The Devil Wears Prada Read Free

here. I’m expecting we’ll be all ready to
leave in fifteen minutes. Understood?”
     
     Fifteen
minutes? Was this woman hallucinating? It would take a minute or two to get
downstairs and into a Town Car, another six or eight to get to her apartment, and
then somewhere in the vicinity of three hours for me to find the puppy in her
eighteen-room apartment, extract the bucking stick shift from its parking spot,
and make my way the twenty blocks to the office.
     
     “Of
course, Miranda. Fifteen minutes.”
     
     I
started shaking again the moment I ran out of her office, wondering if my heart
could just up and give out at the ripe old age of twenty-three. The first
cigarette I lit landed directly on the top of my new Jimmys, where instead of
falling to the cement it smoldered for just long enough to burn a small, neat
hole.Great, I muttered.That’s just fucking great. Chalk up my total as an
even four grand for today’s ruined merchandise—a new personal best.
Maybe she’d die before I got back, I thought, deciding that now was the
time to look on the bright side. Maybe, just maybe, she’d keel over from
something rare and exotic and we’d all be released from her wellspring of
misery. I relished a last drag before stamping out the cigarette and told
myself to be rational.You don’t want her to die, I thought, stretching
out in the backseat.Because if she does, you lose all hope of killing her
yourself. And thatwould be a shame.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    2
     
     I knew
nothing when I went for my first interview and stepped onto the infamous
Elias-Clark elevators, those transporters of all thingsen vogue . I had no idea
that the city’s most well-connected gossip columnists and socialites and
media executives obsessed over the flawlessly made-up, turned-out, turned-in
riders of those sleek and quiet lifts. I had never seen women with such radiant
blond hair, didn’t know that those brand-name highlights cost six grand a
year to maintain or that others in the know could identify the colorists after
a quick glance at the finished product. I had never laid eyes on such beautiful
men. They were perfectly toned—not too muscular because
“that’snot sexy”—and they showed off their lifelong
dedication to gymwork in finely ribbed turtlenecks and tight leather pants.
Bags and shoes I’d never seen on real people shoutedPrada! Armani!
Versace! from every surface. I had heard from a friend of a friend—an
editorial assistant atChic magazine—that every now and then the
accessories get to meet their makers in those very elevators, a touching reunion
where Miuccia, Giorgio, or Donatella can once again admire their summer
‘02 stilettos or their spring couture teardrop bag in person. I knew
things were changing for me—I just wasn’t sure it was for the
better.
     
     I had,
until this point, spent the past twenty-three years embodying small-town
America. My entire existence was a perfect cliché. Growing up in Avon,
Connecticut, had meant high school sports, youth group meetings,
“drinking parties” at nice suburban ranch homes when the parents
were away. We wore sweatpants to school, jeans for Saturday night, ruffled
puffiness for semiformal dances. And college! Well, that was a world of
sophistication after high school. Brown had provided endless activities and
classes and groups for every imaginable type of artist, misfit, and computer
geek. Whatever intellectual or creative interest I wanted to pursue, regardless
of how esoteric or unpopular it may have been, had some sort of outlet at
Brown. High fashion was perhaps the single exception to this widely
bragged-about fact. Four years spent muddling around Providence in fleeces and
hiking boots, learning about the French impressionists, and writing obnoxiously
long-winded English papers did not—in any conceivable way—prepare
me for my very first postcollege job.
     
     I
managed to put it off as long as possible. For the three months