Lauren Weisberger 5-Book Collection: The Devil Wears Prada, Revenge Wears Prada, Everyone Worth Know (11 page)

‘But Miranda's not here.' It came out as a squeak.

‘But she could've called while you were gone and no one would've been here to answer the goddamn phone!' she screamed as she slammed the door to our suite. ‘Our first priority – our only priority – is Miranda Priestly. Period. And if you can't deal with that, just remember that there are millions of girls who would die for your job. Now check your voice mail. If she called, we're dead.
You're
dead.'

I wanted to crawl inside my iMac and die. How could I have screwed up so badly during my very first week? Miranda wasn't even in the office and I'd already let her down. So what if I was hungry? It could wait. There were genuinely important people trying to get things done around here, people who depended on me, and I'd let them down. I dialed my mailbox.

‘Hi, Andy, it's me.' Alex. ‘Where are you? I've never heard you not answer. Can't wait for dinner tonight – we're still on, right? Anywhere you want, your pick. Call me when you get this, I'll be in the faculty lounge anytime after four. Love you.' I immediately felt guilty, because I'd already decided after the whole lunch debacle that I'd rather reschedule. My first week had been so crazy that we'd barely seen each other, and we'd made a special plan to have dinner that night, just the two of us. But I knew I wouldn't be any fun if I fell asleep in my wine, and I kind of wanted a night to unwind and be alone. I'd have to remember to call and see if we could do it the next night.

Emily was standing over me, having already checked her own voice mail. From her relatively calm face, I guessed that Miranda had not left her any death threats. I shook my head to indicate that I hadn't gotten one from her yet.

‘Hi, Andrea, it's Cara.' Miranda's nanny. ‘So, Miranda called here a little while ago' – heart stoppage – ‘and said she's tried the office and no one was picking up. I figured something was going on down there, so I told her that I'd spoken to both you and Emily just a minute before, but don't worry about it. She wanted a
Women's Wear Daily
faxed to her, and I had a copy right here. Already confirmed that she got it, too, so don't stress. Just wanted to let you know. Anyway, have a good weekend. I'll talk to you later. 'Bye.'

Lifesaver. The girl was an absolute saint. It was hard to believe I'd only known her a week – and not even in person, only over the phone – because I thought I was in love with her. She was the opposite of Emily in every regard: calm, grounded, and entirely fashion-oblivious. She recognized Miranda's absurdity but didn't begrudge her it; she had that rare, charming quality of being able to laugh at herself and everyone else.

‘Nope, not her,' I told Emily, lying sort of but not really, smiling triumphantly. ‘We're in the clear.'

‘You're in the clear, this time,' she said flatly. ‘Just remember that we're in this together, but I am in charge. You'll cover for me if I want to go out to lunch once in a while – I'm entitled. This will never happen again, right?'

I bit back the urge to say something nasty. ‘Right,' I said. ‘Right.'

We'd managed to finish wrapping the rest of the bottles and get them all to the messengers by seven that night, and Emily didn't mention the office-abandonment issue again. I finally fell into a taxi (just this one time) at eight, and was spread-eagled, still fully dressed, on top of my covers at ten. And I still hadn't eaten because I couldn't bear the thought of going out in search of food and getting lost again, as I had the past four nights, in my own neighborhood. I called Lily to complain on my brand-new Bang and Olufsen phone.

‘Hi! I thought you and Alex had a date tonight,' she said.

‘Yeah, we did, but I'm dead. He's fine with doing it tomorrow night, and I think I'll just order. Whatever. How was your day?'

‘I have one word: screwed up. OK, so that was two. You'll never imagine what happened. Well, of course you will, it happens all the—'

‘Cut to it, Lil. I'm going to pass out any minute.'

‘OK. Cutest guy ever came to my reading today. Sat through the whole thing looking absolutely fascinated, and waited for me afterward. Asked if he could take me for a drink and hear all about the thesis I had published at Brown, which he'd already read.'

