The Devil Wears Prada: Loved the movie? Read the book!

‘Unfortunately, I don’t speak a word of French, but I’m confident it won’t be a problem.’ She clasped her hands back together.

‘It says here that you studied at Brown?’

‘Yes, I, uh, I was an English major, concentrating on creative writing. Writing has always been a passion.’ So cheesy! I reprimanded myself. Did I really have to use the word ‘passion’?

‘So, does your affinity for writing mean that you’re not particularly interested in fashion?’ She took a sip of sparkling liquid from a glass and set it down quietly. One quick glance at the glass showed that she was the kind of woman who could drink without leaving one of those disgusting lipstick marks. She would always have perfectly lined and filled-in lips regardless of the hour.

‘Oh no, of course not. I adore fashion,’ I lied rather smoothly. ‘I’m looking forward to learning even more about it, since I think it would be wonderful to write about fashion one day.’ Where the hell had I come up with that one? This was becoming an out-of-body experience.

Things progressed with the same relative ease until she asked her final question: Which magazines did I read regularly? I leaned forward eagerly and began to speak: ‘Well, I only subscribe to The New Yorker and Newsweek, but I regularly read The Buzz. Sometimes Time, but it’s dry, and U.S. News is way too conservative. Of course, as a guilty pleasure, I’ll skim Chic, and since I just returned from traveling, I read all of the travel magazines and …’

‘And do you read Runway, Ahn-dre-ah?’ she interrupted, leaning over the desk and peering at me even more intently than before.

It had come so quickly, so unexpectedly, that for the first time that day I was caught off-guard. I didn’t lie, and I didn’t elaborate or even attempt to explain.

‘No.’

After perhaps ten seconds of stony silence, she beckoned for Emily to escort me out. I knew I had the job.

3 (#ulink_f4acf6e5-8c24-5eff-b508-63ac66839a7a)

‘It sure doesn’t sound like you have the job,’ Alex, my boyfriend, said softly, playing with my hair as I rested my throbbing head in his lap after the grueling day. I’d gone straight from the interview to his apartment in Brooklyn, not wanting to sleep on Lily’s couch for another night and needing to tell him about everything that had just happened. I’d thought about staying there all the time, but I didn’t want Alex to feel suffocated. ‘I don’t even know why you’d want it.’ After a moment or two, he reconsidered. ‘Actually, it does sound like a pretty phenomenal opportunity. I mean, if this girl Allison started out as Miranda’s assistant and is now an editor at the magazine, well, that’d be good enough for me. Just go for it.’

He was trying so hard to sound really excited for me. We’d been dating since our junior year at Brown, and I knew every inflection of his voice, every look, every signal. He’d just started a few weeks earlier at PS 277 in the Bronx and was so worn down he could barely speak. Even though his kids were only nine years old, he’d been disappointed to see how jaded and cynical they already were. He was disgusted that they all spoke freely about blow jobs, knew ten different slang words for pot, and loved to brag about the stuff they stole or whose cousin was currently residing in a tougher jail. ‘Prison connoisseurs,’ Alex had taken to calling them. ‘They could write a book on the subtle advantages of Sing Sing over Rikers, but they can’t read a word of the English language.’ He was trying to figure out how he could make a difference.

I slid my hand under his T-shirt and started to scratch his back. Poor thing looked so miserable that I felt guilty bothering him with the details of the interview, but I just had to talk about it with someone. ‘I know. I understand that there wouldn’t be anything editorial about the job whatsoever, but I’m sure I’ll be able to do some writing after a few months,’ I said. ‘You don’t think it’s completely selling out to work at a fashion magazine, do you?’

He squeezed my arm and lay down next to me. ‘Baby, you’re a brilliant, wonderful writer, and I know you’ll be fantastic anywhere. And of course it’s not selling out. It’s paying your dues. You’re saying that if you put in a year at Runway you’ll save yourself three more years of bullshit assistant work somewhere else?’

