Lauren Weisberger 5-Book Collection: The Devil Wears Prada, Revenge Wears Prada, Everyone Worth Know (35 page)

My rapid-fire list of excuses sounded pathetic even to me, but I couldn't stop. He knew I had just forgotten, and so did I. Not because I didn't care or wasn't concerned, but because all things non-Miranda somehow ceased to be relevant the moment I arrived at work. In some ways I still didn't understand and certainly couldn't explain – never mind ask anyone else to understand – how the outside world just melted into nonexistence, that the only thing remaining when everything else vanished was
Runway
. It was especially difficult to explain this phenomenon when it was the single thing in my life I despised. And yet, it was the only one that mattered.

‘Listen, I have to get back to Joey. He has two friends over and they've probably torn apart the entire house by this point.'

‘Joey? Does that mean you're in Larchmont? You don't usually watch him on Wednesdays. Is everything OK?' I was hoping to steer him away from the blatantly obvious fact that I had gotten too wrapped up at work for six straight hours, and this seemed like the best path. He'd tell me how his mom had gotten held up at work accidentally or perhaps had to go see Joey's teacher for conferences that night when the regular babysitter canceled. He'd never complain of course – that just wasn't his style – but he'd at least tell me what was going on.

‘Yeah, yeah, everything's fine. My mom just had an emergency client meeting tonight. Andy, I can't really talk about it now. I was just calling before with some good news. But you didn't call me back,' he said flatly.

I wrapped the phone cord, which had begun to slowly unravel, so tight around my pointer and middle fingers that they began to pulsate. ‘I'm sorry' was all I could manage, because even though I knew he was right, that I was insensitive not to have called, I was too worn out to present a huge defense. ‘Alex, please. Please don't punish me by not telling me something good. Do you know how long it's been since anyone has called with good news? Please. Give me that at least.' I knew he'd respond to my rational approach, and he did.

‘Look, it's not that exciting. I just went ahead and made all the arrangements for us to go back for our first homecoming together.'

‘You did? Really? We're going?' I'd brought it up a couple times before in what I'd liked to believe had been an offhand and casual way, but in a decidedly non-Alex fashion he'd been hedging on committing to our going together. It was really early to be planning any of it, but the hotels and restaurants in Providence were always full months ahead of time. I'd dropped it a few weeks earlier, figuring that we would figure something out, find a place to stay somewhere. But somehow, of course, he'd picked up on just how badly I wanted to go with him, and he'd figured out everything.

‘Yeah, it's done. We have a rental car – a Jeep, actually – and I reserved a room at the Biltmore.'

‘At the Biltmore? You're kidding? You got a room there? That's amazing.'

‘Yeah, well, you've always talked about wanting to stay there, so I figured we should try it. I even made a reservation for brunch on Sunday at Al Forno for ten people, so we can each gather up the troops and have everyone in one place at one time.'

‘No way. You did all of this already?'

‘Sure. I thought you'd be really psyched. That's why I was really looking forward to telling you about it. But apparently you were too busy to call back.'

‘Alex, I'm thrilled. I can't even tell you how excited I am, and I can't believe you figured everything out already. I'm really sorry about before, but I can't wait for October. We're going to have the best time, thanks to you.'

We talked for another couple minutes. By the time I hung up, he didn't sound mad anymore, but I could barely move. The effort to win him back, to find the right words not only to convince him that I hadn't overlooked him but also to reassure him that I was appropriately grateful and enthusiastic had drained the last reserves of my energy. I don't remember getting into the car or the ride home or whether or not I said hello to John Fisher-Galliano in the lobby of my building. Besides a bone-deep exhaustion that hurt so much it almost felt good, the only thing I remember feeling at all was relief that Lily's door was shut and no light peeked out from under it. I thought about ordering in some food, but the mere thought of locating a menu and a phone was too overwhelming – another meal that simply wasn't happening.

