To my astonishment, it happened. I moved into the spare room in Grandma Marilyn’s apartment and a meeting was set, but on the day before my appointment, I had an unpleasant epiphany: I have absolutely nothing to say to Graydon Carter. I was suddenly afraid of that muted train wreck that occurs in an interview when you’re asked, “Do you have any questions?,” and your brain goes blank. Questions, I reasoned. I needed some questions, so I prepared an exhaustive list.
That evening I received an email from Mr. Carter’s assistant:
Dear Ms. Williams,
Regretfully, Graydon’s calendar has just been overrun with unavoidable appointments at the magazine—tomorrow and through the rest of this week. So he has asked if you might please meet with Vanity Fair’s managing editor, Ms. Chris Garrett, tomorrow in his stead. Ms. Garrett’s assistant, Mark Guiducci, is copied on this email. And he is looking forward to welcoming you here at the magazine tomorrow, before your 4:00pm meeting. If anything opens up in Graydon’s calendar at or around that time, I will of course reach out to you so that you might have a brief meeting with Graydon.
. . . I hope that you understand. Please let me know if you have any questions.
Many thanks,
David
The next day, as promised, Mark stood waiting on the twenty-second floor. He was exactly as I imagined a Vanity Fair assistant would be, polished and charismatic. From the lobby, I followed him through a set of glass doors into a carpeted hallway. Vintage magazine photos floated in frames along the walls.
“Chris, Rachel’s here to see you,” Mark said, leaning into an office. An elegant, birdlike woman stood to greet me.
“So, tell me why you’re here,” she began as we sat down. Her request came wrapped in a beautiful cadence, the intonation of a 1950s English movie star. I let slip a small laugh before noting her sincerity, and then I broke into an earnest explanation: because Vanity Fair, above all other magazines, perfectly synthesized my passions for writing and photography, and because my mother always said to “acquire taste not things,” which is what I aspired to do. Her face softened as she listened, before breaking into a faint smile.
“I’d love for you to consider an internship with the magazine,” I heard her say. At this, my heart sank.
“Thank you, but I’ve already done so many internships,” I told her. “I’m really looking for a job.”
“People don’t tend to leave Vanity Fair,” she explained; there were no job openings at the time.
Over the next two weeks, I sent Ms. Garrett a handwritten thank-you note and followed up with human resources. I had nearly given up hope when, one afternoon, two emails arrived in my in-box. The first was from Kathryn MacLeod, the same Ms. MacLeod that I’d picked off the masthead and emailed the previous year. The second was from Chris Garrett. A position had suddenly opened to be Kathryn’s assistant. Unaware that I had ever contacted Kathryn before, Chris Garrett thought of me for the job and sent Kathryn my résumé. Kathryn received the recommendation and remembered our correspondence. The next day, I went in for an interview. I received a job offer that same afternoon.
* * *
“Williams! I’m glad to see you back, my dear. Does this mean you got the job?” Adam asked from behind the security desk. We’d met when he checked me in for my interview. I nodded and smiled. “Congratulations,” he said, offering a high five and then a temporary ID, to use until my official badge was ready.
The elevator opened on the twenty-second floor to a long foyer, blocked on each end by sets of closed glass doors. The voice in my head made a suggestion: “Act like you’ve been here before.” It was a line my soccer coach used to say when my team scored a goal or won a game. I was overflowing with excitement, but it was better to stay calm, to take note of how I got there, and to focus on what would come next.
Over the following months, I learned more than I could have imagined, much of it the hard way. Indeed, I strongly believe now that you should approach your first real job with some very specific guidelines, especially if you’re a recent liberal arts graduate. I propose the following:
1. Don’t be defensive.
2. Expect minimal feedback if you’re doing okay or better. No news is good news.
3. Check your ego at the door.
4. Don’t assume. Check. And check again.
5. Long-windedness has no place in email correspondence; get to the point.
6. Understand why you’re doing something.
7. Think ahead.
8. Hell hath no fury like a boss who receives an email containing bad news that ends with a frowning-face emoticon.
9. In fact, scratch emoticons from all professional correspondence.
10. For birthdays, holidays, or special occasions, just a card will do.
* * *
I moved out of my grandmother’s spare bedroom after a year and moved with a friend into a tiny, overpriced two-bedroom rental on Christopher Street in the West Village.
