Lauren Weisberger 5-Book Collection: The Devil Wears Prada, Revenge Wears Prada, Everyone Worth Know (20 page)

Benji saluted me with his lit cigarette, glowing eerily in the still dark winter morning, and motioned for me to come over. I was nervous I'd be late, but Eduardo gave me his ‘Don't worry, she's not here yet – you're fine' look and I walked over to Benji. He looked bleary-eyed and hopeless. He probably thought
he
had a tyrannical boss. Hah! If only he knew. I wanted to laugh out loud.

‘Hey, I noticed you're the only one here this early every day,' he muttered at me while I dug around in my bag for lipstick before hitting the elevators. ‘What's the deal?'

He looked so tired, so beaten-down, that I felt a surge of sympathy and kindness. But then I felt my legs nearly give out from exhaustion, and I remembered the way Lily had looked when one of Benji's dumb lacrosse buddies had asked if she'd been happy to watch or really actually wanted to join in, and I lost my cool.

‘Well, my deal is that I work for a rather demanding woman, and I need to get here two and a half hours before the rest of the goddamn magazine so that I'm prepared for her,' I said, my tone dripping with anger and sarcasm.

‘Whoa. Just asking. Sorry, though, it sounds pretty bad. Which one do you work for?'

‘I work for Miranda Priestly,' I said, and prayed for a non-reaction. Something about having a seemingly well-educated, successful professional have no idea who Miranda was made me very, very happy. Delighted almost. And luckily, this one didn't let me down. He shrugged and inhaled and looked at me expectantly.

‘She's the editor in chief of
Runway
,' I lowered my voice and began with glee, ‘and pretty much the biggest bitch I've ever met. I mean, I've honestly never met anyone like her. She's really not even human.' I had a litany of complaints I would've liked to have dumped on Benji, but the
Runway
Paranoid Turnaround came on full-force. I became immediately nervous, almost paranoid, convinced that this unknowing, uncaring person was somehow one of Miranda's lackeys, sent to spy on me from the
Observer
or
Page Six
. I knew it was ridiculous, completely absurd. After all, I had personally known Benji for years now and was quite sure he wasn't working for Miranda in any capacity. Just not totally sure. After all, how could you be totally sure? And who knew who could be standing behind me at that very second, overhearing every one of my nasty words? Damage control was required immediately.

‘Of course, she IS the most powerful woman in fashion and publishing, and you just can't get to the top of two major industries in New York City handing out candy all day long. Um, it's understandable that she's a little tough to work for, you know? I would be, too. Yeah, so, um, I have to run now. Good seeing you again.' And I ducked away, as I often had the past few weeks when I found myself talking to someone other than Lily or Alex or my parents and I couldn't help myself from bashing the witch.

‘Hey, don't feel too bad,' he called after me as I headed toward the elevator bank. ‘I've been here since last Thursday morning.' And with that, he dropped his smoldering butt and half-heartedly stamped it into the cement.

‘Morning, Eduardo,' I said, looking at him with my best tired, pathetic eyes. ‘I fucking hate Mondays.'

‘Hey, buddy, don't worry. At least you beat her here this morning,' he said, smiling. He was referring, of course, to those miserable mornings when Miranda would show up at five A.M. and need to be escorted upstairs since she refused to carry an access card. She'd then pace the office, calling Emily and me over and over until one of us could manage to wake up, get ready, and get to work as if a national security emergency were unfolding.

I pushed against the turnstile, praying that this Monday would be the exception, that he'd let me pass without a performance. Negative.

‘Yo, tell me what you want, what you really, really want,'
he sang with his huge, toothy smile and Spanish accent. And all the pleasure of making the cabbie happy and finding out that I had arrived ahead of Miranda vanished. I was left, as I was every morning, wanting to reach across the security counter and tear the flesh from Eduardo's face. But since I was such a good sport and he was one of my only friends in the place, I weakly acquiesced.
‘I'll tell you what I want, what I really, really want, I wanna – I wanna – I wanna – I wanna – I really, really, really wanna zigga zig aaaaaahhhh,'
I sang meekly in a pitiful tribute to the Spice Girls' nineties hit. And once again, Eduardo grinned and buzzed me through.

