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 to make a complete ass of me. Once again, I dove onto the elevators and raced past Sophy, who kindly opened the doors to the floor without my even asking. I even remembered to stop in one of the minikitchens and put some ice in one of the Baccarat goblets we kept in a special cabinet over the microwave just for Miranda. Glass in one hand, newspapers in another, I peeled around the corner and smashed directly into Jessica, a.k.a. Manicure Girl. She looked both annoyed and panic-stricken.
‘Andrea, are you aware that Miranda is on her way to the office?’ she asked, looking me up and down.
‘Sure am. I’ve got her newspapers right here and her water right here, and now I just need to get them back to her office. If you’ll excuse me …’
‘Andrea!’ she called as I ran past her, an ice cube flying out of the glass and landing outside the art department. ‘Remember to change your shoes!’
I stopped dead in my tracks and looked down. I was wearing a pair of funky street sneakers, the kind that weren’t designed to do anything but look cool. The rules of dress – unspoken and otherwise – were obviously relaxed when Miranda was away, and even though every single person in the office looked fantastic, each was wearing something they would swear up and down that they’d never, ever wear in front of Miranda. My bright red, mesh sneakers were a prime example.
I had broken a sweat by the time I made it back to our suite. ‘I’ve got all the papers and I bought the magazines, too, just in case. The only thing is, I don’t think I can wear these shoes, can I?’
Emily tore the headset from her ear and flung it down on her desk. ‘No, of course you can’t wear those.’ She picked up the phone, dialed four digits, and announced, ‘Jeffy, bring me a pair of Jimmy’s in a size …’ She looked at me.
‘Nine and a half.’ I pulled a small bottle of Pellegrino out of the closet and filled the glass.
‘Nine and a half. No, now. No, Jeff, I’m serious. Right now. Andrea is wearing sneakers for chrissake, red sneakers, and She’s going to be here any minute. OK, thanks.’
It was then I noticed that in the four minutes I’d been downstairs, Emily had managed to switch her faded jeans to leather pants and her own funky sneakers to open-toe stilettos. She’d also cleaned up the entire office suite, sweeping the contents of both our desks into drawers and stashing all of the incoming gifts that hadn’t yet been transferred to Miranda’s apartment in the closet. She had slicked on a fresh coat of lip gloss and added some color to her cheeks and was presently motioning for me to get moving.
I grabbed the bag of newspapers and shook them out in a pile on the lightbox in her office, a sort of underlit table where Emily said Miranda would stand for hours on end and examine film that had come in from photo shoots. But it was also where she liked her papers arranged, and once again, I consulted my legal pad for the correct order. First, the New York Times, followed by the Wall Street Journal, and then the Washington Post. And on and on the order went in a pattern I couldn’t distinguish, each placed slightly on top of the one before it until they fanned out across the table in formation. Women’s Wear Daily was the single exception: this was to be placed in the middle of her desk.
‘She’s here! Andrea, come out here! She’s on her way up,’ I heard Emily hiss from the outer area. ‘Uri just called to tell me he just dropped her off.’
I put WWD on her desk, placed the Pellegrino on a corner of her desk on a linen napkin (which side? I couldn’t remember which side it was supposed to go on), and darted from the office, taking one last look around to ensure that everything was in order. Jeffy, one of the fashion assistants who helped organize the fashion closet, tossed me a shoe box with a rubber band around it and bolted. I pulled it open immediately. Inside were a pair of Jimmy Choo heels with straps made of camel hair going every which way and buckles nestled in the middle of it all, probably worth around eight hundred dollars. Shit! I had to get these on. I yanked off my sneakers and my now sweaty socks and tossed them under my desk. The right one went on rather easily, but I couldn’t work my stubby fingernail to free the buckle on the left one until – there! I pried it open and thrust my left foot into
