I dumped all her stuff on the floor under my desk. It was time for the first round of ordering. I dialed the number I’d memorized long ago for Mangia, a gourmet takeout place in midtown, and, as usual, Jorge answered.
‘Hi, pumpkin, it’s me,’ I’d say, propping the phone against my shoulder so I could start logging into Hotmail. ‘Let’s get this day started.’ Jorge and I were friends. Talking three, four, five times a morning had a funny way of bonding two people rather quickly.
‘Hey, baby, I’ll send one of the boys over right away. Is she there yet?’ he asked, understanding that ‘she’ was my lunatic boss and that she worked for Runway, but not quite understanding who exactly would be consuming the breakfast I had just ordered. Jorge was one of my morning men, as I liked to call them. Eduardo, Uri, Jorge, and Ahmed gave a decent as possible start to my day. They were deliciously unaffiliated with Runway, even though their separate existences in my life were solely meant to make its editor’s life more perfect. Not a single one of them truly understood Miranda’s power and prestige.
Breakfast number one would be on its way to 640 Madison in seconds, and the chances were good I’d have to throw it out. Miranda ate four slices of greasy, fatty bacon, two sausage links, and a soft cheese Danish every morning, and washed it down with a tall latte from Starbucks (two raw sugars, remember!). As far as I could tell, the office was divided on whether she was permanently on the Atkins diet or just lucky enough to have a superhuman metabolism, the result of some pretty fantastic genes. Either way, she thought nothing of devouring the fattiest, most sickeningly unhealthy foods – even though the rest of us weren’t exactly afforded the same luxury. Since nothing stayed hot for more than ten minutes after it arrived, I’d keep reordering and tossing until she showed up. I could get away with microwaving each meal one time, but that bought me only an extra five minutes, and she could usually tell. (‘Ahn-dre-ah, this is vile. Get me a fresh breakfast at once.’) I would order and reorder every twenty minutes or so until she called from her cell phone and told me to order her breakfast (‘Ahn-dre-ah, I’ll be at the office shortly. Order my breakfast’). Of course, this was usually only a two- or three-minute warning, so the pre-ordering was necessary both because of the short warning and in the rather common event that she didn’t bother to call at all. If I’d done my job, by the time her actual call for breakfast had come, I’d already have two or three on the way.
The phone rang. It had to be her, too early to be anyone else.
‘Miranda Priestly’s office,’ I chirped, bracing myself for the iciness.
‘Emily, I’ll be there in ten minutes and I’d like my breakfast to be ready.’
She had taken to calling both Emily and me ‘Emily,’ suggesting, quite rightly, that we were indistinguishable from each other and completely interchangeable. Somewhere in the back of my mind I was offended, but I’d grown accustomed to it at this point. And besides, I was too tired to really care about something as incidental as my name.
‘Yes, Miranda, right away.’ But she had already hung up. The real Emily walked into the office.
‘Hey, is she here?’ she whispered, looking furtively toward Miranda’s office as she always did, without a hello or a good morning, just like her mentor.
‘Nope, but she just called and she’ll be here in ten. I’ll be back.’
I quickly transferred my cell phone and cigarettes to my coat pocket and ran. I had only a few minutes to get downstairs, cross Madison, and jump the line at Starbucks – and suck down my first precious cigarette of the day while in transit. Stamping out the last embers, I stumbled into the Starbucks at 57th and Lex and surveyed the line. If it was fewer than eight or so people, I preferred to wait like a normal person. Like most days, however, the line today was twenty or more poor professional souls, wearily waiting in line for their expensive caffeine fix, and I had to jump in front of them. It was not something I relished, but Miranda didn’t seem to understand that the latte I presented to her each morning could not only not be delivered but could easily take a half hour at prime time to purchase. A couple weeks of shrill, angry phone calls on my cell phone (‘Ahn-dre-ah, I simply do not understand. I called you a full twenty-five minutes ago to tell you I’d be in, and my breakfast is not ready. This is unacceptable.’), and I had spoken to the franchise manager.
‘Um, hi. Thanks for taking a minute to talk with me,’ I said to the petite black woman who was in charge. ‘I know this sounds absolutely crazy, but I was wondering if we could work something out in terms of me having to wait in line.’ I went on to explain, as best I could, that I work for a rather important, unreasonable person who doesn’t like to wait for her morning coffee, and was there any way I could walk ahead of the line, subtly, of course, and have someone prepare my order immediately? By some stroke of dumb luck, Marion, the manager, was going to FIT at night for a degree in fashion merchandising.
‘Ohmigod, are you kidding? You work for Miranda Priestly? And she drinks our lattes? A tall? Every morning? Unbelievable. Oh, yes, yes, of course! I’ll tell everyone to help you right away. Don’t worry about a thing. She is, like, the most powerful person in fashion,’ Marion gushed as I forced myself to nod enthusiastically.
And so it came that I could, at will, bypass a long line of tired, aggressive, self-righteous New Yorkers and order before those who had been waiting for many, many minutes. It didn’t make me feel good or important or even cool, and I always dreaded the days I had to do it. When the lines were hellishly long like the one today – snaking around the entire counter and pushing its way outside – I felt even worse and knew I’d be walking out with a full load. My head was pounding at this point, and my eyes already felt heavy and dry. I tried to forget that this was my life, the reason I’d spent four long years memorizing poems and examining prose, the result of good grades and lots of kissing up. Instead, I ordered Miranda’s tall latte from one of the new baristas and added a few drinks of my own. A grande Amaretto Cappuccino, a Mocha Frappuccino, and a Caramel Macchiato landed in my four-cup carrier, along with a half-dozen muffins and croissants. The grand total came to $28.83, and I made sure to tuck my receipt into the already bulging, specially designated receipt section of my wallet, all of which would be reimbursed by the always reliable Elias-Clark.
I had to hurry now, as it was already twelve minutes since Miranda had called and I knew she’d probably be sitting there, seething, wondering exactly where I disappeared to every morning – the Starbucks logo on the side of the cup didn’t ever clue her in. But before I could pick up all the stuff from the counter, my phone rang. And as usual, my heart lurched. I knew it was her, absolutely, positively knew it, but it scared me nonetheless. The caller ID confirmed my suspicion, and I was surprised to hear that it was Emily, calling from Miranda’s line.
‘She’s here and she’s pissed,’ Emily whispered. ‘You’ve got to get back here.’
‘I’m doing everything I can,’ I growled, trying to balance the carrying tray and the bag of baked goods on one arm and hold the phone with the other.
And thus the basic root of the hatred that existed between Emily and me. Since she was in the ‘senior’ assistant position, I was more of Miranda’s personal assistant, there to fetch those coffees and meals, help her kids with their homework, and run all over the city to retrieve the perfect dishes for her dinner parties. Emily did her expenses, made her travel arrangements, and – the biggest job of all – put through her personal clothing order every few months. So when I was out gathering the goodies each morning, Emily was left alone to handle all of the ringing phone lines and an alert, early-morning Miranda and all of her demands. I hated her for being able