Lauren Weisberger 5-Book Collection: The Devil Wears Prada, Revenge Wears Prada, Everyone Worth Know (41 page)

I kissed him on the cheek as he whistled and told me that he'd probably meet some people for dinner but to call him later if I wanted to meet up, and ran as best one can in stilts back to the living room, where Lily was holding a gorgeous piece of black silk fabric. I looked at her questioningly.

‘A wrap, for your big night,' she sang, shaking it out like a bedsheet. ‘I want my Andy to look just as sophisticated as all the big-money Carolina rednecks she'll be serving tonight like a common waitress. My grandmother bought it for me years ago to wear to Eric's wedding. I can't decide if it's gorgeous or hideous, but it's black-tie enough and it's Chanel, so it should do.'

I hugged her. ‘Just promise if Miranda kills me for saying the wrong thing that you'll burn this dress and make sure I'm buried in my Brown sweatpants. Promise me!' She grabbed the mascara wand I was waving about and started working on me.

‘You look great, Andy, really you do. Never thought I'd see you in an Oscar gown going to one of Miranda Priestly's parties, but, hey, you look the part. Now go.'

She handed me the dangling, obnoxiously bright Judith Leiber bag and held the door as I walked into the hallway. ‘Have fun!'

The car was waiting outside my building and John – who was shaping up to be a first-class pervert – whistled as the driver held the door open for me.

‘Knock 'em dead, hottie,' he called after me with an exaggerated wink. ‘See ya late-night.' He had no idea where I was going, of course, but it was comforting that he thought I'd at least be coming home.
Maybe it won't be that bad
, I thought as I settled into the cushy backseat of the Town Car. But then my dress slid up over my knees and the back of my legs touched the ice-cold leather seats, and I lurched forward.
Or, maybe, it will suck just as much as I think it will?

The driver jumped out and ran around to open the door for me, but I was standing on the curb by the time he'd made it around.

I'd been to the Whitney once before, on a day trip to New York with my mom and Jill to see some of the tourist sights. The museum itself didn't look familiar now, but I instantly flashed back when I saw the bridge-like entrance. As a thirteen-year-old, I'd stood on that walkway for nearly twenty minutes, gazing over the side down below, where the well-heeled Upper East Side crowd mingled with the well-heeled suburban day-trippers over lemonades and espressos. They all seemed so confident, so breezy in their discussions of the revolutionary architectural exhibit or the racy black-and-white prints by a young, gay photographer. They spoke to each other with ease and moved with the kind of assurance I'd never felt as a teenager and was sure I never would.

How right I'd been. It may have been ten years later, but the only difference between then and now was the cost of my outfit. And the height of my heels, of course. I briefly considered hurtling first the shoes and then myself over the walkway, but a quick calculation confirmed that I'd only shatter a kneecap or smash a collarbone – not enough to get me out of the evening's festivities. Lacking any alternatives, I inhaled mightily, clenched my fingers to fight off the urge for one last cigarette, and reapplied my Fudgsicle Lipsmackers. It was time to be a lady.

The guard opened the door for me, bowed slightly, and smiled. He probably thought I was a guest.

‘Hi, miss, you must be Andrea. Ilana said to have a seat right over there, and she'll be out in a minute.' He turned away and spoke discreetly into a microphone on his sleeve and nodded when he heard a response through his earpiece. ‘Yes, right over there, miss. She'll be here as soon as she can.'

I looked around the entryway but didn't feel like going through the dress-adjustment hassle of actually sitting. Besides, when would I ever again have the chance to be in the Whitney Museum – or any museum, really – after hours, with apparently no one else there? The ticket tables were empty and the ground-floor bookshop was deserted, but the sense that exciting things were happening somewhere upstairs was palpable.

After nearly fifteen minutes of peering around, being careful not to wander too far from the aspiring Secret Service agent, a rather ordinary-looking girl in a long navy dress crossed the sleek lobby and walked toward me. I was surprised that someone with a job as glamorous as hers (working in the special events office of the museum) could be so plain, and I felt instantly ridiculous, like a girl from a small town trying to dress for a big-city black-tie affair – which, ironically enough, was exactly who I was. Ilana, on the other hand, looked like she hadn't even bothered to change out of work clothes, and I learned later that she hadn't.

