Mr. T. now: How is everything?”
“Here, let me take those,” I said, pulling the monogrammed duffel full of Miranda’s dirty
clothes that she’d given him to give to me. I also relieved him of the beaded Fendi tote
bag that had surfaced again recently. It was a one-of-a-kind tote that had been hand-
beaded in an elaborate crystal design just for Miranda from Silvia Venturini Fendi, as a
thank-you for all of her support, and one of the fashion assistants had put its value at just
under ten grand. But I noticed today that one of the skinny leather handles had broken
loose yet again, even though the accessories department had returned it to Fendi for hand-
stitching two dozen times already. It was intended to hold a delicate ladies’ wallet,
perhaps accompanied by a pair of sunglasses or maybe, if absolutely necessary, a small
cell phone. Miranda didn’t really care about that. She had currently crammed in an extra-
large bottle of Bulgari perfume, a sandal with a broken heel that I was probably supposed
to get fixed, the blotter-size Hermès daily planner that weighed more than an entire
laptop, an oversize spiked dog collar that I thought either belonged to Madelaine or was
for an upcoming fashion shoot, and the Book I had delivered to her the night before. I
would have hocked a bag worth ten thousand dollars and paid my rent for a year, but
Miranda preferred to use it as a trash receptacle.
“Thank you, Andy. You really are a big help to everyone. So Mr. T. would sure like to
hear more about your life. What’s going on?”
What’s going on?What’s going on?Hmm, well, let’s see here. Really not all that much, I
suppose. I spend most of my time trying to survive my term of indentured servitude with
your sadistic wife. If there are ever any free minutes during the workday when she’s not
making some belittling demand, then I’m trying to block out the brainwash drivel that’s
spoon-fed to me by her assistant in chief. On the increasingly rare occasions that I find
myself outside the confines of this magazine, I’m usually trying to convince myself that it
really is OK to eat more than eight hundred calories a day and that being a size six does
not put me in the plus-size category. So I guess the short answer is, not much.
“Well, Mr. Tomlinson, not too much. I work a lot. And I guess when I’m not working I
hang out with my best friend, or my boyfriend. Try to see my family.”I used to read a lot,
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I wanted to say,but I’m too tired now. And sports have always been a pretty big part of
my life, but there wasn’t time anymore.
“So, you’re twenty-five, right?” He non-sequitured. I couldn’t even imagine where he
was going with this one.
“Uh, no, I’m twenty-three. I only graduated last May.”
“Ah-hah! Twenty-three, huh?” He looked like he was trying to decide whether to say
something or not. I braced myself. “So tell Mr. T., what do twenty-three-year-olds do in
this city for fun? Restaurants? Clubs? That sort of thing?” He smiled again, and I
wondered if he really needed the attention as much as he appeared to: there was nothing
sinister behind his interest, just a seemingly driving need totalk .
“Um, well, all sorts of things, I guess. I don’t really go to clubs, but bars and lounges and
places like that. Go out for dinner, see movies.”
“Well, that sounds like a lot of fun. Used to do that kind of stuff, too, when I was your
age. Now it’s just a lot of work events and fund-raisers. Enjoy it while you can, Andy.”
He winked like a dorky father would.
“Yeah, well, I’m trying,” I managed.Please leave, please leave, please leave, I willed,
staring longingly at the bagel that was just calling my name. I get three minutes of peace
and quiet a day, and this man was stealing all of it.
He opened his mouth to say something, but the doors swung open and Emily stomped in.
She was wearing her headphones and moving to the music. I watched her mouth drop
open when she saw him standing there.
“Mr. Tomlinson!” she exclaimed, yanking off her headphones and tossing her iPod in
her Gucci tote. “Is everything OK? Nothing’s wrong with Miranda, is it?” She looked and
sounded genuinely concerned. An A-plus performance: always the perfectly attentive,
unfailingly polite assistant.
“Hello there, Emily. Nothing wrong at all. Miranda will be here shortly. Mr. T. just came
by to drop off her things. How are you doing today?”
Emily beamed. I wondered if she actually enjoyed his presence. “Just fine. Thanks so
much for asking. And you? Did Andrea help you with everything?”
