—the city that contained all of Miranda’s friends, doctors, maids, hair stylists, nannies, makeup artists, shrinks, yoga instructors, personal trainers, drivers, and personal shoppers. Of course, this was where most of the fashion-industry people were, too: the designers, models, actors, editors, advertisers, PR folks, and all-around style mavens would each receive a level-appropriate bottle lovingly delivered by an Elias-Clark messenger.
“How much do you think all of this costs?” I asked Emily, while snipping what felt like the millionth piece of thick white paper.
“I told you, I ordered twenty-five thousand dollars’ worth of booze.”
“No, no—how much do you think it costs altogether? I mean, to overnight all these packages all over the world, well, I bet that in some cases the shipping costs more than the bottle itself, especially if they’re getting a nobody bottle.”
She looked intrigued. It was the first time I’d seen her look at me with anything other than disgust, exasperation, or indifference. “Well, let’s see. If you figure that all the domestic FedExes are somewhere in the twenty-dollar range, and all the international are about $60, then that equals $9,000 for FedEx. I think I heard somewhere that the messengers charge eleven bucks a package, so sending out 250 of those would be $2,750. And our time, well, if it takes us a full week to wrap everything, then added together, that’s two full weeks of both our salaries, which is another four grand—”
It was here I flinched inwardly, realizing that both of our salaries together for an entire week’s work was by far the most insignificant expense.
“Yeah, it comes to around $16,000 in total. Crazy, huh? But what choice is there? She is Miranda Priestly, you know.”
At about one Emily announced she was hungry and was heading downstairs to get some lunch with a few of the girls in accessories. I assumed she meant she would pick up her lunch, since that’s what we’d been doing all week, so I waited for ten minutes, fifteen minutes, twenty, but she never reappeared with her food. Neither of us had actually eaten in the dining room since I’d started in case Miranda called, but this was ridiculous. Two o’clock came and then two-thirty and then three, and all I could think about was how hungry I was. I tried calling Emily’s Cell Phone, but it went directly to voice mail. Could she have died in the dining room? I wondered. Choked on some plain lettuce, or simply slumped over after downing a smoothie? I thought about asking someone to pick something up for me, but it seemed too prima donna–ish to ask a perfect stranger to fetch me lunch. After all,I was supposed to be the lunch-fetcher:Oh, yes, darling, I’m simply too important to abandon my post here wrapping presents, so I was wondering if you might pick me up a turkey and brie croissant? Lovely . I just couldn’t do it. So when four o’clock rolled around and there was still no sign of Emily and no call from Miranda, I did the unthinkable: I left the office unattended.
After peeking down the hall and confirming that Emily was nowhere in sight, I literally ran to the reception area and pushed the down button twenty times. Sophy, the gorgeous Asian receptionist, raised her eyebrows and looked away, and I wasn’t sure if it was my impatience or her knowledge that Miranda’s office was abandoned that made her look at me that way. No time to figure it out. The elevator finally arrived, and I was able to throw myself onboard even as a sneering, heroin-thin guy with spiky hair and lime GREen Pumas was pushing “Door Close.” No one moved aside to give me room even though there was plenty of space. And while this would’ve normally driven me crazy, all I could concentrate on was getting food and getting back, ASAP.
The entrance to the all-glass-and-granite dining room was blocked by a group of Clackers-in-training, all leaning in and whispering, examining each group of people who got off the elevator. Friends of Elias employees, I immediately recalled from Emily’s description of such groups, obvious from their unmasked excitement to be standing at the center of it all. Lily had already begged me to take her to the dining room since it’d been written up in nearly every Manhattan newspaper and magazine for its incredible food quality and selection—not to mention its gaggle of gorgeous people—but I wasn’t ready for that yet. Besides, due to the complex office-sitting schedule Emily and I negotiated each day so far, I’d yet to spend more time there than the two and a half minutes it took to choose and pay for my food, and I wasn’t sure I ever would.