‘Why bother?' she'd laughed. ‘It's not like these people are here to look at me.' Her brown hair was clean and straight but lacking in style, and her brown flats were horrifically unfashionable. But her blue eyes were bright and kind, and I knew instantly that I would like her.

‘You must be Ilana,' I said, sensing that I somehow had seniority in the situation and was expected to take charge. ‘I'm Andrea. I'm Miranda's assistant, and I'm here to help in any way I can.'

She looked so relieved, I instantly wondered what Miranda had said to her. The possibilities were endless, but I imagined it had something to do with Ilana's
Ladies' Home Journal
getup. I shuddered to think what wicked thing she'd uttered to such a sweet girl and prayed she wouldn't start to cry. Instead, she turned to me with those big innocent eyes, leaned forward, and declared none-too-quietly, ‘Your boss is a first-rate bitch.'

I stared, shocked, for just a moment before recovering. ‘She is, isn't she?' I said, and we both laughed. ‘What do you need me to do? Miranda's going to be able to sense that I'm here in about ten seconds, so I should look like I'm doing something.'

‘Here, I'll show you the table,' she said, stepping into the elevator and pressing the button for the second floor. ‘It's dynamite.'

We stepped off the elevator and cruised past another guard, weaved around a sculpture I couldn't immediately identify, and made our way to a smaller room towards the back of the floor. A rectangular, twenty-four-seat table stretched down the middle. Robert Isabell was worth it, I could see. He was
the
New York party planner, the only one who could be trusted to strike just the right note with astonishing attention to detail: fashionable without being trendy, luxe but not ostentatious, unique without being over the top. Miranda insisted that Robert do everything, but the only time I'd ever seen his work before was at Cassidy and Caroline's birthday party. I knew he could manage to turn Miranda's colonial-style living room into a chic downtown lounge (complete with soda bar – in martini glasses, of course – ultra-suede, built-in banquettes, and a fully heated, tented balcony dance floor with a Moroccan theme) for ten-year-olds, but this was truly spectacular.

Everything glowed white. Light white, smooth white, bright white, textured white, and rich white. Bundles of milky white peonies looked as if they grew from the table itself, deliciously lush but low enough to allow people to talk over them. Bone white china (with a white checked pattern) rested on a crisp white linen tablecloth, and high-backed white oak chairs were covered in luscious white suede (the danger!), all atop a plush white carpet, specially laid for the evening. White votive candles in simple white porcelain holders gave off a soft white light, highlighting (but somehow not burning) the peonies from underneath and providing subtle, unobtrusive illumination around the table. The only color in the entire room came from the elaborate multihued canvases that hung on the walls surrounding the table. A quick glance at their descriptions told me that B-DAD's brother would be celebrating his engagement in the presence of oil paintings by Rothko, Steel, Kline, and of course, de Kooning. The white table as a deliberate contrast to the larger-than-life canvases that literally burst with color was exquisite. As I turned my head around to take in the wonderful contrast of the color and the white (‘That Robert really is a genius!'), a vibrant red figure caught my eye. In the corner, standing ramrod straight under Rothko's
Four Darks in Red
was Miranda, wearing the beaded red Chanel that had been commissioned, cut, fitted, and precleaned just for tonight. In that moment I knew immediately why she'd insisted on both the gallery and the dress, knew that she'd planned for that painting to highlight that dress – or perhaps it was the other way around? Either way, it was perfection. She looked breathtaking. She herself was an
objet d'art
, chin jutted upward and muscles perfectly taut, a neoclassical relief in beaded Chanel silk. She wasn't beautiful – her eyes were a bit too beady and her hair too severe and her face much too hard – but she was stunning in a way I couldn't make sense of, and no matter how hard I tried to play it cool, to pretend to be admiring the room, I couldn't take my eyes off her.

As usual, the sound of her voice broke my reverie. ‘Ahn-dre-ah, you do know the names and faces of our guests this evening, do you not? I assume you have properly studied their portraits. I expect you won't humiliate me tonight by failing to greet someone by name,' she announced, looking nowhere, with only my name indicating that her words might somehow be directed toward me.

