I imagine I stood like that for no longer than ten or fifteen seconds, but the silence was so overwhelming, so all-consuming, that I wondered if I had, in fact, died already. No one uttered a word. No silver scraped plates, no glasses clinked, no one even whispered to a neighbor about who was standing in for Miranda Priestly. They just watched me, moment after moment, until I was left with no choice but to speak. I didn’t remember a word of the speech that I had written an hour earlier, so I was on my own.
‘Hello,’ I began and heard my voice reverberate in my ears. I couldn’t tell if it was the microphone or the sound of blood pounding inside my head, but it didn’t matter. The only thing I could hear for sure was that it was shaking – uncontrollably. ‘My name is Andrea Sachs and I’m Mir – uh, I’m on staff at Runway. Unfortunately, Miranda, um, Ms Priestly had to step out for a moment, but I would like to accept this award on her behalf. And, of course, on behalf of everyone at Runway. Thank you, um’ – I couldn’t remember the name of the council or the president here – ‘all so much for this, uh, this wonderful honor. I know I speak for everyone when I say that we are all so honored.’ Idiot! I was stuttering and um-ing and shaking, and I was even conscious enough at this point to notice that the crowd had begun to twitter. Without another word, I walked in as dignified a manner as I could manage from the podium and didn’t realize until I’d reached the back doors that I’d forgotten the plaque. A staffer followed me to the lobby, where I’d just collapsed in a fit of exhaustion and humiliation, and handed it to me. I waited until she left and asked one of the janitors to throw it out. He shrugged and tossed it in his bag.
That bitch! I thought, too angry and tired to conjure up any really creative names or methods of ending her life. My phone rang and, knowing it was her, I turned off the ringer and ordered a gin and tonic from one of the front desk people. ‘Please. Please just have someone send one out. Please.’ The woman took one look at me and nodded. I sucked the entire thing down in just two long gulps and headed back upstairs to see what she wanted. It was only two in the afternoon of my first day in Paris, and I wanted to die. Only death was not an option.
17
‘Miranda Priestly’s room,’ I answered from my new Parisian office. My four glorious hours that were supposed to constitute a full night’s sleep had been rudely interrupted by a frantic call from one of Karl Lagerfeld’s assistants at six A.M., which is precisely when I’d discovered that all of Miranda’s phone calls were being routed directly to my room for answering. It appeared the entire city and surrounding area knew Miranda stayed here during the shows, and so my phone had been ringing incessantly since the moment I stepped inside. Never mind the two dozen messages that had already been left on the voice mail.
‘Hi, it’s me. How’s Miranda doing? Is everything OK? Did anything go wrong yet? Where is she and why aren’t you with her?’
‘Hey, Em! Thanks for caring. How are you feeling, by the way?’
‘What? Oh, I’m fine. A little weak, but getting better. Whatever. How is she?’
‘Yes, well, I’m fine, too, thanks for asking. Yes, it was a long flight to get here and I haven’t slept for more than twenty minutes at a time since the phone keeps ringing and I’m pretty sure it’s never going to stop, and, oh! I gave a completely impromptu speech – after writing an impromptu speech – to a group of people who wanted Miranda’s company but apparently weren’t interesting enough to warrant it. Looked like a giant fucking idiot, actually, and nearly gave myself a heart attack in the process, but hey, other than that, things are just great.’
‘Andrea! Be serious! I’ve been really worried about everything. There wasn’t a lot of time to prepare for this, and you know that if anything goes wrong over there she’s going to blame me anyway.’
‘Emily. Please don’t take this personally, but I can’t talk to you right now. I just can’t do it.’
‘Why? Is something wrong? How did her meeting go yesterday? Did she get there on time? Do you have everything you need? Are you making sure to wear appropriate clothes? Remember, you’re representing Runway over there, so you always have to look the part.’
‘Emily. I need to hang up now.’
‘Andrea! I’m concerned. Tell me what you’ve been doing.’