I pushed my way past the girls and felt them turn to see if I was anyone important. Negative. Weaving quickly, intently, I bypassed gorgeous racks of lamb and veal marsala in the entrees section and, with a push of willpower, cruised right past the sundried tomato and goat cheese pizza special (which resided on a small table banished to the sidelines that everyone referred to as “Carb Corner”). It wasn’t as easy to navigate around thepièce de résistance of the room, the salad bar (also known just as “GREens,” as in “I’ll meet you at Greens”), which was as long as an airport landing strip and accessible from four different directions, but the hordes let me pass when I loudly assured them that I wasn’t going after the last of the tofu cubes. All the way in the back, directly behind the panini stand that actually resembled a makeup counter, was the single, lone soup station. Lone because the soup chef was the only one in the entire dining room who refused to make a single one of his offerings low fat, reduced fat, fat-free, low sodium, or low carb. He simply refused. As a result, his was the single table in the entire room without a line, and I sprinted directly toward him every day. Since it appeared that I was the only one in the entire company who actually bought soup—and I’d only been there a week—the higher-ups had slashed his menu to a solitary soup per day. I prayed for tomato cheddar. Instead, he ladled out a giant cup of New England clam chowder, proudly declaring it was made with heavy cream. Three people at Greens turned to stare. The only obstacle left was dodging the crowds around the chef’s table, where a visiting chef in full whites was arranging large chunks of sashimi for what appeared to be adoring fans. I read the nametag on his starched white collar: Nobu Matsuhisa. I made a mental note to look him up when I got upstairs, since I seemed to be the only employee in the place who wasn’t fawning all over him. Was it worse to have never heard of Mr. Matsuhisa or Miranda Priestly?
The petite cashier looked first at the soup and then at my hips when she rang me up. Or had she? I’d already grown accustomed to being looked up and down every time I went anywhere, and I could’ve sworn she was looking at me with the same expression I would’ve given a five-hundred-pound person with eight Big Macs arrayed in from of him: the eyes raised just enough as if to ask, “Do youreally need that?” But I brushed my paranoia aside and reminded myself that the woman was simply a cashier in a cafeteria, not a Weight Watchers counselor. Or a fashion editor.
“So. Not many people buying the soup these days,” she said quietly, punching numbers on the register.
“Yeah, I guess not that many people like New England clam chowder,” I mumbled, swiping my card and willing her hands to move faster, faster.
She stopped and turned her narrowed brown eyes directly toward mine. “No, I think it’s because the soup chef insists on making these really fattening things—do you have any idea how many calories are in that? Do you have any idea how fattening that little cup of soup is? I’m just saying is, someone could put on ten pounds from just looking at it—”And you’re not one who could afford to gain ten pounds, she implied.
Ouch. As if it hadn’t been hard enough convincing myself that I was a normal weight for a normal height as all the tall, willowyRunway blondes had openly examined me, now thecashier was—for all intents and purposes—telling me I was fat? I snatched my takeout bag and pushed past the people, and walked into the bathroom that was conveniently located directly outside the dining room, where one could purge any earlier bingeing problems. And even though I knew that the mirror would reveal nothing more or less than it had that morning, I turned to face it head on. A twisted, angry face stared back at me.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Emily all but shouted at my reflection. I whipped around in time to see her hanging her leather blazer through the handle of the Gucci logo tote, as she pushed her sunglasses on top of her head. It occurred to me that Emily had meant what she’d said three and a half hours before quite literally: she’d gone out for lunch. As in, outside. As in, left me all alone for three straight hours with no warning, practically tethered to a phone line with no hopes of food or bathroom breaks. As in, none of that mattered because I still knew I was wrong to leave and I was about to get screamed at for it by someone my own age. Blessedly, the door swung open and the editor in chief ofCoquette strode in. She looked us both up and down as Emily grabbed my arm and steered me out of the bathroom and toward the elevator. We stood like that together, her clutching my arm and me feeling as though I’d just wet the bed. We were living one of those scenes where the kidnapper puts a gun to a woman’s back in broad daylight and quietly threatens her as he leads her to his basement of torture.
“How could you do this to me?” she hissed as she pushed me throughRunway ’s reception-area doors and we hurtled together back to our desks. “As the senior assistant, I am responsible for what goes on in our office. I know you’re new, but I’ve told you from the very first day: we do not leave Miranda unattended.”
“But Miranda’s not here.” It came out as a squeak.
“But she could’ve called while you were gone and no one would’ve been here to answer the goddamn phone!” she screamed as she slammed the door to our suite. “Our first priority—our only priority—is Miranda Priestly. Period. And if you can’t deal with that, just remember that there are millions of girls who would die for your job. Now check your voice mail. If she called, we’re dead.You’re dead.”