‘Um, yes, I've got it covered,' I answered, suppressing the urge to salute and still acutely aware that I was staring. ‘I'll take a few minutes now and make sure I'm positive.' She looked at me as if to say
You sure will, you idiot
, and I forced myself to look away and walk out of the gallery. Ilana was right behind me.

‘What's she talking about?' she whispered, leaning toward me. ‘Portraits? Is she crazy?'

We sat down on an uncomfortable wooden bench in a darkened hallway, both of us overwhelmed with the need to hide. ‘Oh, that. Yeah, normally I would've spent the last week trying to find pictures of the guests tonight and memorizing them so I could greet them by name,' I explained to a horrified Ilana. She stared at me incredulously. ‘But since she just told me I had to come today, I only had a few minutes in the car to look them over.'

‘What?' I asked. ‘You think
this
is strange? Whatever. It's standard stuff for a Miranda party.'

‘Well, I thought there wouldn't be anyone famous here tonight,' she said.

‘Yeah, there won't be anyone we'd recognize right away, just a lot of billionaires with homes below the Mason-Dixon line. Usually when I have to memorize the guests' faces, they're easier to find online or in
WWD
or something. I mean, you can generally locate a picture of Queen Noor or Michael Bloomberg or Yohji Yamamoto if you have to. But just try to find Mr and Mrs Packard from some rich suburb of Charleston or wherever the hell they live and it's not so easy. Miranda's other assistant was looking for these people while everyone else was getting me ready, and she eventually found almost everyone in the society pages of their hometown newspapers or on various companies' websites, but it was really annoying.'

Ilana continued to stare. I think somehow I knew that I was sounding like a robot, but I couldn't stop. Her shock only made me feel worse.

‘There's only one couple I haven't identified yet, so I guess I'll know them by default,' I said.

‘Oh, my. I don't know how you do it. I'm annoyed I have to be here on a Friday night, but I can't imagine doing your job. How do you take it? How do you stand being spoken to and treated like that?'

It took me a moment to realize that this question caught me off-guard: no one had really ever volunteered anything negative about my job. I'd always thought I was the only one – among the millions of imaginary girls that would ‘die' for my job – who saw anything remotely disturbing about my situation. It was more horrifying to see the shock in her eyes than it was to witness the hundreds of ridiculous things I saw each and every day at work; the way she looked at me with that pure, unadulterated pity triggered something inside me. I did what I hadn't done in months of working under subhuman conditions for a nonhuman boss, what I always managed to keep suppressed for a more appropriate time. I started to cry.

Ilana looked more shocked than ever. ‘Oh, sweetie, come here! I'm so sorry! I didn't mean anything by it. You're a saint for putting up with that witch, you hear me? Come with me.' She pulled me by the hand and led me down another darkened hallway toward an office in the back. ‘Here, now sit for a minute and forget all about what these stupid people look like.'

I sniffled and started to feel stupid.

‘And don't feel strange, you hear? I have a feeling you kept that inside for a long, long time and you have to have a good cry every now and then.'

She was fumbling around in her desk for something while I tried to wipe the mascara from my cheeks. ‘Here,' she proclaimed proudly. ‘I'm destroying this right after you see it, and if you even think of telling anyone about it, I'll wreck your life. But just look, it's amazing.' She handed me a manila envelope sealed with a ‘Confidential' sticker and smiled.

I tore off the sticker and pulled a green folder out. Inside was a photo – a color photocopy, actually – of Miranda stretched out on a restaurant banquette. I recognized it immediately as a picture taken by a famous society photographer during a recent birthday party for Donna Karan at Pastis. It had already appeared on the pages of
New York
magazine and was bound to keep showing up. In it she was wearing her signature brown and white snakeskin trench coat, the one I always thought made her look like a snake.

Well, it seems I wasn't alone, because in this version, someone had subtly – expertly – attached a scaled-to-size cutout of a rattlesnake's rattle directly where her legs should have been. The effect was a fabulous rendition of Miranda as Snake: she rested her elbow on the banquette, cradled her chiseled chin in her palm, and stretched out across the leather, with her rattle curled in a semicircle and hanging off the edge of the bench. It was perfect.