The Devil Wears Prada (32 page)

 I was
silent. I wanted to talk, but Miranda was inching her way back to her office as
she upbraided the public events coordinator in front of everyone. She was in a
wicked mood, and I’d already had enough for one day. The girl she was
currently abusing had her head hung in shame, cheeks bright red, and I prayed
for her own sake that she wouldn’t cry.

 “Andy!
This is fucking ridiculous. Just say yes or no! It’s bad enough that I
have to cut class today and you can’t so much as leave work to come look
at this place, but you can’t even bother to say yes or no? What am
I—” Lily had reached her breaking point and I totally understood,
but there was nothing I could do except hang up on her. She was screaming so
loud into the phone that it was reverberating in the quiet office, and Miranda
was standing less than five feet away. I was so frustrated, I wanted to grab
the PR coordinator and hit the ladies’ room and cry with her. Or maybe if
we worked together we could throw Miranda into a toilet stall and tighten that
Hermès scarf that hung loosely around her skinny neck. Would I hold her
down or pull? Or perhaps it’d be more effective to just shove the damn thing
down her throat and watch her gasp for air and—

 “Ahn-dre-ah!”
Her voice was clipped, steely. “What did I ask you for a mere five
minutes ago?” Shit! The sundae. I’d forgotten the sundae. “Is
there a particular reason why you’re still sitting there instead of doing
your job? Is this your idea of a joke? Did I do or say something to indicate
that I wasn’t entirely serious? Did I? Did I?” Her blue eyes were
bulging out of her face, and although she hadn’t fully raised her voice
yet, of course, she was coming awfully close. I opened my mouth to speak but
heard Emily talking instead.

 “Miranda,
I’m so sorry. It’s my fault. I asked Andrea to answer the phone
because I thought it might be Caroline or Cassidy and I was on the other line
ordering that shirt from Prada you wanted. Andrea was just on her way out.
I’m sorry, and it won’t happen again.”

 Miracle
of miracles! The Perfect One had spoken, and in my defense, no less.

 Miranda
looked momentarily mollified. “Well, all right then. Get my sundae now,
Andrea.” And with that, she walked in her office and picked up the phone,
where she promptly started cooing to B-DAD.

 I looked
at Emily, but she was pretending to work. I shot her a one-word e-mail.Why? I
wrote.

 Because
I wasn’t entirely sure she wasn’t going to fire you, and I
don’t really feel like training someone new,she wrote back instantly. I
left to go in search of this perfect sundae and called Lily from my cell phone
as soon as the elevator hit the lobby.

 “I’m
sorry, I really am. It’s just that—”

 “Look,
I don’t really have time for this,” Lily said flatly. “I
think you’re overreacting just a little bit, don’t you? I mean, you
can’t so much as say yes or no on the phone?”

 “It’s
hard to explain, Lil, it’s just that—”

 “Forget
it. I’ve got to run. I’ll call you if we get it. Not that you
really care either way.”

 I tried
to protest, but she’d hung up. Dammit! It wasn’t fair to expect
Lily to understand when I would’ve thought I was ridiculous a mere four
months earlier. It really wasn’t fair to send her all over Manhattan in
search of an apartment we could both share when I wouldn’t even take her
phone calls, but what choice did I have?

 When she
answered one of my calls right after midnight, she told me we got the
apartment.

 “That’s
amazing, Lil. I can’t thank you enough. I swear I’ll make it up to
you. I promise!” And then I had a thought. Be spontaneous! Call an Elias
car and get up to Harlem and thank your best friend in person. Yes, that was
it! “Lil, are you home? I’m coming up to celebrate, OK?”

 I
thought she’d be thrilled, but she was quiet. “Don’t
bother,” she said quietly. “I’ve got a bottle of So-Co and
Tongue Ring Boy is here. I’ve got everything I want.”

 It
stung, but I understood. Lily rarely got mad, but when she did, no one could
talk her out of it until she was good and ready. I heard liquid swishing into a
glass and ice clinking, and I heard her take a deep, long swig.

 “OK.
But call me if you need anything, OK?”

 “Why?
So you can sit in silence on the other end? No thanks.”

 “Lil—”

 “Don’t
worry about me. I’m just fine.” Another gulp. “I’ll
talk to you later. And hey, congratulations to us.”

 “Yeah,
congratulations to us,” I repeated, but she’d already hung up once
again.

 I’d
called Alex on his cell to ask if I could go over to his place, but he
didn’t sound as delighted to hear from me as I’d hoped.

 “Andy,
you know I’d love to see you, but, well, I’m out with Max and the
guys. You’re never really around during the week anymore, so I made plans
to see them tonight.”

 “Oh,
well, are you guys in Brooklyn or around here somewhere? I could come meet
you?” I asked, knowing that of course they were somewhere on the Upper
East Side, probably very close to me, because that’s where all the other
guys lived as well.

 “Listen,
any other night that’d be great, but tonight is definitely just a
guys’ night.”

 “Oh,
sure, OK. I was going to meet Lily to celebrate the new apartment, but we, uh,
sort of got in a fight. She doesn’t understand why I can’t really
talk from work.”

 “Well,
Andy, I have to say, sometimes I don’t totally understand, either. I
mean, I know she’s a tough lady—trust me, I do—it just seems
that you take everything pretty seriously when it comes to her, you
know?” He sounded like he was trying very hard to keep his tone
accommodating and nonconfrontational.

