Neither of us so much as glanced at him. The clock said it was only four, but it felt like midnight.
“OK then, let me guess. Mama’s been calling off the hook because she lost an earring somewhere between the Ritz and Alain Ducasse and she wants you to find it, even though it’s in Paris and you’re in New York.”
I snorted. “You think that would put us in this condition? That’s our job. We do that every day. Give us something difficult.”
Even Emily laughed. “Seriously, James, not good enough. I could find an earring in under ten minutes in any city in the world,” she said, all of a sudden inspired to join in for reasons I didn’t understand. “It’d only be a challenge if she didn’t tell us what city she’d lost it in. But I bet even then we could do it.”
James was backing himself away from the office, a look of feigned horror on his face. “All right, then, ladies, you have a great day, you hear? At least she hasn’t fucked you both up for good. I mean, seriously, thank god for that, right? You’re both tooootally sane. Yeah. Um, have a great day . . .”
“NOT SO FAST THERE, YOU PANSY!” shrieked someone very loud and very high-pitched. “I WANT YOU TO MARCH YOUR WAY BACK IN THERE AND TELL THE GIRLS WHAT YOU WERE THINKING WHEN YOU PUT THAT SHMATA ON THIS MORNING!” Nigel grabbed James by the left ear and dragged him into the area between our desks.
“Oh, come on, Nigel,” James whined, pretending to be annoyed but obviously delighted that Nigel was touching him. “You know you love this top!”
“LOVE THAT TOP? YOU THINK I LOVE THAT FRATTY, GAY-JOCK LOOK YOU’VE GOT GOING? JAMES, YOU NEED TO RETHINK HERE, OK? OK?”
“What’s wrong with a tight football jersey? I think it looks hot.” Emily and I nodded in quiet alliance with James. It may not have been exactly tasteful, but he did look incredibly hip. And besides, it was kind of tough to be taking fashion advice from a man who was, at that precise moment, wearing zebra-print boot-cut jeans and a black V-neck sweater with a keyhole cut out in the back to reveal rippling back muscles. The whole ensemble was topped off with a floppy straw hat and a touch (subtle, I’ll give him that!) of kohl eyeliner.
“BABY BOY, FASHION IS NOT FOR ADVERTISING YOUR FAVE SEX ACTS ON YOUR SHIRT. UNH-UNH, NO IT’S NOT! YOU WANNA SHOW A LITTLE SKIN? THAT’S HOT! YOU WANNA SHOW SOME OF THOSE TIGHT, YOUNG CURVES OF YOURS? THAT’S HOT. CLOTHING IS NOT FOR TELLING THE WORLD WHAT POSITION YOU PREFER, BOYFRIEND. NOW DO YOU UNDERSTAND?”
“But, Nigel!” A look of defeat was carefully constructed to disguise how pleased he was to be the center of Nigel’s attention.
“DON’T ‘NIGEL’ ME, HONEY. GO TALK TO JEFFY AND TELL HIM I SENT YOU. TELL HIM TO GIVE YOU THE NEW CALVIN TANK WE CALLED IN FOR THE MIAMI SHOOT. IT’S THE ONE THAT GORGEOUS BLACK MODEL—OH MY, HE’S AS TASTY AS A THICK, CHOCOLATE MILKSHAKE—IS ASSIGNED TO WEAR. GO ON NOW, SHOO. BUT BE SURE TO COME BACK HERE AND SHOW ME WHAT YOU LOOK LIKE!”
James scampered off like a recently fed bunny rabbit, and Nigel turned to look at us. “HAVE YOU PUT IN HER CLOTHING ORDER YET?” he asked no one in particular.
“No, she won’t choose until she has the look-books,” Emily answered, looking bored. “She said she’ll do it when she gets back.”
“WELL, JUST BE SURE TO LET ME KNOW AHEAD OF TIME SO I CAN CLEAR MY SCHEDULE FOR THAT PARTY!” He took off in the direction of the Closet, probably to try to catch a glimpse of James changing.
I’d already lived through one round of Miranda wardrobe ordering, and it hadn’t been pretty. When at the shows, she went from runway to runway, sketchbook in hand, preparing herself to come back to the States and tell New York society what they would be wearing—and middle America what they’d like to be wearing—via the only runway that actually mattered. Little did I know that Miranda was also paying particular attention to the outfits cruising down the runways because it was her first glance at what she herself would be wearing in the upcoming months.
A couple weeks after returning to the office, Miranda had handed Emily a list of designers whose look-books she’d like to see. As the usual suspects rushed to get their books put together for her—their runway photographs often weren’t even developed, never mind airbrushed and bound, before she demanded to see them—everyone at Runway was put on alert that the books would be arriving. Nigel would need to be ready, of course, to help her flip through them all and select her personal outfits. An accessories editor should be on hand to choose bags and shoes, and perhaps an extra fashion editor to ensure that everyone was in agreement—especially if the order included something big, like a fur coat or an evening gown. When the various houses had finally pieced together the different items she’d requested, Miranda’s personal tailor would come to Runway for a few days to fit everything. Jeffy would completely empty out the Closet, and no one would really be able to get any work done at all, since Miranda and her tailor would be holed up in there for hours on end. On the first go-round of fittings, I’d walked by the Closet just in time to hear Nigel shouting, “MIRANDA PRIESTLY! TAKE THAT RAG OFF THIS SECOND. THAT DRESS MAKES YOU LOOK LIKE A SLUT! A COMMON WHORE!” I’d stood outside with my ear pressed to the door—literally risking life and limb if it were to swing open—and waited for her to upbraid him in that special way of hers, but all I heard was a quiet murmur of agreement and the rustling of the fabric as she removed the dress.