I nodded. ‘That’s what Emily and Allison said, that it was an automatic quid pro quo. Work a year for Miranda and don’t get fired, and she’ll make a call and get you a job anywhere you want.’

‘Then how could you not? Seriously, Andy, you’ll work your year and you’ll get a job at The New Yorker. It’s what you’ve always wanted! And it sure sounds like you’ll get there a whole lot faster doing this than anything else.’

‘You’re right, you’re totally right.’

‘And besides, it would guarantee that you’re moving to New York, which, I have to say, is very appealing to me right now.’ He kissed me, one of those long, lazy kisses it seemed we had personally invented. ‘But stop worrying so much. Like you said yourself, you’re still not sure you have the job. Let’s wait and see.’

We cooked a simple dinner and fell asleep watching Letterman. I was dreaming about obnoxious little nine-year-olds having sex on the playground while they swigged forties of Olde English and screamed at my sweet, loving boyfriend when the phone rang.

Alex picked it up and pressed it to his ear but didn’t bother to open his eyes or say hello. He quickly dropped it next to me. I wasn’t sure I could muster the energy to pick it up.

‘Hello?’ I mumbled, glancing at the clock and seeing that it was 7:15 A.M. Who the hell would call at such an hour?

‘It’s me,’ barked a very angry-sounding Lily.

‘Hi, is everything OK?’

‘Do you think I’d be calling you if everything was OK? I’m so hungover I could die, and I finally stop puking long enough to fall asleep, and I’m awakened by a scarily perky woman who says she works in HR at Elias-Clark. And she’s looking for you. At seven-fifteen in the freakin’ morning. So call her back. And tell her to lose my number.’

‘Sorry, Lil. I gave them your number because I don’t have a cell yet. I can’t believe she called so early! I wonder if that’s good or bad?’ I took the portable and crept out of the bedroom, quietly closing the door as I went.

‘Whatev. Good luck. Let me know how it goes. Just not in the next couple hours, OK?’

‘Will do. Thanks. And sorry.’

I looked at my watch again and couldn’t believe I was about to have a business conversation. I put on a pot of coffee and waited until it had finished brewing and brought a cup to the couch. It was time to call. I had no choice.

‘Hello, this is Andrea Sachs,’ I said firmly, although my voice betrayed me with its deep, raspy, just-woke-up-ness.

‘Andrea, good morning! Hope I didn’t call too early,’ Sharon sang, her own voice full of sunshine. ‘I’m sure I didn’t, my dear, especially since you’ll have to be an early bird soon enough! I have some very good news. Miranda was very impressed with you and said she’s very much looking forward to working with you. Isn’t that wonderful? Congratulations, dear. How does it feel to be Miranda Priestly’s new assistant? I imagine that you’re just—’

My head was spinning. I tried to pull myself off the couch to get some more coffee, water, anything that might clear my head and turn her words back into English, but I only sank further into the cushions. Was she asking me if I would like the job? Or was she making an official offer? I couldn’t make sense of anything she’d just said, anything other than the fact that Miranda Priestly had liked me.

‘—delighted with this news. Who wouldn’t be, right? So let’s see, you can start on Monday, right? She’ll actually be on vacation then, but that’s a great time to start. Give you a little time to get acquainted with the other girls – oh, they’re all such sweeties!’ Acquainted? What? Starting Monday? Sweetie girls? It was refusing to make sense in my addled brain. I picked a single phrase that I’d understood and responded to it.

‘Um, well, I don’t think I can start Monday,’ I said quietly, hoping I’d indeed said something coherent. Saying those words had shocked me into semiwakefulness. I’d walked through the Elias-Clark doors for the very first time the day before, and was being awakened from a deep sleep to listen to someone tell me that I was to begin work in three days. It was Friday – at seven o’clock in the goddamn morning – and they wanted me to start on Monday? It began to feel like everything was spiraling out of control. Why the ridiculous rush? Was this woman so important that she needed me so badly? And why exactly did Sharon herself sound so scared of Miranda?