“Oh, she sure did,” he said, throwing smile number 6,000 in my direction. “I wanted to
go over a few things about my brother’s engagement party, but I realize that it’s probably
a little early for that, right?”
For a moment I thought he meant too early in the morning and I almost shouted “Yes!”
but then I realized that he meant it was too early in the planning to discuss details.
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He turned back to Emily and said, “You’ve got yourself a great junior assistant here,
don’t you think?”
“Absolutely,” Emily managed through clenched teeth. “She’s the best.” She grinned.
I grinned.
Mr. Tomlinson grinned with extra wattage, and I wondered if he had a chemical
imbalance, perhaps hypomania.
“Well, Mr. T. had better be on his way. It’s always lovely chatting with you girls. Have a
nice morning, both of you. Good-bye now.”
“’Bye, Mr. Tomlinson!” Emily called as he rounded the corner in the hallway on his way
to reception.
“Why were you so rude to him?” she asked as she pulled the flimsy leather blazer off,
only to reveal a flimsier chiffon scoop-neck that was laced all the way up the front like a
corset.
“So rude? I helped him unload her stuff and I talked to him before you got here. How is
that rude?”
“Well, you didn’t say good-bye, for one thing. And you have that look on your face.”
“That look?”
“Yes, that look of yours. The one that tells everyone just how far above this you are, just
how much you hate it here. That may fly with me, but it won’t with Mr. Tomlinson. He’s
Miranda’shusband , and you just can’t treat him like that.”
“Em, don’t you think he’s a little, I don’t know . . . weird? He never stops talking. How
can he be so nice when she’s such a . . . so not as nice?” I watched as she glanced inside
Miranda’s office to make sure that I’d set the newspapers correctly.
“Weird? Hardly, Andrea. He’s one of the most prominent tax attorneys in Manhattan.”
It wasn’t worth it. “Never mind, I don’t even know what I’m saying. What’s going on
with you? How was your night?”
“Oh, it was good. I went shopping with Jessica for gifts for her bridesmaids.
Everywhere—Scoop, Bergdorf’s, Infinity, everywhere. And I tried on a bunch of stuff to
get some idea for Paris, but it’s still really too early.”
“For Paris? You’re going to Paris? Does that mean you’ll leave me alone with her?” I
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hadn’t meant to say the last part out loud, but it had slipped.
Again, a look like I was crazy. “Yes, I’ll be going to Paris with Miranda in October, for
the spring ready-to-wear shows. Each year she takes her senior assistant to the spring
shows so she can see what it’s really like. I mean, I’ve been to, like, a million at Bryant
Park, but the European shows are just different.”
I did a quick calculation. “In October, as in seven months from now? You were trying on
clothes for a trip seven months from now?” I hadn’t meant for it to sound as harsh as it
did, and Emily immediately got defensive.
“Well, yes. I mean, obviously I wasn’t going to buy anything—so many of the styles will
have changed by then. But I just wanted to start thinking about it. It’s a really huge deal,
you know. Stay in five-star hotels, go to the craziest parties ever. And my god, you get to
go to the hottest, most exclusive fashion shows in existence.”
Emily had already told me that Miranda went to Europe three or four times a year for the
fashion shows. She always skipped London, like everyone did, but she went to Milan and
Paris in October for spring ready-to-wear, in July for winter couture, and in March for
fall ready-to-wear. Sometimes she’d hit resort, but not always. We’d been working like
crazy to get Miranda prepared for the shows coming up at the end of the month. I’d
wondered briefly why she wasn’t planning on bringing an assistant.
“So why doesn’t she take you to all of them?” I decided to just go for it, even though the
answer was sure to entail a lengthy explanation. I was excited enough that Miranda
would be out of the office for two whole weeks (she spent one in Milan and one in Paris)
and was giddy at the thought of getting rid of Emily for a week of that. Visions of bacon
cheeseburgers and nonprofessionally ripped jeans and flats—oh hell, maybe even
sneakers—filled my head. “Why just in October?”
“Well, it’s not like she doesn’t have help over there. Italian and FrenchRunway always
send some of their assistants for Miranda, and most of the time the editors help her
themselves. But it’s at spring RTW that she throws a huge party, the annual kick-off
party that everyone says is the biggest and best at all the shows, all year long. I’ll only go
for the week while she’s in Paris. So obviously she would only trustme to help her there.”