‘Sounds great. What was he?' Lily went out with different guys almost every night after getting off work, but had yet to complete her fraction. She had founded the Scale of Fractional Love one night after listening to a few of our guy friends rate the girls they were dating on their own invention, the Ten-Ten Scale. ‘She's a six, eight, B-plus,' Jake would declare of the advertising assistant he'd been set up with the night before. It was assumed everyone knew that it was a ten-point scale, with face always being the first numerical ranking, body the second, and personality coming in last with a slightly more generalized letter grade. Since there were clearly more factors at work in judging guys, Lily devised the Fractional Scale, which had a total of ten pieces that each earned a point. The Perfect Guy would obviously have all five of the primary pieces: intelligence, sense of humor, decent body, cute face, and any sort of job that fell under the generous umbrella of ‘normal.' Since it was next to impossible to find The Perfect Guy, someone could up their fraction by earning points on the secondary five, which included a definitive lack of psycho ex-girlfriends, psycho parents, or date-rapist roommates, and any sort of extracurricular interests or hobbies that weren't sports- or porn-related. So far, the highest anyone had received was a nine-tenths, but he had broken up with her.

‘Well, at first he was going strong at seven-tenths. He was a theater major at Yale
and
he's straight, and he could discuss Israeli politics so intelligently that he never once suggested that we “just nuke 'em,” so that was good.'

‘Sure sounds good. I can't wait for the clincher. What was it? Did he talk about his favorite Nintendo game?'

‘Worse.' She sighed.

‘Is he thinner than you?'

‘Worse.' She sounded defeated.

‘What on earth could be worse than that?'

‘He lives on Long Island—'

‘Lily! So he's geographically undesirable. That doesn't make him undateable! You know better than to—'

‘With his parents,' she interrupted.

Oh.

‘For the past four years.'

Oh, my.

‘And he absolutely loves it. Says he can't imagine wanting to live alone in such a big city when his mom and dad are such great company.'

‘Whoa! Say no more. I don't think we've ever had a seven-tenths fall all the way to a zero after the first date. Your guy set a new record. Congratulations. Your day was officially worse than mine.' I leaned over to kick my bedroom door closed when I heard Shanti and Kendra come home from work. I heard a guy's voice with them and wondered if either of my roommates had boyfriends. I'd seen them a combined total of only ten minutes in the last week and a half, because they seemed to work longer hours than I did.

‘That bad? How could your day be bad? You work in
fashion
,' she said.

There was a quiet knocking on the door.

‘Hold on a sec, someone's here. Come in!' I called to the door, much too loud for the tiny space. I waited for one of my quiet roommates to timidly ask if I'd remembered to call the landlord to put my name on the lease (no) or bought more paper plates (no) or had taken down any phone messages (no), but Alex appeared.

‘Hey, can I call you back? Alex just showed up.' I was thrilled to see him, so excited that he'd surprised me, but a small part of me had been looking forward to just taking a shower and crawling into bed.

‘Sure. Tell him I say hi. And remember what a lucky girl you are for having completed the fraction with him, Andy. He's great. Hold on to that one.'

‘Don't I know it. The kid's a goddamn saint.' I smiled in his direction.

‘'Bye.'

‘Hi!' I willed myself to first sit up, then stand up and walk over to him. ‘What a great surprise!' I went to hug him but he backed away, keeping his arms behind his back. ‘What's wrong?'

‘Nothing at all. I know you've had such a long week, and, knowing you, I figured you hadn't bothered to eat yet, so I brought the food to you.' He pulled a huge brown paper bag from behind his back, one of the old-school grocery style ones, and it already had some delicious-smelling grease stains on it. All of a sudden, I was starving.

‘You did not! How'd you know that I was sitting here this very second, wondering how I was going to motivate to find food? I was just about to give up.'

‘So come here and eat!' He looked pleased and pulled open the bag, but we both couldn't fit on the floor of my bedroom together. I thought about eating in the living room since there was no kitchen, but Kendra and Shanti had both collapsed in front of the TV together, their untouched takeout salads open in front of them. I thought they were waiting until the
Real World
episode they were watching was over, but then I noticed that they'd both already fallen asleep. Sweet lives we all had.

