’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 naively 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 post college 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 city.

Perfect, that is, until it all actually arrived. It seems simply eyeing a room isn’t quite the same as measuring it. Nothing fit. Alex put the bed together and by the time he’d pushed it against the exposed-brick wall (Manhattan code for “unfinished wall”) it had consumed the entire room. I had to send the delivery men back with the six-drawer dresser, the two adorable nightstands, and even the full-length mirror. The men and Alex did lift up the bed, however, and I was able to slip the tri-blue rug under it, and a few blue inches peeked out from underneath the wooden behemoth. The rice-paper lamp had no nightstand or dresser on which to rest, so I simply placed it on the floor, wedged in the six inches between the bed frame and the sliding closet door. And even though I tried special mounting tape, nails, duct tape, screws, wires, Krazy Glue, double-sided tape, and much cursing, the framed photos refused to adhere to the exposed brick wall. After nearly three hours of effort and knuckles rubbed bleeding and raw from the brick, I finally propped them up on the windowsill. It was for the best, I thought. Blocked a bit of the direct view the woman living across the air shaft had into my room. None of it mattered, though. Not the air shaft instead of a majestic skyline or the lack of drawer space or the closet that was too small to hold a winter coat. The room was mine—the first I could decorate all on my own, with no input from parents or roommates—and I loved it.

It was the Sunday night before my first day of work, and I could do nothing but agonize over what to wear the next day. Kendra, the nicer of my two apartment mates, kept poking her head in and asking quietly if she could help at all. Considering the two of them wore ultraconservative suits to work each day, I declined any fashion input. I paced the living room as much as I could manage when each length only took four strides, and sat down on the futon in front of the TV. Just what does one wear to the first day working for the most fashionable fashion editor of the most fashionable fashion magazine in existence? I’d heard of Prada (from the few Jappy girls who carried the backpacks at Brown) and Louis Vuitton (because both of my grandmothers sported the signature-print bags without realizing how cool they were) and maybe even Gucci (because who hasn’t heard of Gucci?). But I sure didn’t own a single stitch of it, and I wouldn’t have known what to do with it if the entire contents of all three stores resided in my miniature closet. I walked back to my room—or, rather, the wall-to-wall mattress that I called a room—and collapsed on that big, beautiful bed, banging my ankle on the bulky frame. Shit. What now?

After much agonizing and clothes-flinging, I finally decided on a light blue sweater and a knee-length black skirt, with my knee-high black boots. I already knew that a briefcase wouldn’t fly there, so I was left with no choice but to use my black canvas purse. The last thing I remember about that night was trying to navigate around my massive bed in high-heeled boots, a skirt, and no shirt, and sitting down to rest from the exhaustion of the effort.

I must have passed out from sheer anxiety, because it was adrenaline alone that awakened me at 5:30 A.M. I bolted from the bed. My nerves had been in perpetual overdrive all week, and my head felt like it would explode. I had exactly an hour and a half to shower, dress, and make my way from my fraternity-like building at 96th and Third to midtown via public transportation, a still sinister and intimidating concept. That meant I had to allot an hour for travel time and a half hour to make myself beautiful.

The shower was horrific. It made a high-pitched squealing noise like one of those dog-training whistles, remaining steadfastly lukewarm until just before I stepped out into the freezing-cold bathroom, at which point the water turned scalding. It took a mere three days of that routine before I began sprinting from my bed, turning on the shower fifteen minutes early, and heading back under the covers. When I snoozed three more times with the alarm clock and went back for round two in the bathroom, the mirrors would be all steamed up from the gloriously hot—although trickling—water.

I got myself into my binding and uncomfortable outfit and out the door in twenty-five minutes—a record. And it took only ten minutes to find the nearest subway, something I should’ve done the night before but was too busy scoffing at my mother’s suggestion to take a “run-through” so I wouldn’t get lost. When I’d gone for the interview the week before I’d taken a cab, and I was already convinced that this subway experiment was going to be a nightmare. But, remarkably, there was an English-speaking attendant in the booth who instructed me to take the 6 train to 59th Street. She said I’d exit right on 59th and would have to walk two blocks west to Madison. Easy. I rode the cold train in silence, one of the only people crazy enough to be awake and actually moving at such a miserable hour in the middle of November. So far, so good—no glitches until it was time to make my way up to street level.

I took the nearest stairs and stepped out into a frigid day where the only light I saw was emanating from twenty-four-hour bodegas. Behind me was Bloomingdale’s, but nothing else looked familiar. Elias-Clark, Elias-Clark, Elias-Clark. Where was that building? I turned in my place 180 degrees until I saw a street sign: 60th Street and Lexington. Well, 59th can’t be that far away from 60th, but which way should I walk to make the streets go west? And where was Madison in comparison to Lexington? Nothing looked familiar from my visit to the building the week before, since I’d been dropped off right in front. I strolled for a bit, happy to have left enough time to get as lost as I was, and finally ducked into a deli for a cup of coffee.