My bed was positioned in the corner of my room, beneath the room’s window, the lower half of which bit down on an AC unit. There was a strange period of time where mysterious spider bites appeared on my arms and upper legs, one at a time. Red circles started as sore spots and grew into swollen mounds. I went to walk-in clinics, took courses of antibiotics, and cleaned my bedding, my clothing, and the room, but to no avail. I lasted a full year with the spider bites before cracking, and decided at long last that I needed a fresh start. I moved into a nearby studio apartment, where I paid less rent, had more space, and lived alone.
So, there I was: I had a great job, I was living on my own, and I had a new boyfriend named Nick and a feral cat called Boo, whom I’d scooped up from the streets of the West Village as a scared three-month-old kitten hiding under a car. My New York dreams had finally come true, and for four more years they hummed along.
In that time, I got promoted from assistant to associate and, finally, to photography editor. Kathryn was no longer my direct boss (by then, several assistants had come and gone in my wake), but she still sat right next to me and we were very much a team. My days were filled with all the details necessary for organizing Vanity Fair’s elaborate photo shoots—everything from securing locations and ordering catering for the top photographers and movie stars to cleaning up garbage on set and dealing with logistics. The work was challenging and rarely glamorous, but it was extraordinary just to be there, to have a minor role in the big leagues, contributing to the creation of iconic images featuring the most notable cultural influencers of our time. I traveled from the office to photo-shoot destinations around New York City, as well as in Los Angeles, Paris, Belfast, and Havana. Schedules would often not be confirmed until the very last minute, so I learned to be nimble. I was motivated, happy, busy, and fulfilled.
And that’s when I met Anna.
Chapter 3
Foundation Work
* * *
I was six years into my job at Vanity Fair when she appeared. From the get-go, there was something about her that demanded attention, an enigmatic otherness that was captivating. I met her one night when I was out with friends. It’s funny in hindsight to consider the impact of such an otherwise unremarkable evening. Although Anna struck me as a bit odd, meeting her would have been forgettable had it not set into motion a chain of events that would alter both of our lives forever.
It was a Wednesday in February 2016, a few weeks after my twenty-eighth birthday. I had just recovered from a nasty cold, which had kept me cooped up for several days watching The Great British Bake Off, a television series I had recently discovered and had become obsessed with. Vanity Fair’s annual Hollywood issue was on newsstands, its cover featuring thirteen women, including Jennifer Lawrence, Cate Blanchett, Jane Fonda, and Viola Davis.
As usual, I went to work at Vanity Fair’s headquarters, now located on the forty-first floor of One World Trade Center, the tallest building in the United States, into which Condé Nast had moved two years prior. I spent the mornin
g catching up on my expenses: tracking down receipts for charges that had been made on my credit card before and during photo shoots. I taped down each receipt, carefully entered its details into an online portal, and then typed in the assignment code that tied each charge to its corresponding project. I finished the report after lunch, scanned in the receipts, and clicked Submit. Within a few weeks, Condé Nast would approve the line items and disburse payment directly to American Express. The rest of the workday was slower, mostly emails back and forth pertaining to upcoming shoot dates. By 5:30 p.m., I was antsy from a day of paperwork and in the mood to socialize. I sent an email to my colleague Cate, to ask if perhaps she wanted to have dinner together. She had plans already but suggested we grab a quick glass of wine. We went to P. J. Clarke’s in Brookfield Place, close to our office. She had to leave after forty-five minutes, but I settled in to order food.
Maybe it was that glass of wine or the slowness of the workweek. Maybe I was on a high after my sickness or especially liked the outfit I had on. Whatever the reason, on that particular evening I was full of energy and eager for some fun. As Cate left, I scrolled through my phone to plan my next move.