‘Hold on, I have an idea,' he said and tiptoed to the living room. He came back with two oversize garbage bags and spread them out over my blue comforter. He dug into the greasy bag and brought out two giant burgers with everything and one extra-large order of fries. He'd remembered ketchup packets and tons of salt for me, and even the napkins. I clapped I was so excited, although a quick visual of the imagined disappointment on Miranda's face appeared, one that said,
You? You're eating a burger?

‘I'm not done yet. Here, check it out.' And out of his backpack came a fistful of tiny vanilla tea lights, a bottle of screw-top red wine, and two waxy paper cups.

‘You're kidding,' I said softly, still not believing that he'd put all this together after I'd canceled our date.

He handed me a cup of wine and tapped it with his. ‘No, I'm not. You think I was going to miss hearing about the first week of the rest of your life? To my best girl.'

‘Thank you.' I said, slowly taking a sip. ‘Thank you, thank you, thank you.'

‘Ohmigod, is it the fashion editor herself?' Jill mock-shrieked when she opened the front door. ‘Come on over here and let your big sister genuflect a li'l.'

‘Fashion editor?' I snorted. ‘Hardly. Try fashion mishap. Welcome back to civilization.' I hugged her for what felt like ten minutes and didn't want to let go. It was hard when she'd started at Stanford and left me all alone with our parents when I was a mere nine years old, but it was even harder when she'd followed her boyfriend – now husband – to Houston. Houston! The whole placed seemed drenched in humidity and infested with mosquitoes to the point of unbearability, and if that wasn't bad enough, my sister – my sophisticated, beautiful big sister who loved neoclassical art and made your heart melt when she recited poetry – had developed a southern accent. And not just a slight accent with a subtle, charming southern lilt, but an all-out, unmistakable, like-a-drill-through-the-eardrum redneck drawl. I'd yet to forgive Kyle for dragging her to that wretched place, even if he was a pretty decent brother-in-law, and it didn't help when he opened his mouth.

‘Hey there, Andy darlin', you're looking more beautiful every time I see you.'
Yer lookin' more beeyootiful avery time I see ya
. ‘What are they feeding y'all at
Runway
, huh?'

I wanted to stick a tennis ball in his mouth to keep him from talking anymore, but he smiled at me and I walked over and hugged him. He might sound like a hick and grin a little too openly and often, but he tried really hard and he clearly adored my sister. I vowed to make a sincere effort not to visibly cringe when he spoke. ‘It's not really what I'd call a feeding-friendly kind of place, if you know what I mean. Whatever it is, it's definitely in the water and not the food. But never mind. Kyle, you look great yourself. Keeping my sister busy in the city of misery, I hope?'

‘Andy, just come and visit, sweetie. Bring Alex along and y'all can make it a li'l vacation. It's not that bad, you'll see.' He smiled first at me and then at Jill, who smiled back and brushed the back of her hand across his cheek. They were disgustingly in love.

‘Really, Andy, it's a culture-rich place with a whole lot to do. We both wish you'd come visit us more often. It's just not right that the only time we see each other is in this house,' she said, waving expansively around our parents' living room. ‘I mean, if you can stand Avon, you can certainly stand Houston.'

‘Andy, you're here! Jay, the big New York City career girl is here, come say hi,' my mom called as she rounded the corner coming from the kitchen. ‘I thought you were going to call when you got to the train station.'

‘Mrs Myers was picking Erika up from the same train, so she just dropped me off. When are we eating? I'm starving.'

‘Now. Do you want to clean up? We can wait. You look a little ragged from the train. You know, it's fine if—'

‘Mother!' I shot her a warning look.

‘Andy! You look dynamite. Come here and give your old man a hug.' My dad, tall and still very handsome in his mid-fifties, smiled from the hallway. He was holding a Scrabble box behind his back that he only let me see by flashing it quickly by the side of his leg. He waited until everyone looked away from him and pointed to the box and mouthed, ‘I'll kick your ass. Consider yourself warned.'

I smiled and nodded my head. Contrary to all common sense, I found myself looking forward to the next forty-eight hours with my family more than I had in the four years since I'd left home. Thanksgiving was my favorite holiday, and this year I was set to enjoy it more than ever.