 “Maybe
that’s because I do!” I shot back at him, pissed off at him for not
wanting to see me and not begging me to go out with his friends and for taking
Lily’s side even though she had a point and so did he. “It is my
life, you know? My career. Myfuture . What the hell am I supposed to do? Treat
it like a joke?”

 “Andy,
you’re twisting my words. You know that’s not what I meant.”

 But I
was already screaming back—I couldn’t help myself. First Lily and
now Alex? Both on top of Miranda, all day, every day? It was too much, and I
wanted to cry but all I could do was yell.

 “A
big fucking joke, huh? That’s what my job is to both of you!Oh, Andy, you
work in fashion, how hard can it be? ” I mimicked, hating myself more
with every passing second. “Well, excuse me if we can’t all be
do-gooders or Ph.D. candidates! Excuse me if—”

 “Call
me when you calm down,” he stated. “I’m not going to listen
to this anymore.” And he hung up. Hung up! I waited for him to call back,
but he never did, and by the time I’d finally fallen asleep, close to
three, I hadn’t heard from either Alex or Lily.

 Now it
was moving day—a full week later—and while neither was still
visibly mad, neither seemed exactly the same either. There hadn’t been
time to make amends in person with either one since we were in the middle of
closing an issue, but I figured things would fall into place when Lily and I
moved into our new apartment. Our shared apartment, where everything would go
back to the way it was when we were in college and life was much more
palatable.

 The
movers finally came at eleven, and it took them all of nine minutes to
disassemble my beloved bed and throw the pieces in back of their van. Mom and I
hitched a ride with them over to my new building, where my dad and Alex were
schmoozing with the doorman—who, bizarrely enough, was a dead ringer for
John Galliano—with my boxes piled against a wall in the lobby.

 “Andy,
glad you’re here. Mr. Fisher here won’t open the apartment unless
there’s a tenant present,” my dad said with a huge smile on his
face. “Which is very smart of him,” he added, winking at the
doorman.

 “Oh,
is Lily not here yet? She said she’d get here by ten, ten-thirty.”

 “Nope,
haven’t seen her. Should I call her?” Alex asked.

 “Yeah,
I guess so. Why don’t I go up with, er, Mr. Fisher so we can start
bringing stuff up. Ask her if she needs any help.”

 Mr.
Fisher smiled a way that could only be described as lecherous. “Please,
we’re like family now,” he said, looking at my chest. “Call
me John.”

 I almost
choked on the now cold coffee I was holding and wondered if the man revered the
world over for reviving the Dior brand had died without my knowing and been
reincarnated as my doorman.

 Alex
nodded and wiped his glasses on his T-shirt. I loved it when he did that.
“You go with your parents. I’ll call.”

 I
wondered if it was a good or bad thing that my father was now best friends with
my (designer) doorman, the man who would inevitably know every detail of my
life. The lobby looked nice, if a little retro. It was done in a light-colored
stone of some sort, and there were a few uncomfortable-looking benches in front
of the elevators and behind the mailroom. Our apartment was number 8C, and it faced
southwest, which, from what I’d heard, was a good thing. John opened the
door with his master key and stood back like a proud papa.

 “Here
she is,” he announced grandly.

 I walked
in first, expecting to be hit with an overpowering smell of sulfur or perhaps
see a few bats winging their way around our ceiling, but it was surprisingly
clean and bright. The kitchen was on the right, a narrow, one-person-wide strip
with white tile floors and reasonably white Formica cabinets. The countertops
were some sort of flecked granite imitation, and there was a microwave built in
above the stove.

 “This
is great,” my mom said, pulling open the refrigerator. “It’s
already got ice trays.” The movers pushed past us, grunting while they
lugged my bed.

 The
kitchen opened to the living room, which had already been divided in two by a
temporary wall to create a second bedroom. Of course, that meant that all the
windows had been cut out of the living room entirely, but that was OK. The
bedroom was a decent size—definitely bigger than the one I’d just
left—and the sliding glass door leading to the balcony made up one whole
wall. The bathroom was between the living room and the real bedroom and was
done in Pepto pink tiling and pink paint. Oh well. Could be kitschy. I walked
into the real bedroom, which was significantly bigger than the living room one
and looked around. A tiny closet, a ceiling fan, and a small, dirty window that
looked directly into an apartment in the building next door. Lily had wanted
this one and I’d happily agreed. She preferred having the extra space
since she spent so much time in her bedroom studying, but I’d rather have
the light and the balcony entrance.

 “Thanks,
Lil,” I whispered to myself, knowing that Lily couldn’t possibly
hear me.

 “What’d
you say, honey?” my mom asked, coming up behind me.

 “Oh,
nothing. Just that Lily did really, really well. I had no idea what to expect,
but this is great, don’t you think?”

 She
looked like she was trying to find the most tactful way of saying something.
“Yes, for New York, it’s a great apartment. It’s just hard to
imagine paying so much and getting so little. You know your sister and Kyle
only pay fourteen hundred a month total for their condo, and they have central
air, marble bathrooms, brand-new dishwasher and washer-dryer, and three
bedrooms and two bathrooms?” she pointed out, as if she were the first to
make this realization. For $2,280 you could get a beachfront townhouse in LA, a
three-story condo on a tree-lined street in Chicago, a four-bedroom split-level
in Miami, or a goddamn castle with a moat in Cleveland. Yes, we knew this.

 “And
two parking spots, access to the golf course, gym, and pool,” I added
helpfully. “Yeah, I know. But believe it or not, this is a great deal. I
think we’ll be very happy here.”

 She
hugged me. “I think you will be, too. As long as you don’t work too
hard to enjoy it,” she said lightly.