Lauren Weisberger 5-Book Collection: The Devil Wears Prada, Revenge Wears Prada, Everyone Worth Know (18 page)

‘Mum, tell her that she can't just walk in my room and take my jeans! She won't listen to me,' one of them pleaded of Miranda, who'd set down her fork and was taking a sip of what I knew to be Pellegrino with a lime, from the
left
side of the table.

‘Caroline, Cassidy, enough. I simply don't want to hear it anymore. Tomas, bring out some more mint jelly,' she called. A man I presumed to be the chef hurried into the room holding a silver bowl on a silver serving platter.

And then I realized that I'd been standing there for nearly thirty seconds, observing them all having dinner. They hadn't seen me yet, but would as soon as I moved toward the hall table. I did so gingerly but felt them all turn to look. Just as I was about to offer some sort of greeting, I remembered making a gigantic ass out of myself at our first meeting earlier today, stammering and stumbling like an idiot, and I kept my mouth shut.
Table, table, table
. There it was.
Deposit book on table.
And now for the clothes. I looked around frantically for the place I was supposed to hang the dry cleaning, but I couldn't focus. The dinner table had grown silent, and I could feel them all watching me. No one said hello. It didn't seem to bother the girls that there was a perfect stranger standing in their apartment. Finally, I saw a small coat closet tucked away behind the door, and I managed to get every twisted, slippery hanger on the rod.

‘Not in the closet, Emily,' I heard Miranda call out, slowly, deliberately. ‘On the hooks that are provided for this exact occasion.'

‘Oh, um, hi there.'
Idiot! Shut up! She's not looking for a response, just do what she says!
But I couldn't help it. It was just too weird that no one had said hello or wondered who I might be, or in any way acknowledged that someone had just let herself into their apartment and was prowling around. And
Emily
? Was she kidding? Blind? Could she really not tell that I was not the girl who'd worked for her for over a year already? ‘I'm Andrea, Miranda. I'm your new assistant.'

Silence. All-pervasive, unbearable, never-ending, deafening, debilitating silence.

I knew I shouldn't keep talking, knew that I was digging my own grave, but I just couldn't help myself. ‘Um, well, sorry about the confusion. I'll just put these on the hooks, like you said, and let myself out.'
Stop narrating! She doesn't give a shit what you're doing. Just do it and get out
. ‘OK, then, have a nice dinner. Nice meeting all of you.' I turned to leave and realized that not only was the mere act of talking ridiculous, but I was also saying stupid things.
Nice to meet you?
I hadn't been introduced to a single one of them.

‘Emily!' I heard just as my hand reached the doorknob. ‘Emily, let this not happen tomorrow night. We're not interested in the interruption.' And the doorknob turned itself in my hand and I was finally in the hallway. The entire thing had taken less than a minute, but I felt like I'd just swum the entire length of an Olympic-size pool without coming up for air.

I slumped onto the bench and took long, controlled breaths. That bitch! The first time she called me Emily could've been a mistake, but the second was undoubtedly deliberate. What better way to belittle and marginalize someone than to insist on calling them the wrong name, after you've refused to so much as acknowledge their presence in your own home? I knew I was the lowest-ranking life-form at the magazine already – as Emily hadn't yet lost an opportunity to impress upon me – but was it really so necessary for Miranda to make sure I was aware of it, too?

It wouldn't have been outside the realm of reality to sit there all night and shoot mental bullets at the PH A doors, but I heard a throat clearing and looked up to find the sad little elevator man watching the floor and patiently waiting for me to join him.

‘Sorry,' I said as I shuffled aboard.

‘No problem,' he near-whispered, intently studying the wood-paneled floor. ‘It'll get easier.'

‘What? I'm sorry, I didn't hear what you—'

‘Nothing, nothing. Here you are, miss. Have a nice evening.' The door opened to the lobby, where Emily was loudly chattering on her cell phone. She clicked it closed when she saw me.

‘How'd it go? No problem, right?'

I thought about telling her what had transpired, wished fervently that she could be a sympathetic coworker, that we could be a team, but I knew I'd just be setting myself up for another verbal lashing.
So not interested right now.

‘It was totally fine. No problems at all. They were eating dinner and I just left everything exactly where you said.'

