wools hanging next to her minks) and where we kept a number of supplies: castoff coats
and clothes that were worth tens of thousands of dollars, some new dry cleaning that had
been delivered to the office but not yet brought up to Miranda’s apartment, at least two
hundred of the infamous white Hermès scarves. I’d heard that Hermès had decided to
discontinue her particular style last year, a simple and elegant white silk square. Someone
at the company felt they owed Miranda an explanation and actually called to apologize to
her. Unsurprisingly, she’d coldly told them how disappointed she was and promptly
purchased their entire remaining stock. About five hundred of the scarves had been
delivered to the office a couple years before I’d gotten there, and we were now down to
less than half. Miranda left them everywhere: restaurants, movies, fashion shows, weekly
meetings, taxis. She left them on airplanes, at her daughters’ school, on the tennis court.
Of course, she always had one stylishly incorporated into her outfit—I’d yet to see her
outside her own home without one. But that didn’t explain where they all went. Perhaps
she thought they were handkerchiefs? Or maybe she liked jotting notes on silk instead of
paper? Whatever it was, she seemed to truly believe they were disposable, and none of us
knew how to tell her otherwise. Elias-Clark had paid a couple hundred dollars for each
one, but no matter: we handed them out to her as though they were Kleenex. At the rate
she was going, in under two years, Miranda was due to run out.
I’d arranged the stiff orange boxes on the ready-to-distribute shelf of the closet, where
they never remained for very long. Every third or fourth day, she’d prepare to leave for
lunch and sigh, “Ahn-dre-ah, hand me a scarf.” I comforted myself with the thought that
I’d be long gone by the time she ran out of them completely. Whoever was unlucky
enough to be around would have to tell her that there were no more white Hermès
scarves, and that none could be made, shipped, created, formed, mailed, ordered, or
mandated. The mere thought was terrifying.
Just as I got the closet and office opened, Uri called.
“Andrea? Hello, hello. It is Uri. Could you come downstairs please? I am on Fifty-eighth
Street, closer to Park Avenue, right in front of the New York Sports Club. I have things
for you.”
This call was a good although imperfect way of telling me that Miranda would be
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arriving somewhat soon. Maybe. Most mornings she sent Uri ahead to the office with her
things, an assortment of dirty clothes that needed dry cleaning, any copy she’d taken
home to read, magazines, shoes or bags that needed to be fixed, and the Book. This way,
she could have me meet the car and carry up all of these rather mundane things ahead of
schedule and deal with them before she stepped into the office. She tended to follow her
stuff by about a half hour, since Uri would drop off her things and then go pick her up
from wherever she might be hiding that morning.
She herself could be anywhere, since, according to Emily, she never slept. I didn’t
believe it until I started getting to the office ahead of Emily and would be the first to
listen to the voice mail. Every night, without exception, Miranda would leave eight to ten
ambiguous messages for us between the hours of one and six in the morning. Things like,
“Cassidy wants one of those nylon bags all the little girls are carrying. Order her one in
the medium size and a color she’d like,” and “I’ll be needing the address and phone
number of that antique store in the seventies, the one where I saw the vintage dresser.” As
though we knew which nylon bags were all the rage among ten-year-olds or at which one
of four hundred antique stores in the seventies—east or west, by the way?—she happened
to spot something she liked at some point in the past fifteen years. But each morning I
faithfully listened to and transcribed those messages, hitting “replay” over and over and
over again, trying to make sense of the accent and interpret the clues in order to avoid
asking Miranda directly for more information.
Once, I made the mistake of suggesting that we actually ask Miranda to provide a few
more details, only to be met with one of Emily’s withering looks. Questioning Miranda
was apparently off-limits. Better to muddle through and wait to be told how off the mark
our results were. To locate the vintage dresser that had caught Miranda’s eye, I had spent
two and a half days in a limo, cruising around Manhattan, through the seventies on both
sides of the park. I ruled out York Avenue (too residential) and proceeded up First, down
Second, up Third, down Lex. I skipped Park (again, too residential) but continued up
Madison, and then repeated a similar process on the West Side. Pen poised, eyes peeled,
phone book open in my lap, ready to jump out at the first sight of a store that sold
antiques. I graced every single antique store—and not a few regular furniture stores—
with a personal visit. By store number four, I had it down to an art form.
