elegant stone patio in the back of the townhouse, all lit by white candles, where a violinist
played softly, and I peeked outside. Immediately I recognized Anna Wintour, looking
absolutely ravishing in a cream-colored silk slip dress and beaded Manolo sandals. She
was talking animatedly to a man I presumed to be her boyfriend, although her giant
Chanel sunglasses prevented me from being able to tell if she was amused, indifferent, or
sobbing. The press loved to compare the antics and attitudes of Anna and Miranda, but I
found it impossible to believe that anyone could be quite as unbearable as my boss.
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Behind her stood what I presumed to be a fewVogue editors, eyeing Anna warily and
wearily like our own Clackers eye Miranda, and next to them was a screeching Donatella
Versace. Her face was so caked with makeup, her clothes were so phenomenally tight,
that she actually looked like a caricature of herself. Like the first time I visited
Switzerland and couldn’t help thinking how much it resembled the mock-up town in
EPCOT, Donatella actually looked more like the character onSaturday Night Live than
herself.
I sipped my glass of champagne (and I thought I wouldn’t be having any!) and made
small talk with an Italian guy—one of the first ugly ones I’d ever met—who spoke in
florid prose about his innate appreciation for the female body, until Christian reappeared
again.
“Hey, come with me for a minute,” he said, once again navigating me smoothly through
the crowd. He was wearing his uniform: perfectly faded Diesels, a white T-shirt, a dark
sport coat, and Gucci loafers, and he blended into the fashion crowd seamlessly.
“Where are we going?” I asked, keeping my eyes peeled for Miranda, who, no matter
what Christian said, was still probably expecting me to be banished to the corner, faxing
or updating the itinerary.
“First, we’re getting you another drink, and maybe another for me as well. Then, I’m
going to teach you how to dance.”
“What makes you think I don’t know how to dance? It just so happens that I’m a gifted
dancer.”
He handed me another glass of champagne that seemed to appear out of thin air and led
me into his parents’ formal living room, which was done in gorgeous shades of deep
maroon. A six-piece band was playing hip music, of course, and the couple dozen people
under thirty-five had congregated here. As if on cue, the band started playing Marvin
Gaye’s “Let’s Get It On” and Christian pulled me against him. He smelled of masculine,
preppy cologne, something old-school like Polo Sport. His hips moved naturally to the
music, no thinking involved, we just moved together all over the makeshift dance floor,
and he sang quietly in my ear. The rest of the room became fuzzy—I was vaguely aware
there were others dancing, too, and somewhere someone was making a toast to
something, but at that moment the only thing with any definition was Christian.
Somewhere in the deep recesses of my mind, there was a tiny but insistent reminder that
this body against mine was not Alex’s, but it didn’t matter at all. Not now, not tonight.
It was after one when I actually remembered that I was there with Miranda; it had been
hours since I’d last seen her, and I was certain she’d forgotten all about me and headed
back to the hotel. But when I finally pulled myself away from the couch in his father’s
study, I saw her happily chatting with Karl Lagerfeld and Gwyneth Paltrow, all of them
apparently oblivious to the fact that they would all be waking up for the Christian Dior
show in just a few hours. I was debating whether or not I should approach her when she
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spotted me.
“Ahn-dre-ah! Come over here,” she called, her voice sounding almost merry over the din
of the party that had become noticeably more festive in the last few hours. Someone had
dimmed the lights, and it was abundantly clear that the partyers who remained had been
well taken care of by the smiling bartenders. The annoying way she pronounced my name
didn’t even bother me in my warm and fuzzy champagne buzz. And even though I
thought the evening couldn’t get any better, she was clearly calling me over to introduce
me to her celebrity friends.
“Yes, Miranda?” I cooed in my most ingratiating, thank-you-for-bringing-me-to-thisfabulous-
place tone. She didn’t even look in my general direction.
“Get me a Pellegrino and then make sure the driver’s out front. I’m ready to leave now.”
The two women and one man standing next to her snickered, and I felt my face turn
bright red.