Instead, I sat on the crumbling concrete of my furnitureless balcony and leisurely inhaled a cigarette. Lacking the energy to actually blow the smoke out, I let it seep from my mouth and hang in the still air around me. At some point I heard Lily's door open, her footsteps shuffling along the hallway, but I quickly turned out my lights and sat in the darkened silence. There had just been fifteen straight hours of talking, and I could talk no more.

‘Hire her,' Miranda had decreed when she met Annabelle, the twelfth girl I'd interviewed and one of only two that I'd decided were fit to even meet Miranda. Annabelle was a native French speaker (she actually spoke so little English I had to have the twins translate for me), a graduate of the Sorbonne, and the possessor of a long, hard body, with gorgeous brown hair. She had style. She wasn't afraid to wear stilettos on the job and didn't seem to mind Miranda's brusque manner. In fact, she was rather aloof and brusque herself and never really seemed to make any sort of eye contact. Always kind of bored, a touch disinterested, and supremely confident. I was thrilled when Miranda wanted her, both because it saved me weeks more of meeting nanny wannabes and because it indicated – in some teeny, tiny way – that I was starting to get it.

Get what, exactly, I wasn't sure, but things were going as smoothly as I could have hoped at this point. I'd pulled off the clothing order with only a few noticeable screwups. She hadn't exactly been psyched when I'd shown her everything she'd ordered from Givenchy and accidentally pronounced it precisely as it appears – give-EN-chee. After much glaring and a few snide comments, I was informed of the correct pronunciation, and everything went reasonably well until she had to be told that the Roberto Cavalli dresses she'd requested hadn't been made yet and wouldn't be ready for another three weeks. But I'd handled that and had managed to co-ordinate fittings in the Closet with her tailor and had assembled nearly everything in the closet in her home dressing room, a space roughly the size of a studio apartment.

The party planning had continued in Miranda's absence and picked up again full-force with her return, but there was surprisingly little panic – it appeared that everything was in order, and that the upcoming Friday was set to go off without a hitch. Chanel had delivered a one-of-a-kind, floor-length red beaded sheath while Miranda was in Europe, and I'd immediately sent it to the cleaners for a once-over. I'd seen a similar Chanel dress in black in the pages of
W
the month before, and when I pointed it out to Emily, she'd nodded somberly.

‘Forty thousand dollars,' she'd said, moving her head up and down, up and down. She double-clicked on a pair of black pants on style.com, where she'd spent months scouring for ideas for her upcoming trip to Europe with Miranda.

‘Forty thousand WHAT?'

‘Her dress. The red one from Chanel. It costs forty thousand dollars if you were to buy it retail. Of course, Miranda isn't paying full price, but she didn't get this one for free, either. Isn't it wild?'

‘Forty thousand DOLLARS?' I'd asked again, still unable to believe that I'd held a single item worth so much money in my hands just hours earlier. I couldn't help a quick conceptualization of forty grand: two full years' college tuition, a down payment on a new home, an average yearly salary for a typical American family of four. Or, at the very least, one hell of a lot of Prada bags. But one dress? I thought I'd seen it all at that point, but I was due another zinger when the dress came back from the couture dry cleaner with a calligraphic envelope that read
Ms Miranda Priestly
. Inside was a hand-printed invoice on cream-colored cardstock that read:

There was an additional note underneath the actual bill part from the shop's owner, a woman I was sure paid both the rent for her store and her home with the money she received from Elias on behalf of Miranda's extensive dry-cleaning addiction.

Either way, it was only Thursday and Miranda had a brand-new and newly cleaned gown resting gently in her closet, and Emily had located the exact silver Jimmy Choo sandals she'd requested. The hair stylist was due at her house at five-thirty P.M. on Friday, the makeup artist at five forty-five, and Uri was on call for exactly six-fifteen to take Miranda and Mr Tomlinson to the museum.

Miranda had already left for the day to watch Cassidy's gymnastics meet, and I was hoping to duck out early to surprise Lily. She'd just finished her last exam of the year and I wanted to take her out for a celebration.

‘Hey, Em, do you think I could leave by six-thirty or seven today? Miranda said she didn't need the Book because there really wasn't anything new,' I added quickly, irritated that I had to beg my equal, my peer for permission to leave work after only twelve hours instead of the usual fourteen.