“Hi, do you sell any vintage dressers?” I’d practically scream the second they buzzed me
inside. By the sixth store I wasn’t even bothering to move in from the doorway. Some
snotty salesperson inevitably looked me up and down—I couldn’t escape it!—sizing me
up to decide if I was someone to be bothered with. Most would notice the waiting Town
Car at this point and grudgingly provide me with a yes or no answer, although some
wanted detailed descriptions of the dresser I was looking for.
If they admitted to selling something that fit my two-word requirement, I would
immediately follow up with a curt “Has Miranda Priestly been here recently?” If they
hadn’t thought I was crazy at this point, they now looked ready to call security. A few
had never heard her name, which was fantastic both because it was rejuvenating to see
firsthand that there were still normally functioning human beings whose lives weren’t
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dominated by her, and also because I could promptly leave without further discussion.
The pathetic majority who recognized the name became instantly curious. Some
wondered which gossip column I wrote for. But regardless of whatever story I made up,
no one had seen her in their shop (with the exception of three stores who hadn’t “seen
Ms. Priestly in months, and oh, how we miss her! Please do tell her that
Franck/Charlotte/Sarabeth sends his/her love!”).
When I hadn’t located the shop by noon of the third day, Emily finally gave me the
green light to come to the office and ask Miranda for clarification. I started sweating
when the car pulled in front of the building. I threatened to climb over the turnstile if
Eduardo didn’t let me pass without a performance. By the time I reached our floor, the
sweat had soaked through my shirt. Hands started shaking the moment I entered the
office suite, and the perfectly prepared speech (Hello, Miranda. I’m fine, thanks so much
for asking. How are you? Listen, I just wanted to let you know that I’ve been trying very
hard to locate the antique store you described, but I haven’t had much luck. Perhaps you
could tell me whether it’s on the east or west side of Manhattan? Or maybe you even
recall the name?) simply vanished into the fickle regions of my very nervous brain.
Against all protocol, I didn’t post my question on the Bulletin; I requested permission to
approach her at her desk and—probably because she was so shocked I’d had the nerve to
speak without being spoken to—she granted it. To make a long story short, Miranda
sighed and patronized and condescended and insulted in every delightful way of hers but
finally opened her black leather Hermès planner (tied shut inconveniently but chicly with
a white Hermès scarf) and produced . . . the business card for the store.
“I left this information on the recording for you, Ahn-dre-ah. I suppose it would have
been too much trouble to write it down?” And even though the yearning to make
decorative paper-cut designs all over her face with the aforementioned business card
filled my entire being, I simply nodded and agreed. It wasn’t until I looked down at the
card that I noticed the address: 244 East 68th Street. Naturally. East or west or Second
Avenue or Amsterdam wouldn’t have made a damn bit of difference, because the store
I’d just dedicated the past thirty-three working hours to locating wasn’t even in the
seventies.
I thought of this as I wrote down the last of Miranda’s late-night requests before racing
downstairs to meet Uri at our designated area. Every morning he described where he
parked in great detail so I could theoretically meet him at the car. But every morning, no
matter how fast I made it downstairs, he’d bring everything inside himself so I wouldn’t
have to race up and down the streets searching for him. I was delighted to see that today
was no exception: he was leaning against a lobby turnstile, holding bags and clothes and
books in his arms like a benevolent, generous grandfather.
“Don’t you run to me, you hear?” he said in his thick Russian accent. “All day long, you
run, run, run. She makes you work very, very hard. This is why I bring the tings to you,”
he said, helping me get a grip on the overflowing bags and boxes. “You be a good girl,
you hear, and have a nice day.”