“Hello, sir. I can’t seem to find my way to the Elias-Clark building. Could you please point me in the right direction?” I asked the nervous-looking man behind the cash register. I tried not to smile sweetly, remembering what everyone had told me about not being in Avon anymore, and how people here don’t exactly respond well to good manners. He scowled at me, and I got nervous it was because he thought me rude. I smiled sweetly.

“One dollah,” he said, holding out his hand.

“You’re charging me for directions?”

“One dollah, skeem or bleck, you peek.”

I stared at him for a moment before I realized he knew only enough English to converse about coffee. “Oh, skim would be perfect. Thank you so much.” I handed over a dollar and headed back outside, more lost than ever. I asked people who worked at newsstands, as street sweepers, even a man who was tucked inside one of those movable breakfast carts. Not a single one understood me well enough to so much as point in the direction of 59th and Madison, and I had brief flashbacks to Delhi, depression, dysentery.No! I will find it.

A few more minutes of wandering aimlessly around a waking midtown actually landed me at the front door of the Elias-Clark building. The lobby glowed behind the glass doors in the early-morning darkness, and it looked, for those first few moments, like a warm, welcoming place. But when I pushed the revolving door to enter, it fought me. Harder and harder I pushed, until my body weight was thrust forward and my face was nearly pressed against the glass, and only then did it budge. When it did begin to move, it slid slowly at first, prompting me to push ever harder. But as soon as it picked up some momentum, the glass behemoth whipped around, hitting me from behind and forcing me to trip over my feet and shuffle visibly to remain standing. A man behind the security desk laughed.

“Tricky, eh? Not the first time I seen that happen, and won’t be the last,” he chortled, fleshy cheeks jiggling. “They getcha good here.”

I looked him over quickly and decided to hate him and knew that he would never like me, regardless of what I said or how I acted. I smiled anyway.

“I’m Andrea,” I said, pulling a knit mitten from my hand and reaching over the desk. “Today’s my first day of work at Runway. I’m Miranda Priestly’s new assistant.”

“And I’m sorry!” he roared, throwing his round head back with glee. “Just call me ‘Sorry for You’! Hah! Hah! Hah! Hey, Eduardo, check this out. She’s one of Miranda’s new slaves ! Where you from, girl, bein’ all friendly and shit? Topeka fuckin’ Kansas? She is gonna eat you alive, hah, hah, hah!”

But before I could respond, a portly man wearing the same uniform came over and with no subtlety whatsoever looked me up and down. I braced for more mocking and guffaws, but it didn’t come. Instead, he turned a kind face to mine and looked me in the eyes.

“I’m Eduardo, and this idiot here’s Mickey,” he said, motioning to the first man, who looked annoyed that Eduardo had acted civilly and ruined all the fun. “Don’t make no never mind of him, he’s just kiddin’ with you.” He spoke with a mixed Spanish and New York accent, as he picked up a sign-in book. “You just fill out this here information, and I’ll give you a temporary pass to go upstairs. Tell ’em you need a card wit your pitcher on it from HR.”

I must have looked at him gratefully, because he got embarrassed and shoved the book across the counter. “Well, go on now, fill ’er out. And good luck today, girl. You gonna need it.”

I was too nervous and exhausted at this point to ask him to explain, and besides, I didn’t really have to. About the only thing I’d had time to do in the week between accepting the job and starting work was to learn a little bit about my new boss. I had Googled her and was surprised to find that Miranda Priestly was born Miriam Princhek, in London’s East End. Hers was like all the other orthodox Jewish families in the town, stunningly poor but devout. Her father occasionally worked odd jobs, but mostly they relied on the community for support since he spent most of his days studying Jewish texts. Her mother had died in childbirth with Miriam, and it washer mother who moved in and helped raise the children. And were there children! Eleven in all. Most of her brothers and sisters went on to work blue-collar jobs like their father, with little time to do anything but pray and work; a couple managed to get themselves into and through the university, only to marry young and begin having large families of their own. Miriam was the single exception to the family tradition.

After saving the small bills her older siblings would slip her whenever they were able, Miriam promptly dropped out of high school upon turning seventeen—a mere three months shy of graduation—to take a job as an assistant to an up-and-coming British designer, helping him put together his shows each season. After a few years of making a name for herself as one of the darlings of London’s burgeoning fashion world and studying French at night, she scored a job as a junior editor at the French Chic magazine in Paris. By this time, she had little to do with her family: they didn’t understand her life or ambitions, and she was embarrassed by their old-fashioned piety and overwhelming lack of sophistication. The alienation from her family was completed shortly after joining French Chic when, at twenty-four years old, Miriam Princhek became Miranda Priestly, shedding her undeniably ethnic name for one with more panache. Her rough, cockney-girl British accent was soon replaced by a carefully cultivated, educated one, and by her late twenties, Miriam’s transformation from Jewish peasant to secular socialite was complete. She rose quickly, ruthlessly, through the ranks of the magazine world.

