apartment and buy some furniture and move.”
“Oh, well, then. I suppose Wednesday would be OK,” she sniffed.
After a few more minutes of haggling, we finally settled on November 17, a week from
Monday. That left me a little more than eight days to find and furnish a home in one of
the craziest real estate markets in the world.
I hung up and flopped back down on the couch. My hands were trembling, and I let the
phone drop to the floor. A week. I had a week to start working at the job I’d just accepted
as Miranda Priestly’s assistant. But, wait! That’s what was bothering me . . . I hadn’t
actually accepted the job because it hadn’t even been officially offered. Sharon hadn’t
even had to utter the words “We’d like to make you an offer,” since she took it for
granted that anyone with some semblance of intelligence would obviously just accept. No
one had so much as mentioned the word “salary.” I almost laughed out loud. Was this
some sort of war tactic they’d perfected? Wait until the victim was finally deep into REM
sleep after an extremely stressful day and then throw some life-altering news at her? Or
had she just assumed that it would be wasted time and breath to do something as
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mundane as make a job offer and wait for acceptance, considering that this wasRunway
magazine? Sharon had just assumed that of course I’d jump all over the chance, that I’d
be thrilled with the opportunity. And, as they always were at Elias-Clark, she was right. It
had all happened so fast, so frenetically, that I hadn’t had time to debate and deliberate as
usual. But I had a good feeling that thiswas an opportunity I’d be crazy to turn down, that
this could actually be a great first step to getting toThe New Yorker . I had to try it. I was
lucky to have it.
Newly energized, I gulped the rest of my coffee, brewed another cup for Alex, and took
a quick, hot shower. When I went back into his room, he was just sitting up.
“You’re dressed already?” he asked, fumbling for the tiny wire-rimmed glasses he was
blind without. “Did someone call this morning, or did I dream that?”
“Not a dream,” I said, crawling back under the covers even though I was wearing jeans
and a turtleneck sweater. I was careful not to let my wet hair soak his pillows. “That was
Lily. The HR woman from Elias-Clark called her place because that’s the number I gave
them. And guess what?”
“You got the job?”
“I got the job!”
“Oh, come here!” he said, sitting up and hugging me. “I’m so proud of you! That’s great
news, it really is.”
“So you really think it’s a good opportunity? I know we talked about it, but they didn’t
even give me a chance to decide. She just assumed that I’d want the job.”
“It’s an amazing opportunity. Fashion isn’t the worst thing on earth—maybe it’ll even be
interesting.”
I rolled my eyes.
“OK, so maybe that’s going a little far. But withRunway on your résumé and a letter
from this Miranda woman, and maybe even a few clips by the time you’re done, hell, you
can do anything.The New Yorker will be beating down your door.”
“I hope you’re right, I really do.” I jumped up and starting throwing my things in my
backpack. “Is it still OK if I borrow your car? The sooner I get home, the sooner I can get
back. Not that it really matters, because I’mmoving to New York . It’s official!”
Since Alex went home to Westchester twice a week to babysit his little brother when his
mom had to work late, his mom had given him her old car to keep in the city. But he
wouldn’t be needing it until Tuesday, and I’d be back before then. I had been planning to
go home that weekend anyway, and now I’d have some good news to bring with me.
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“Sure. No problem. It’s in a spot about a half-block down on Grand Street. The keys are
on the kitchen table. Call me when you get there, OK?”
“Will do. Sure you don’t want to come? There’ll be great food—you know my mom
orders in only the best.”
“Sounds tempting. You know I would, but I organized some of the younger teachers to
get together tomorrow night for happy hour. Thought it might help us all work as a team.
I really can’t miss it.”
“Goddamn do-gooder. Always doing good, spreading good cheer wherever you go. I’d
hate you if I didn’t love you so much.” I leaned over and kissed him good-bye.