Obviously.
“Mmm, sounds like it’ll be a great time. So that means I just hold down the fort here,
huh?”
“Yeah, pretty much. But don’t think that it’ll be a joke. That will probably be the hardest
week of all because she needs a lot of assistance when she’s away. She’ll be calling you a
lot.”
“Oh, goody,” I said. She rolled her eyes.
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I slept with my eyes open, staring at a blank computer screen, until the office began to
fill up and there were other people to watch. TenA .M. brought the first of the Clackers,
the quiet sipping of no-whip skim lattes to nurse the previous night’s champagne
hangovers. James stopped by my desk, as he did whenever he saw Miranda wasn’t at
hers, and proclaimed he’d met his future husband at Balthazar the night before.
“He was just sitting at the bar, wearing the greatest red leather jacket I’d ever seen—and
let me tell you, he could pull it off. You should have seen how he slipped those oysters on
his tongue . . .” He audibly groaned. “Oh, it was just magnificent.”
“So’d you get his number?” I asked.
“Get his number? Try get his pants. He was butt-ass naked on my couch by eleven, and
boy, let me tell you—”
“Lovely, James. Lovely. Not one for playing hard to get, are you? Sounds a little slutty
of you, to be honest. This is the age of AIDS, you know.”
“Sweetie, even you, Miss High and Mighty I-Date-the-World’s-Last-Angel, would’ve
been on your knees without a second thought if you saw this guy. He’s absolutely
amazing. Amazing!”
By eleven everyone had checked everyone else out, making notations of who had scored
a pair of the new Theory “Max” pants or the latest, impossible-to-find Sevens. Time for a
break at noon, when conversation centered around particular items of clothing and
usually took place by the racks lined up against the walls. Each morning Jeffy would pull
out all the racks of dresses and bathing suits and pants and shirts and coats and shoes and
everything else that had been called in as a potential item to shoot for one of the fashion
spreads. He lined up each rack against a wall, weaving them throughout the entire floor
so the editors could find what they needed without having to fight their way through the
Closet itself.
The Closet wasn’t really a closet at all. It was more like a small auditorium. Along the
perimeter were walls of shoes in every size and color and style, a virtual Willy Wonka’s
factory for fashionistas, with dozens of slingbacks, stilettos, ballet flats, high-heeled
boots, open-toe sandals, beaded heels. Stacked drawers, some built-in and others just
shoved in corners, held every imaginable configuration of stockings, socks, bras, panties,
slips, camisoles, and corsets. Need a last-minute leopard-print push-up bra from La
Perla? Check the Closet. How about a pair of flesh-colored fishnets or those Dior
aviators? In the Closet. The accessories shelves and drawers took up the farthest two
walls, and the sheer amount of merchandise—not to mention its value—was staggering.
Fountain pens. Jewelry. Bed linens. Mufflers and gloves and ski caps. Pajamas. Capes.
Shawls. Stationery. Silk flowers. Hats, so many hats. And bags. The bags! There were
totes and bowling bags, backpacks and under-arms, over-shoulders and minis, oversize
and clutches, envelopes and messengers, each bearing an exclusive label and a price tag
of more than the average American’s monthly mortgage payment. And then there were
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the racks and racks of clothes—pushed so tightly together it was impossible to walk
among them—that occupied every remaining inch of space.
So during the day Jeffy would attempt to make the Closet a semi-usable space where
models (and assistants like myself) could try on clothes and actually reach some of the
shoes and bags in the back by pushing all of the racks into the halls. I’d yet to see a single
visitor to the floor—whether writer or boyfriend or messenger or stylist—not stop dead in
his or her tracks and gape at the couture-lined hallways. Sometimes the racks were
arranged by shoot (Sydney, Santa Barbara) and other times by item (bikinis, skirt suits),
but mostly it just seemed like a haplessly casual mishmash ofreally expensive stuff . And
although everyone stopped and stared and fingered the butter-soft cashmeres and the
intricately beaded evening gowns, it was the Clackers who hovered possessively over
“their” clothes and provided constant, streaming commentary on each and every piece.
“Maggie Rizer is the only woman in theworld who can actually wear these capris,”
Hope, one of the fashion assistants—weighing a whopping 105 pounds and clocking in at
