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
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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
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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.
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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
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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