I found his little green Jetta on the first try and only spent twenty minutes trying to find
the parkway that would take me to 95 North, which was wide open. It was a freezing day
for November; the temperature was in the midthirties, and there were slick frozen patches
on the back roads. But the sun was out, the kind of winter glare that causes unaccustomed
eyes to tear and squint, and the air felt clean and cold in my lungs. I rode the entire way
with the window rolled down, listening to the “Almost Famous” soundtrack on repeat. I
worked my damp hair into a ponytail with one hand to keep it from flying in my eyes,
and blew on my hands to keep them warm, or at least warm enough to grip the steering
wheel. Only six months out of college, and my life was on the verge of bursting forward.
Miranda Priestly, a stranger until yesterday but a powerful woman indeed, had
handpicked me to join her magazine. Now I had a concrete reason to leave Connecticut
and move—all on my own, as a real adult would—to Manhattan and make it my home.
As I pulled into the driveway of my childhood house, sheer exhilaration took over. My
cheeks looked red and windburned in the rearview mirror, and my hair was flying wildly
about. There was no makeup on my face, and my jeans were dirty around the bottom
from trudging through the city slush. But at that moment, I felt beautiful. Natural and
cold and clean and crisp, I threw open the front door and called out for my mother. It was
the last time in my life I remember feeling so light.
“A week? Honey, I just don’t see how you’re going to start work in a week,” my mother
said, stirring her tea with a spoon. We were sitting at the kitchen table in our usual spots,
my mother drinking her usual decaf tea with Sweet’N Low, me with my usual mug of
English Breakfast and sugar. Even though I hadn’t lived at home in four years, all it took
was an oversize mug of microwaved tea and a couple Reese’s peanut butter cups to make
me feel like I’d never left.
“Well, I don’t have a choice, and, honestly, I’m lucky to have that. You should’ve heard
how hard-core this woman was on the phone,” I said. She looked at me, expressionless.
“But, whatever, I can’t worry about it. I did just get a job at a really famous magazine
with one of the most powerful women in the industry. A job a million girls would die
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for.”
We smiled at each other, but her smile was tinged with sadness. “I’m so happy for you,”
she said. “Such a beautiful, grown-up daughter I have. Honey, I just know this is going to
be the start of a wonderful, wonderful time in your life. Ah, I remember graduating from
college and moving to New York. All alone in that big, crazy city. Scary but so, so
exciting. I want you to love every minute of it, all the plays and films and people and
shopping and books. It’s going to be the best time of your life—I just know it.” She
rested her hand on mine, something she didn’t usually do. “I’m so proud of you.”
“Thanks, Mom. Does that mean you’re proud enough of me to buy me an apartment,
furniture, and a whole new wardrobe?”
“Yeah, right,” she said and smacked the top of my head with a magazine on her way to
the microwave to heat two more cups. She hadn’t said no, but she wasn’t exactly
grabbing her checkbook, either.
I spent the rest of the evening e-mailing everyone I knew, asking if anyone needed a
roommate or knew of someone who did. I posted some messages online and called
people I hadn’t spoken to in months. No luck. I decided my only choice—without
permanently moving onto Lily’s couch and inevitably wrecking our friendship, or
crashing at Alex’s, which neither of us was ready for—was to sublet a room short-term,
until I could get my bearings in the city. It would be best to find my own room
somewhere, and preferably one that was already furnished so I wouldn’t have to deal
with that, too.
The phone rang at a little after midnight, and I lunged for it, nearly falling off my twin-
size childhood bed in the process. A framed, signed picture of Chris Evert, my childhood
hero, smiled down from my wall, just below a bulletin board that still had magazine
cutouts of Kirk Cameron plastered across it. I smiled into the phone.
“Hey, champ, it’s Alex,” he said with that tone of voice that meant something had
happened. It was impossible to tell if it was something good or bad. “I just got an e-mail
that a girl, Claire McMillan, is looking for a roommate. Princeton girl. I’ve met her
before, I think. Dating Andrew, totally normal. You interested?”
“Sure, why not? Do you have her number?”
“No, I only have her e-mail, but I’ll forward you her message and you can get in touch
with her. I think she’ll be good.”
I e-mailed Claire while I finished talking to Alex and then finally got some sleep in my
own bed. Maybe, just maybe, this would work out.
