The last letter of the massive pile before I’d begin tackling the two dozen invitations Miranda received each day was addressed in the loopy, girly writing of a teenager, complete with i’s dotted with hearts and smiley faces next to happy thoughts. I planned to only skim it, but it wouldn’t allow itself to be skimmed: it was too immediately sad and honest—it was bleeding and pleading and begging all over the page. The initial four-second period came and went and I was still reading.
Dear Miranda,
My name is Anita and I am seventeen years old and I am a senior at Barringer H.S. in Newark, NJ. I am so ashamed of my body even though everyone tells me I’m not fat. I want to look like the models you have in your magazine. Every month I wait for Runway to come in the mail even though my mama says it’s stupid to pay all my allowance for a fashion magazine. But she doesn’t understand that I have a dream, but you do, dontcha? It has been my dream since I was a little girl, but I don’t think it’s gonna happen. Why, you ask? My boobs are very flat and my behind is bigger than the ones your models have and this makes me very embarased. I ask myself if this is the way I wanna live my life and I answer NO!!! because I wanna change and I wanna look and feel better and so I’m asking for your help. I wanna make a positive change and look in the mirror and love my breasts and my behind because they look just like the ones in the best magazine on earth!!!
Miranda, I know you’re a wonderful person and fashion editor and you could transform me into a new person, and trust me, I would be forever grateful. But if you can’t make me a new person, maybe you can get me a really, really, really nice dress for special occasions? I don’t ever have dates, but my mama says it’s OK for girls to go out alone so I will. I have one old dress but its not a designer dress or anything you would show in Runway. My favorite designers are Prada (#1), Versace (#2), John Paul Gotier (#3). I have many faves, but those are my first three I love. I do not own any of their clothes and I haven’t even seen them in a store (I’m not sure if anywhere in Newark sells these designers, but if you know of one, please tell me so I can go look at them and see what they look like up close), but I’ve seen there clothes in Runway and I have to say that I really, really love them.
I’m gonna stop bothering you now, but I want you to know that even if you throw this letter in the garbage, I will still be a big fan of your magazine because I love the models and the clothes and everything, and of course I love you too.
Sincerely,
Anita Alvarez
P.S. My phone number is 973-555-3948. You can write or call but please do so before the week of July 4 because I really need a nice dress before then. I LOVE YOU!! Thank you!!!!!
The letter smelled like Jean Naté, that acrid-smelling toilet water– spray preferred by preteen girls the country over. But that wasn’t what was causing the tightness in my chest, the constriction in my throat. How many Anitas were there out there? Young girls with so little else in their lives that they measured their worth, their confidence, their entire existence around the clothes and the models they saw in Runway? How many more had decided to unconditionally love the woman who put it all together each month—the orchestrator of such a seductive fantasy—even though she wasn’t worth one single second of their adoration? How many girls had no idea that the object of their worship was a lonely, deeply unhappy, and oftentimes cruel woman who didn’t deserve the briefest moment of their innocent affection and attention?
I wanted to cry, for Anita and all her friends who expended so much energy trying to mold themselves into Shalom or Stella or Carmen, trying to impress and please and flatter the woman who would only take their letters and roll her eyes or shrug her shoulders or toss them without a second thought to the girl who’d written down a piece of herself. Instead, I tucked the letter into my top desk drawer and vowed to find a way to help Anita. She sounded even more desperate than the others who wrote, and there was no reason that with all the excess stuff around I couldn’t find her a decent dress for a date she would hopefully have soon.
“Hey, Em, I’m just going to run down to the newsstand and see if they have Women’s Wear yet. I can’t believe it’s so late today. Do you want anything?”
“Will you bring me a Diet Coke?” she asked.
“Sure. Just a minute,” I said, and weaved quickly through the racks and past the doorway to the service elevator, where I could hear Jessica and James sharing a cigarette and wondering who would be at Miranda’s Met party that night. Ahmed was finally able to produce a copy of Women’s Wear Daily, which was a relief, and I grabbed a Diet Coke for Emily and a can of Pepsi for me, but on second thought, I took a Diet for myself as well. The difference in taste and enjoyment wasn’t worth the disapproving looks and/or comments I was sure to receive during the walk from reception to my desk.
I was so busy examining the front page’s color photo of Tommy Hilfiger, I didn’t even notice that one of the elevators had opened and was available. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a quick glimpse of green, a very distinct green. Particularly noteworthy because Miranda had a Chanel suit in just that shade of greeny tweed, a color I’d never really seen before but liked a whole lot. And although my mind knew better, it couldn’t stop my eyes from looking up and into the elevator, where they were sort of not really surprised to find Miranda peering back. She stood ramrod straight, her hair pulled severely off her face as usual, her eyes staring intently at what must have been my shocked face. There was absolutely no alternative but to step inside the elevator with her.
