“Um, Christian, golly, I’d love to,” I started, trying to forget immediately that I’d just said “golly.” Golly! Who said that? The scene where Baby proudly announces to Johnny that she’d carried a watermelon flashed to mind, but I pushed it back and willed myself to forge forward despite the humiliation. “I’d really love to”—yes, you idiot, you just said that, try to make some progress here—“but I just can’t do it. I, um, I already have plans for Saturday.” A good response overall, I thought. I was shouting over the noise of the siren, but I thought I still sounded somewhat dignified. No need to be available for a date that was only two days away, and no real need to reveal existence of boyfriend . . . after all, it really wasn’t any of his business. Right?
“Do you really have plans, Andrea, or do you think your boyfriend would disapprove of you going out with another man?” He was fishing, I could tell.
“Either way has nothing to do with you,” I said prissily, and I actually rolled my eyes at myself. I crossed Third Avenue without noticing that the light was against me and almost got mowed down by a minivan.
“OK, well, I’ll let you off this time. But I’ll be asking again. And I think next time you’ll say yes.”
“Oh, really? What gives you that impression?” The confidence that had seemed so sexy before was now starting to sound a whole lot like arrogance. The only problem was that it made him sound even sexier.
“Just a hunch, Andrea, just a hunch. And no need to worry that pretty little head of yours—or your boyfriend’s—I was just extending a friendly invitation for a good meal and good company. Maybe he’d like to join us, Andrea? Your boyfriend. He must be a great guy, I’d really like to meet him.”
“No!” I almost shouted, horrified at the thought of the two of them sitting across a table from each other, each so amazing in such radically different ways. I’d be ashamed for Christian to see Alex’s wholesomeness, his do-gooder ways. To Christian, Alex would seem like a naïve hick. And I’d be even more ashamed for Alex to see, with his own eyes, all the ugly things I found so incredibly attractive about Christian: the style, the cockiness, a self-assuredness so rock-solid it seemed impossible to insult him.
“No.” I laughed or, rather, forced a laugh, as I tried to make it sound casual. “I’m not so sure that’s a good idea. Although I’m sure he’d just love to meet you, too.”
He laughed with me, but it had turned mocking, patronizing. “I was just kidding, Andrea. I’m sure your boyfriend’s a really great guy, but I’m not particularly interested in meeting him.”
“Well, of course. Sure. I mean, I knew what you—”
“Listen, I’ve got to run. Why don’t you give me a call if you change your mind . . . or your ‘plans,’ OK? Offer’s still open. Oh, and have a great day.” And before I could say another word, he’d hung up.
What the hell had just happened? I ran through it again: Hot Smart Writer had somehow found my cell number, called it, and fully asked me on a date for Saturday night to Hot Trendy Restaurant. I wasn’t clear whether he knew ahead of time if I had a boyfriend or not, but he didn’t appear particularly daunted by the information. The only thing I knew for sure was that I’d spent way too long chatting on the phone, a fact confirmed by a quick glance at my watch. It had been thirty-two minutes since I’d left the office, longer than the time it usually took me to get lunch and come back.
I stashed the phone and realized I had already made it to the restaurant. I pulled open the lumbering wooden door and stepped into the hushed, darkened dining room. Even though every table was filled with midtown bankers and lawyers gnawing on their favorite steaks, there was barely any noise at all, as if the plush carpeting and manly color scheme just absorbed all the sound.
“Andrea!” I heard Sebastian cry from the hostess stand. He beelined toward me as though I might be holding the last of a life-saving medication. “We’re just all so glad you’re here!” Two young girls in crisp gray skirt suits nodded seriously behind him.
“Oh, really? Why is that?” I could never help myself toying with Sebastian, just a little. He was such an unbelievable kiss-ass.
He leaned over conspiratorially, his excitement palpable. “Well, you know how the entire staff here at Smith and Wollensky feels about Ms. Priestly, don’t you? Runway is such a gorgeous magazine, what with all the beautiful shoots and stunning style and, of course, fascinating, literate articles. We all just adore it!”