She spent ten years at the helm of French Runway before Elias transferred her to the number-one spot at American Runway, the ultimate achievement. She moved her two daughters and her rock-star then husband (himself eager to gain more exposure in America) to a penthouse apartment on Fifth Avenue at 76th Street and began a new era at Runway magazine: the Priestly years, the sixth of which we were nearing as I began my first day.

By some stroke of dumb luck, I would be working for nearly a month before Miranda was back in the office. She took her vacation every year starting a week before Thanksgiving until right after New Year’s. Typically, she’d spend a few weeks at the flat she kept in London, but this year, I was told, she had dragged her husband and daughters to Oscar de la Renta’s estate in the Dominican Republic for two weeks before spending Christmas and New Year’s at the Ritz in Paris. I’d also been forewarned that even though she was technically “on vacation,” she’d still be fully reachable and working at all times, and therefore, so should every single other person on staff. I was to be appropriately prepped and trained without her highness present. That way, Miranda wouldn’t have to suffer my inevitable mistakes while I learned the job. Sounded good to me. So at 7:00 A.M. on the dot, I signed my name into Eduardo’s book and was buzzed through the turnstiles for the very first time. “Strike a pose!” Eduardo called after me, just before the elevator doors swept shut.

Emily, looking remarkably haggard and sloppy in a fitted but wrinkled sheer white T-shirt and hyper trendy cargo pants was waiting for me in the reception area, clutching a cup of Starbucks and flipping though the new December issue. Her high heels were placed firmly on the glass coffee table, and a black lacy bra showed obviously through the completely transparent cotton of her shirt. Lipstick, smeared a bit around her mouth by the coffee cup, and uncombed, wavy red hair that spilled down over her shoulders made her look as though she’d spent the last seventy-two hours in bed.

“Hey, welcome,” she muttered, giving me my first official up-down look-over by someone other than the security guard. “Nice boots.”

My heart surged. Was she serious? Or sarcastic? Her tone made it impossible to tell. My arches ached already and my toes were jammed up against the front, but if I’d actually been complimented on an item of my outfit by a Runway-er, it might be worth the pain.

Emily looked at me a moment longer and then swung her legs off the table, sighing dramatically. “Well, let’s get to it. It’s really lucky for you that she’s not here,” she said. “Not that she’s not great, of course, because she is,” she added in what I would soon recognize—and come to adopt myself—as the classic Runway Paranoid Turnaround. Just when something negative about Miranda slips out from a Clacker’s lips—however justified—paranoia that Miranda will find out overwhelms the speaker and inspires an about-face. One of my favorite workday pastimes became watching my colleagues scramble to negate whatever blasphemy they’d uttered.

Emily slid her card through the electronic reader, and we walked side by side, in silence, through the winding hallways to the center of the floor, where Miranda’s office suite was located. I watched as she opened the suite’s French doors and tossed her bag and coat on one of the desks that sat directly outside Miranda’s cavernous office. “This is your desk, obviously,” she motioned to a smooth, wooden, L-shaped Formica slab that sat directly opposite hers. It had a brand-new turquoise iMac computer, a phone, and some filing trays, and there were already pens and paper clips and some notebooks in the drawers. “I left most of my stuff for you. It’s easier if I just order the new stuff for myself.”

Emily had just been promoted to the position of senior assistant, leaving the junior assistant position open for me. She explained that she would spend two years as Miranda’s senior assistant, after which she’d be skyrocketed to an amazing fashion position at Runway. The three-year assistant program she’d be completing was the ultimate guarantee of going places in the fashion world, but I was clinging to the belief that my one-year sentence would suffice for The New Yorker. Allison had already left Miranda’s office area for her new post in the beauty department, where she’d be responsible for testing new makeup, moisturizers, and hair products and writing them up. I wasn’t sure how being Miranda’s assistant had prepared her for this task, but I was impressed nonetheless. The promises were true: people who worked for Miranda got places.

The rest of the staff began streaming in around ten, about fifty in all of editorial. The biggest department was fashion, of course, with close to thirty people, including all the accessories assistants. Features, beauty, and art rounded out the mix. Nearly everyone stopped by Miranda’s office to schmooze with Emily, overhear any gossip concerning her boss, and check out the new girl. I met dozens of people that first morning, everyone flashing enormous, toothy white smiles and appearing genuinely interested in meeting me.

