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

‘Cut to it, Lil. I’m going to pass out any minute.’

‘OK. Cutest guy ever came to my reading today. Sat through the whole thing looking absolutely fascinated, and waited for me afterward. Asked if he could take me for a drink and hear all about the thesis I had published at Brown, which he’d already read.’

‘Sounds great. What was he?’ Lily went out with different guys almost every night after getting off work, but had yet to complete her fraction. She had founded the Scale of Fractional Love one night after listening to a few of our guy friends rate the girls they were dating on their own invention, the Ten-Ten Scale. ‘She’s a six, eight, B-plus,’ Jake would declare of the advertising assistant he’d been set up with the night before. It was assumed everyone knew that it was a ten-point scale, with face always being the first numerical ranking, body the second, and personality coming in last with a slightly more generalized letter grade. Since there were clearly more factors at work in judging guys, Lily devised the Fractional Scale, which had a total of ten pieces that each earned a point. The Perfect Guy would obviously have all five of the primary pieces: intelligence, sense of humor, decent body, cute face, and any sort of job that fell under the generous umbrella of ‘normal.’ Since it was next to impossible to find The Perfect Guy, someone could up their fraction by earning points on the secondary five, which included a definitive lack of psycho ex-girlfriends, psycho parents, or date-rapist roommates, and any sort of extracurricular interests or hobbies that weren’t sports- or porn-related. So far, the highest anyone had received was a nine-tenths, but he had broken up with her.

‘Well, at first he was going strong at seven-tenths. He was a theater major at Yale and he’s straight, and he could discuss Israeli politics so intelligently that he never once suggested that we “just nuke ’em,” so that was good.’

‘Sure sounds good. I can’t wait for the clincher. What was it? Did he talk about his favorite Nintendo game?’

‘Worse.’ She sighed.

‘Is he thinner than you?’

‘Worse.’ She sounded defeated.

‘What on earth could be worse than that?’

‘He lives on Long Island—’

‘Lily! So he’s geographically undesirable. That doesn’t make him undateable! You know better than to—’

‘With his parents,’ she interrupted.

Oh.

‘For the past four years.’

Oh, my.

‘And he absolutely loves it. Says he can’t imagine wanting to live alone in such a big city when his mom and dad are such great company.’

‘Whoa! Say no more. I don’t think we’ve ever had a seven-tenths fall all the way to a zero after the first date. Your guy set a new record. Congratulations. Your day was officially worse than mine.’ I leaned over to kick my bedroom door closed when I heard Shanti and Kendra come home from work. I heard a guy’s voice with them and wondered if either of my roommates had boyfriends. I’d seen them a combined total of only ten minutes in the last week and a half, because they seemed to work longer hours than I did.

‘That bad? How could your day be bad? You work in fashion,’ she said.

There was a quiet knocking on the door.

‘Hold on a sec, someone’s here. Come in!’ I called to the door, much too loud for the tiny space. I waited for one of my quiet roommates to timidly ask if I’d remembered to call the landlord to put my name on the lease (no) or bought more paper plates (no) or had taken down any phone messages (no), but Alex appeared.

‘Hey, can I call you back? Alex just showed up.’ I was thrilled to see him, so excited that he’d surprised me, but a small part of me had been looking forward to just taking a shower and crawling into bed.

‘Sure. Tell him I say hi. And remember what a lucky girl you are for having completed the fraction with him, Andy. He’s great. Hold on to that one.’

‘Don’t I know it. The kid’s a goddamn saint.’ I smiled in his direction.

‘’Bye.’

‘Hi!’ I willed myself to first sit up, then stand up and walk over to him. ‘What a great surprise!’ I went to hug him but he backed away, keeping his arms behind his back. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing at all. I know you’ve had such a long week, and, knowing you, I figured you hadn’t bothered to eat yet, so I brought the food to you.’ He pulled a huge brown paper bag from behind his back, one of the old-school grocery style ones, and it already had some delicious-smelling grease stains on it. All of a sudden, I was starving.

‘You did not! How’d you know that I was sitting here this very second, wondering how I was going to motivate to find food? I was just about to give up.’

‘So come here and eat!’ He looked pleased and pulled open the bag, but we both couldn’t fit on the floor of my bedroom together. I thought about eating in the living room since there was no kitchen, but Kendra and Shanti had both collapsed in front of the TV together, their untouched takeout salads open in front of them. I thought they were waiting until the Real World episode they were watching was over, but then I noticed that they’d both already fallen asleep. Sweet lives we all had.

‘Hold on, I have an idea,’ he said and tiptoed to the living room. He came back with two oversize garbage bags and spread them out over my blue comforter. He dug into the greasy bag and brought out two giant burgers with everything and one extra-large order of fries. He’d remembered ketchup packets and tons of salt for me, and even the napkins. I clapped I was so excited, although a quick visual of the imagined disappointment on Miranda’s face appeared, one that said, You? You’re eating a burger?

‘I’m not done yet. Here, check it out.’ And out of his backpack came a fistful of tiny vanilla tea lights, a bottle of screw-top red wine, and two waxy paper cups.

‘You’re kidding,’ I said softly, still not believing that he’d put all this together after I’d canceled our date.

He handed me a cup of wine and tapped it with his. ‘No, I’m not. You think I was going to miss hearing about the first week of the rest of your life? To my best girl.’

‘Thank you.’ I said, slowly taking a sip. ‘Thank you, thank you, thank you.’

6 (#ulink_036feb92-3d31-5eb1-922e-6ff33b345d12)

‘Ohmigod, is it the fashion editor herself?’ Jill mock-shrieked when she opened the front door. ‘Come on over here and let your big sister genuflect a li’l.’