‘Hey, don't forget: July sixteenth!' he called after me.

‘I know, July sixteenth …' I called back, a reference to our shared birthdays. I don't remember how or why he had discovered my birthdate, but he adored that we had the same one. And for some inexplicable reason, it became a part of our personal morning ritual. Every single goddamn day.

There were eight elevators on the Elias-Clark side, half for floors one to seventeen, half for seventeen and up. Only the first bank really mattered since most of the big names were on the first seventeen floors; they advertised their presence with illuminated panels over the elevator doors. There was a free, state-of-the-art gym on the second floor for employees, complete with a full Nautilus circuit and at least a hundred Stairmasters, treadmills, and elliptical machines. The locker rooms had saunas, hot tubs, steam rooms, and attendants in maids' uniforms, and a salon offered emergency manicures, pedicures, and facials. There was even complimentary towel service, or so I'd heard – not only did I not have the time, the place was always too damn crowded between the hours of six A.M. and ten P.M. to so much as walk around. Writers and editors and sales assistants called three days ahead of time to book themselves into the yoga or kick-boxing classes, and even then they lost their place if they didn't get there fifteen minutes in advance. Like nearly everything at Elias-Clark designed to make employees' lives better, it just stressed me out.

I'd heard a rumor that there was a daycare center in the basement, but I didn't know anyone who actually had children, so I still wasn't entirely positive. The real action began on the third floor with the dining room, where so far Miranda had refused to eat among the peons unless she was lunching with Irv Ravitz, Elias's CEO, who liked to eat there in a show of unity with his employees.

Up, up, up we went, past all the other famous titles. Most of them had to share floors, with one flanking each side of the receptionist's desk, facing off behind separate glass doors. I hopped off at the seventeenth floor, checking my butt in the reflection of the door's glass. In a stroke of empathy and genius, the architect had kindly left mirrors out of the elevators in 640 Madison. As usual, I'd forgotten my electronic ID card – the very same one that tracked all our movements, purchases, and absences in the building – and had to break onto the floor. Sophy didn't come in until nine, so I had to bend down under her desk, find the button that would release the glass doors, and sprint from the middle of the reception area to the doors and yank them open before they snapped locked again. Sometimes I'd have to do this three or four times until I finally caught it, but today I made it on my second attempt.

The floor was always dark when I arrived, and I took the same route to my desk every morning. To my left when I walked in was the advertising department, the girls who most loved adorning themselves in Chloé T-shirts and spike-heeled boots while handing out business cards that screamed ‘
Runway
.' They were removed, wholly and entirely, from anything and everything that took place on the editorial side of the floor: it was editorial that picked the clothes for the fashion spreads, wooed the good writers, matched the accessories to the outfits, interviewed the models, edited the copy, designed the layouts, and hired the photographers. Editorial traveled to hot spots around the world for shoots, got free gifts and discounts from all the designers, hunted for trends, and went to parties at Pastis and Float because they ‘had to check out what people were wearing.'

Ad sales was left to try and sell ad space. Sometimes they threw promotional parties, but they were celebrity-free and therefore boring to New York's hipster scene (or so Emily had sneeringly told me). My phone would ring off the hook on a day during a
Runway
ad sales party with people I didn't know really well looking for an invite. ‘Um, like, I hear
Runway
's having a party tonight. Why am I not invited?' I always found out from someone on the outside that there was a party that night: editorial was never invited because they wouldn't go anyway. As if it wasn't enough for the
Runway
girls to mock, terrorize, and ostracize any and every person who wasn't one of them, they had to create internal class lines as well.

The ad sales department gave way to a long, narrow hallway. It seemed to stretch forever before arriving at a tiny kitchen on the left side. Here were an assortment of coffees and teas, a fridge for stored lunches – all superfluous, since Starbucks had a monopoly on employees' daily caffeine fixes and all meals were carefully selected in the dining room or ordered in from any one of a thousand midtown takeout places. But it was a nice touch, almost cute; it said,
‘Hey, look at us, we have Lipton tea packets and Sweet'n Lows and even a microwave in case you want to warm up some of last night's dinner! We're just like everyone else!'