The men were all flamboyantly gay, adorning themselves in second-skin leather pants and ribbed T’s that stretched over bulging biceps and perfect pecs. The art director, an older man sporting champagne blond, thinning hair, who looked like he dedicated his life to emulating Elton John, was turned out in rabbit-fur loafers and eyeliner. No one batted an eye. We’d had gay groups on campus, and I had a few friends who’d come out the past few years, but none of them looked like this. It was like being surrounded by the entire cast and crew of Rent-with better costumes, of course.

The women, or rather the girls, were individually beautiful. Collectively, they were mind-blowing. Most appeared to be about twenty-five, and few looked a day older than thirty. While nearly all of them had enormous, glimmering diamonds on their ring fingers, it seemed impossible that any had actually given birth yet—or ever would. In and out, in and out they walked gracefully on four-inch skinny heels, sashaying over to my desk to extend milky-white hands with long, manicured fingers, calling themselves “Jocelyn who works with Hope,” “Nicole from fashion,” and “Stef who oversees accessories.” Only one, Shayna, was shorter than five-nine, but she was so petite it seemed impossible for her to carry another inch of height. All weighed less than 110 pounds.

As I sat in my swivel chair, trying to remember everyone’s name, the prettiest girl I’d seen all day swooped in. She wore a rose-colored cashmere sweater that looked like it was spun from pink clouds. The most amazing, white hair swirled down her back. Her six-one frame looked as though it carried only enough weight to keep her upright, but she moved with the surprising grace of a dancer. Her cheeks glowed, and her multi-carat, flawless diamond engagement ring emanated an incredible lightness. I thought she’d caught me staring at it, since she flung her hand under my nose.

“I created it,” she announced, smiling at her hand and looking at me. I looked to Emily for an explanation, a hint as to who this might be, but she was on the phone again. I thought the girl was referring to the ring, meant that she had actually designed it, but then she said, “Isn’t it a gorgeous color? It’s one coat Marshmallow and one coat Ballet Slipper. Actually, Ballet Slipper came first, and then a topcoat to finish it off. It’s perfect—light colored without looking like you painted your nails with White Out. I think I’ll use this every time I get a manicure!” And she turned on her heels and walked out.Ah, yes, a pleasure to meet you, too, I mentally directed toward her back as she strutted away.

I’d been enjoying meeting all my coworkers; everyone seemed kind and sweet and, except for the beautiful weirdo with the nail polish fetish, they all appeared interested in getting to know me. Emily hadn’t left my side yet, seizing every opportunity to teach me something. She provided running commentary on who was really important, whom not to piss off, whom it was beneficial to befriend because they threw the best parties. When I described Manicure Girl, Emily’s face lit up.

“Oh!” she breathed, more excited than I’d heard her about anyone else yet. “Isn’t she just amazing?”

“Um, yeah, she seemed nice. We didn’t really get a chance to talk, she was just, you know, showing me her nail polish.”

Emily smiled widely, proudly. “Yes, well, you do know who she is, don’t you?”

I wracked my brain, trying to remember if she looked like any movie stars or singers or models, but I couldn’t place her. So, she was famous! Maybe that’s why she hadn’t introduced herself—I was supposed to recognize her. But I didn’t. “No, actually, I don’t. Is she famous?”

The stare I received in response was part disbelief, part disgust. “Um,yeah, ” Emily said, emphasizing the “yeah” and squinting her eyes as if to say, You total fucking idiot. “That is Jessica Duchamps.” She waited. I waited. Nothing. “You do know who that is, right?” Again, I ran lists through my mind, trying to connect something with this new information, but I was quite sure I’d never, ever heard of her. Besides, this game was getting old.

“Emily, I’ve never seen her before, and her name doesn’t sound familiar. Would you please tell me who she is?” I asked, struggling to remain calm. The ironic part was that I didn’t even care who she was, but Emily was clearly not going to give this up until she’d made me look like a complete and total loser.

Her smile this time was patronizing. “Of course. You just had to say so. Jessica Duchamps is, well, a Duchamps! You know, as in the most successful French restaurant in the city! Her parents own it—isn’t that crazy? They are so unbelievably rich.”

“Oh, really?” I said, feigning enthusiasm for the fact that this super-pretty girl was worth knowing because her parents were restaurateurs. “That’s great.”

I answered a few phone calls with the requisite “Miranda Priestly’s office,” although both Emily and I were worried that Miranda herself would call and I wouldn’t know what to do. Panic set in during a call when an unidentified woman barked something incoherent in a strong British accent, and I threw the phone to Emily without thinking to put it on hold first.

“It’s her,” I whispered urgently. “Take it.”

Emily gave me my first viewing of her specialty look. Never one to mince emotions, she could raise her eyebrows and drop her chin in a way that clearly conveyed equal parts disgust and pity.

