of person you’re looking for, and I’m confident I’d be perfect for the job,’ I said, remembering Cheryl’s words. She looked amused for a moment but seemed unfazed.
It was at this point that I began to want the job most desperately, in the way people yearn for things they consider unattainable. It might not be akin to getting into law school or having an essay published in a campus journal, but it was, in my starved-for-success mind, a real challenge – a challenge because I was an imposter, and not a very good one at that. I had known the minute I stepped on the Runway floor that I didn’t belong. My clothes and hair were wrong for sure, but more glaringly out of place was my attitude. I didn’t know anything about fashion and I didn’t care. At all. And therefore, I had to have it. Besides, a million girls would die for this job.
I continued to answer her questions about myself with a forthrightness and confidence that surprised me. There wasn’t time to be intimidated. After all, she seemed pleasant enough and I, amazingly, knew nothing to the contrary. We stumbled a bit when she inquired about any foreign languages I spoke. When I told her I knew Hebrew, she paused, pushed her palms flat on her desk and said icily, ‘Hebrew? I was hoping for French, or at least something more useful.’ I almost apologized, but stopped myself.
‘Unfortunately, I don’t speak a word of French, but I’m confident it won’t be a problem.’ She clasped her hands back together.
‘It says here that you studied at Brown?’
‘Yes, I, uh, I was an English major, concentrating on creative writing. Writing has always been a passion.’ So cheesy! I reprimanded myself. Did I really have to use the word ‘passion’?
‘So, does your affinity for writing mean that you’re not particularly interested in fashion?’ She took a sip of sparkling liquid from a glass and set it down quietly. One quick glance at the glass showed that she was the kind of woman who could drink without leaving one of those disgusting lipstick marks. She would always have perfectly lined and filled-in lips regardless of the hour.
‘Oh no, of course not. I adore fashion,’ I lied rather smoothly. ‘I’m looking forward to learning even more about it, since I think it would be wonderful to write about fashion one day.’ Where the hell had I come up with that one? This was becoming an out-of-body experience.
Things progressed with the same relative ease until she asked her final question: Which magazines did I read regularly? I leaned forward eagerly and began to speak: ‘Well, I only subscribe to The New Yorker and Newsweek, but I regularly read The Buzz. Sometimes Time, but it’s dry, and U.S. News is way too conservative. Of course, as a guilty pleasure, I’ll skim Chic, and since I just returned from traveling, I read all of the travel magazines and …’
‘And do you read Runway, Ahn-dre-ah?’ she interrupted, leaning over the desk and peering at me even more intently than before.
It had come so quickly, so unexpectedly, that for the first time that day I was caught off-guard. I didn’t lie, and I didn’t elaborate or even attempt to explain.
‘No.’
After perhaps ten seconds of stony silence, she beckoned for Emily to escort me out. I knew I had the job.
‘It sure doesn’t sound like you have the job,’ Alex, my boyfriend, said softly, playing with my hair as I rested my throbbing head in his lap after the grueling day. I’d gone straight from the interview to his apartment in Brooklyn, not wanting to sleep on Lily’s couch for another night and needing to tell him about everything that had just happened. I’d thought about staying there all the time, but I didn’t want Alex to feel suffocated. ‘I don’t even know why you’d want it.’ After a moment or two, he reconsidered. ‘Actually, it does sound like a pretty phenomenal opportunity. I mean, if this girl Allison started out as Miranda’s assistant and is now an editor at the magazine, well, that’d be good enough for me. Just go for it.’
He was trying so hard to sound really excited for me. We’d been dating since our junior year at Brown, and I knew every inflection of his voice, every look, every signal. He’d just started a few weeks earlier at PS 277 in the Bronx and was so worn down he could barely speak. Even though his kids were only nine years old, he’d been disappointed to see how jaded and cynical they already were. He was disgusted that they all spoke freely about blow jobs, knew ten different slang words for pot, and loved to brag about the stuff they stole or whose cousin was currently residing in a tougher jail. ‘Prison connoisseurs,’ Alex had taken to calling them. ‘They could write a book on the subtle advantages of Sing Sing over Rikers, but they can’t read a word of the English language.’ He was trying to figure out how he could make a difference.
I slid my hand under his T-shirt and started to scratch his back. Poor thing looked so miserable that I felt guilty bothering him with the details of the interview, but I just had to talk about it with someone. ‘I know. I understand that there wouldn’t be anything editorial about the job whatsoever, but I’m sure I’ll be able to do some writing after a few months,’ I said. ‘You don’t think it’s completely selling out to work at a fashion magazine, do you?’
He squeezed my arm and lay down next to me. ‘Baby, you’re a brilliant, wonderful writer, and I know you’ll be fantastic anywhere. And of course it’s not selling out. It’s paying your dues. You’re saying that if you put in a year at Runway you’ll save yourself three more years of bullshit assistant work somewhere else?’
I nodded. ‘That’s what Emily and Allison said, that it was an automatic quid pro quo. Work a year for Miranda and don’t get fired, and she’ll make a call and get you a job anywhere you want.’
‘Then how could you not? Seriously, Andy, you’ll work your year and you’ll get a job at The New Yorker. It’s what you’ve always wanted! And it sure sounds like you’ll get there a whole lot faster doing this than anything else.’
‘You’re right, you’re totally right.’
‘And besides, it would guarantee that you’re moving to New York, which, I have to say, is very appealing to me right now.’ He kissed me, one of those long, lazy kisses it seemed we had personally invented. ‘But stop worrying so much. Like you said yourself, you’re still not sure you have the job. Let’s wait and see.’
We cooked a simple dinner and fell asleep watching Letterman. I was dreaming about obnoxious little nine-year-olds having sex on the playground while they swigged forties of Olde English and screamed at my sweet, loving boyfriend when the phone rang.
Alex picked it up and pressed it to his ear but didn’t bother to open his eyes or say hello. He quickly dropped it next to me. I wasn’t sure I could muster the energy to pick it up.
‘Hello?’ I mumbled, glancing at the clock and seeing that it was 7:15 A.M. Who the hell would call at such an hour?
‘It’s me,’ barked a very angry-sounding Lily.
‘Hi, is everything OK?’
‘Do you think I’d be calling you if everything was OK? I’m so hungover I could die, and I finally stop puking long enough to fall asleep, and I’m awakened by a scarily perky woman who says she works in HR at Elias-Clark. And she’s looking for you. At seven-fifteen in the freakin’ morning. So call her back. And tell
