The Devil Wears Prada (2 page)

 “Just
heading back to the Elias-Clark building,” I said with a long sigh as the
driver pulled around the block and headed south on Park Avenue. Since I rode
the route every day—sometimes twice—I knew I had exactly eight
minutes to breathe and collect myself and possibly even figure out a way to
disguise the ash and sweat stains that had become permanent features on the
Gucci suede. The shoes—well, those were beyond hope, at least until they
could be fixed by the fleet of shoemakersRunway kept for such emergencies. The
ride was actually over in six and a half minutes, and I had no choice but to
hobble like an off-balance giraffe on my one flat, one four-inch heel
arrangement. A quick stop in the Closet turned up a brand-new pair of knee-high
maroon-colored Jimmy Choos that looked great with the leather skirt I grabbed,
tossing the suede pants in the “Couture Cleaning” pile (where the
basic prices for dry cleaning started at seventy-five dollars per item). The
only stop left was a quick visit to the Beauty Closet, where one of the editors
there took one look at my sweat-streaked makeup and whipped out a trunk full of
fixers.

 Not
bad,I thought, looking in one of the omnipresent full-length mirrors. You might
not even know that mere minutes before I was hovering precariously close to
murdering myself and everyone around me. I strolled confidently into the
assistants’ suite outside Miranda’s office and quietly took my
seat, looking forward to a few free minutes before she returned from lunch.

 “And-re-ah,”
she called from her starkly furnished, deliberately cold office. “Where
are the car and the puppy?”

 I leaped
out of my seat and ran as fast as was possible on plush carpeting while wearing
five-inch heels and stood before her desk. “I left the car with the
garage attendant and Madelaine with your doorman, Miranda,” I said, proud
to have completed both tasks without killing the car, the dog, or myself.

 “And
why would you do something like that?” she snarled, looking up from her
copy ofWomen’s Wear Daily for the first time since I’d walked in.
“I specifically requested that you bring both of them to the office,
since the girls will be here momentarily and we need to leave.”

 “Oh,
well, actually, I thought you said that you wanted them to—”

 “Enough.
The details of your incompetence interest me very little. Go get the car and
the puppy and bring them here. I’m expecting we’ll be all ready to
leave in fifteen minutes. Understood?”

 Fifteen
minutes? Was this woman hallucinating? It would take a minute or two to get
downstairs and into a Town Car, another six or eight to get to her apartment, and
then somewhere in the vicinity of three hours for me to find the puppy in her
eighteen-room apartment, extract the bucking stick shift from its parking spot,
and make my way the twenty blocks to the office.

 “Of
course, Miranda. Fifteen minutes.”

 I
started shaking again the moment I ran out of her office, wondering if my heart
could just up and give out at the ripe old age of twenty-three. The first
cigarette I lit landed directly on the top of my new Jimmys, where instead of
falling to the cement it smoldered for just long enough to burn a small, neat
hole.Great, I muttered.That’s just fucking great. Chalk up my total as an
even four grand for today’s ruined merchandise—a new personal best.
Maybe she’d die before I got back, I thought, deciding that now was the
time to look on the bright side. Maybe, just maybe, she’d keel over from
something rare and exotic and we’d all be released from her wellspring of
misery. I relished a last drag before stamping out the cigarette and told
myself to be rational.You don’t want her to die, I thought, stretching
out in the backseat.Because if she does, you lose all hope of killing her
yourself. And thatwould be a shame.