‘Good. Well, that's what you'll do every night. Then just take the car home and you're done. Anyway, have fun at Marshall's party tonight. I'd definitely go, but I have a bikini wax appointment I just can't cancel – do you believe they're booked for the next two months? And it's the middle of winter, too. It must be all the people who are going on winter vacations. Right? I just can't understand why every woman in New York needs a bikini wax right now. It's just so strange, but hey, what can you do?'

My head pounded to the tempo of her voice, and it seemed that no matter what I did or how I responded, I was sentenced to forever listen to her talk about bikini waxes. It may have been better to have her scream at me about interrupting Miranda's dinner.

‘Yeah, what can you do? Well, I'd better get going, I told James I'd meet him at nine and it's already ten after. See you tomorrow?'

‘Yep. Will do. Oh, just so you know, now that you're pretty much trained, you'll still get in at seven, but I don't come in until eight. Miranda knows – it's understood that the senior assistant comes in later since she works so much harder.' I almost lunged at her throat. ‘So just go through the morning routine like I taught you. Call me if you have to, but you should know the drill by now. 'Bye!' She hopped into the backseat of the second car that was waiting in front of the building.

‘'Bye!' I trilled, a giant fake smile plastered on my face. The driver made a move to get out of the car and open the door for me, but I told him I was fine to let myself into the backseat. ‘The Plaza, please.'

James had been waiting for me on the stairs outside even though it couldn't have been more than twenty degrees. He'd gone home to change and looked very, very skinny in black suede pants and a white ribbed tank top, which showed off his expertly applied midwinter bottle tan. I still looked appropriately amateurish in my Gap miniskirt.

‘Hey, Andy, how'd the Book dropping-off go?' We waited in line to check our coats and I had immediately spotted Brad Pitt.

‘Ohmigod, you're joking. Brad Pitt's here?'

‘Yeah, well, Marshall does Jennifer's hair, natch. So she must be here also. Really, Andy, maybe next time you'll believe me when I tell you to stick with me. Let's get a drink.'

The Reese and Johnny spottings had come back to back, and by the time one A.M. rolled around, I'd had four drinks and was happily gabbing away with a fashion assistant from
Vogue
. We were discussing bikini waxes. Passionately. And it didn't even bother me.
Christ
, I thought, as I weaved through the crowd looking for James, flashing a giant kiss-ass smile in the general direction of Jennifer Aniston when I passed by –
this isn't a half-bad party
. But I was tipsy, I had to be at work again in less than six hours, and I hadn't been home in nearly twenty-four, so when I spotted James making out with one of the colorists from Marshall's salon, I was just about to duck out when I felt a hand in the small of my back.

‘Hey,' said the gorgeous guy I'd spotted earlier lurking in the corner. I waited for him to realize that he'd approached the wrong girl, that I must've looked the same as his girlfriend from behind, but he just smiled even wider. ‘Not so talkative, are you?'

‘Oh, and saying “hey” makes you articulate, I guess?'
Andy! Shut your mouth!
I berated silently.
Some absolutely beautiful man approaches you out of the blue at a party full of celebrities and you tell him off right away?
But he didn't seem offended, and even though it didn't seem possible, his smile increased in size to an all-out grin.

‘Sorry,' I muttered while examining my nearly empty drink. ‘My name's Andrea. There. I think that's a much better way of beginning.' I stuck out my hand and wondered what he wanted.

‘Actually, I liked your way just fine. Name's Christian. A pleasure to meet you, Andy.' He pushed a brown curl out of his left eye and took a swig from a bottle of Budweiser. He looked vaguely familiar, I decided, but I couldn't place him.

‘Bud, huh?' I asked, pointing to his hand. ‘I didn't think they served something so lowbrow at a party like this.'

He laughed, a deep, hearty laugh instead of the chuckle I'd expected. ‘You sure do say what you think, don't you?' I must've looked mortified, because he smiled again and said, ‘No, no, that's a good thing. And a rare thing, especially in this industry. I couldn't bring myself to drink champagne from a straw out of a minibottle, you know? Something fairly emasculating about that. So the bartender dug one of these out of the kitchen somewhere.' Another curl push, but it fell back in his eye the moment he took his hand away. He pulled a pack of cigarettes from the pocket of his black sport coat and offered it to me. I took one and proceeded to drop it immediately, seizing the opportunity to examine him while I reached down to retrieve it.

