exactly how Miranda likes her coffee (tall latte with two raw sugars), a breathless blond girl I remembered as one of the many fashion assistants walked in carrying a wicker basket the size of a baby carriage. She hovered just outside Miranda’s office, looking as though she thought the soft gray carpeting might turn to quicksand under her Jimmy Choos if she dared to cross the threshold.
‘Hi, Em. I’ve got the skirts right here. Sorry that took so long, but no one’s around since it’s that weird time right before Thanksgiving. Anyway, hopefully you’ll find something she’ll like.’ She looked down at her basket full of folded skirts.
Emily looked up at her with barely disguised scorn. ‘Just leave them on my desk. I’ll return the ones that won’t work. Which I imagine will be most of them, considering your taste.’ The last part was under her breath, just loud enough for me to hear.
The blond girl looked bewildered. Definitely not the brightest star in the sky, but she seemed nice enough. I wondered why Emily so obviously hated her. It’d been a long day already, what with the running commentary and errands all over the city and hundreds of names and faces to try to remember, so I didn’t even ask.
Emily placed the large basket on her desk and looked down on it, hands on her hips. From what I could see from Miranda’s office floor, there were perhaps twenty-five different skirts in an incredible assortment of fabrics, colors, and sizes. Had she really not specified what she wanted at all? Did she really not bother to inform Emily whether she’d be needing something appropriate for a black-tie dinner or a mixed-doubles match or perhaps to use as a bathing suit cover-up? Did she want denim, or would something chiffon work better? How exactly were we supposed to predict what would please her?
I was about to find out. Emily carried the wicker basket to Miranda’s office and carefully, reverentially, placed it on the plush carpeting beside me. She sat down and began removing the skirts one by one and laying them in a circle around us. There was a beautiful crocheted skirt in shocking fuchsia by Celine, a pearl gray wraparound by Calvin Klein, and a black suede one with black beads along the bottom by Oscar de la Renta. There were skirts in red and ecru and lavender, some with lace and others in cashmere. A few were long enough to sweep gracefully along the ankles, and others were so short they looked more like tube tops. I picked up a midcalf, brown silk beauty and held it up to my waist, but the material covered only one of my legs. The next one in the pile reached to the floor in a swirl of tulle and chiffon and looked as though it would feel most at home at a Charleston garden party. One of the jean skirts was prefaded and came with a gigantic brown leather belt already looped around it, and another had a crinkly, silver-material overlay on top of a slightly more opaque silver liner. Where on earth were we going here?
‘Wow, looks like Miranda has a thing for skirts, huh?’ I said, simply because I had nothing better to say.
‘Actually, no. Miranda has a slight obsession with scarves.’ Emily refused to make eye contact with me, as though she’d just revealed that she herself had herpes. ‘It’s just one of those cute, quirky things about her you should know.’
‘Oh, really?’ I asked, trying to sound amused and not horrified. An obsession with scarves? I like clothes and bags and shoes as much as the next girl, but I wouldn’t exactly declare any of them an ‘obsession.’ And something about the way Emily was saying it wasn’t so casual.
‘Yes, well, she must need a skirt for something specific, but it’s scarves that’s she’s really into. You know, like her signature scarves?’ She looked at me. My face must have betrayed my complete lack of a clue. ‘You do remember meeting her during the interview, do you not?’
‘Of course,’ I said quickly, sensing it’d probably not be the best idea to let this girl know that I couldn’t so much as remember Miranda’s name during my interview, never mind remember what she was wearing. ‘But I’m not sure I noticed a scarf.’
‘She always, always, always wears a single white Hermès scarf somewhere on her outfit. Mostly around her neck, but sometimes she’ll have her hairdresser tie one in a chignon, or occasionally she’ll use them as a belt. They’re, like, her signature. Everyone knows that Miranda Priestly wears a white Hermès scarf, no matter what. How cool is that?’
It was at that exact moment that I noticed Emily had a lime green scarf woven through the belt loops on her cargo pants, just peeking out from underneath the white T-shirt.
‘She likes to mix it up sometimes, and I’m guessing that this is one of those times. Anyway, those idiots in fashion never know what she’ll like. Look at some of these, they’re hideous!’ She held up an absolutely gorgeous flowy skirt, slightly dressier than the rest with its little flecks of gold shimmering from the deep tan background.
‘Yep,’ I agreed, in what was to become the first of thousands, if not millions, of times I agreed with whatever she said simply to make her stop talking. ‘It’s horrendous-looking.’ It was so beautiful I thought I’d be happy to wear it to my own wedding.
Emily continued prattling on about patterns and fabrics and Miranda’s needs and wants, occasionally interjecting a scathing insult about a coworker. She finally chose three radically different skirts and set them aside to send to Miranda, talking, talking, talking the whole time. I tried to listen, but it was almost seven, and I was trying to decide whether I was ravenously hungry, utterly nauseated, or just plain exhausted. I think it was all three. I didn’t even notice when the tallest human being I’d ever seen swooped into the office.
‘YOU!’ I heard from somewhere behind me. ‘STAND UP SO I CAN GET A LOOK AT YOU!’
I turned just in time to see the man, who was at least seven feet tall, with tanned skin and black hair, pointing directly at me. He had 250 pounds stretched over his incredibly tall frame and was so muscular, so positively ripped, that it looked as though he might just explode out of his denim … catsuit? Ohmigod! He was wearing a catsuit. Yes, yes, a denim, one-piece catsuit with tight pants and a belted waist and rolled-up sleeves. And a cape. There was actually a blanket-size fur cape tied twice around his thick neck, and shiny black combat boots the size of tennis rackets adorned his mammoth feet. He looked around thirty-five years old, although all the muscles and the deep tan and the positively chiseled jawbone could have been hiding ten years or adding five. He was flapping his hands at me and motioning for me to get up off the floor. I stood, unable to take my eyes off him, and he turned to examine me immediately.
‘WELL! WHO DO WE HAVE HEEEEERE?’ he bellowed, as best as one can in a falsetto voice. ‘YOU’RE PRETTY, BUT TOO WHOLESOME. AND THE OUTFIT DOES NOTHING FOR YOU!’
‘My name’s Andrea. I’m Miranda’s new assistant.’
He moved his eyes up and down over my body, inspecting every inch. Emily was watching the spectacle with a sneer on her face. The silence was unbearable.
‘KNEE-HIGH BOOTS? WITH A KNEE-LENGTH SKIRT? ARE YOU KIDDING ME? BABY GIRL, IN CASE YOU’RE UNAWARE – IN CASE YOU MISSED THE BIG, BLACK SIGN BY THE DOOR – THIS IS RUNWAY MAGAZINE, THE FUCKING HIIPPEST MAGAZINE ON EARTH. ON EARTH! BUT NO WORRIES, HONEY, NIGEL WILL GET RID OF THAT JERSEY MALL-RAT LOOK YOU’VE GOT GOING SOON ENOUGH.’
He put both his massive hands on my hips and twirled me around. I could feel his eyes looking at my legs and tush.
‘SOON ENOUGH, SWEETIE, I PROMISE YOU, BECAUSE YOU’RE GOOD RAW MATERIAL. NICE LEGS, GREAT HAIR, AND NOT FAT. I CAN WORK WITH NOT FAT. SOON ENOUGH, SWEETIE.’
I wanted to be offended, to pull myself away from the grip he had on my lower body, to take a few minutes and mull over the fact that a complete stranger – and a coworker,
