We all clinked soda cans and coffee mugs and toasted the grinning couple and my sister’s twenty-four-inch waist. I cleaned up by throwing the entire contents of the table directly into a garbage bag while my mom tried to pressure Jill to name the baby after various dead relatives. Kyle sipped coffee and looked pleased with himself, and just before midnight my dad and I sneaked off to his study for a game.
He turned up the white-noise machine he used when he had patients during the day, both to block out the sounds of the household from them and to keep anyone else in the house from hearing what was discussed in his office. Like any good shrink, my dad had placed a gray leather couch in the far corner, so soft I liked to rest my head on the armrest, and three chairs that angled forward and held a person in a kind of fabric sling. Womblike, he assured me. His desk was sleek and black and topped with a flat-screen monitor, and the matching black leather chair was high-backed and very plush. A wall of psychology books encased in glass, a collection of bamboo stalks in a very tall crystal vase on the floor, and some framed colorblock prints – the only real color in the room – completed the futuristic look. I flopped on the floor between the couch and his desk, and he did the same.
‘So, tell me what’s really going on, Andy,’ he said as he handed me a little wooden tile holder. ‘I’m sure you’re feeling really overwhelmed right now.’
I picked my seven tiles and carefully arranged them in front of me. ‘Yeah, it’s been a pretty crazy couple weeks. First moving, then starting. It’s a weird place, hard to explain. It’s like, everyone’s beautiful and thin and wearing gorgeous clothes. And they really do seem nice enough – everybody’s been really friendly. Almost like they’re all on serious prescription drugs. I don’t know …’
‘What? What were you going to say?’
‘I can’t put my finger on it. There’s just this feeling that it’s all a house of cards that’s going to come crashing down around me. I can’t shake the feeling that it’s ridiculous to be working for a fashion magazine, you know? The work’s been a little mindless so far, but I don’t even care. It’s challenging enough because it’s all new, you know?’
He nodded.
‘I know it’s a “cool” job, but I keep wondering how it’s preparing me for The New Yorker. I must just be looking for something to go wrong, because so far it seems too good to be true. Hopefully, I’m just crazy.’
‘I don’t think you’re crazy, sweetie. I think you’re sensitive. But I have to agree, I think you lucked out with this one. People go their entire lives and don’t see the things you’ll see this year. Just think! Your first job out of college, and you’re working for the most important woman at the most profitable magazine at the biggest magazine publishing company in the entire world. You’ll get to watch it all happen, from the top down. If you just keep your eyes open and your priorities in order, you’ll learn more in one year than most people in the industry will see in their entire careers.’ He placed his first word in the middle of the board, JOLT.
‘Not bad for an opening move,’ I said and counted its worth, doubled it because the first word always went on a pink star, and started a scorecard. Dad: 22 points, Andy: 0. My letters weren’t showing much promise. I added an A, M, and E to the L and accepted my paltry six points.
‘I just want to make sure you give it a fair shake,’ he said, switching his tiles around on his holder. ‘The more I think about it, the more I’m convinced this is going to mean big things for you.’
‘Well, I sure hope you’re right, because I have enough paper cuts from wrapping to last a long, long time. There better be more to the whole thing than that.’
‘There will be, sweetie, there will be. You’ll see. It might feel like you’re doing silly stuff, but trust me, you’re not. This is the start of something fantastic, I can feel it. And I’ve studied up on your boss. This Miranda sounds like a tough woman, no doubt about it, but I think you’re going to like her. And I think she’s going to like you, too.’
He placed the word TOWEL down using my E and looked satisfied.
‘I hope you’re right, Dad. I really hope you’re right.’
‘She’s the editor in chief of Runway – you know, the fashion magazine?’ I whispered urgently into the phone, trying valiantly not to get frustrated.
‘Oh, I know which one you mean!’ said Julia, a publicity assistant for Scholastic Books. ‘Great magazine. I love all those letters where girls write in their embarrassing period stories. Are those for real? Do you remember reading the one where—’
‘No, no, not the one for teenagers. It’s most definitely for grown women.’ In theory, at least. ‘Have you really never seen Runway?’ Is it humanly possible that she hasn’t? I wondered. ‘Anyway, it’s spelled P-R-I-E-S-T-L-Y. Miranda, yes,’ I said with infinite patience. I wondered how she’d react if she knew I actually had someone on the line who’d never heard of her. Probably not well.
‘Well, if you could get back to me as soon as possible, I’d really appreciate it,’ I told Julia. ‘And if a senior publicist gets in anytime soon, please have her call me.’
It was a Friday morning in the middle of December and the sweet, sweet freedom of the weekend was only ten hours away. I had been trying to convince a fashion-oblivious Julia at Scholastic that Miranda Priestly really was someone important, someone worth bending rules and suspending logic for. This proved significantly more difficult than I had anticipated. How could I have known that I’d have to explain the weight of Miranda’s position to influence someone who’d never even heard of the most prestigious fashion magazine on earth – or its famous editor? In my four short weeks as Miranda’s assistant, I’d already figured out that such weight-throwing and favor-currying was merely part of my job, but usually the person I was attempting to persuade, intimidate, or otherwise pressure yielded completely at the mere mention of my infamous boss’s name.
Unfortunately for me, Julia worked for an educational publishing house where someone like Nora Ephron or Wendy Wasserstein was much likelier to get VIP treatment than someone known for her impeccable taste in fur. I inherently understood this. I tried to remember all the way back to a time before I had ever heard of Miranda Priestly – five weeks earlier – and couldn’t. But I knew that such a magical time had existed. I envied Julia’s indifference, but I had a job to do, and she wasn’t helping.
The fourth book in that wretched Harry Potter series was due to be released the next day, a Saturday, and Miranda’s ten-year-old twin daughters each wanted one. The first copies wouldn’t arrive in stores until Monday, but I had to have them in my hands on Saturday morning – mere minutes after they were released from the warehouse. After all, Harry and the crew had to catch a private flight to Paris.
My thoughts were interrupted by the phone. I picked it up as I always did now that Emily trusted me enough to speak to Miranda. And boy, did we speak – probably in the vicinity of two dozen times a day. Even from afar, Miranda had managed to creep into my life and completely take over, barking orders and requests and demands at a rapid-fire pace from seven A.M. until I was finally allowed to leave at nine P.M.
‘Ahn-dre-ah? Hello? Is anyone there? Ahn-dre-ah!’ I jumped out of my seat the moment I heard her pronounce my name. It took a moment to remember and accept that she was not, in fact, in the office – or even in the country, and for the time being, at least, I was safe. Emily had assured me that Miranda was completely unaware that Allison had been promoted or I had been hired, that these were insignificant details lost on her. As long as someone answered the phone and got her what she needed, that person’s actual identity was irrelevant.
‘I simply do not understand what takes you so long to speak after you pick up the phone,’ she stated. From any other person on earth that would have sounded whiny, but from Miranda it sounded appropriately cold and firm. Just like her. ‘In case you haven’t been here long enough to notice, when I call, you respond. It’s actually simple. See? I call. You respond. Do you think you can handle that, Ahn-dre-ah?’