I wanted to crawl inside my iMac and die. How could I have screwed up so badly during my very first week? Miranda wasn’t even in the office and I’d already let her down. So what if I was hungry? It could wait. There were genuinely important people trying to get things done around here, people who depended on me, and I’d let them down. I dialed my mailbox.
“Hi, Andy, it’s me.” Alex. “Where are you? I’ve never heard you not answer. Can’t wait for dinner tonight—we’re still on, right? Anywhere you want, your pick. Call me when you get this, I’ll be in the faculty lounge anytime after four. Love you.” I immediately felt guilty, because I’d already decided after the whole lunch debacle that I’d rather reschedule. My first week had been so crazy that we’d barely seen each other, and we’d made a special plan to have dinner that night, just the two of us. But I knew I wouldn’t be any fun if I fell asleep in my wine, and I kind of wanted a night to unwind and be alone. I’d have to remember to call and see if we could do it the next night.
Emily was standing over me, having already checked her own voice mail. From her relatively calm face, I guessed that Miranda had not left her any death threats. I shook my head to indicate that I hadn’t gotten one from her yet.
“Hi, Andrea, it’s Cara.” Miranda’s nanny. “So, Miranda called here a little while ago”—heart stoppage—“and said she’s tried the office and no one was picking up. I figured something was going on down there, so I told her that I’d spoken to both you and Emily just a minute before, but don’t worry about it. She wanted aWomen’s Wear Daily faxed to her, and I had a copy right here. Already confirmed that she got it, too, so don’t stress. Just wanted to let you know. Anyway, have a good weekend. I’ll talk to you later. ’Bye.”
lifesaver. The girl was an absolute saint. It was hard to believe I’d only known her a week—and not even in person, only over the phone—because I thought I was in love with her. She was the opposite of Emily in every regard: calm, grounded, and entirely fashion-oblivious. She recognized Miranda’s absurdity but didn’t begrudge her it; she had that rare, charming quality of being able to laugh at herself and everyone else.
“Nope, not her,” I told Emily, lying sort of but not really, smiling triumphantly. “We’re in the clear.”
“You’rein the clear, this time,” she said flatly. “Just remember that we’re in this together, but I am in charge. You’ll cover for me if I want to go out to lunch once in a while—I’m entitled. This will never happen again, right?”
I bit back the urge to say something nasty. “Right,” I said. “Right.”
We’d managed to finish wrapping the rest of the bottles and get them all to the messengers by seven that night, and Emily didn’t mention the office-abandonment issue again. I finally fell into a taxi (just this one time) at eight, and was spread-eagle, still fully dressed, on top of my covers at ten. And I still hadn’t eaten because I couldn’t bear the thought of going out in search of food and getting lost again, as I had the past four nights, in my own neighborhood. I called Lily to complain on my brand-new Bang and Olufsen phone.
“Hi! I thought you and Alex had a date tonight,” she said.
“Yeah, we did, but I’m dead. He’s fine with doing it tomorrow night, and I think I’ll just order. Whatever. How was your day?”
“I have one word: screwed up. OK, so that was two. You’ll never imagine what happened. Well, of course you will, it happens all the—”
“Cut to it, Lil. I’m going to pass out any minute.”
“OK. Cutest guy ever came to my reading today. Sat through the whole thing looking absolutely fascinated, and waited for me afterward. Asked if he could take me for a drink and hear all about the thesis I had published at Brown, which he’d already read.”
“Sounds GREat. What was he?” Lily went out with different guys almost every night after getting off work, but had yet to complete her fraction. She had founded the Scale of Fractional Love one night after listening to a few of our guy friends rate the girls they were dating on their own invention, the Ten-Ten Scale. “She’s a six, eight, B-plus,” Jake would declare of the advertising assistant he’d been set up with the night before. It was assumed everyone knew that it was a ten-point scale, with face always being the first numerical ranking, body the second, and personality coming in last with a slightly more generalized letter grade. Since there were clearly more factors at work in judging guys, Lily devised the Fractional Scale, which had a total of ten pieces that each earned a point. The Perfect Guy would obviously have all five of the primary pieces: intelligence, sense of humor, decent body, cute face, and any sort of job that fell under the generous umbrella of “normal.” Since it was next to impossible to find The Perfect Guy, someone could up their fraction by earning points on the secondary five, which included a definitive lack of psycho ex-girlfriends, psycho parents, or date-rapist roommates, and any sort of extracurricular interests or hobbies that weren’t sports- or porn-related. So far, the highest anyone had received was a nine-tenths, but he had broken up with her.