I sent a text to my friend Ashley, an upbeat blonde with good lipstick sense and a kind heart, whom I’d known since the first summer after I moved to the city. Back then, she was working at Interview magazine with one of my best friends from college. Ashley had since found her way through the fashion editorial scene to become a freelance writer. She would travel to parties, events, and fashion shows and then write about them for publications such as Vogue, AnOther Magazine, W, and V. She was always fun to be around, and it was Fashion Week, so there was a chance she would already be out and game for an adventure.
Hi!! I just finished my last show! she quickly replied. Want to grab a drink maybe?
That was exactly what I wanted. We made a plan: I would finish my dinner, she would wrap up some of her Fashion Week coverage, and then, at eight p.m., we would meet at Black Market, a cocktail bar in Alphabet City.
She arrived on schedule and got us a table. Because of a pit stop in my apartment (to drop off my workbag and change into boots with more of a heel), I walked in fifteen minutes late, full of apologies. The two of us were cheerful as we caught up over cocktails. In a few days’ time, Ashley would travel to London Fashion Week and then to Havana before another week of fashion shows in Paris.
Once our drinks were finished and we had caught up on each other’s news, we decided to join forces with some of Ashley’s fashion friends who were also out that night. We walked twenty minutes to meet them at a place called Happy Ending, a trendy spot on the Lower East Side with a restaurant on the ground floor and a popular nightclub past the bouncer one flight down.
We found our group finishing dinner, tucked into a booth in the back. Mariella was there, an Australian with short brown hair and a natural sassiness that was endearingly exaggerated by her accent. I’d met her recently through Ashley. She worked in PR for luxury brands. There were a couple of other girls there, too, whom I didn’t know that well: a fashion associate from a Hearst magazine and a publicist who worked in-house for a fashion label.
Tagging along with this crowd made me feel like I was on the inside of something special. Their knowledge of fashion and a certain slice of who’s-who trivia exceeded my own, but I knew the language and got the jokes. They were friends with publicists, models, musicians, and designers. Wherever we went, they knew the guy at the door—the one who decides if you’re tall enough, rich enough, or attractive enough to enter; who might, if he’s in the right mood and you know the right person, say the right thing, or wear the right shoes, let you pass. Select patrons only—it’s a funny idea. Why is exclusivity appealing? We all want to be included. We crave validation, from friends and from strangers. If you’d said that to me then, I’d have been defensive. I might have said, “Oh, sure, the door is silly, but inside you’ll have more fun than you would in some other random bar,” and I’d have been right. On this night in particular, I wish the door policy had been even more discerning.
Tommy came by the table as the dinner plates were cleared. “Tommy” was a name I’d heard mentioned many times. In his early to mid-forties, from Germany by way of Paris, he worked with businesses on the creative direction of their branding, marketing, and events. I knew him as someone who threw exclusive parties for Fashion Week types—in an assortment of popular venues (from hot-spot hotels like the Surf Lodge, in Montauk, to buzzy nightclubs like the once fun, now defunct Le Baron in Chinatown). If you were looking for him in a crowd, you could ask any stranger. “Oh, Tommy? He was just here a minute ago” would be a likely response. He always—and I mean always—wore a hat.
It was thanks to him that we had a reservation in the more exclusive lounge downstairs. We walked in as the space was kicking into gear, not empty but not crowded. Young men and women made laps through machine-pumped fog, scouting for action and a place to settle in, as they sipped their vodka soda through black plastic straws. We made our way to the right and back, where the fog and people were denser and the music was louder. We spilled onto the banquette and small stools flanking a low, round, red-topped table.
I can’t remember what arrived first: the expected bucket of ice with a bottle of Grey Goose and stack of glasses or “Anna Delvey.” She was a stranger, and yet not entirely unknown to me. I’d noticed her for the first time one month earlier, tagged in Instagram photos with Ashley and other girls whom I had recognized. Curious about the unfamiliar face, I’d clicked the tag over her image and discovered that @annadelvey (since changed to @theannadelvey) had more than 40,000 followers. After scrolling through her posts—pictures of travel, art, and a few doe-eyed selfies—I assumed that she was a socialite. She smiled and made herself at home in our company, a relaxed, new member of the crew. I was looking forward to meeting her.