“Miranda? It’s Emily,” she said, a bright smile lighting up her face as if Miranda might be able to seep through the phone and see her. Silence. A frown. “Oh, Mimi, so sorry! The new girl thought you were Miranda! I know, how funny. I guess we have to work on not thinking every British accent is necessarily our boss! ” She looked at me pointedly, her over tweezed eyebrows arching even higher.

She chatted a bit longer while I continued to answer the phone and take messages for Emily, who would then call the people back—with nonstop narration on their order of importance, if any, in Miranda’s life. About noon, just as the first hunger pangs were beginning, I picked up a call and heard a British accent on the other end.

“Hello? Allison, is that you?” asked the icy-sounding but regal voice. “I’ll be needing a skirt.”

I cupped my hand over the receiver and felt my eyes open wide. “Emily, it’s her, it’s definitely her,” I hissed, waving the receiver to get her attention. “She wants a skirt!”

Emily turned to see my panic-stricken face and promptly hung up the phone without so much as “I’ll call you later” or even “good-bye.” She pressed the button to switch Miranda to her line, and plastered on another wide grin.

“Miranda? It’s Emily. What can I do?” She put her pen to her pad and began writing furiously, forehead furrowing intently. “Yes, of course. Naturally.” And as fast as it happened, it was over. I looked at her expectantly. She rolled her eyes at me for appearing so eager.

“Well, it looks like you have your first job. Miranda needs a skirt for tomorrow, among other things, so we’ll need to get it on a plane by tonight, at the latest.”

“OK, well, what kind does she need?” I asked, still reeling from the shock that a skirt would be traveling to the Dominican Republic simply because she’d requested it do so.

“She didn’t say exactly,” Emily muttered as she picked up the phone.

“Hi, Jocelyn, it’s me. She wants a skirt, and I’ll need to have it on Mrs. de la Renta’s flight tonight, since she’ll be meeting Miranda down there. No, I have no idea. No, she didn’t say. I really don’t know. OK, thanks.” She turned to me and said, “It makes it more difficult when she’s not specific. She’s too busy to worry about details like that, so she didn’t say what material or color or style or brand she wants. But that’s OK. I know her size, and I definitely know her taste well enough to predict exactly what she’ll like. That was Jocelyn from the fashion department. They’ll start calling some in.” I pictured Jerry Lewis presiding over a skirt telethon with a giant scoreboard, drum role, and voilà! Gucci and spontaneous applause.

Not quite. “Calling in” the skirts was my very first lesson in Runway ridiculousness, although I do have to say that the process was as efficient as a military operation. Either Emily or myself would notify the fashion assistants—about eight in all, who each maintained contacts within a specified list of designers and stores. The assistants would immediately begin calling all of their public relations contacts at the various design houses and, if appropriate, at upscale Manhattan stores and tell them that Miranda Priestly—yes, Miranda Priestly, and yes, it was indeed for her personal use—was looking for a particular item. Within minutes, every PR account exec and assistant working at Michael Kors, Gucci, Prada, Versace, Fendi, Armani, Chanel, Barney’s, Chloé, Calvin Klein, Bergdorf, Roberto Cavalli, and Saks would be messengering over (or, in some cases, hand-delivering) every skirt they had in stock that Miranda Priestly could conceivably find attractive. I watched the process unfold like a highly choreographed ballet, each player knowing exactly where and when and how their next step would occur. While this near-daily activity unfolded, Emily sent me to pick up a few other things that we’d need to send with the skirt that night.

“Your car will be waiting for you on Fifty-eighth Street,” she said while working two phone lines and scribbling instructions for me on a piece of Runway stationery. She paused briefly to toss me a cell phone and said, “Here, take this in case I need to reach you or you have any questions. Never turn it off. Always answer it.” I took the phone and the paper and headed down to the 58th Street side of the building, wondering how I was ever going to find “my car.” Or even, really, what that meant. I had barely stepped on the sidewalk and looked meekly around before a squat, gray-haired man gumming a pipe approached.

“You Priestly’s new girl?” he croaked through tobacco-stained lips, never removing the mahogany-colored pipe. I nodded. “I’m Rich. The dispatcher. You wanna car, you talka to me. Got it, blondie?” I nodded again and ducked into the backseat of a black Cadillac sedan. He slammed the door shut and waved.

“Where you going, miss?” the driver asked, pulling me back to the present. I realized I had no idea and pulled the piece of paper from my pocket.

First stop: Tommy Hilfiger’s studio at 355 West 57th St., 6th Floor. Ask for Leanne.

She’ll give you everything we need.

