‘Andrea! She’s on her way in. She’ll be here in ten minutes,’ Emily announced loudly, obviously struggling to remain calm.
‘Hmm? I’m sorry, I didn’t hear what—’
‘Miranda is on her way into the office this moment. We need to get ready.’
‘On her way into the office? But I thought she wasn’t even coming back to the country until Saturday …’
‘Well, clearly she changed her mind. Now, move! Go downstairs and get her papers and lay them out just the way I told you. When you’re done, wipe down her desk and leave a glass of Pellegrino on the left-hand side, with ice and a lime. And make sure that her bathroom is stocked, OK? Go! She’s already in the car, so she should be here in less than ten minutes, depending on traffic.’
As I raced out of the office, I could hear Emily rapid-fire dialing four-digit extensions and all but screaming, ‘She’s on her way – tell everyone.’ It took me only three seconds to wind through the hallways and pass through the fashion department, but I already heard panicked cries of ‘Emily said she’s on her way in’ and ‘Miranda’s coming!’ and a particularly blood-curdling cry of ‘She’s baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack!’ Assistants were frantically straightening clothes on the racks that lined the halls, and editors were racing into their offices, where I could see one changing from her kitten-heeled shoes to four-inch stilettos while another lined her lips, curled her lashes, and adjusted her bra strap without so much as slowing down. As the publisher walked out of the men’s room, I glanced past him and saw James, looking frenzied, checking his black cashmere sweater for lint while spastically popping Altoids in his mouth. Unless the men’s room was wired with loudspeakers for these very occasions, I wasn’t even sure how he’d heard yet.
I was dying to stop and watch the scene unfold, but I had less than ten minutes to prepare for my first meeting with Miranda as her actual assistant, and I wasn’t going to blow it. Until then I’d been trying not to appear as if I’d been actually running, but upon witnessing the utter lack of dignity everyone else had demonstrated, I broke into a sprint.
‘Andrea! You know Miranda’s on her way here, don’t you?’ Sophy called from the reception desk as I flew by.
‘Yeah, I know, but how do you know?’
‘Sweetie pie, I know everything. Now I suggest you get your butt in gear. One thing’s for sure: Miranda Priestly does not like to be kept waiting.’
I leapt onto the elevator and called out a thank you. ‘I’ll be back in three minutes with the papers!’
The two women on the elevator stared at me in disgust, and I realized that I had been screaming.
‘Sorry,’ I said, trying to catch my breath. ‘We just found out that our editor in chief is on her way to the office and we weren’t prepared, so everyone’s a little edgy now.’ Why am I explaining myself to these people?
‘Ohmigod, you must work for Miranda! Wait, let me guess. You’re Miranda’s new assistant? Andrea, right?’ The leggy brunette flashed what must’ve been four dozen teeth and moved forward like a piranha. Her friend instantly brightened.
‘Um, yeah. Andrea,’ I said, repeating my own name as though I wasn’t entirely sure it was mine. ‘And yes, I’m Miranda’s new assistant.’
At that moment the elevator hit the lobby and the doors opened to the stark white marble. I moved ahead of the women and bolted through before the doors had opened entirely and heard one of them call, ‘You’re a lucky girl, Andrea. Miranda’s an amazing woman, and a million girls would die for your job!’
I tried not to slam into a group of very unhappy-looking lawyers, and nearly flew into the newsstand in the corner of the lobby, where a little Kuwaiti man named Ahmed presided over a sleek display of glossy titles and a noticeably sparser array of mostly sugar-free candy and diet sodas. Emily had introduced Ahmed and me to each other before Christmas as part of my training, and I was hoping he could be enlisted to help me now.
‘Stop right there!’ he cried as I began pulling newspapers out of their wire racks by the register. ‘You are Miranda’s new girl, right? Come here.’
I swiveled to see Ahmed lean down and ferret under the register, his face turning a bit too red under the strain. ‘Ah-ha!’ he cried again, springing to his feet with all the agility of an old man with two broken legs. ‘For you. So you don’t make a mess of my display, I keep them aside for you each day. And maybe to make sure I don’t run out, too.’ He winked.
‘Ahmed, thank you. I can’t even tell you how much this helps me. Do you think I should get the magazines now, too?’
‘I sure do. Look, it’s already Wednesday and they all came out on Monday. Your boss probably don’t like that so much,’ he said knowingly. And again he reached under the register and again he rose with an armful of magazines, which, after a quick glance, I confirmed were all the ones on my list – no more, no less.
ID card, ID card, where the hell was that goddamn ID card? I reached inside my starched white button-down and found the silk lanyard that Emily had fashioned for me out of one of Miranda’s white Hermès scarves. ‘Never actually wear the card when she’s around, of course,’ she had said, ‘but just in case you forget to take it off, at least you won’t be wearing it on a plastic chain.’ She had practically spit out the last two words.
‘Here you go, Ahmed. Thank you so much for your help, but I’m in a big, big rush. She’s on her way in.’
He swiped my card down the reader on the side of the machine and placed the scarf lanyard around my neck like a lei. ‘Run, now. Run!’
I grabbed the overflowing plastic bag and ran, pulling my ID card out again to swipe against the security turnstiles that would allow me to enter the Elias-Clark elevator bank. I swiped and pushed. Nothing. I swiped and pushed again, this time harder. Nothing.
‘Some boys kiss me, some boys hug me, I think they’re okay-ay,’ Eduardo, the round and slightly sweaty security guard, began singing in a high-pitched voice from behind the security desk. Shit. I already knew without looking that his smile, conspiratorial and enormous, demanded again – as it had every single day for the past few weeks – that I play along. It seems he had a never-ending supply of annoying tunes that he loved to sing, and he wouldn’t let me through the turnstiles until I acted them out. The day before was ‘I’m Too Sexy.’ As he sang, ‘I’m too sexy for Milan, too sexy for Milan, New York and Japan,’ I had to walk down the lobby’s imaginary Runway. It could be fun when I was in a decent mood. Sometimes it even made me smile. But it was my very first day with Miranda, and I couldn’t be late getting her things set up, I just couldn’t. I wanted to hurt him for holding me up as everyone else breezed past the security desk in the turnstiles on each side of me.
‘If they don’t give me proper credit, I just walk away-ay,’ I muttered, allowing the words to stretch and fade, just like Madonna.
He raised his eyebrows. ‘Where’s the enthusiasm, girlfriend?’
I thought I’d do something violent if I heard his voice again, so I dropped my bag of papers on the counter, threw both arms up in the air and thrust my hips to the left, while pursing my lips into a dramatic pout. ‘A material! A material! A material! A material … WORLD!’ I all but screamed, and he cackled and clapped and whoosh! He buzzed me through.
Mental note: Discuss with Eduardo when and where it is appropriate