camouflage against her green and blue plaid comforter. There was a gold hoop through
his eyebrow, much glittering metal from each ear, and two small, rounded spikes coming
out of his chin. Thankfully he was wearing a pair of boxers, but they looked so dirty and
dingy and old that I almost—almost—wished he weren’t. He pulled on his cigarette,
exhaled slowly and meaningfully, and nodded in my general direction.
“Yo,” he said, waving his cigarette toward me. “You mind shuttin’ the door there,
m’friend?”
What? “M’friend”? Was this sleazy-looking Aussie actually givingme attitude?
“Are you smokingcrack ?” I asked, no longer interested in manners of any sort, and not
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at all scared. He was shorter than me and couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred
thirty—as far as I could tell, the worst thing he could do to me at that point would be to
touch me. I shuddered when I thought about the myriad ways he’d probably touched Lily,
who was still sleeping soundly underneath his protective hover. “Who the hell do you
think you are? This ismy apartment, and I’d like you to leave. Now!” I added, my
courage fueled by the time demands: I had exactly one hour to get gorgeous for the single
most stressful night of my career, and dealing with this strung-out freak had not been part
of the game plan.
“Duuuuuuuude. Chill out,” he breathed and inhaled again. “It doesn’t look like your
friend here wants me to leave . . .”
“She would want you to leave if she HAPPENED TO BE CONSCIOUS, YOU
ASSHOLE!” I screamed, horrified that Lily had—in all likelihood—had sex with this
guy. “I assure you, I speak for both of us when I say GET THE FUCK OUT OF OUR
APARTMENT!”
I felt a hand on my shoulder and whipped around to see Alex, looking concerned,
checking out the situation. “Andy, why don’t you get in the shower and let me take care
of this, OK?” Although no one could call him a big guy, he looked like a pro wrestler
compared to the emaciated mess that was currently nuzzling his facial metal against my
best friend’s bare back.
“I. WANT. HIM.”—I pointed here, just to be clear.—“OUT. OF. MY. APARTMENT.”
“I know you do, and I think he’s about ready to leave, too, aren’t you, buddy?” Alex
asked in the kind of soothing voice you’d use with a rabid-looking dog you were
frightened of upsetting.
“Duuuuuuude,no issues here. Just havin’ a little fun with Lily is all. She was all over me
last night at Au Bar—ask anyone, they’ll tell you. Fuckin’ begged me to come back with
her.”
“I don’t doubt that,” Alex said soothingly. “She’s a really friendly girl when she wants to
be, but sometimes she gets too drunk to know what she’s doing. So as her friend, I’m
going to have to ask you to leave now.”
The freak mashed his cigarette out and made a big show of throwing up his hands in
mock surrender. “Dude, no problem whatsoever. I’ll just take a quick shower and give
m’little Lily here a proper good-bye, and then I’ll be on m’way.” He swung his legs over
the side of the bed and reached for the towel that hung next to her desk.
Alex moved forward, swiftly removed the towel from his hands, and looked him directly
in the eye. “No. I think you should leave now. Right now.” And in a way that I’d never
seen him do in the almost three years I’d known him, he placed himself squarely in front
of Freak Boy and allowed his height to insinuate the threat that was clearly intended.
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“Dude, no worries. I’m outta here,” he crooned after taking one look at Alex and
realizing he had to crane his neck to look at his face. “Just get m’self dressed and out the
door.” He picked up his jeans from the floor and located his ripped-up T-shirt from
underneath Lily’s still exposed body. She moved when he pulled it out from under her,
and a few seconds later her eyes managed to open.
“Cover her!” Alex commanded gruffly, now clearly enjoying his new role as
threatening-man-in-charge. And without comment, Freak Boy pulled the cover over her
shoulders so that only a tangle of her black curls was visible.
“What’s going on?” Lily croaked while willing her eyes to stay open. She turned to see
me trembling in anger in her doorway, Alex hulking about doing manly poses, and Freak
Boy scrambling to tie his blue and canary yellow Diadoras and get the hell out before
things got really ugly. Too late. Her gaze stopped on Freak Boy.