Now that I had been there long enough, it seemed as though the honor of ordering Miranda’s clothes would fall to me. Four times a year, like clockwork, she flipped through look-books like they were her own personal catalogs and selected Alexander McQueen suits and Balenciaga pants like they were T-shirts from L.L.Bean. A yellow sticky on this pair of Fendi pencil pants, another placed squarely over the Chanel skirt suit, a third with a big “NO” plastered across the matching silk top. Flip, stick, flip, stick, on and on it went, until she had selected a full season’s wardrobe directly from the runway, clothes that had most likely not yet even been made.
I’d watched as Emily had faxed Miranda’s choices to the different designers, omitting any size or color preference, since anyone worth their Manolos knew what would work for Miranda Priestly. Of course, merely being made to the correct size wasn’t enough—when the clothes did arrive at the magazine, they’d need to be cut and tucked to make them appear custom-made. Only when the entire wardrobe was completely ordered, shipped, snipped, and delivered expressly to her bedroom closet by chauffeured limousine would Miranda relinquish last season’s clothes and heaps of Yves and Celine and Helmut Lang would find their way—in garbage bags—back to the office. Most were only four or six months old, stuff that had been worn once or twice or, most often, not at all. Everything was still so incredibly stylish, so ludicrously hip, that it wasn’t yet available in most stores, but once it was last season, it was about as likely to show up on Miranda as a pair of pleather pants from Target’s new Massimo line.
Occasionally I’d find a tank top or an oversize jacket I could keep, but the fact that everything was in a size zero was a bit of a problem. Mostly we distributed the clothes to anyone with preteen daughters, the only ones who had a shot in hell of actually fitting into the stuff. I pictured little girls with bodies like little boys strutting around in Prada lipstick skirts and slinky Dolce and Gabbana dresses with spaghetti straps. If there was something really dynamite, really expensive, I’d pull it from the garbage bag and stash it under my desk until I could smuggle it home safely. A few quick clicks on eBay or perhaps a little visit to one of the upscale consignment shops on Madison Avenue, and my salary all of a sudden wasn’t so depressing. Not stealing, I rationalized, simply utilizing what was available to me.
Miranda called six more times between the hours of six and nine in the evening—midnight to three A.M. her time—to have us connect her to various people who were already in Paris. I fielded them listlessly, uneventfully, until I went to gather my things and try to sneak out for the night before the phone rang again. It wasn’t until I was climbing exhaustedly into my coat that I ca
ught a glimpse of the note that I’d stuck to my monitor just so this very thing wouldn’t happen: CALL A, 3:30P.M. TODAY. My head felt like it was swimming, my contacts had long before dried to tiny, hard shards covering my eyes, and at this point my head started to throb. No sharp pains, just that nebulous, dull kind of ache where you can’t pinpoint the center but you know it will build and build in a slow, burning intensity until you either manage to pass out or your head just explodes. In the frenzy of all the calls that had produced such anxiety, such panic, from across an ocean, I had forgotten to take the thirty seconds out of my day and call Alex when he’d asked me to. Simply up and forgotten to do something so simple for someone who never seemed to need anything from me.
I sat down in the now darkened and silent office and picked up the phone that was still a little wet from my sweaty hands during Miranda’s last call a few minutes earlier. His home line rang and rang until the machine picked up, but he answered on the first ring when I tried his cell phone.
“Hi,” he said, knowing it was me from the caller ID. “How was your day?”
“Whatever, usual. Alex, I’m so sorry I didn’t call you at three-thirty. I can’t even get into it—it’s just that things were so crazy here, she just kept calling and—”
“Hey, forget it. Not a big deal. Listen, now’s not really a great time for me. Can I call you tomorrow?” He sounded distracted, his voice taking on that faraway quality of someone talking from an international payphone on the beach of a tiny village across the world.
“Um, sure. But is everything OK? Will you just quickly tell me what you wanted to talk about before? I’ve been really worried that everything’s not OK.”
He was quiet for a moment and then said, “Yeah, well it doesn’t seem like you were all that worried. I ask you one time to call me at a time that’s convenient for me—not to mention that your boss isn’t even in the country right now—and you can’t manage to do that until six hours after the fact. Not really a sign of someone who’s genuinely concerned, you know?” He stated all of this with no sarcasm, no disapproval, just a simple summary of the facts.
I was twisting the phone cord around my finger until it cut off the circulation entirely, making the knuckle bulge out and the tip turn white; there was also a brief, metallic taste of blood in my mouth, the first realization that I had been gnawing on the inside of my bottom lip.
“Alex, it’s not that I forgot to call,” I lied openly, trying to extricate myself from his nonaccusatory accusation. “I simply didn’t have a single second free, and since it sounded like something serious, I didn’t want to call just to have to hang up again. I mean, she must have called me two dozen times just this afternoon, and each one is an absolute emergency. Emily took off at five and left me all alone with that phone, and Miranda just didn’t stop. She just kept calling and calling and calling, and every time I went to call you, it’d be her again on the other line. I, uh, you know?”
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.
13
“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 th
e 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 coordinate 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.