“Of course. I’ll be right back.” I fetched the water, which she accepted without a thank-
you, and made my way through the thinning crowd to the car. I considered finding
Christian’s parents to thank them but thought better of it and headed straight toward the
door, where he was leaning up against the frame with a smugly satisfied expression.
“So, little Andy, did I show you a good time tonight?” he slurred just a little bit, and it
seemed nothing short of adorable at that moment.
“It was all right, I suppose.”
“Just all right? Sounds to me like you wish I would’ve taken you upstairs tonight, huh,
Andy? All in good time, my friend, all in good time.”
I smacked him playfully on the forearm. “Don’t flatter yourself, Christian. Thank your
parents for me.” And, for once, I leaned over first and kissed him on the cheek before he
could do anything else. “G’night.”
“A tease!” he called, slurring just a little bit more. “You’re quite the little tease. Bet your
boyfriend loves that about you, doesn’t he?” He was smiling now, and not cruelly. It was
all part of the flirty game for him, but the reference to Alex sobered me for a minute. Just
long enough to realize that I’d had a better time tonight than I could remember having
had in many years. The drinking and the close dancing and his hands on my back as he
pulled me against him had made me feel more alive than in all the months since I’d been
working atRunway, months that had been filled with nothing but frustration and
humiliation and a body-numbing exhaustion. Maybe this was why Lily did it, I thought.
The guys, the partying, the sheer joy of realizing you’re young and breathing. I couldn’t
wait to call and tell her all about it.
Miranda joined me in the backseat of the limo after another five minutes, and she even
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appeared to be somewhat happy. I wondered if she’d gotten drunk but ruled that out
immediately: the most I’d ever seen her drink was a sip of this or that, and then only
because a social situation demanded it. She preferred Perrier or Pellegrino to champagne
and certainly a milkshake or a latte to a cosmo, so the chances she was actually drunk
right now were slim.
After grilling me about the following day’s itinerary for the first five minutes (luckily I’d
thought to tuck a copy in my bag), she turned and looked at me for the first time all
evening.
“Emily—er, Ahn-dre-ah, how long have you been working for me?”
It came out of left field, and my mind couldn’t work fast enough to figure out the ulterior
motive for this sudden question. It felt strange to be the object of any question of hers that
wasn’t explicitly asking why I was such a fucking idiot for not finding, fetching, or
faxing something fast enough. She’d never actually asked about my life before. Unless
she remembered the details of our hiring interview—and it seemed unlikely, considering
she’d stared at me with utterly blank eyes my very first day of work—then she had no
idea where, if anywhere, I’d attended college, where, if anywhere, I lived in Manhattan,
or what, if anything, I did in the city in the few precious hours a day I wasn’t racing
around for her. And although this question most certainly did have a Miranda element to
it, my intuition said that this might, just maybe, be a conversation about me.
“Next month it will be a year, Miranda.”
“And do you feel you’ve learned a few things that may help you in your future?” She
peered at me, and I instantly suppressed the urge to start rattling off the myriad things I’d
“learned”: how to find a single store or restaurant review in a whole city or out of a dozen
newspapers with few to no clues about its genuine origin; how to pander to preteenage
girls who’d already had more life experiences than both my parents combined; how to
plead with, scream at, persuade, cry to, pressure, cajole, or charm anyone, from the
immigrant food delivery guy to the editor in chief of a major publishing house to get
exactly what I needed, when I needed it; and, of course, how to complete just about any
challenge in under an hour because the phrase “I’m not sure how” or “that’s not possible”
was simply not an option. It had been nothing if not a learning-rich year.
“Oh, of course,” I gushed. “I’ve learned more in one year working for you than I
could’ve hoped to have learned in any other job. It’s been fascinating, really, seeing how
a major—themajor—magazine runs, the production cycle, what all the different jobs are.
And, of course, being able to observe the way you manage everything, all the decisions
you make—it’s been an amazing year. I’m so thankful, Miranda!” So thankful that two of
my molars had been aching for weeks, too, but I wasn’t ever able to get in to see a dentist
during working hours, but whatever. My newfound, intimate knowledge of Jimmy
Choo’s handicraft had been well worth the pain.