2

 I knew
nothing when I went for my first interview and stepped onto the infamous
Elias-Clark elevators, those transporters of all thingsen vogue . I had no idea
that the city’s most well-connected gossip columnists and socialites and
media executives obsessed over the flawlessly made-up, turned-out, turned-in
riders of those sleek and quiet lifts. I had never seen women with such radiant
blond hair, didn’t know that those brand-name highlights cost six grand a
year to maintain or that others in the know could identify the colorists after
a quick glance at the finished product. I had never laid eyes on such beautiful
men. They were perfectly toned—not too muscular because
“that’snot sexy”—and they showed off their lifelong
dedication to gymwork in finely ribbed turtlenecks and tight leather pants.
Bags and shoes I’d never seen on real people shoutedPrada! Armani!
Versace! from every surface. I had heard from a friend of a friend—an
editorial assistant atChic magazine—that every now and then the
accessories get to meet their makers in those very elevators, a touching reunion
where Miuccia, Giorgio, or Donatella can once again admire their summer
‘02 stilettos or their spring couture teardrop bag in person. I knew
things were changing for me—I just wasn’t sure it was for the
better.

 I had,
until this point, spent the past twenty-three years embodying small-town
America. My entire existence was a perfect cliché. Growing up in Avon,
Connecticut, had meant high school sports, youth group meetings,
“drinking parties” at nice suburban ranch homes when the parents
were away. We wore sweatpants to school, jeans for Saturday night, ruffled
puffiness for semiformal dances. And college! Well, that was a world of
sophistication after high school. Brown had provided endless activities and
classes and groups for every imaginable type of artist, misfit, and computer
geek. Whatever intellectual or creative interest I wanted to pursue, regardless
of how esoteric or unpopular it may have been, had some sort of outlet at
Brown. High fashion was perhaps the single exception to this widely
bragged-about fact. Four years spent muddling around Providence in fleeces and
hiking boots, learning about the French impressionists, and writing obnoxiously
long-winded English papers did not—in any conceivable way—prepare
me for my very first postcollege job.

 I
managed to put it off as long as possible. For the three months following
graduation, I’d scrounged together what little cash I could find and took
off on a solo trip. I did Europe by train for a month, spending much more time
on beaches than in museums, and didn’t do a very good job of keeping in
touch with anyone back home except Alex, my boyfriend of three years. He knew
that after the five weeks or so I was starting to get lonely, and since his
Teach for America training had just ended and he had the rest of the summer to
kill before starting in September, he surprised me in Amsterdam. I’d
covered most of Europe by then and he’d traveled the summer before, so
after a not-so-sober afternoon at one of the coffee shops, we pooled our
traveler’s checks and bought two one-way tickets to Bangkok.

 Together
we worked our way through much of Southeast Asia, rarely spending more than $10
a day, and talked obsessively about our futures. He was so excited to start
teaching English at one of the city’s underprivileged schools, totally
taken with the idea of shaping young minds and mentoring the poorest and the
most neglected, in the way that only Alex could be. My goals were not so lofty:
I was intent on finding a job in magazine publishing. Although I knew it was
highly unlikely I’d get hired atThe New Yorker directly out of school, I
was determined to be writing for them before my fifth reunion. It was all
I’d ever wanted to do, the only place I’d ever really wanted to
work. I’d picked up a copy for the first time after I’d heard my
parents discussing an article they’d just read and my mom had said,
“It was so well written—you just don’t read things like that
anymore,” and my father had agreed, “No doubt, it’s the only
smart thing being written today.” I’d loved it. Loved the snappy
reviews and the witty cartoons and the feeling of being admitted to a special,
members-only club for readers. I’d read every issue for the past seven
years and knew every section, every editor, and every writer by heart.

 Alex and
I talked about how we were both embarking on a new stage in our lives, how we
were lucky to be doing it together. We weren’t in any rush to get back,
though, somehow sensing that this would be the last period of calm before the
craziness, and we stupidly extended our visas in Delhi so we could have a few
extra weeks touring in the exotic countryside of India.