It landed a few inches from his shiny, square-toed loafers that sported the irrefutable Gucci tassel, and on the way up I noticed that his Diesel jeans were the perfect parts faded, long, and wide enough at the bottom that they dragged a little behind the shiny loafers, the ends frayed from repeated interaction with the soles. A black belt, probably Gucci but thankfully not recognizable, kept the jeans riding in the perfect low spot below his waist, where he had tucked in a plain white cotton T-shirt – one that even though it easily could have been a Hanes was definitely an Armani or a Hugo Boss and was put in place only to offset his beautiful complexion. His black blazer looked just as expensive and well cut, perhaps even custom-made to fit his average-size but inexplicably sexy frame, and it was his green eyes that commanded the most attention. Seafoam, I thought, remembering the old J. Crew colors we'd loved so much in high school, or perhaps just a straightforward teal. The height, the build, the whole package looked vaguely like Alex, just with a whole lot more Euro style and a whole lot less Abercrombie. Slightly cooler, slightly better looking. Definitely older, right around thirty. And probably much too slick.

He immediately produced a flame and leaned in close to make sure my cigarette had caught. ‘So what brings you to a party like this, Andrea? Are you one of the lucky few who can call Marshall Madden her own?'

‘No, I'm afraid not. At least not yet, although he wasn't all that subtle in telling me that I probably should be.' I laughed, noticing for a brief moment that I was
desperate
to impress this stranger. ‘I work at
Runway
. One of the beauty guys dragged me here.'

‘Ah,
Runway
magazine, huh? Cool place to work, if you're into S&M and that sort of thing. How do you like it?'

I wasn't sure if he meant S&M or the job itself, but I considered the possibility that he got it, that he was enough of an insider to know that it wasn't exactly how it appeared to those on the outside. Perhaps I should charm him with the nightmare involved in dropping off the Book earlier that night? No, no, I had no idea who this guy was … for all I knew he also worked at
Runway
in some far-flung department I hadn't even seen yet, or maybe for another Elias-Clark magazine. Or maybe, just maybe, he was one of those sneaky
Page Six
reporters that Emily had so carefully warned me against. ‘They just appear,' she'd said ominously. ‘They just appear and try to trick you into saying something juicy about Miranda or
Runway
. Just be aware.' Between that and the tracking ID cards, I was quite sure that
Runway
's surveillance put the mob to shame. The
Runway
Paranoid Turnaround was back.

‘Yeah,' I said, trying to sound casual and noncommittal. ‘It's a strange place. I'm not so into fashion – I'd actually rather be writing, but I guess it's not a bad start. What do you do?'

‘I'm a writer.'

‘Oh, you are? That must be nice.' I hoped I didn't sound quite as condescending as I felt, but it got to be really annoying when anyone and everyone in New York anointed himself or herself a writer or actor or poet or artist.
I used to write for the paper in college, I thought to myself, and hell, I even had an essay published in a monthly magazine once in high school.
Did that make me a writer? ‘What do you write?'

‘Mostly literary fiction so far, but I'm actually working on my first historical novel.' He took another swig and swatted yet again at that pesky but adorable curl.

‘First historical' implied that there other were nonhistorical novels. Interesting. ‘What's it about?'

He thought for a moment and then said, ‘It's a story told from the perspective of a young woman, about what it was like to live in this country during World War Two. I'm still finishing my research, transcribing interviews and things like that, but the little writing I've done so far has come along. I think …'

He continued talking, but I'd already tuned him out. Holy shit. I recognized the book description immediately from a
New Yorker
article I'd just read. It seemed the entire book world was eagerly anticipating his next contribution and couldn't shut up about the realism with which he depicts his female heroine. I was standing at a party, casually chatting with Christian Collinsworth, the boy genius who'd first been published at the ripe old age of twenty from a Yale library cubicle. The critics had gone crazy over his first book, hailing it as one of the most significant literary achievements of the twentieth century, and he'd followed it up with two more since then, each spending more time on the bestseller list than the one before it.
The New Yorker
piece had included an interview in which the author had called Christian ‘not only a force for years to come' in the book industry, but one with ‘a hell of a look, a killer style, and enough natural charm that would ensure – in the unlikely event that his literary success did not – a lifetime of success with the ladies.'