Starting Monday would be impossible. I had nowhere to live. Home base was my parents’ house in Avon, the place I’d grudgingly moved back to after graduation, and where most of my things remained while I’d traveled during the summer. All of my interview-related clothes were piled on Lily’s couch. I’d been trying to do the dishes and empty her ashtrays and buy pints of Häagen-Dazs so she wouldn’t hate me, but I thought it only fair to give her a much-needed break from my unending presence, so I camped out on weekends at Alex’s. That put all of my weekend going-out clothes and fun makeup at Alex’s in Brooklyn, my laptop and mismatched suits at Lily’s Harlem studio, and the rest of my life at my parents’ house in Avon. I had no apartment in New York and didn’t particularly understand how everyone knew that Madison Avenue ran uptown but Broadway ran down. I didn’t actually know what uptown was. And she wanted me to start Monday?

‘Um, well, I don’t think I can do this Monday because I don’t currently live in New York,’ I quickly explained, clutching the phone, ‘and I’ll need a couple days to find an apartment and buy some furniture and move.’

‘Oh, well, then. I suppose Wednesday would be OK,’ she sniffed.

After a few more minutes of haggling, we finally settled on November 17, a week from Monday. That left me a little more than eight days to find and furnish a home in one of the craziest real estate markets in the world.

I hung up and flopped back down on the couch. My hands were trembling, and I let the phone drop to the floor. A week. I had a week to start working at the job I’d just accepted as Miranda Priestly’s assistant. But, wait! That’s what was bothering me … I hadn’t actually accepted the job because it hadn’t even been officially offered. Sharon hadn’t even had to utter the words ‘We’d like to make you an offer,’ since she took it for granted that anyone with some semblance of intelligence would obviously just accept. No one had so much as mentioned the word ‘salary.’ I almost laughed out loud. Was this some sort of war tactic they’d perfected? Wait until the victim was finally deep into REM sleep after an extremely stressful day and then throw some life-altering news at her? Or had she just assumed that it would be wasted time and breath to do something as mundane as make a job offer and wait for acceptance, considering that this was Runway magazine? Sharon had just assumed that of course I’d jump all over the chance, that I’d be thrilled with the opportunity. And, as they always were at Elias-Clark, she was right. It had all happened so fast, so frenetically, that I hadn’t had time to debate and deliberate as usual. But I had a good feeling that this was an opportunity I’d be crazy to turn down, that this could actually be a great first step to getting to The New Yorker. I had to try it. I was lucky to have it.

Newly energized, I gulped the rest of my coffee, brewed another cup for Alex, and took a quick, hot shower. When I went back into his room, he was just sitting up.

‘You’re dressed already?’ he asked, fumbling for the tiny wire-rimmed glasses he was blind without. ‘Did someone call this morning, or did I dream that?’

‘Not a dream,’ I said, crawling back under the covers even though I was wearing jeans and a turtleneck sweater. I was careful not to let my wet hair soak his pillows. ‘That was Lily. The HR woman from Elias-Clark called her place because that’s the number I gave them. And guess what?’

‘You got the job?’

‘I got the job!’

‘Oh, come here!’ he said, sitting up and hugging me. ‘I’m so proud of you! That’s great news, it really is.’

‘So you really think it’s a good opportunity? I know we talked about it, but they didn’t even give me a chance to decide. She just assumed that I’d want the job.’

‘It’s an amazing opportunity. Fashion isn’t the worst thing on earth – maybe it’ll even be interesting.’

I rolled my eyes.

‘OK, so maybe that’s going a little far. But with Runway on your résumé and a letter from this Miranda woman, and maybe even a few clips by the time you’re done, hell, you can do anything. The New Yorker will be beating down your door.’

‘I hope you’re right, I really do.’ I jumped up and starting throwing my things in my backpack. ‘Is it still OK if I borrow your car? The sooner I get home, the sooner I can get back. Not that it really matters, because I’m moving to New York. It’s official!’