I finally made it to Miranda's enclave at 7:05, so tired I could barely move. But as with everything, there was yet another routine that I never thought to question or alter, so I began in earnest. I unlocked her office and turned on all the lights. It was still dark outside, and I loved the drama of standing in the dark in the power monger's office, staring out at a flashing and restless New York City and picturing myself in one of those movies (take your pick – any that have lovers embracing on the expansive terrace of his $6 million apartment with views of the river), feeling on top of the world. And then the lights would blaze forth, and my fantasy was over. The anything-is-possible feel of New York at dawn vanished, and the identical, grinning faces of Caroline and Cassidy were all I could see.

Next I unlocked the closet in our outer office area, the place where I hung her coat (and mine if she wasn't wearing a fur that day – Miranda didn't like Emily's or my pedestrian wools hanging next to her minks) and where we kept a number of supplies: castoff coats and clothes that were worth tens of thousands of dollars, some new dry cleaning that had been delivered to the office but not yet brought up to Miranda's apartment, at least 300 of the infamous white Hermès scarves. Emily had quietly informed me that she'd made an executive decision to purchase as many of the signature scarves as she could conceivably locate at any given time. This way, she explained, Miranda would never, ever be without a scarf and we'd never be left in a position where we'd need to locate more in a panic. Operating from this simple and logical premise, Emily had managed to find just over five hundred of the scarves all over the U.S. and France and promptly purchased every single one. I hadn't yet told anyone that I'd opened a letter from the Hermès corporate headquarters in Paris. Addressing her as ‘Madame Priestly', they driveled on and on about how honored they were that Miranda had attached herself and her style to one of their scarves, how she had done more for the label than she'd ever even know, and they were so dreadfully sorry that they had no choice but to slightly alter the particular design she favored. Included in the envelope were a half-dozen swatches of white patterns on white silk – their conciliatory gesture to help Miranda get through this tough time – in addition to the subtly altered design she always wore. I'd stared at them for nearly twenty minutes trying to see the differences in any of them. I couldn't, but I knew Miranda would know in a heartbeat. Naturally, the letter and swatches were currently residing under a very large pile of very boring papers in my bottom desk drawer, but I couldn't help wondering what would happen when our current stock ran out.

Miranda left them everywhere: restaurants, movies, fashion shows, weekly meetings, taxis. She left them on airplanes, at her daughters' school. Of course, she always had one stylishly incorporated into her outfit – I'd yet to see her outside her own home without one. But that didn't explain where they all went. Perhaps she thought they were handkerchiefs? Or maybe she liked jotting notes on silk instead of paper? Whatever it was, she seemed to truly believe they were disposable, and none of us knew how to tell her otherwise. Elias-Clark had paid a couple hundred dollars for each one, but no matter: we handed them out to her as though they were Kleenex. At the rate she was going, in under two years, Miranda was due to run out.

I'd arranged the stiff orange boxes on the ready-to-distribute shelf of the closet, where they never remained for very long. Every third or fourth day, she'd prepare to leave for lunch and sigh, ‘Ahn-dre-ah, hand me a scarf.' I comforted myself with the thought that I'd be long gone by the time she ran out of them completely. Whoever was unlucky enough to be around would have to tell her that there were no more white Hermès scarves, and that none could be made, shipped, created, formed, mailed, ordered, or mandated. The mere thought was terrifying.

Just as I got the closet and office opened, Uri called.

‘Andrea? Hello, hello. It is Uri. Could you come downstairs please? I am on Fifty-eighth Street, closer to Park Avenue, right in front of the New York Sports Club. I have things for you.'

This call was a good although imperfect way of telling me that Miranda would be arriving somewhat soon. Maybe. Most mornings she sent Uri ahead to the office with her things, an assortment of dirty clothes that needed dry cleaning, any copy she'd taken home to read, magazines, shoes or bags that needed to be fixed, and the Book. This way, she could have me meet the car and carry up all of these rather mundane things ahead of schedule and deal with them before she stepped into the office. She tended to follow her stuff by about a half hour, since Uri would drop off her things and then go pick her up from wherever she might be hiding that morning.