 Well,
nothing ends the romance more swiftly than amoebic dysentery. I lasted a week
in a filthy Indian hostel, begging Alex not to leave me for dead in that hellish
place. Four days later we landed in Newark and my worried mother tucked me into
the backseat of her car and clucked the entire way home. In a way it was a
Jewish mother’s dream, a real reason to visit doctor after doctor after
doctor, making absolutely sure that every miserable parasite had abandoned her
little girl. It took four weeks for me to feel human again and another two
until I began to feel that living at home was unbearable. Mom and Dad were
great, but being asked where I was going every time I left the house—or
where I’d been every time I returned—got old quickly. I called Lily
and asked if I could crash on the couch of her tiny Harlem studio. Out of the
kindness of her heart, she agreed.

 I woke
up in that tiny Harlem studio, sweat-soaked. My forehead pounded, my stomach
churned, every nerve shimmied —shimmied in a very unsexy way. Ah!
It’s back, I thought, horrified. The parasites had found their way back
into my body and I was bound to suffer eternally! Or what if it was worse? Perhaps
I’d contracted a rare form of late-developing dengue fever? Malaria?
Possibly even Ebola? I lay in silence, trying to come to grips with my imminent
death, when snippets from the night before came back to me. A smoky bar
somewhere in the East Village. Something called jazz fusion music. A hot-pink
drink in a martini glassoh, nausea, oh, make it stop. Friends stopping by to
welcome me home. A toast, a gulp, another toast. Oh, thank god—it
wasn’t a rare strain of hemorrhagic fever, it was just a hangover. It
never occurred to me that I couldn’t exactly hold my liquor anymore after
losing twenty pounds to dysentery. Five feet ten inches and 115 pounds did not
bode well for a hard night out (although, in retrospect, it boded very well for
employment at a fashion magazine).

 I
bravely extracted myself from the crippling couch I’d been crashing on
for the past week and concentrated all my energy on not getting sick.
Adjustment to America—the food, the manners, the glorious
showers—hadn’t been too grueling, but the houseguest thing was
quickly becoming stale. I figured I had about a week and a half left of
exchanging leftover baht and rupees before I completely ran out of cash, and
the only way to get money from my parents was to return to the never-ending circuit
of second opinions. That sobering thought was the single thing propelling me
from bed, on what would be a fateful November day, to where I was expected in
one hour for my very first job interview. I’d spent the last week parked
on Lily’s couch, still weak and exhausted, until she finally yelled at me
to leave—if only for a few hours each day. Not sure what else to do with
myself, I bought a MetroCard and rode the subways, listlessly dropping off
résumés as I went. I left them with security guards at all the
big magazine publishers, with a halfhearted cover letter explaining that I
wanted to be an editorial assistant and gain some magazine writing experience.
I was too weak and tired to care if anyone actually read them, and the last
thing I was expecting was an interview. But Lily’s phone had rung just
the day before and, amazingly, someone from human resources at Elias-Clark
wanted me to come in for a “chat.” I wasn’t sure if it would
be considered an official interview or not, but a “chat” sounded
more palatable either way.

 I washed
down Advil with Pepto and managed to assemble a jacket and pants that did not
match and in no way created a suit, but at least they stayed put on my
emaciated frame. A blue button-down, a not-too-perky ponytail, and a pair of
slightly scuffed flats completed my look. It wasn’t great—in fact,
it bordered on supremely ugly—but it would have to suffice.They’re
not going to hire me or reject me on the outfit alone, I remember thinking.
Clearly, I was barely lucid.

 I showed
up on time for my elevenA .M. interview and didn’t panic until I
encountered the line of leggy, Twiggy types waiting to be permitted to board
the elevators. Their lips never stopped moving, and their gossip was punctuated
only by the sound of their stilettos clacking on the floor.Clackers, I
thought.That’s perfect. (The elevators!)Breathe in, breathe out, I
reminded myself.You will not throw up. You will not throw up. You’re just
here to talk about being an editorial assistant, and then it’s straight
back to the couch. You will not throw up. “Why yes, I’d love to
work at Reaction!Well, sure, I supposeThe Buzzwould be suitable. Oh, what? I
may have my pick? Well, I’ll need the night to decide between there and
Maison Vous.Delightful!”