“Um, good morning, Miranda,” I said, but it came out sounding like a whisper. The doors closed behind us: we would be the only two riding for the entire seventeen floors. She said nothing to me, but she pulled out her leather organizer and began flipping through the pages. We stood side by side, the depth of the silence increasing tenfold with every second that she didn’t respond. Does she even recognize me? I wondered. Was it possible that she was entirely unaware that I had been her assistant for the past seven months—or perhaps I really had whispered so softly that she hadn’t heard? I wondered why she didn’t immediately ask me about the restaurant review or whether I’d received her message about ordering new china, or if everything was in place for the evening’s party. But she acted as though she were all alone in that elevator, that there was not another human being—or, to be precise, not one worth acknowledging—inside that small vestibule with her.
It wasn’t until nearly a full minute later that I noticed we weren’t progressing through the floors. Ohmigod! She had seen me because she’d assumed that I would press the button, but I’d been too stunned to move. I reached forward slowly, fearfully, pressed the number seventeen, and instinctively waited for something to explode. But we immediately whisked upward, and I wasn’t even sure if she had noticed we hadn’t been moving all along.
Five, six, seven . . . it felt as though it took ten minutes for the elevator to pass each floor, and the silence had begun humming in my ears. When I worked up enough nerve to steal a glance in Miranda’s direction, I discovered that she was looking me up and down. Her eyes moved unabashedly as they checked out first my shoes and then my pants and then my shirt, and continued upward to my face and hair, all the while avoiding my eyes. The expression on her face was one of passive disgust, the way the desensitized Law & Order detectives appear when they’re faced with yet another beaten and bloodied corpse. I did a quick review of myself and wondered what exactly had triggered the reaction. Short-sleeve, military-style shirt, a brand-new pair of Seven jeans I’d been sent free from their PR department simply for working at Runway, and a pair of relatively flat (two-inch heels) black slingbacks that were to date the only nonboots/nonsneakers/nonloafers that allowed me to make four-plus trips to Starbucks a day without shredding my feet to bits. I usually tried to wear the Jimmy Choos that Jeffy had given me, but I needed a day off every week or so to allow the arches in my feet to stop aching. My hair was clean and assembled in the kind of deliberately messy topknot that Emily always
wore without comment, and my nails—though unpainted—were long and reasonably well shaped. I had shaved under my arms within the last forty-eight hours. At least as far as the last time I’d checked, there were no massive facial eruptions. My Fossil watch was turned around so the face was sitting on the inside of my wrist just in case anyone tried to catch a glimpse of the brand, and a quick check with my right hand indicated that no bra straps were visible. So what was it? What exactly had made her look at me that way?
Twelve, thirteen, fourteen . . . the elevator stopped and swept open to yet another stark white reception area. A woman of around thirty-five stepped forward to board, but stopped two feet from the door when she saw Miranda standing inside.
“Oh, I, uh . . .” she stammered loudly, looking frantically around her for an excuse not to enter our private hell. And although it would’ve been nicer for me to have her come aboard, I privately rooted for her to escape. “I, um, oh! I forgot the photos I need for the meeting,” she finally managed, whipping around on a particularly unsteady Manolo and high-tailing it back toward the office area. Miranda hadn’t appeared to notice, and once again, the doors swept shut.
Fifteen, sixteen, and finally—finally!—seventeen, where the doors opened to reveal a group of Runway fashion assistants on their way to pick up the cigarettes, Diet Coke, and mixed greens that would constitute their lunch. Each young, beautiful face looked more panicked than the next, and they almost trampled one another trying to move out of Miranda’s way. They parted directly down the middle, three to one side and two to the other, and she deigned to walk past them. They were all staring after her, silent, as she made her way across the reception area, and I was left with no choice but to follow her. Wouldn’t notice a thing, I figured. We’d just spent what felt like an entire insufferable week locked together in a five-by-three-foot box, and she hadn’t so much as acknowledged my presence. But as soon as I stepped onto the floor, she turned around.
“Ahn-dre-ah?” she asked, her voice cutting through the tense silence that filled the entire room. I didn’t respond since I figured it was rhetorical, but she waited.
“Ahn-dre-ah?”
“Yes, Miranda?”
“Whose shoes are you wearing?” She placed one hand lightly on a tweed-swathed hip and peered over at me. By now the elevator had left without the fashion assistants, since they were too engrossed in actually getting to see—and hear!—Miranda Priestly in the flesh. I could feel six pairs of eyes on my feet, which, although they had been quite comfortable mere moments before, were now beginning to burn and itch under the intense scrutiny of five fashion assistants and one fashion guru.
The anxiety from the unexpected shared elevator ride (a first) and the unwavering stares of all these people addled my brain, so when Miranda asked whose shoes I was wearing, I thought that perhaps she thought I was not wearing my own.
“Um, mine?” I said, without realizing until the words had been spoken that it sounded not only disrespectful, but downright obnoxious. The gaggle of Clackers began to twitter, until Miranda turned her wrath on them.
“I’m wondering why the vahst majority of my fashion assistants appear as though they have nothing better to do than gossip like little girls.” She began singling them out by pointing at each one, since she wouldn’t have been able to produce a single one’s name if you put a gun to her head.