Anna, in a clingy black dress and flat black Gucci t-strap sandals with gold bamboo-inspired accents around the ankle, slid into the banquette on the other side of Mariella, who was sitting to my left. She methodically smoothed her long auburn hair, arranging it over her shoulders, as Mariella introduced us. Anna had a cherubic face with oversize blue eyes and pouty lips. She greeted me in an ambiguously accented voice that was unexpectedly high-pitched.
Pleasantries led to a discussion of how Anna first came into our group of friends. She had interned for Purple magazine in Paris and become friends with Tommy back when he was living there, too. It was the quintessential nice-to-meet-you-in-New-York conversation: hellos, exchange of niceties, how do you know X, what do you do for work?
“I work at Vanity Fair,” I told her. The usual dialogue ensued: “In the photo department,” “Yes, I love it,” “I’ve been there for six years.” Anna was attentive, engaged, and generous, ordering another bottle of Grey Goose and picking up the tab. I could tell that she liked me, and I was happy to have found a new friend.
Not long after that evening, I was invited by Mariella to join her and Anna for an evening at Harry’s, a downtown steak house not far from my office. It was the first time Mariella had reached out to me directly, and I was pleased. Until then, we’d only seen each other when I was out with Ashley, whom I knew best out of the group.
The vibe at Harry’s was masculine and upscale, with leather seating and wood-paneled walls. Anna was there when I arrived, and Mariella came a few minutes later, impeccably dressed, having rushed from a work event. We were shown to our table and we settled in, removing our jackets and setting our bags to the side. These girls are pretty cool, I thought to myself, slightly nervous and aching for a cocktail. Anna was testing out an app for a friend, she told us. She had used it to make our dinner reservation and would also use it to pay. I wasn’t hungry—we’d had pizza that afternoon in the office—but Anna ordered appetizers, entrées, several side dishes, and a round of espresso martinis for the table.
Conversation rolled along just fine, as did the cocktails. The evening had a di
stinct New York glamour to it—martinis in a steak house, chatting about our workday.
Mariella went first, filling us in on the successful PR event she’d finished just before dinner. Then I told her and Anna about my day, which was unexceptional by comparison. Last up, our focus turned to Anna. She had spent the day in meetings with lawyers, she said.
“For what?” I asked.
Anna’s face lit up. She was hard at work on her foundation—a visual-arts center dedicated to contemporary art, she explained, referring vaguely to a family trust. She planned to lease the historic Church Missions House, a building at Park Avenue South and Twenty-Second Street, to house a lounge, bar, art galleries, studio space, restaurants, and a members-only club. She was meeting every day with lawyers and bankers in an effort to finalize the lease.
I was impressed. Anna and Mariella embodied a level of professional empowerment that I respected and wanted to emulate. Anna’s ambitions, in particular, were remarkable—her plans were grand in scale and promising in theory—but what was just as fascinating, if not more so, was her hypnotizing manner. She was endearingly kooky, not polished or prim. Her hair was wispy, her face was naked, and she was constantly fidgeting with her hands. She was a zillion miles away from the cotillion-trained debutantes I’d known in my youth, and I liked her more because of it.
The evening went on, more food arrived, and finally it came time for the bill. Anna offered her phone to the waiter, who obligingly studied its screen.
“I don’t think it’s working,” he said.
“Are you sure?” Anna asked. “Can you try it again?”
The waiter took the phone to a computer across the room and typed in the numbers manually before coming back to us a minute later.
“I’m sorry, there’s still an error,” he said, returning Anna’s cell phone. Mariella and I assuaged Anna’s obvious frustration with the offer of our credit cards. It had been a nice evening with new friends, and even though I hadn’t eaten more than a few oysters, I was happy to take on a third of the check, less for the food and more for the pleasure of the company. I thought nothing more of it.
My Friend Anna Page 4