“Literate articles, huh?” I asked, suppressing the huge smile that was threatening to emerge. He nodded proudly and turned as one of the suited helpers tapped him on the shoulder to hand him a tote bag.
He literally cried out in joy. “Ah-hah! Here we have it, one perfectly prepared lunch for one perfect editor—and one perfect assistant,” he added while winking at me.
“Thank you, Sebastian, we both appreciate it.” I opened the natural cotton tote, a bag that looked just like those über-cool ones from the Strand that all the NYU students slung over their shoulder, but without the logo, and made sure everything was right. One-and-a-quarter-pound ribeye, bleeding all over the container, so raw it just might not have been cooked at all. Check. Two baked potatoes the size of small kittens, each steaming hot. Check. One small side container of smashed potatoes, made soft with lots of heavy cream and extra butter. Check. Precisely eight perfect stalks of asparagus with the tips looking plump and juicy and the ends shaved to a clean, white finish. Check. There was also a metal gravy boat full of softened butter, a pinch-box overflowing with grainy kosher salt, a wooden-handled steak knife, and a crisp white linen napkin, which today was folded into the shape of a pleated skirt. How adorable. Sebastian waited to see if I liked it.
“Very nice, Sebastian,” I said as though I were praising a puppy for going number two outside. “You really outdid yourself today.”
He beamed and then looked at the ground in practiced humility. “Well, thank you. You know how I feel about Ms. Priestly, and, well, it’s really an honor to, well, you know . . .”
“Prepare her lunch?” I supplied, helpfully.
“Well, yes. Exactly. You know what I mean.”
“Yes, of course I do, Sebastian. She’ll love it, I’m sure.” I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I immediately unfolded all of his creations because the Ms. Priestly he so adored would throw a hissy fit if faced with a napkin in the shape of anything other than a napkin—never mind a bowling bag or a high-heeled shoe. I tucked the bag under my arm and turned to leave, but just then my phone rang.
Sebastian looked at me expectantly, fervently hoping that the voice on the other line of my cell phone would be his love, his reason for living. He wasn’t let down.
“Is this Emily? Emily, is that you, I can barely hear you!” Miranda’s voice came over the line in a shrill, angry staccato.
“Hello, Miranda. Yes, this is Andrea.” I stated calmly while Sebastian visibly swooned at the sound of her name.
“Are you preparing my lunch yourself, Andrea? Because according to my clock, I asked for it thirty-five minutes ago. I cannot think of a single reason why—if you were doing your job properly—my lunch would not be at my desk yet. Can you?”
She got my name right! A small success, but no time to celebrate.
“Uh, um, well, I’m very sorry it’s taken so long, but there was a little mix-up with—”
“You do know just how uninterested I am in such details, do you not?”
“Yes, of course I understand, and it won’t be long before—”
“I am calling to tell you that I want my lunch, and I want it now. There’s really not much room for nuance, Emily. I. Want. My. Lunch. Now!” With that, she hung up the phone, and my hands were shaking so badly I dropped my cell on the floor. It might as well have been covered in burning arsenic.
Sebastian, who looked ready to pass out from the action, swooped down to retrieve the phone and hand it back to me.
“Is she upset with us, Andrea? I hope she doesn’t think we let her do
wn! Does she? Does she think that?” His mouth pursed into a tight oval and the already prominent veins in his forehead pulsed, and I wanted to hate him as much as I hated her, but I just felt sorry for him. Why did this man, this man who seemed remarkable only to the extent that he was so unremarkable, why did he care so much about Miranda Priestly? Why was he so invested in pleasing her, impressing her, providing for her? Perhaps he should take over my job, I thought, because I was going to quit. Yes, that was it. I was going to march back to that office and quit. Who needed her shit? What gave her the right to talk to me, to anyone, like that? The position? The power? The prestige? The goddamn Prada? Where, in a just universe, was this acceptable behavior?