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Claire McMillan: not so much. Her apartment was dark and depressing and in the middle
of Hell’s Kitchen, and there was a junkie propped up on the doorstep when I arrived. The
others weren’t much better. There was a couple looking to rent out an extra room in their
apartment who made indirect references to putting up with their constant and loud
lovemaking; an artist in her early thirties with four cats and a fervent desire for more; a
bedroom at the end of a long, dark hallway, with no windows or closets; a twenty-yearold
gay guy in his self-proclaimed “slutty stage.” Each and every miserable room I’d
visited was going for well over $1,000 and my salary was cashing in at a whopping
$32,500. And although math had never been my strong suit, it didn’t take a genius to
figure out that rent would eat up more than $12,000 of it and taxes would take the rest.
Oh, and my parents were confiscating the emergencies-only credit card, now that I was
an “adult.” Sweet.
Lily pulled through after three straight days of letdowns. Since she had a vested interest
in getting me off her couch for good, she e-mailed everyone she knew. A classmate from
her Ph.D. program at Columbia had a friend who had a boss who knew two girls who
were looking for a roommate. I called immediately and spoke to a very nice girl named
Shanti, who told me she and her friend Kendra were looking for someone to move into
their Upper East Side apartment, in a room that was miniscule but had a window, a
closet, and even an exposed brick wall. For $800 a month. I asked if the apartment had a
bathroom and kitchen. It did (no dishwasher or bathtub or elevator, of course, but one can
hardly expect living in luxury their first time out). Bingo. Shanti and Kendra ended up
being two very sweet and quiet Indian girls who’d just graduated from Duke, worked
hellishly long hours at investment banks, and seemed to me, that first day and every day
thereafter, utterly indistinguishable from each other. I had found a home.
4
I’d slept in my new room for three nights already and still felt like a stranger living in a
very strange place. The room was minute. Perhaps slightly larger than the storage shed in
the backyard of my house in Avon, but not really. And unlike most empty spaces that
actually looked bigger with furniture, my room had shrunk to half its size. I had naively
eyed the tiny square and decided that it had to be close to a normal-size room and that I’d
just buy the usual bedroom set: a queen-size bed, a dresser, maybe a nightstand or two.
Lily and I had taken Alex’s car to Ikea, the postcollege apartment mecca, and picked out
a beautiful light-colored wood set and a woven rug with shades of light blue, dark blue,
royal blue, and indigo. Again, like fashion, home decorating was not my strong suit: I
believe that Ikea was into its “Blue Period.” We bought a duvet cover with a blue-flecked
pattern and the fluffiest comforter they sold. She persuaded me to get one of those
Chinese rice-paper lamps for the nightstand, and I chose some preframed black-and-white
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pictures to complement the deep red roughness of my much-hyped exposed brick wall.
Elegant and casual, and not a little Zen. Perfect for my first adult room in the big city.
Perfect, that is, until it all actually arrived. It seems simply eyeing a room isn’t quite the
same as measuring it. Nothing fit. Alex put the bed together and by the time he’d pushed
it against the exposed-brick wall (Manhattan code for “unfinished wall”) it had consumed
the entire room. I had to send the delivery men back with the six-drawer dresser, the two
adorable nightstands, and even the full-length mirror. The men and Alex did lift up the
bed, however, and I was able to slip the tri-blue rug under it, and a few blue inches
peeked out from underneath the wooden behemoth. The rice-paper lamp had no
nightstand or dresser on which to rest, so I simply placed it on the floor, wedged in the
six inches between the bed frame and the sliding closet door. And even though I tried
special mounting tape, nails, duct tape, screws, wires, Krazy Glue, double-sided tape, and
much cursing, the framed photos refused to adhere to the exposed brick wall. After nearly
three hours of effort and knuckles rubbed bleeding and raw from the brick, I finally
propped them up on the windowsill. It was for the best, I thought. Blocked a bit of the
direct view the woman living across the airshaft had into my room. None of it mattered,
though. Not the airshaft instead of a majestic skyline or the lack of drawer space or the
closet that was too small to hold a winter coat. The room was mine—the first I could
decorate all on my own, with no input from parents or roommates—and I loved it.