‘Fashion editor?’ I snorted. ‘Hardly. Try fashion mishap. Welcome back to civilization.’ I hugged her for what felt like ten minutes and didn’t want to let go. It was hard when she’d started at Stanford and left me all alone with our parents when I was a mere nine years old, but it was even harder when she’d followed her boyfriend – now husband – to Houston. Houston! The whole placed seemed drenched in humidity and infested with mosquitoes to the point of unbearability, and if that wasn’t bad enough, my sister – my sophisticated, beautiful big sister who loved neoclassical art and made your heart melt when she recited poetry – had developed a southern accent. And not just a slight accent with a subtle, charming southern lilt, but an all-out, unmistakable, like-a-drill-through-the-eardrum redneck drawl. I’d yet to forgive Kyle for dragging her to that wretched place, even if he was a pretty decent brother-in-law, and it didn’t help when he opened his mouth.

‘Hey there, Andy darlin’, you’re looking more beautiful every time I see you.’ Yer lookin’ more beeyootiful avery time I see ya. ‘What are they feeding y’all at Runway, huh?’

I wanted to stick a tennis ball in his mouth to keep him from talking anymore, but he smiled at me and I walked over and hugged him. He might sound like a hick and grin a little too openly and often, but he tried really hard and he clearly adored my sister. I vowed to make a sincere effort not to visibly cringe when he spoke. ‘It’s not really what I’d call a feeding-friendly kind of place, if you know what I mean. Whatever it is, it’s definitely in the water and not the food. But never mind. Kyle, you look great yourself. Keeping my sister busy in the city of misery, I hope?’

‘Andy, just come and visit, sweetie. Bring Alex along and y’all can make it a li’l vacation. It’s not that bad, you’ll see.’ He smiled first at me and then at Jill, who smiled back and brushed the back of her hand across his cheek. They were disgustingly in love.

‘Really, Andy, it’s a culture-rich place with a whole lot to do. We both wish you’d come visit us more often. It’s just not right that the only time we see each other is in this house,’ she said, waving expansively around our parents’ living room. ‘I mean, if you can stand Avon, you can certainly stand Houston.’

‘Andy, you’re here! Jay, the big New York City career girl is here, come say hi,’ my mom called as she rounded the corner coming from the kitchen. ‘I thought you were going to call when you got to the train station.’

‘Mrs Myers was picking Erika up from the same train, so she just dropped me off. When are we eating? I’m starving.’

‘Now. Do you want to clean up? We can wait. You look a little ragged from the train. You know, it’s fine if—’

‘Mother!’ I shot her a warning look.

‘Andy! You look dynamite. Come here and give your old man a hug.’ My dad, tall and still very handsome in his mid-fifties, smiled from the hallway. He was holding a Scrabble box behind his back that he only let me see by flashing it quickly by the side of his leg. He waited until everyone looked away from him and pointed to the box and mouthed, ‘I’ll kick your ass. Consider yourself warned.’

I smiled and nodded my head. Contrary to all common sense, I found myself looking forward to the next forty-eight hours with my family more than I had in the four years since I’d left home. Thanksgiving was my favorite holiday, and this year I was set to enjoy it more than ever.

We gathered in the dining room and dug into the massive meal that my mother had expertly ordered, her traditional Jewish version of a night-before-Thanksgiving feast. Bagels and lox and cream cheese and whitefish and latkes all professionally arranged on rigid disposable serving platters, waiting to be transferred to paper plates and consumed with plastic forks and knives. My mother smiled lovingly as her brood dug in, with a look of pride on her face as if she’d been cooking for a week to sustain and nurture her babies.

I told them all about the new job, tried as best as I could to describe a job that I didn’t yet fully understand myself. Briefly I wondered if it sounded ridiculous to tell them how the skirts were called in and all the hours I’d logged wrapping and sending presents, and how there was a little electronic ID card that tracked everything you did. It was hard to fit into words the sense of urgency each of these had taken on at the time, how when I was at work it seemed that my job was supremely relevant, even important. I talked and talked, but I didn’t know how to explain this world that may have been only two hours away geographically but was really in a different solar system. They all nodded and smiled and asked questions, pretending to be interested, but I knew it was all too foreign, too absolutely strange sounding and different to make any sense to people who – like me until a few weeks earlier – had never even heard the name Miranda Priestly. It didn’t make much sense to me yet, either: it seemed overly dramatic at times and more than a little Big Brother-esque, but it was exciting. And cool. It was definitely, undeniably a supercool place to call work. Right?

‘Well, Andy, you think you’ll be happy there for your year? Maybe you’ll even want to stay longer, huh?’ My mom asked while smearing cream cheese on her salt bagel.

In signing my contract at Elias-Clark, I’d agreed to stay with Miranda for a year – if I didn’t get fired, which at this point seemed like a big if. And if I fulfilled my obligation with class and enthusiasm and some level of competence – and this part was not in writing but implied by a half-dozen people in HR, and Emily, and Allison – then I would be in a position to name the job I’d like next. It was expected, of course, that whichever job that may be would be at Runway or, at the very least, at Elias-Clark, but I was free to request anything from working on book reviews in the features department to acting as a liaison between Hollywood celebrities and Runway. Out of the last ten assistants who had made it through their year in Miranda’s office, a full hundred percent had chosen to move to the fashion department at Runway, but I didn’t let that concern me. A stint in Miranda’s office was considered to be the ultimate way to skip three to five years of indignity as an assistant and move directly into meaningful jobs in prestigious places.