The receipt I was supposed to sign every day charging the ninety-five-dollar meal to Elias-Clark was resting on the podium, and I quickly scrawled an illegible signature. Whether it was mine or Miranda’s or Emily’s or Mahatma Gandhi’s at this point I couldn’t even be sure, but it wouldn’t matter. I grabbed the bag of food that redefined the term “lunch meat” and stomped back outside, leaving a very fragile Sebastian to deal with himself. I threw myself in a cab the moment I hit the street, nearly knocking an elderly man off his feet. No time to be concerned. I had a job to quit. Even with the midday traffic, we covered the few blocks in ten minutes, and I threw the cabbie a twenty. I would’ve given him fifty if I’d had it and figured out a way to recoup it from Elias, but there were none in my wallet. He immediately began counting out change, but I slammed the door and ran. Let that twenty go to caring for a little girl somewhere or fixing a hot water heater, I decided. Or even for a few postshift beers at the cab park in Queens—whatever the cabbie did with it would somehow be nobler than buying yet another cup of Starbucks.
Full of self-righteous indignation, I stormed inside the building and ignored the disapproving stares from the small group of Clackers in the corner. I saw Benji stepping off the Bergman elevators but quickly turned my back so I didn’t waste any more time, swiped my card, and threw my hip against the turnstile. Shit! The metal bar smacked against my pelvic bone and I knew I’d have a splotchy purple bruise within minutes. I looked up to see two rows of glimmering white teeth and the fat, sweating face that formed around them. Eduardo. He had to be kidding. He just had to be.
I quickly flashed him my best nasty look, the one that said, quite simply, Just die! but it didn’t work today. Maintaining full eye contact, I swiveled around to the next turnstile in the line, swiped my card lightning-fast, and lunged against the bar. He’d managed to lock it just in time, and I stood there as he let the Clackers go through the first turnstile I’d tried, one by one. Six in all, and I still stood there, so frustrated I thought I might cry. Eduardo was not sympathetic.
“Girlfriend, don’t look so down. This ain’t torture, it’s fun. Now, please. Pay attention, because . . . I think we’re alone now. There doesn’t seem to be anyone a-rou-ound. I think we’re alone now. The beatin’ of our hearts is the only sou-ound.”
“Eduardo! How on earth am I supposed to act out that one? I don’t have time for this shit right now!”
“OK, OK. No actin’ this time, just singin’. I’ll start, you finish. Children behave! That’s what they say when we’re together. And watch how you play! They don’t understand, and so we’re . . .”
I figured I wouldn’t have to quit if I ever actually made it upstairs because I’d be fired by then anyway. Might as well make someone else’s day. “Running just as fast as we can,” I continued, not missing a beat. “Holdin’ on to one another’s hand. Tryin’ to get away into the night and then you put your arms around me and we tumble to the ground and then you say . . .”
I leaned in closer when I noticed that the jerk from day one, Mickey, was trying to listen, and Eduardo finished it off: “I think we’re alone now. There doesn’t seem to be anyone a-rou-ound. I think we’re alone now. The beatin’ of our hearts is the only sou-ound!” He guffawed and threw his hand in the air. I slapped him high five, and I heard the metal bar click open.
“Have a good lunch, Andy!” he called, still grinning.
“You, too, Eduardo, you, too.”
The elevator ride was blissfully uneventful, and it wasn’t until I was standing directly outside the doors of our office suite that I decided I couldn’t quit. Aside from the obvious—that is, it’d be too terrifying to do it unprepared, she’d probably just look at me and say, “No, I won’t allow you to quit” and then what would I say?—I had to remember that it was only a year of my life. A single year to bypass many more of misery. One year, 12 months, 52 weeks, 365 days, of putting up with this garbage to do what I really wanted. It wasn’t too great a demand, and besides, I was too tired to even think about looking for another job. Way too tired.
Emily looked up at me when I walked in. “She’ll be right back. She just got called up to Mr. Ravitz’s office. Seriously, Andrea, what took you so long? You know that she comes down on me when you’re late, and what can I tell her? That you’re smoking cigarettes instead of buying her coffee, or talking to your boyfriend instead of getting her lunch? It’s not fair—it’s really not.” She turned her attention back to her computer, a resigned expression on her face.