“Well, at first he was going strong at seven-tenths. He was a theater major at Yaleand he’s straight, and he could discuss Israeli politics so intelligently that he never once suggested that we ‘just nuke ’em,’ so that was good.”
“Sure sounds good. I can’t wait for the clincher. What was it? Did he talk about his favorite Nintendo game?”
“Worse.” She sighed.
“Is he thinner than you?”
“Worse.” She sounded defeated.
“What on earth could be worse than that?”
“He lives on Long Island—”
“Lily! So he’s geographically undesirable. That doesn’t make him undateable! You know better than to—”
“With his parents,” she interrupted.
Oh.
“For the past four years.”
Oh, my.
“And he absolutely loves it. Says he can’t imagine wanting to live alone in such a big city when his mom and dad are such GREat company.”
“Whoa! Say no more. I don’t think we’ve ever had a seven-tenths fall all the way to a zero after the first date. Your guy set a new record. Congratulations. Your day was officially worse than mine.” I leaned over to kick my bedroom door closed when I heard Shanti and Kendra come Home from work. I heard a guy’s voice with them and wondered if either of my roommates had boyfriends. I’d seen them a combined total of only ten minutes in the last week and a half, because they seemed to work longer hours than I did.
“That bad? How could your day be bad? You work infashion, ” she said.
There was a quiet knocking on the door.
“Hold on a sec, someone’s here. Come in!” I called to the door, much too loud for the tiny space. I waited for one of my quiet roommates to timidly ask if I’d remembered to call the landlord to put my name on the lease (no) or bought more paper plates (no) or had taken down any phone messages (no), but Alex appeared.
“Hey, can I call you back? Alex just showed up.” I was thrilled to see him, so excited that he’d surprised me, but a small part of me had been looking forward to just taking a shower and crawling into bed.
“Sure. Tell him I say hi. And remember what a lucky girl you are for having completed the fraction with him, Andy. He’s GREat. Hold on to that one.”
“Don’t I know it. The kid’s a goddamn saint.” I smiled in his direction.
“’Bye.”
“Hi!” I willed myself to first sit up, then stand up and walk over to him. “What a GREat surprise!” I went to hug him but he backed away, keeping his arms behind his back. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing at all. I know you’ve had such a long week, and, knowing you, I figured you hadn’t bothered to eat yet, so I brought the food to you.” He pulled a huge brown paper bag from behind his back, one of the old-school grocery style ones, and it already had some delicious-smelling GREase stains on it. All of a sudden, I was starving.
“You did not! How’d you know that I was sitting here this very second, wondering how I was going to motivate to find food? I was just about to give up.”
“So come here and eat!” He looked pleased and pulled open the bag, but we both couldn’t fit on the floor of my bedroom together. I thought about eating in the living room since there was no kitchen, but Kendra and Shanti had both collapsed in front of the TV together, their untouched takeout salads open in front of them. I thought they were waiting until theReal World episode they were watching was over, but then I noticed that they’d both already fallen asleep. Sweet lives we all had.
“Hold on, I have an idea,” he said and tiptoed to the kitchen. He came back with two oversize garbage bags and spread them out over my blue comforter. He dug into the GREasy bag and brought out two giant burgers with everything and one extra-large order of fries. He’d remembered ketchup packets and tons of salt for me, and even the napkins. I clapped I was so excited, although a quick visual of the imagined disappointment on Miranda’s face appeared, one that said,You? You’re eating a burger?
“I’m not done yet. Here, check it out.” And out of his backpack came a fistful of tiny vanilla tea lights, a bottle of screw-top red wine, and two waxy paper cups.
“You’re kidding,” I said softly, still not believing that he’d put all this together after I’d canceled our date.
He handed me a cup of wine and tapped it with his. “No, I’m not. You think I was going to miss hearing about the first week of the rest of your life? To my best girl.”
“Thank you.” I said, slowly taking a sip. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