I gave the driver the address and stared out the window. It was one o’clock on a frigid winter afternoon, I was twenty-three years old, and I was riding in the backseat of a chauffeured sedan, on my way to Tommy Hilfiger’s studio. And I was positively starving. It took nearly forty-five minutes to go the fifteen blocks during the midtown lunch hour, my first glimpse of real city gridlock. The driver told me he’d circle the block until I came out again, and off I went to Tommy’s studio. When I asked for Leanne at the receptionist’s desk on the sixth floor, an adorable girl not a day older than eighteen came bounding down the stairs.

“Hi!” she called, stretching out the “I” sound for a few seconds. “You must be Andrea, Miranda’s new assistant. We sure do love her around here, so welcome to the team!” She grinned. I grinned. She pulled a massive plastic bag out from underneath a table and immediately spilled its contents on the floor. “Here we have Caroline’s favorite jeans in three colors, and we threw in some baby T’s, too. And Cassidy just adores Tommy’s khaki skirts—we gave them to her in olive and stone.” Jean skirts, denim jackets, even a few pair of socks came flying out of the bag, and all I could do was stare: there were enough clothes to constitute four or more total preteen wardrobes.Who the hell are Cassidy and Caroline? I wondered, staring at the loot. What self-respecting person wears Tommy Hilfiger jeans—in three different colors, no less?

I must’ve looked thoroughly confused, because Leanne quite purposely turned her back while repacking the clothes and said, “I just know Miranda’s daughters will love this stuff. We’ve been dressing them for years, and Tommy insists on picking the clothes out for them himself.” I shot her a grateful look and threw the bag over my shoulder.

“Good luck!” she called as the elevator doors closed, a genuine smile taking up most of her face. “You’re lucky to have such an awesome job!” Before she could say it, I found myself mentally finishing the sentence—a million girls would die for it.And for that moment, having just seen a famous designer’s studio and in possession of thousands of dollars worth of clothes, I thought she was right.

Once I got the hang of things, the rest of the day flew. I debated for a few minutes whether anyone would be mad if I took a minute to pick up a sandwich, but I had no choice. I hadn’t eaten anything since my croissant at seven this morning, and it was nearly two. I asked the driver to pull over at a deli and decided at the last minute to get him one, too. His jaw dropped when I handed him the turkey and honey mustard, and I wondered if I had made him uncomfortable.

“I just figured you were hungry, too,” I said. “You know, driving around all day, you probably don’t have much time for lunch.”

“Thank you, miss, I appreciate it. It’s just that I’ve been driving around Elias-Clark girls for twelve years, and they are not so nice. You are very nice,” he said in a thick but indeterminate accent, looking at me in the rear view mirror. I smiled at him and felt a momentary flash of foreboding. But then the moment passed and we each munched our turkey wraps while sitting in gridlock and listening to his favorite CD, which sounded to me like little more than a woman shrieking the same thing over and over in an unknown language, the whole thing set to sitar music.

Emily’s next written instruction was to pick up a pair of white shorts that Miranda desperately needed for tennis. I figured we’d be headed to Polo, but she had written Chanel. Chanel made white tennis shorts? The driver took me to the private salon, where an older saleswoman whose face lift had left her eyes looking like slits handed me a pair of white cotton-Lycra hot pants, size zero, pinned to a silk hanger and draped in a velvet garment bag. I looked at the shorts, which appeared as though they wouldn’t fit a six-year-old, and looked back to the woman.

“Um, do you really think Miranda will wear these?” I asked tentatively, convinced the woman could open that pit-bull mouth of hers and consume me whole. She glared at me.

“Well, I should hope so, miss, considering they’re custom measured and cut, according to her exact specifications,” she snarled as she handed the mini shorts over. “Tell her Mr. Kopelman sends his best.”Sure, lady. Whoever that is.

My next stop was what Emily wrote as “way downtown,” J&R Computer World near City Hall. Seemed it was the only store in the entire city that sold Warriors of the West, a computer game that Miranda wanted to purchase for Oscar and Annette de la Renta’s son, Moises. By the time I made it downtown an hour later, I’d realized that the cell phone could make long-distance calls, and I was happily dialing my parents and telling them how great the job was.

“Um, Dad? Hi, it’s Andy. Guess where I am now? Yes, of course I’m at work, but that happens to be in the backseat of a chauffeured car cruising around Manhattan. I’ve already been to Tommy Hilfiger and Chanel, and after I buy this computer game, I’m on my way to Oscar de la Renta’s apartment on Park Avenue to drop all the stuff off. No, it’s not for him! Miranda’s in the DR and Annette’s flying there to meet them all tonight. On a private plane, yes! Dad! It stands for the Dominican Republic, of course!”

