The walk back to the building usually took longer than the walk to Starbucks, since I had to distribute my coffees and snacks. I preferred to hand them out to the homeless, a small band of regulars who hung out on stoops and slept in doorways on 57th Street, thumbing the city’s attempts to ‘clean them up.’ The police always hustled them away before rush hour kicked into high gear, but they were still hanging out when I was doing the day’s first coffee run. There was something so fantastic – invigorating, really – in making sure that these overpriced, Elias-sponsored coffee faves made it into the hands of the city’s most undesirable people.
The urine-soaked man who slept outside the Chase Bank got a daily Mocha Frappuccino. He never actually woke up to accept it, but I left it (with a straw, of course) next to his left elbow each morning, and it was often gone – along with him – when I returned for my next coffee run a few hours later.
The old lady who propped herself up on her cart and set out a cardboard sign that read NO HOME/CAN CLEAN/NEED FOOD got the Caramel Macchiato. I soon found her name was Theresa, and I used to buy her a tall latte, like Miranda’s. She always said thank you, but she never made a move to taste it while it was still hot. When I finally asked her if she wanted me to stop bringing them, she vigorously shook her head and mumbled that she hates to be picky, but she’d actually like something sweeter, that the coffee was too strong. The next day I had her coffee flavored with vanilla and topped with whipped cream. Was this better? Oh yes, it was much, much better, but maybe now it was a touch too sweet. One more day and I finally got it right: it turns out Theresa liked her coffee unflavored, topped with whipped cream and some caramel syrup. She flashed a near-toothless smile and began guzzling it each and every day, the moment I handed it to her.
The third coffee went to Rio, the Nigerian who sold CDs off a blanket. He didn’t appear to be homeless, but he walked over to me one morning when I was handing Theresa her daily fix and said, or, rather, sang, ‘Yo, yo, yo, you like the Starbucks fairy or what? Where’s mine?’ I handed him a grande Amaretto Cappuccino the next day, and we’d been friends ever since.
I expensed twenty-four dollars more every day on coffee than necessary (Miranda’s single latte should’ve cost a mere four dollars) to take yet another passive-aggressive swipe at the company, my personal reprimand to them for Miranda Priestly’s free rein. I handed them out to the filthy, the smelly, and the crazy because that – and not the wasted money – was what would really piss them off.
By the time I made it to the lobby, Pedro, the heavily accented Mexican delivery boy from Mangia, was chatting in Spanish with Eduardo near the elevator bank.
‘Hey, here’s our girlie,’ said Pedro as a few Clackers peered over at us. ‘I’ve got the usual: bacon, sausage, and one nasty-looking cheese thing. You only ordered one today! Don’t know how you eat this shit and stay so thin, girl.’ He grinned. I suppressed the urge to tell him he didn’t have a clue what thin looked like. Pedro knew full well that I was not the one eating his breakfasts, but like every one of the dozen or so people I spoke to before eight A.M. each day, he didn’t really know the details. I handed him a ten, as usual, for the $3.99 breakfast, and headed upstairs.
She was on the phone when I entered the office, her snakeskin Gucci trench draped across the top of my desk. My blood pressure increased tenfold. Would it kill her to take the extra two steps over to the closet, open it, and hang up her own coat? Why did she have to take it off and fling it over my desk? I put down the latte, looked over at Emily, who was too busy answering three phone lines to notice me, and hung up the snakeskin. I shook off my own coat and bent down to toss it underneath my desk, since mine might infect hers if they mingled in the closet.
I grabbed two raw sugars, a stirrer, and a napkin from a stock I kept in my desk drawer and wrapped them all together. I briefly considered spitting in the drink but was able to restrain myself. Next, I pulled a small china plate from the overhead bin and dumped out the greasy meat and the oozing Danish, wiping my hands on her dirty dry cleaning, which was hidden beneath my desk so she couldn’t see it hadn’t been picked up yet. I was theoretically supposed to clean her plate each day in the sink in our mock-up kitchen, but I just couldn’t bring myself to bother. The humiliation of doing her dishes in front of everyone prompted me to wipe it down with tissues after each meal and scrape off any leftover cheese with my fingernails. If it was really dirty or had been sitting for a long time, I’d open a bottle of the Pellegrino we kept by the case and dump a little bit on. I figured she should be thankful I wasn’t using a spritz or two of desk cleaner. I was reasonably sure that I had reached a new moral low – what was worrisome was that I’d sunk to it so naturally.
‘Remember, I want my girls smiling,’ she was saying into the phone. I could tell from her tone she was talking to Lucia, the fashion director who’d be in charge of the upcoming Brazil shoot, about how the models should appear. ‘Happy, lots of teeth, clean healthy girls. No brooding, no anger, no frowning, no dark makeup. I want them shining. I mean it, Lucia: I will accept nothing less.’
I set the plate on the edge of her desk and placed the latte and the napkin with all necessary accessories next to it. She didn’t look at me. I paused for a moment to see if she’d hand me a pile of papers off her desk, things to fax or find or file, but she ignored me and I walked out. Eight-thirty A.M. I’d been awake now for three full hours, felt like I’d already worked for twelve, and could finally sit down for the very first time all morning. Just as I was logging on to Hotmail, anticipating some fun e-mails from people on the outside, she walked out. The belted jacket cinched her already tiny waist and complemented the perfectly fitted pencil skirt she wore beneath it. She looked dynamite.
‘Ahn-dre-ah. The latte is ice cold. I don’t understand why. You were certainly gone long enough! Bring me another.’
I inhaled deeply and concentrated on keeping the look of hatred off my face. Miranda set the offending latte on my desk and flipped through the new issue of Vanity Fair that a staffer had set on the table for her. I could feel Emily watching me and knew her look would be one of sympathy and anger: she felt bad that I had to repeat the hellish ordeal all over again, but she hated me for daring to be upset about it. After all, wouldn’t a million girls die for my job?
And so with an audible sigh – something I’d perfected lately, so it was just enough Miranda could hear but not nearly enough she could ever call me on it – I once again put on my coat and willed my legs to move toward the elevators. It was going to be another long, long day.
The second coffee run in twenty minutes went much more smoothly; the lines at Starbucks had thinned a little and Marion had come on duty. She herself got to work on a tall latte as soon as I walked in the door. I didn’t bother overspending on a larger order this time because I was too desperate to just get back and sit down, but I did add venti cappuccinos for both Emily and me. Just as I was paying for the coffee, my phone rang. Goddamn it to hell, this woman was impossible. Insatiable, impatient, impossible. I hadn’t been gone for more than four minutes; she couldn’t possibly be freaking out yet. Again, I balanced my tray in one hand and pulled my phone from my coat pocket. I’d already decided that such behavior on her part warranted my having another cigarette – if just to hold up her coffee a few minutes longer – when I saw that it was Lily calling from her home phone.
‘Hey, bad time?’ she asked, sounding excited. I looked at my watch and saw that she should’ve been in class.
‘Um, sort of. I’m on my second coffee run, which is really great. I’m really, really enjoying myself, just in case you were wondering. What’s up? Don’t you have class now?’
‘Yeah, but I went out with Pink-Shirt Boy again last night and we each drank a few too many margaritas. Like, eight too many. He’s still passed out here, so I can’t just leave him. But that’s not why I’m calling.’
‘Yeah?’ I was barely listening, since one of the cappuccinos was starting to leak and I had the phone wedged in between my neck and my shoulder as I used my one free hand to pluck a cigarette from the box and light it.