“You!” she said crisply to the coltish new girl who was probably seeing Miranda for the first time. “Did we hire you for this or did we hire you to call in clothes for the suits shoot?” The girl hung her head and opened her mouth to apologize, but Miranda barreled on.
“And you!” she said, walking over and standing directly in front of Jocelyn, the highest-ranking among them and a favorite of all the editors. “You think there aren’t a million girls who want your job and who understand couture just as well as you?” She took a step back, slowly moved her eyes up and down each of their bodies, lingering just long enough to make each feel fat, ugly, and inappropriately clad, and commanded them all to return to their desks. They nodded their heads furiously while keeping their heads bowed. A few murmured heartfelt apologies while they moved quickly back to the fashion area. It wasn’t until they’d all left that I realized we were alone. Again.
“Ahn-dre-ah? I won’t tolerate being spoken to that way by my assistant,” she declared, walking toward the door that would lead us to the hallway. I was unsure whether I should follow her or not, and I briefly hoped that either Eduardo or Sophy or one of the fashion girls had warned Emily that Miranda was on her way back.
“Miranda, I—”
“Enough.” She paused at the door and looked at me. “Whose shoes are you wearing?” she asked again in a none-too-pleased voice.
I checked out my black slingbacks again and wondered how to tell the most stylish woman in the western hemisphere that I was wearing a pair of shoes I’d purchased at Ann Taylor Loft. Another glance at her face and I knew I couldn’t.
“I bought them in Spain,” I said quickly, averting my eyes. “It was at some adorable boutique in Barcelona right off Las Ramblas that carried this new Spanish designer’s line.” Where the hell had I pulled that one from?
She folded her hand into a fist, put it over her mouth, and cocked her head. I saw James approaching the glass door from the other side, but as soon as he saw Miranda he turned and fled. “Ahn-dre-ah, they’re unacceptable. My girls need to represent Runway magazine, and those shoes are not the message I’m looking to convey. Find some decent footwear in the Closet. And get me a coffee.” She looked at me and looked at the door, and I understood I was to reach forward and open it for her, which I did. She walked through without saying thank you and headed back to the office. I needed to get money and my cigarettes for the coffee run, but neither was worth having to walk behind her like an abused but loyal duckling, and so I turned to walk back toward the elevator. Eduardo could spot me the five bucks for the latte, and Ahmed would just charge a new pack to Runway’s house account, as he’d been doing for months now. I hadn’t counted on her even noticing, but her voice hit the back of my head like a shovel.
“Ahn-dre-ah!”
“Yes, Miranda?” I stopped in my tracks and turned to face her.
“I expect the restaurant review I asked you for is on my desk?”
“Um, well, actually, I’ve had a little trouble locating it. You see, I’ve spoken to all the papers and it seems none of them have run a review of an Asian fusion restaurant in the past few days. Do you, uh, happen to remember the name of the restaurant?” Without realizing it, I was holding my breath and bracing for the onslaught.
It appeared my explanation held little interest for her, because she had resumed walking toward her office. “Ahn-dre-ah, I already told you that it was in the Post—is it really that difficult to find?” And with that, she was gone. The Post? I’d spoken to their restaurant reviewer just that morning and he had sworn there were no reviews that fit my description—nothing noteworthy had opened that week whatsoever. She was cracking up, for sure, and I was the one who was going to get blamed.
The coffee run took only a few minutes since it was midday, so I felt free to tack on an extra ten minutes to call Alex, who would be having lunch at exactly twelve-thirty. Thankfully, he answered his cell phone, so I didn’t have to deal with any of the teachers again.
“Hey babe, how’s your day going?” He sounded cheerful to the point of excess, and I had to remind myself not to be irritated.
“Awesome so far, as always. I really do love it here. I’ve spent the past five hours researching an imaginary article that was dreamed up by a delusional woman who would probably rather take her own life than admit she’s wrong. What about you?”
“Well, I’ve had a great day. Remember I told you about Shauna?” I nodded into the phone even though he couldn’t see me. Shauna was one of his little girls who had yet to utter a single word in class, and whether he threatened her or bribed her or worked with her one on one, Alex
couldn’t get her to talk. He’d been near-hysterical the first time she’d shown up in his class, placed there by a social worker who’d discovered that even though she was nine years old she’d never been in the inside of a school, and he’d been obsessed with helping her ever since.
“Well, it seems she won’t shut up! All it took was a little singing. I had a folk singer come in today to play the guitar for the kids, and Shauna was singing away. And once she broke the ice, she’s been jabbering away with everyone since. She knows English. She has an age-appropriate vocabulary. She’s completely and totally normal!” His obvious elation made me smile, and all of a sudden I started to miss him. Miss him in the way that you do when you’ve seen someone frequently and regularly but haven’t really connected with him in any significant way. It had been great to surprise him the night before, but, as usual, I’d been too frazzled to be much company. We both inherently understood that we were just waiting out my sentence, waiting for me to complete my year of servitude, waiting until everything went back to the way it was. But I still missed him. And I still felt not a little guilty for the whole Christian situation.