He sounded wary but pleased that I was so happy, and I came to decide that I was hired as college-educated messenger. Which was absolutely fine with me. After leaving the bag of Tommy clothes, the hot pants, and the computer game with a very distinguished-looking doorman in a very plush Park Avenue lobby (so this is what people mean when they talk about Park Avenue!), I headed back to the Elias-Clark building. When I walked into my office area, Emily was sitting Indian-style on the floor, wrapping presents in plain white paper with white ribbons. She was surrounded by mountains of red-and-white boxes, all identical in shape, hundreds, perhaps thousands, scattered between our desks and overflowing into Miranda’s office. Emily was unaware that I was watching her, and I saw that it took her only two minutes to wrap each individual box perfectly and an additional fifteen seconds to tie on a white satin ribbon. She moved efficiently, not wasting a single second, piling the wrapped white boxes in new mountains behind her. The wrapped pile grew and grew, but the unwrapped pile didn’t shrink. I estimated that she could be at it for the next four days and still not finish.

I called her name over the eighties CD she had playing from her computer. “Um, Emily? Hi, I’m back.”

She turned toward me and for a brief moment appeared to have no idea who I was. Completely blank. But then my new-girl status came rushing back. “How’d it go?” she asked quickly. “Did you get everything on the list?”

I nodded.

“Even the video game? When I called, there was only one copy left. It was there?”

I nodded again.

“And you gave it all to the de la Rentas’ doorman on Park? The clothes, the shorts, everything?”

“Yep. No problem. It went very smoothly, and I dropped it all off a few minutes ago. I was wondering, will Miranda actually wear those—”

“Listen, I need to run to the bathroom and I’ve been waiting for you to get back. Just sit by the phone for a minute, OK?”

“You haven’t gone to the bathroom since I left?” I asked incredulously. It had been five hours. “Why not?”

Emily finished tying the ribbon on the box she had just wrapped and looked at me coolly. “Miranda doesn’t tolerate anyone except her assistants answering her phone, so since you weren’t here, I didn’t want to go. I suppose I could have run out for a minute, but I know she’s having a hectic day, and I want to make sure that I’m always available to her. So no, we do not go to the bathroom—or anywhere else—without clearing it with each other. We need to work together to make sure that we are doing the best job possible for her. OK?”

“Sure,” I said. “Go ahead. I’ll be right here.” She turned and walked away, and I put my hand on the desk to steady myself. No going to the bathroom without a coordinated war plan? Did she really sit in that office for the past five hours willing her bladder to behave because she worried that a woman across the Atlantic may call in the two and a half minutes it would take to run to the ladies’ room? Apparently so. It seemed a little dramatic, but I assumed that was just Emily being overly enthusiastic. There was no way that Miranda actually demanded that of her assistants. I was sure of it. Or did she?

I picked up a few sheets of paper from the printer and saw that it was titled “X-Mas Presents Received.” One, two, three, four, five,six single-spaced pages of gifts, with sender and item on one line each. Two hundred and fifty-six presents in all. It looked like a wedding registry for the Queen of England, and I couldn’t take it in fast enough. There was a Bobby Brown makeup set from Bobby Brown herself, a one-of-a-kind leather Kate Spade handbag from Kate and Andy Spade, a Smythson of Bond Street burgundy leather organizer from Graydon Carter, a mink-lined sleeping bag from Miuccia Prada, a multi strand beaded Verdura bracelet from Aerin Lauder, a diamond-encrusted watch from Donatella Versace, a case of champagne from Cynthia Rowley, a matching beaded tank top and evening bag from Mark Badgley and James Mischka, a collection of Cartier pens from Irv Ravitz, a chinchilla muffler from Vera Wang, a zebra-print jacket from Alberto Ferretti, a Burberry cashmere blanket from Rosemarie Bravo. And that was just the start. There were handbags in every shape and size from everyone: Herb Ritts, Bruce Weber, Giselle Bundchen, Hillary Clinton, Tom Ford, Calvin Klein, Annie Leibovitz, Nicole Miller, Adrienne Vittadini, Michael Kors, Helmut Lang, Giorgio Armani, John Sahag, Bruno Magli, Mario Testino, and Narcisco Rodriguez, to name a few. There were dozens of donations made in Miranda’s name to various charities, what must have been a hundred bottles of wine and champagne, eight or ten Dior bags, a couple dozen scented candles, a few pieces of Oriental pottery, silk pajamas, leather-bound books, bath products, chocolates, bracelets, caviar, cashmere sweaters, framed photographs, and enough flower arrangements and/or potted plants to decorate one of those five-hundred-couple mass weddings they have in soccer stadiums in China. Ohmigod! Was this reality? Was this actually happening? Was I now working for a woman who received 256 presents at Christmas from some of the world’s most famous people? Or not so famous? I wasn’t sure. I recognized a few of the really obvious celebrities and designers, but didn’t know then that the others comprised some of the most sought-after photographers, makeup artists, models, socialites, and a whole slew of Elias-Clark executives. Just as I was wondering if Emily actually knew who all the people were, she walked back in. I tried to pretend I wasn’t reading the list, but she didn’t mind at all.