She was right, of course. It wasn’t fair. To me, to her, to any semicivilized human being. And I felt bad for making it more difficult for her, which I did every time I took a few extra minutes away from the office to relax and unwind. Because every second I was gone was another second that Miranda focused her relentless attention on Emily. I vowed to try harder.
“You’re totally right, Em, and I’m sorry. I’ll try harder.”
She looked genuinely surprised and a little bit pleased. “I’d really appreciate it, Andrea. I mean, I’ve done your job. I know how much it sucks. Trust me, there were days that I had to go out in the snow and the slush and the rain to get her coffee five, six, seven times in a single day. I was so tired I could barely move—I know what it’s like! Sometimes she’d call me to ask where something was—her latte, her lunch, some special, sensitive-teeth toothpaste I’d been sent to find—it was comforting to discover that at least her teeth had a bit of sensitivity—and I hadn’t even left the building yet. Hadn’t even gotten outside! That’s just her, Andy. That’s just how it is. You can’t fight it anymore, or you’ll never survive. She doesn’t mean any harm by it, she really doesn’t. That’s just the way she is.”
I nodded and I understood, but I just couldn’t accept that. I hadn’t worked anywhere else, but I just couldn’t believe that all bosses everywhere acted like this. But maybe they did?
I carried the lunch bag over to my desk and began the preparations for serving her. One by one, I used my bare hands to pluck the food from its heat-sealed to-go containers and arrange it (stylishly, I hoped) on one of the china plates from the overhead bin. Slowing only to wipe my now greasy hands on a pair of her dirty Versace pants I hadn’t yet sent to the cleaners, I placed the plate on the teak and tile serving tray that resided under my desk. Next to it went the gravy boat full of butter, the salt, and the silverware wrapped in a linen-pleated skirt-no-longer. A quick survey of my artistry revealed a missing Pellegrino. Better hurry—she’d be back any minute! I dashed to one of the minikitchens and palmed a fistful of ice cubes, blowing on them to keep them from freezer-burning my hands. Blowing was only one itsy, bitsy, teensy step from licking them—do I do it? No! Be above it, rise above it. Do not spit in her food or gum her ice cubes. You’re a bigger person than that!
Her office was still empty by the time I made it back, and the only thing left to do was pour the bottled water and place the whole orchestrated tray on her desk. She’d come back and perch at her mammoth desk and call out for someone to close her doors. And this would be one time I’d jump up happily, enthusiastically, because it meant not only that she’d sit quietly behind those closed doors for a good half hour, on the phone with B-DAD, but also that it was time for us to eat as well. One of us could race down to the dining room and grab the
very first thing she saw and race back so the other could go. We would try to hide our food under our desks and behind our computer screens just in case she came out unexpectedly. If there was a single unspoken but still irrefutable rule, it was that members of the Runway staff do not eat in front of Miranda Priestly. Period.
My watch said it was quarter after two. My stomach said it was late evening. It had been seven hours since I’d shoved a chocolate scone down my throat on the walk back to the office from Starbucks, and I was so hungry I considered gnawing on her ribeye.
“Em, I might pass out, I’m so hungry. I think I’m going to run down and pick something up. Can I get you something?”
“Are you crazy? You haven’t served her lunch yet. She’ll be back any minute.”
“I’m serious. I really don’t feel well. I don’t think I can wait.” The sleep deprivation and the low blood sugar were combining to make me dizzy. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to carry the steak tray into her office even if she did come back sometime soon.
“Andrea, be rational! What if you run into her in the elevator or in reception? She’d know that you left the office. She’d freak! It’s not worth the risk. Hold on a sec—I’ll get you something.” She grabbed her change purse and headed out of the office. Not four seconds later, I saw Miranda making her way down the hall toward me. Any thoughts of dizziness or hunger or exhaustion disappeared the moment I spotted her tight, frowning face, and I flew out of my seat to put the tray on her desk before she reached it herself.