‘Well, let’s see. In all the free time I’ve had, I’ve gotten a half-dozen or so massages, two facials, and a few manicures. Miranda and I have really bonded over doing the whole spa thing together. It’s great fun. She’s really trying hard not to be too demanding, says she really wants me to enjoy Paris since it’s such a wonderful city and I’m lucky to be here. So basically we just hang out and have fun. Drink great wine. Shop. You know, the usual.’
‘Andrea! This is really not funny, OK? Now tell me what the hell is going on.’ With every degree more annoyed she sounded, my mood improved a notch.
‘Emily, I’m not sure what to tell you. What do you want to hear? How it’s been so far? Let’s see, I’ve spent most of my time trying to figure out how best to sleep through a phone that won’t stop ringing while simultaneously shoving enough food down my throat between the hours of two and six A.M. to sustain me for the remaining twenty hours. It’s like fucking Ramadan here, Em – no eating during daylight hours. Yeah, you should be really sorry you’re missing this one.’
The other line began blinking and I put Emily on hold. Every time it rang my mind went quickly, uncontrollably, to Alex, wondering if he just might call and say that everything was going to be just fine. I’d called twice on my international cell since I’d arrived and he’d answered both times, but like the expert prank caller I’d been in junior high, I’d hung up the moment I’d heard his voice. It’d been the longest we’d ever gone without talking and I wanted to hear what was going on, but I also couldn’t help feeling like life had gotten significantly simpler since we’d taken a break from the bickering and the guilt-mongering. Still, I held my breath until I heard Miranda’s voice screeching from across the wires.
‘Ahn-dre-ah, when is Lucia due to arrive?’
‘Oh, hello, Miranda. Let me just check the itinerary I have for her. Here it is. Let’s see, it says here that she was flying in directly from the shoot in Stockholm today. She should be at the hotel.’
‘Connect me.’
‘Yes, Miranda, just a moment, please.’
I put her on hold and switched back to Emily. ‘That’s her, hold on.’
‘Miranda? I just found Lucia’s number. I’ll connect you now.’
‘Wait, Ahn-dre-ah. I’ll be leaving the hotel in twenty minutes for the rest of the day. I’ll need some scarves before I return, and a new chef. He should have a minimum of ten years’ experience in mostly French restaurants and be available for family dinners four nights a week and dinner parties twice a month. Now connect me to Lucia.’
I knew I should’ve gotten hung up on the fact that Miranda wanted me to hire her a New York chef from Paris, but all I could focus on was that she was leaving the hotel – without me, and for the entire day. I clicked back to Emily and told her that Miranda needed a new chef.
‘I’ll work on it, Andy,’ she announced while coughing. ‘I’ll do some preliminary screening and then you can talk to a few of the finalists. Just find out if Miranda would like to wait until she gets home to meet them or if she’d prefer if you arranged for a couple to fly there and meet with her now, OK?’
‘You can’t be serious.’
‘Well, of course I’m serious. Miranda hired Cara when she was in Marbella last year. Their last nanny had just quit and she had me fly three finalists to her so she could find someone right away. Just find out, OK?’
‘Sure,’ I muttered. ‘And thanks.’
Just talking about those massages had sounded so good, I decided to book one for myself. There wasn’t an appointment available until early evening, so I called room service in the meantime and ordered a full breakfast. When the butler delivered it to me, I’d already crawled back into one of the plush robes, donned a p
air of the matching slippers, and prepared myself to feast on the omelet, croissants, Danishes, muffins, potatoes, cereal, and crepes that arrived smelling so good. After devouring all the food and two cups of tea, I waddled back to the bed I hadn’t really slept in the night before and fell asleep so quickly that I wondered if someone had slipped something in my orange juice.
The massage was the perfect way to top off what had been a blessedly relaxed day. Everyone else was doing my work for me, and Miranda had only called and woken me once – once! – to request that I make her a lunch reservation the following day. This isn’t so bad, I thought, as the woman’s strong hands kneaded my twisted neck muscles. Not a bad perk at all. But just as I started to drift off once again, the cell phone that I’d grudgingly brought along began its persistent ring.
‘Hello?’ I said brightly, as if I weren’t lying naked on a table covered in oil, half-asleep.