“Crazy, isn’t it? She is the coolest woman ever,” she gushed, snatching the sheets off her desk and gazing at them with what can only be described as lust. “Have you ever seen more amazing things in your life? This is last year’s list. I just pulled it out so we know what to expect since the gifts have begun coming in already. That’s definitely one of the best parts of the job—opening all her presents.” I was confused.We opened her presents? Why wouldn’t she open them herself? I asked as much.

“Are you out of your mind? Miranda won’t like ninety percent of the stuff people send. Some of it is downright insulting, things I won’t even show her. Like this,” she said, picking up a small box. It was a Bang and Olufsen portable phone in their signature sleek silver with all rounded edges and the capability to remain clear for something like 2,000 miles. I had been in the store just a couple weeks earlier, watching Alex salivate over their stereo systems, and I knew the phone cost upward of five hundred dollars and could do everything short of holding a conversation for you. “A phone? Do you believe someone had the nerve to send Miranda Priestly a phone ?” She tossed it to me. “Keep it if you want it: I would never even let her see this. She’d be annoyed that someone sent something electronic.” She pronounced the word “electronic” as though it were synonymous with “covered in bodily fluids.”

I tucked the phone box under my desk and tried to keep the smile off my face. It was too perfect! A portable phone was on my list of stuff that I still needed for my new room, and I’d just gotten a five-hundred-dollar one for free.

“Actually,” she continued, flopping down again on the floor of Miranda’s office, Indian-style, “let’s put in a few hours wrapping some more of these wine bottles, and then you can open the presents that came in today. They’re over there.” She pointed behind her desk to a smaller mountain of boxes and bags and baskets in a multitude of colors.

“So, these are gifts that we’re sending out from Miranda, right?” I asked her as I picked up a box and began wrapping it in the thick white paper.

“Yep. Every year, it’s the same deal. Top-tier people get bottles of Dom. This would include Elias execs, and the big designers who aren’t also personal friends. Her lawyer and accountant. Midlevel people get Veuve, and this is just about everyone—the twins’ teachers, the hair stylists, Uri, et cetera. The nobodies get a bottle of the Ruffino Chianti—usually they go to the PR people who send small, general gifts that aren’t personalized for her. She’ll have us send Chianti to the vet, some of the babysitters who fill in for Cara, the people who wait on her in stores she goes to often, and all the caretakers associated with the summer house in Connecticut. Anyway, I order about twenty-five thousand dollars’ worth of this stuff at the beginning of November, Sherry-Lehman delivers it, and it usually takes nearly a month to do all the wrapping. It’s good she’s out of the office now or we’d be taking this stuff home with us to wrap. Pretty good deal, because Elias picks up the tab.”

“I guess it would cost double that to have the Sherry-Lehman place wrap them, huh?” I wondered, still trying to process the hierarchy of the gift-giving.

“What the hell do we care?” she snorted. “Trust me, you’ll learn quickly that cost is no issue around here. It’s just that Miranda doesn’t like the wrapping paper they use. I gave them this white paper last year, but they just didn’t look as nice as when we do it.” She looked proud.

We wrapped like that until close to six, with Emily telling me how things worked as I tried to wrap my mind around this strange and exciting world. Just as she was describing 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 might 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 Mr. de la Renta himself. 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 . . . cat suit? Ohmigod! He was wearing a cat suit. Yes, yes, a denim, one-piece cat suit 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, no less—had just provided an unsolicited and unflinchingly honest account of my outfit and my figure, but I wasn’t. I liked his kind green eyes that seemed to laugh instead of taunt, but more than that, I liked that I had passed. This was Nigel-single name, like Madonna or Prince—the fashion authority whom even I recognized from TV, magazines, the society pages, everywhere, and he had called me pretty. And said I had nice legs! I let the mall-rat comment slide. I liked this guy.

I heard Emily tell him to leave me alone from somewhere in the background, but I didn’t want him to go. Too late, he was already heading for the door, his fur cape flapping behind him. I wanted to call out, tell him it had been nice to meet him, that I wasn’t offended by what he said and was excited that he wanted to redo me. But before I could say a thing, Nigel whipped around and covered the space between us in two strides, each the length of a long jump. He planted himself directly in front of me, wrapped my entire body with his massive, rippling arms, and pressed me to him. My head rested just below his chest, and I smelled the unmistakable scent of Johnson’s Baby Lotion. And just as I had the presence of mind to hug him back, he flung me backward, engulfed both of my hands in his, and screeched:

“WELCOME TO THE DOLLHOUSE, BABY!”