“Who the hell are you?” she asked him, bolting upright without even realizing that she
was now completely naked. Alex and I instinctively turned away while she pulled the
covers up, looking shocked, but Freak Boy grinned lecherously and ogled her breasts.
“Baby, you tellin’ me you don’t remember who I am?” he asked, his thick Australian
accent becoming less adorable with every passing second. “You sure knew who I was last
night.” He walked over to her and looked like he was about to sit down on the bed, but
Alex had already grabbed his arm and pulled him upright.
“Out. Now. Or I’m going to have to carry you myself,” he commanded, looking tough
and very cute and not a little proud of himself.
Freak Boy threw up his hands and made clucking noises. “I’m outta here. Call me
sometime, Lily. You were great last night.” He moved quickly through the bedroom door
toward the living room with Alex in pursuit. “Man, she sure as hell is a feisty one,” I
heard him say to Alex right before the front door slammed shut, but it didn’t appear that
Lily had heard. She had pulled on a T-shirt and managed to pull herself out of bed.
“Lily, who the hell was that? He was the biggest jerk I’ve ever met, not to mention
absolutelydisgusting .”
She shook her head slowly and appeared to be concentrating very hard, trying to
remember where he’d entered her life. “Disgusting. You’re right, he is absolutely
disgusting, and I have no idea what happened. I remember you leaving last night and
talking to some really nice guy in a suit—we were doing shots of Jaeger, for some
reason—and that’s it.”
“Lily, just imagine how drunk you had to be to agree to not only have sex with someone
who looks like that, but to bring him back to our apartment!” I thought I was pointing out
the obvious, but her eyes widened into surprised realization.
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“You think I had sex with him?” she asked softly, refusing to acknowledge what seemed
certain.
Alex’s words from a few months before came back to me: Lily did drink more than was
normal—all the signs were there. She was missing classes regularly, had gotten arrested,
and now had dragged home the scariest-looking mutant of a guy I’d ever laid eyes on. I
also remembered the message one of her professors had left on our machine right after
finals, something to the effect that while Lily’s final paper had been stellar, she’d missed
too many classes and handed things in too late to give her the “A” she deserved. I decided
to tread carefully. “Lil, sweetie, I don’t think the problem is the guy. I think it’s the
drinking that’s causing it.”
She had begun brushing her hair, and it wasn’t until now that I realized it was already six
o’clock on a Friday night and she was just getting out of bed. She wasn’t protesting, so I
continued.
“It’s not that I have any issue with drinking,” I said, trying to keep the conversation
relatively peaceful. “Clearly, I’m not antidrinking. I just wonder if it’s gotten a little bit
out of control lately, you know? Has everything been OK at school?”
She opened her mouth to say something, but Alex popped his head in the door and
handed me my shrieking cell phone. “It’s her,” he said and left again.Argghhh! The
woman had a very special gift for wrecking my life.
“Sorry,” I said to Lily, looking at the phone warily as the display screamed MP CELL
over and over again. “It usually only takes a second for her to humiliate or reprimand me,
so hold that thought.” Lily set down her brush and watched me answer.
“Miran—” Again, I’d almost answered the line as though it were her own. “This is
Andrea,” I corrected, bracing for the barrage.
“Andrea, you know I expect you there at six-thirty tonight, do you not?” she barked into
the phone without a greeting or identification of any sort.
“Oh, um, you had said seven o’clock earlier. I still need to—”
“I said six-thirty before and I’m saying it again now.Siiiiix-thiiiiirty . Get it?” Click.
She’d hung up. I looked at my watch. 6:05P .M. This was a problem.
“She wants me there in twenty-five minutes,” I stated out loud to no one in particular.
Lily looked relieved for the distraction. “Let’s get you moving then, OK?”
“We’re midconversation here, and this is important. What were you going to say
before?” The words were right, but it was clear to both of us that my mind was already a
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million miles away. I’d already decided there was no time to shower, as I now had fifteen
minutes to zip myself into black-tie and get into a car.
“Seriously, Andy, you’ve got to move. Go get ready—we’ll do this later.”
