Thought it might help us all work as a team. I really can’t miss it.’
‘Goddamn do-gooder. Always doing good, spreading good cheer wherever you go. I’d hate you if I didn’t love you so much.’ I leaned over and kissed him good-bye.
I found his little green Jetta on the first try and only spent twenty minutes trying to find the parkway that would take me to 95 North, which was wide open. It was a freezing day for November; the temperature was in the midthirties, and there were slick frozen patches on the back roads. But the sun was out, the kind of winter glare that causes unaccustomed eyes to tear and squint, and the air felt clean and cold in my lungs. I rode the entire way with the window rolled down, listening to the ‘Almost Famous’ soundtrack on repeat. I worked my damp hair into a ponytail with one hand to keep it from flying in my eyes, and blew on my hands to keep them warm, or at least warm enough to grip the steering wheel. Only six months out of college, and my life was on the verge of bursting forward. Miranda Priestly, a stranger until yesterday but a powerful woman indeed, had handpicked me to join her magazine. Now I had a concrete reason to leave Connecticut and move – all on my own, as a real adult would – to Manhattan and make it my home. As I pulled into the driveway of my childhood house, sheer exhilaration took over. My cheeks looked red and windburned in the rearview mirror, and my hair was flying wildly about. There was no makeup on my face, and my jeans were dirty around the bottom from trudging through the city slush. But at that moment, I felt beautiful. Natural and cold and clean and crisp, I threw open the front door and called out for my mother. It was the last time in my life I remember feeling so light.
‘A week? Honey, I just don’t see how you’re going to start work in a week,’ my mother said, stirring her tea with a spoon. We were sitting at the kitchen table in our usual spots, my mother drinking her usual decaf tea with Sweet’N Low, me with my usual mug of English Breakfast and sugar. Even though I hadn’t lived at home in four years, all it took was an oversize mug of microwaved tea and a couple Reese’s peanut butter cups to make me feel like I’d never left.
‘Well, I don’t have a choice, and, honestly, I’m lucky to have that. You should’ve heard how hard-core this woman was on the phone,’ I said. Mom looked at me, expressionless. ‘But, whatever, I can’t worry about it. I did just get a job at a really famous magazine with one of the most powerful women in the industry. A job a million girls would die for.’
We smiled at each other, but her smile was tinged with sadness. ‘I’m so happy for you,’ she said. ‘Such a beautiful, grown-up daughter I have. Honey, I just know this is going to be the start of a wonderful, wonderful time in your life. Ah, I remember graduating from college and moving to New York. All alone in that big, crazy city. Scary but so, so exciting. I want you to love every minute of it, all the plays and films and people and shopping and books. It’s going to be the best time of your life – I just know it.’ She rested her hand on mine, something she didn’t usually do. ‘I’m so proud of you.’
‘Thanks, Mom. Does that mean you’re proud enough of me to buy me an apartment, furniture, and a whole new wardrobe?’
‘Yeah, right,’ she said and smacked the top of my head with a magazine on her way to the microwave to heat two more cups. She hadn’t said no, but she wasn’t exactly grabbing her checkbook, either.
I spent the rest of the evening e-mailing everyone I knew, asking if anyone needed a roommate or knew of someone who did. I posted some messages online and called people I hadn’t spoken to in months. No luck. I decided my only choice – without permanently moving onto Lily’s couch and inevitably wrecking our friendship, or crashing at Alex’s, which neither of us was ready for – was to sublet a room short-term, until I could get my bearings in the city. It would be best to find my own room somewhere, and preferably one that was already furnished so I wouldn’t have to deal with that, too.
The phone rang at a little after midnight, and I lunged for it, nearly falling off my twin-size childhood bed in the process. A framed, signed picture of Chris Evert, my childhood hero, smiled down from my wall, just below a bulletin board that still had magazine cutouts of Kirk Cameron plastered across it. I smiled into the phone.
‘Hey, champ, it’s Alex,’ he said with that tone of voice that meant something had happened. It was impossible to tell if it was something good or bad. ‘I just got an e-mail that a girl, Claire McMillan, is looking for a roommate. Princeton girl. I’ve met her before, I think. Dating Andrew, totally normal. You interested?’
‘Sure, why not? Do you have her number?’
‘No, I only have her e-mail, but I’ll forward you her message and you can get in touch with her. I think she’ll be good.’
I e-mailed Claire while I finished talking to Alex and then finally got some sleep in my own bed. Maybe, just maybe, this would work out.
Claire McMillan: not so much. Her apartment was dark and depressing and in the middle of Hell’s Kitchen, and there was a junkie propped up on the doorstep when I arrived. The others weren’t much better. There was a couple looking to rent out an extra room in their apartment who made indirect references to putting up with their constant and loud lovemaking; an artist in her early thirties with four cats and a fervent desire for more; a bedroom at the end of a long, dark hallway, with no windows or closets; a twenty-year-old gay guy in his self-proclaimed ‘slutty stage.’ Each and every miserable room I’d visited was going for well over $1,000 and my salary was cashing in at a whopping $32,500. And although math had never been my strong suit, it didn’t take a genius to figure out that rent would eat up more than $12,000 of it and taxes would take the rest. Oh, and my parents were confiscating the emergencies-only credit card, now that I was an ‘adult.’ Sweet.
Lily pulled through after three straight days of letdowns. Since she had a vested interest in getting me off her couch for good, she e-mailed everyone she knew. A classmate from her Ph.D. program at Columbia had a friend who had a boss who knew two girls who were looking for a roommate. I called immediately and spoke to a very nice girl named Shanti, who told me she and her friend Kendra were looking for someone to move into their Upper East Side apartment, in a room that was minuscule but had a window, a closet, and even an exposed brick wall. For $800 a month. I asked if the apartment had a bathroom and kitchen. It did (no dishwasher or bathtub or elevator, of course, but one can hardly expect living in luxury their first time out). Bingo. Shanti and Kendra ended up being two very sweet and quiet Indian girls who’d just graduated from Duke, worked hellishly long hours at investment banks, and seemed to me, that first day and every day thereafter, utterly indistinguishable from each other. I had found a home.
I’d slept in my new room for three nights already and still felt like a stranger living in a very strange place. The room was minute. Perhaps slightly larger than the storage shed in the backyard of my house in Avon, but not really. And unlike most empty spaces that actually looked bigger with furniture, my room had shrunk to half its size. I had naïvely eyed the tiny square and decided that it had to be close to a normal-size room and that I’d just buy the usual bedroom set: a queen-size bed, a dresser, maybe a nightstand or two. Lily and I had taken Alex’s car to Ikea, the postcollege apartment mecca, and picked out a beautiful light-colored wood set and a woven rug with shades of light blue, dark blue, royal blue, and indigo. Again, like fashion, home decorating was not my strong suit: I believe that Ikea was into its ‘Blue Period.’ We bought a duvet cover with a blue-flecked pattern and the fluffiest comforter they sold. She persuaded me to get one of those Chinese rice-paper lamps for the nightstand, and I chose some preframed black-and-white pictures to complement the deep red roughness of my much-hyped exposed brick wall. Elegant and casual, and not a little Zen. Perfect for my first adult room in the big