Could this possibly sound believable? I stole a glance, and she seemed to be buying it,
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nodding her head gravely. “Well, you know, Ahn-dre-ah, that if ah-fter a year my girls
have performed well, I consider them ready for a promotion.”
My heart surged. Was it finally happening? Was this where she told me that she’d
already gone ahead and secured a job for me atThe New Yorker ? Never mind that she
had no idea I would kill to work there. Maybe she had just figured it out because she
cares.
“I have my doubts about you, of course. Don’t think I haven’t noticed your lack of
enthusiasm, or those sighs or faces you make when I ask you to do something that you
quite obviously don’t feel like doing. I’m hoping that’s just a sign of your immaturity,
since you do seem reasonably competent in other areas. What exactly are you interested
in doing?”
Reasonably competent! She may as well have announced I was the most intelligent,
sophisticated, gorgeous, and capable young woman she’d ever had the pleasure of
meeting. Miranda Priestly had just told me I was reasonably competent!
“Well, actually, it’s not that I don’t love fashion, because of course I do. Who
wouldn’t?” I rushed on to say, keeping a careful appraisal of her expression, which, as
usual, remained mostly unchanged. “It’s just that I’ve always dreamt of becoming a
writer, so I was hoping that might, uh, be an area I could explore.”
She folded her hands in her lap and glanced out the window. It was clear that this forty-
five-second conversation was already beginning to bore her, so I had to move quickly.
“Well, I certainly have no idea if you can write a word or not, but I’m not opposed to
having you write a few short pieces for the magazine to find out. Perhaps a theater review
or a small writeup for the Happenings section. As long as it doesn’t interfere with any of
your responsibilities for me, and is done only during your own time, of course.”
“Of course, of course. That would be wonderful!” We were talking, really
communicating, and we hadn’t so much as mentioned the words “breakfast” or “dry
cleaning” yet. Things were going too well not to just go for it, and so I said, “It’s my
dream to work atThe New Yorker one day.”
This seemed to catch her now drifting attention, and once again she peered at me. “Why
ever would you want to do that? No glamour there, just nuts and bolts.” I couldn’t decide
if the question was rhetorical, so I played it safe and kept my mouth shut.
My time was about twenty seconds from expiring, both because we were nearing the
hotel and her fleeting interest in me was fading fast. She was scrolling through the
incoming calls on her cell phone, but still managed to say in the most offhanded, casual
way, “Hmm,The New Yorker . Condé Nast.” I was nodding wildly, encouragingly, but
she wasn’t looking at me. “Of course I know a great many people there. We’ll see how
the rest of the trip goes, and perhaps I’ll make a call over there when we return.”
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The car pulled up to the entrance, and an exhausted-looking Monsieur Renaud eclipsed
the bellman who was leaning forward to open Miranda’s door and opened it himself.
“Ladies! I hope you had a lovely evening,” he crooned, doing his best to smile through
the exhaustion.
“We’ll be needing the car at nine tomorrow morning to go to the Christian Dior show. I
have a breakfast meeting in the lobby at eight-thirty. See that I’m not disturbed before
then,” she barked, all traces of her previous humanness evaporating like spilled water on
a hot sidewalk. And before I could think how to end our conversation or, at the very least,
kiss up a little more for having had it at all, she walked toward the elevators and vanished
inside one. I shot a weary, understanding look to Monsieur Renaud and boarded an
elevator myself.
The small, tastefully arranged chocolates on a silver tray on my bedside table only
highlighted the perfection of the evening. In one random, unexpected night, I’d felt like a
model, hung out with one of the hottest guys I’d seen in the flesh, and had been told by
Miranda Priestly that I was reasonably competent. It felt like everything was finally
coming together, that the past year of sacrifice was showing the first early signs of
potentially paying off. I collapsed on top of the covers, still fully dressed, and gazed at
the ceiling, still unable to believe that I’d told Miranda straight up that I wanted to work
atThe New Yorker, and she hadn’t laughed. Or screamed. Or in any way, shape, or form