‘Um, sure. Yeah, whatever. I'm leaving now.' She checked her computer screen and saw that it was a little after five. ‘Stay for another couple hours and then head out. She's with the twins tonight, so I don't think she should be calling much.' She had a date that night with the guy she'd met in LA over New Year's. He'd finally made it to New York and, surprise of all surprises, he'd actually called. They were headed to Craftbar for drinks, at which point she would treat him to Nobu if he was behaving himself. She'd made the reservations five weeks earlier when he'd e-mailed that he might be in New York, but Emily still had to use Miranda's name to score the time slot.

‘Well, what are you going to do when you show up there and you're clearly not Miranda Priestly?' I asked stupidly.

As usual, I received an expert eye-roll-deep-sigh combo. ‘I'll simply tell them that Miranda had to be out of town unexpectedly, show them a business card, and tell them she wanted me to have her reservation. Hardly a big deal.'

Miranda called only once after Emily left to tell me that she wouldn't be in the office until noon tomorrow, but she'd like a copy of the restaurant review she'd read today ‘in the paper.' I had the presence of mind to ask if she recalled the name of the restaurant or the paper in which she read about it, but this annoyed her greatly.

‘Ahn-dre-ah, I'm already late for the meet. Don't grill me. It was an Asian fusion restaurant and it was in today's paper. That's all.' And with that, she snapped her Motorola V60 shut. I hoped, as I usually did when she cut me off mid-sentence, that one day the cell phone would simply clamp down on her perfectly manicured fingers and swallow them whole, taking special time to shred those flawless red nails. No luck yet.

I wrote a quick note to myself to find the restaurant first thing in the morning in the notebook I kept with Miranda's myriad and ever-changing requests and bolted for the car. I called Lily from my cell and she picked up just as I was about to get out and go up to the apartment, and so I waved to John Fisher-Galliano (who had grown his hair a little longer and adorned his uniform with a few chains and looked more like the designer each and every day) but didn't move.

‘Hey, what's up? It's me.'

‘
Hiiiiiiiiiii
,' she sang, happier than I'd heard her in weeks, maybe months. ‘I am so done. Done! No early summer session, nothing but a little, insignificant proposal due for a master's thesis that I can change ten times after the fact if I want. So that leaves nothing until mid-July. Do you believe it?' She sounded positively gleeful.

‘I know, I'm so excited for you! You up for a celebratory dinner? Anywhere you want, it's on
Runway
.'

‘Really? Anywhere?'

‘Anywhere. I'm downstairs and I have a car. Come down; we'll go somewhere great.'

She squealed. ‘Fun! I've been meaning to tell you all about Freudian Boy. He's beautiful! Hold on one second. I'm putting on jeans and I'll be right down.'

She bounded out five minutes later looking trendier and happier than I'd seen her in a very long time. She wore a pair of tight, faded boot-cut jeans that hugged her hips, paired with a long-sleeve flowy white peasant blouse. A pair of flip-flops I'd never seen before – brown leather straps with turquoise beads – completed the look. She was even wearing makeup, and her curls looked as though they had seen a blow-dryer at some point in the last twenty-four hours.

‘You look great,' I said as she bounded into the backseat. ‘What's your secret?'

‘Freudian Boy, of course. He's amazing. I think I'm in love. So far, he's going strong at nine-tenths. Do you believe it?'

‘First, let's decide where we're going. I didn't make a reservation anywhere, but I can call ahead and use Miranda's name. Anywhere you want.'

She was rubbing on some Kiehl's lip gloss and staring at herself in the driver's rearview mirror. ‘Anywhere?' she said absentmindedly.

‘Anywhere. Maybe Chicama for those mojitos?' I suggested, knowing that the way to sell Lily on a restaurant was by advertising its drinks, not its food. ‘Or there are those amazing Cosmos at Meet. Or the Hudson Hotel – maybe we can even sit outside? If you want wine, though, I'd love to try—'