‘Ahn-dre-ah. Move my hair and makeup earlier and tell the Ungaro people I can’t make it tonight. I’ll be attending a small cocktail party instead, and I expect you to come with me. Be ready to leave in an hour.’
‘Um, sure, uh, sure,’ I stammered, trying to process the fact that I was actually going somewhere with her. A flashback from yesterday – the last time I was told at the very last minute that I was to go somewhere with her – flooded my brain, and I felt as though I would hyperventilate. I thanked the woman and charged the massage to the room even though I’d made it through only the first ten minutes, and I ran upstairs to figure out how to best maneuver around this newest obstacle. This was getting old. Quickly.
It took just a few minutes to page Miranda’s hair and makeup people (who, incidentally, were different from my own – I was pieced together by an angry-looking woman whose look of despair on seeing me for the first time haunted me still, while Miranda had a pair of gay guys who looked like they stepped directly out of the pages of Maxim) and change her appointment.
‘No problem,’ Julien squealed in a thick French accent. ‘We will be there, how you say? Wearing bells! We clear our schedules this week just in the case that Madame Priestly need us at different times!’
I paged Briget yet again and asked her to deal with the Ungaro people. Time to hit the wardrobe. The sketchbook with all my different ‘looks’ was displayed prominently on the bedside table, just waiting for a lost fashion victim like myself to turn to it for spiritual guidance. I flipped through the headings and subheadings and tried to make sense of it all.
Shows:
Daytime
Evening
Meals:
Breakfast meeting
Lunch Casual (hotel or bistro)
Formal (The Espadon in the Ritz)
Dinner Casual (bistro, room service)
Midrange (decent restaurant, casual dinner party)
Formal (Le Grand Vefour restaurant, formal dinner party)
Parties:
Casual (champagne breakfasts, afternoon teas)
Stylish (cocktail parties by nonmajor people, book parties, ‘meet for drinks’)
Dressy (cocktail parties by major people, anything at a museum or gallery, postshow parties hosted by design team)
Miscellaneous:
To and from the airport
Athletic events (lessons etc.)
Shopping excursions
Running errands To couture salons
To upscale shops and boutiques
To the local food store and/or health and beauty aid
There didn’t appear to be any suggestions for what to wear when one was unable to establish the major-ness or non-major-ness of the hosts. Clearly, there was the opportunity to make a big mistake here: I could narrow the event down to ‘Parties,’ which was a good first step, but at that point things got gray. Was this party going to be a simple number 2, where I’d just pull out something chic, or was it really a 3, in which case I’d better pay attention to choose something from the more elegant choices? There were no instructions for ‘gray area’ or ‘uncertainty,’ but someone had helpfully included a last-minute handwritten note toward the bottom of the table of contents: When in doubt (and you never should be), better to be underdressed in something fabulous than overdressed in something fabulous. Well, OK then, it looked like I now squarely fit into category, party; subcategory, stylish. I turned to the six looks that Lucia had sketched for that specific description and tried to figure out what might look less ridiculous once it was actually on.
After a particularly embarrassing run-in with a feather-covered tank top and patent-leather thigh-high (as in yes, over the knee) boots, I finally selected the outfit on page thirty-three, a flowy patchwork skirt by Roberto Cavalli with a baby-T and a pair of biker-chick black boots by D&G. Hot, sexy, stylish – but not too dressy – without actually making me look like an ostrich, an eighties throwback, or a hooker. What more could you ask for? Just as I was attempting to choose a workable bag, the hair and makeup woman showed up to begin her frowning and disapproving attempts at making me not look half as horrific as she clearly thought I did.
‘Um, could you maybe lighten the stuff under my eyes just a little?’ I asked carefully, desperately trying not disparage her handiwork. It probably would’ve been better to have a go at the makeup myself – especially since I had more supplies and instructions than the NASA scientists commissioned to build the space shuttle – but the Makeup Gestapo showed up like clockwork whether I liked it or not.
‘No!’ she barked, clearly not striving for the same sensitivity as myself. ‘It looks better this way.’