And once again I was left with no choice but to move quickly, heart racing, climbing
into my gown and running a brush through my hair and trying to match some of the
names with the pictures of the evening’s guests that Emily had helpfully printed out
earlier. Lily watched the whole thing unwind with mild amusement, but I knew she was
worrying about the incident with Freak Boy, and I felt terrible I couldn’t deal with it right
then. Alex was on his phone with his little brother, trying to convince him that he really
was too young to go to a movie at nine o’clock and that their mother wasn’t cruel in
forbidding him to do so.
I kissed him on the cheek as he whistled and told me that he’d probably meet some
people for dinner but to call him later if I wanted to meet up, and ran as best one can in
stilts back to the living room, where Lily was holding a gorgeous piece of black silk
fabric. I looked at her questioningly.
“A wrap, for your big night,” she sang, shaking it out like a bedsheet. “I want my Andy
to look just as sophisticated as all the big-money Carolina rednecks she’ll be serving
tonight like a common waitress. My grandmother bought it for me years ago to wear to
Eric’s wedding. I can’t decide if it’s gorgeous or hideous, but it’s black-tie enough and
it’s Chanel, so it should do.”
I hugged her. “Just promise if Miranda kills me for saying the wrong thing that you’ll
burn this dress and make sure I’m buried in my Brown sweatpants. Promise me!” She
grabbed the mascara wand I was waving about and started working on me.
“You look great, Andy, really you do. Never thought I’d see you in an Oscar gown going
to one of Miranda Priestly’s parties, but, hey, you look the part. Now go.”
She handed me the dangling, obnoxiously bright Judith Leiber bag and held the door as I
walked into the hallway. “Have fun!”
The car was waiting outside my building and John—who was shaping up to be a first-
class pervert—whistled as the driver held the door open for me.
“Knock ’em dead, hottie,” he called after me with an exaggerated wink. “See ya late-
night.” He had no idea where I was going, of course, but it was comforting that he
thought I’d at least be coming home.Maybe it won’t be that bad, I thought as I settled into
the cushy backseat of the Town Car. But then my dress slid up over my knees and the
back of my legs touched the ice-cold leather seats, and I lurched forward.Or, maybe, it
will suck just as much as I think it will?
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The driver jumped out and ran around to open the door for me, but I was standing on the
curb by the time he’d made it around. I’d been to the Met once before, on a day trip to
New York with my mom and Jill to see some of the tourist sights. I didn’t remember any
of the actual exhibits we saw that day—only how much my new shoes had hurt by the
time we got there—but I recalled the never-ending white staircase out front and the
feeling that I could climb those stairs forever.
The stairs stood where I remembered them but looked different in the haze of dusk. Still
accustomed to the short, miserable days of winter, I thought it seemed strange that the
sky was just darkening and it was already six-thirty. That night the stairs looked
positively regal. They were prettier than the Spanish Steps or the ones outside the library
at Columbia, or even the awe-inspiring spread at the Capitol building in D.C. It wasn’t
until I’d made it to about the tenth one of those white beauties that I began to loathe
them. What cruel, cruel sadist would make a woman in a skintight, floor-length gown and
spiked heels climb such a hill of hell? Since I couldn’t very well hate the architect or
even the museum official who’d commissioned him, I was forced to hate Miranda, who
could usually be blamed for directly or indirectly causing all the misery and bad will in
my life.
The top felt like a mile away, and I flashed back to the spinning classes I used to take
when I still had time to go to the gym. Some Nazi instructor would sit atop her little bike
and bark out orders in perfect military staccato: “Pump, pump, and breathe, breathe!
Climb, people, climb that hill. You’re almost at the top! Don’t lose it now! Climb for
your life!” I closed my eyes and tried to envision pedaling instead, the wind in my hair,
running over the instructor, but climbing, still climbing. Oh, anything to forget the fiery
pain that shot from little toe to heel to back again. Ten more steps, that was all that was
left, just ten more, oh, god, was that wetness in my shoes blood? Would I have to walk
before Miranda in a sweaty Oscar gown and bloody feet? Please, oh please, say that I was
almost there and . . . there! The top. The feeling of victory was no less than that of a
world-class sprinter who’d just won her first gold medal. I inhaled mightily, clenched my
fingers to fight off the urge for a victory cigarette, and reapplied my Fudgsicle
Lipsmackers. It was time to be a lady.