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I shot him a grateful look, glared at Eduardo semijokingly—my way of saying, “I will
fucking kill you if you eventhink of asking me to strike a pose right now”—and softened
a bit when he buzzed me through the turnstiles, comment-free. I miraculously
remembered to stop by the lobby newsstand, where Ahmed piled all of Miranda’s
requested morning papers into my arms. Although the mailroom delivered each to
Miranda’s desk by nine each day, I was still to purchase a full second set every morning
to help minimize the risk that she would spend a single second in her office without her
papers. Same with the weekly magazines. No one seemed to mind that we charged nine
newspapers a day and seven magazines a week for someone who read only the gossip and
fashion pages.
I dumped all her stuff on the floor under my desk. It was time for the first round of
ordering. I dialed the number I’d memorized long ago for Mangia, a gourmet takeout
place in midtown, and, as usual, Jorge answered.
“Hi, pumpkin, it’s me,” I’d say, propping the phone against my shoulder so I could start
logging into Hotmail. “Let’s get this day started.” Jorge and I were friends. Talking three,
four, five times a morning had a funny way of bonding two people rather quickly.
“Hey, baby, I’ll send one of the boys over right away. Is she there yet?” he asked,
understanding that “she” was my lunatic boss and that she worked forRunway, but not
quite understanding who exactly would be consuming the breakfast I had just ordered.
Jorge was one of my morning men, as I liked to call them. Eduardo, Uri, Jorge, and
Ahmed gave a decent as possible start to my day. They were deliciously unaffiliated
withRunway, even though their separate existences in my life were solely meant to make
its editor’s life more perfect. Not a single one of them truly understood Miranda’s power
and prestige.
Breakfast number one would be on its way to 640 Madison in seconds, and the chances
were good I’d have to throw it out. Miranda ate four slices of greasy, fatty bacon, two
sausage links, and a soft cheese Danish every morning, and washed it down with a tall
latte from Starbucks (two raw sugars, remember!). As far as I could tell, the office was
divided on whether she was permanently on the Atkins diet or just lucky enough to have
a superhuman metabolism, the result of some pretty fantastic genes. Either way, she
thought nothing of devouring the fattiest, most sickeningly unhealthy foods—even
though the rest of us weren’t exactly afforded the same luxury. Since nothing stayed hot
for more than ten minutes after it arrived, I’d keep reordering and tossing until she
showed up. I could get away with microwaving each meal one time, but that bought me
only an extra five minutes, and she could usually tell. (“Ahn-dre-ah, this is vile. Get me a
fresh breakfast at once.”) I would order and reorder every twenty minutes or so until she
called from her cell phone and told me to order her breakfast (“Ahn-dre-ah, I’ll be at the
office shortly. Order my breakfast”). Of course, this was usually only a two-or three-
minute warning, so the preordering was necessary both because of the short warning and
in the rather common event that she didn’t bother to call at all. If I’d done my job, by the
time her actual call for breakfast had come, I’d already have two or three on the way.
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The phone rang. It had to be her, too early to be anyone else.
“Miranda Priestly’s office,” I chirped, bracing myself for the iciness.
“Emily, I’ll be there in ten minutes and I’d like my breakfast to be ready.”
She had taken to calling both Emily and me “Emily,” suggesting, quite rightly, that we
were indistinguishable from each other and completely interchangeable. Somewhere in
the back of my mind I was offended, but I’d grown accustomed to it at this point. And
besides, I was too tired to really care about something as incidental as my name.
“Yes, Miranda, right away.” But she had already hung up. The real Emily walked into
the office.
“Hey, is she here?” she whispered, looking furtively toward Miranda’s office as she
always did, without a hello or a good morning, just like her mentor.
“Nope, but she just called and she’ll be here in ten. I’ll be back.”
I quickly transferred my cell phone and cigarettes to my coat pocket and ran. I had only a
few minutes to get downstairs, cross Madison, and jump the line at Starbucks—and suck
down my first precious cigarette of the day while in transit. Stamping out the last embers,
I stumbled into the Starbucks at 57th and Lex and surveyed the line. If it was fewer than