She finished painting on the thick black paint along my bottom lashes and vanished as quickly as she’d arrived; I grabbed my bag (alligator Gucci bowling bag) and headed to the lobby fifteen minutes before our estimated time of departure so I could double-check that the driver was ready. Just as I was debating with Renaud whether Miranda would prefer for us to each take separate cars so she wouldn’t have to speak to me or actually use the same one and risk catching something from sharing a backseat with her assistant, she appeared. She looked me up and down very slowly, her expression remaining completely passive and indifferent. I’d passed! This was the first time since I’d started working there that I hadn’t received a look of all-out disgust or, at the very least, a snarky comment, and all it had taken was a SWAT team of New York fashion editors, a collection of Parisian hair and makeup stylists, and a hefty selection of the world’s finest and most expensive clothing.
‘Is the car here, Ahn-dre-ah?’ She looked stunning in a short, shirred velvet cocktail dress.
‘Yes, Ms Priestly, right this way,’ Monsieur Renaud interrupted smoothly, leading us past a group of what could only be other American fashion editors also there for the shows. A deferential hush fell over the super-hip-looking crowd of über-Clackers when we walked past, Miranda two steps in front me, looking thin and striking and very, very unhappy. I nearly had to run to keep up, even though she was six inches shorter than me, and I waited until she gave me a ‘Well? What the hell are you waiting for?’ look before I ducked into the backseat of the limo after her.
Thankfully the driver appeared to know where he was going, because I’d been paranoid for the past hour that she would turn to me and ask me where the unknown cocktail party was being held. She did turn to me, but she said nothing, choosing instead to chat with B-DAD on her cell phone, repeating over and over that she expected him to arrive with plenty of time to change and have a drink before the big party on Saturday night. He was flying over in his company’s private jet, and they were currently debating whether or not to bring Caroline and Cassidy; since he wouldn’t be returning until Monday, she didn’t want the girls to have to miss a day of school. It wasn’t until we’d actually pulled up in front of a duplex apartment on Boulevard Saint Germain that I wondered what it was exactly that I was supposed to do all night. She’d always been rather good about not abusing Emily or me or any of her staff in public, which indicated – at least on some level – that she knew s
he was doing it in the first place. So if she couldn’t really order me to fetch her drinks or find her someone on the phone or have something dry-cleaned while we were standing there, what was I to do?
‘Ahn-dre-ah, this party is being hosted by a couple with whom I was friendly when we lived in Paris. They requested that I bring along an assistant to entertain their son, who generally finds these events rather dull. I’m sure the two of you will get along well.’ She waited until the driver opened her door, then she daintily stepped out in her perfect Jimmy Choo pumps. Before I could open my own door, she had climbed the three steps and was already handing her coat to the butler, who was clearly awaiting her arrival. I slumped back into the soft leather seat for just a minute, trying to process this new gem of information she’d so coolly relayed. The hair, the makeup, the rescheduling, the panicked consultation with the style book, the biker-chick boots, were all so I could spend the night babysitting some rich couple’s snot-nosed kid? And a French snot-nosed kid, no less.
I spent three full minutes reminding myself that The New Yorker was now only a couple months away, that my year of servitude was about to pay off, that I could surely make it through one more night of tedium to get my dream job. It didn’t help. All of a sudden, I desperately wanted to curl up on my parents’ couch and have my mom microwave me some tea while my dad set up the Scrabble board. Jill and even Kyle would be visiting, too, with baby Isaac, who would coo and smile when he saw me and Alex would call and tell me he loved me. No one would care that my sweatpants were stained or my toes were frightfully unpedicured or that I was eating a big, fat chocolate éclair. Not a single person would even know that there were fashion shows going on somewhere across the Atlantic, and they sure as hell wouldn’t be interested in hearing about them. But all of that seemed incredibly far away, a lifetime actually, and right now I had to contend with a coterie of people who lived and died on the runway. That, and what was sure to be a screaming, spoiled little boy speaking some French gibberish.
Lauren Weisberger 5-Book Collection: The Devil Wears Prada, Revenge Wears Prada, Everyone Worth Know Page 37