all vanilla cappuccino, please,” I ordered from a barista I didn’t recognize at the Starbucks on 57th Street. It had been nearly five months since I’d been here last, trying to balance a whole tray of coffees and snacks and get back to Miranda before she fired me for breathing. When I thought about it like that, I figured it was far better to have gotten fired for screaming “fuck you” than it was to get fired because I’d brought back two packets of Equal instead of two raw sugars. Same outcome, but a totally different ballgame.

Who knew Starbucks had such huge turnover? There wasn’t a single person behind the counter who looked remotely familiar, making all the time I’d spent there seem that much farther away. I smoothed my well-cut but non designer black pants and checked to make sure that the cuffed bottoms hadn’t collected any of the city’s muddy slush. I knew there was an entire magazine staff of fashionistas who would emphatically disagree with me, but I thought I looked pretty damn good for only my second interview. Not only did I now know that no one wears suits at magazines, but somewhere, somehow, a year’s worth of high fashion had—by simple osmosis, I think—crammed itself into my head.

The cappuccino was almost too hot, but it felt fantastic on that chilly, wet day. The darkened, late-afternoon sky seemed to be misting the city with a giant Snow-Cone. Normally, a day like this would’ve depressed me. It was, after all, one of the more depressing days in the year’s most depressing month (February), the kind when even the optimists would rather crawl under the covers and the pessimists didn’t stand a chance of getting through without a fistful of Zoloft. But the Starbucks was warmly lit and just the right state of crowded, and I curled up in one of their oversize green armchairs and tried not to think of who had rubbed his dirty hair there last.

In the past three months, Loretta had become my mentor, my champion, my savior. We’d hit it off in that first meeting and she’d been nothing but wonderful to me ever since. As soon as I’d walked into her spacious but cluttered office and saw that she was-gasp!—fat, I had a weird feeling that I’d love her. She sat me down and read every word of the stuff I’d been working on all week: tongue-in-cheek pieces on fashion shows, some snarky stuff on being a celebrity assistant, a hopefully sensitive story about what it takes—and doesn’t take—to bring down a three-year-long relationship with someone you love but can’t be with. It was storybook-like, nauseating, really, how well we’d instantly hit it off, how effortlessly we shared our nightmares about Runway (I was still having them: a recent one had included a particularly horrid segment in which my own parents were shot dead by Parisian fashion police for wearing shorts on the street and Miranda had somehow managed to legally adopt me), how quickly we realized that we were the same person, just seven years apart.

Since I’d just had the brilliant idea of dragging all my Runway clothes to one of those snooty resale shops on Madison Avenue, I was a wealthy woman—I could afford to write for peanuts; anything for a byline. I had waited and waited for Emily or Jocelyn to call to tell me they were sending a messenger to pick it all up, but they never did. So it was all mine. I packed up most of the clothes but set aside the Diane Von Furstenburg wrap-dress. While going through the contents of my desk drawers that Emily had emptied into boxes and mailed to me, I came across the letter from Anita Alvarez, the one in which she expressed her worship of all things Runway. I’d always meant to send her a fabulous dress, but I’d never found the time. I wrapped the bold-printed dress in tissue paper, tossed in a pair of Manolos, and forged a note from Miranda—a talent I was unhappy to discover I still possessed. This girl should know—just once—how it feels to own one beautiful thing. And, more importantly, to think there’s someone out there who actually cares.

Except for the dress, the tight and very sexy D&G jeans, and the utterly classic, quilted, chain-handle purse I’d given to my mom as a gift (“Oh, honey, this is beautiful. What’s this brand again?”), I sold every last filmy top, leather pant, spiked boot, and strappy sandal. The woman who worked the register called the woman who owned the store, and the two of them had decided it would be best if they just closed the shop down for a few hours to evaluate my merchandise. The Louis Vuitton luggage—two large suitcases, one medium-size accessories bag, and an oversize trunk—alone had netted me six grand, and when they were finally finished whispering and examining and giggling, I cruised out of there with a check for just over $38,000. Which, by my calculations, meant that I could pay rent and even feed myself for a year while I tried to get this writing gig together. And then Loretta strolled into my life and made it instantly better.

Loretta had already agreed to buy four pieces—one blurb, only slightly larger than a pull quote, two 500-word pieces, and the original 2,000-word story. But even more exciting was her bizarre obsession with helping me make contacts, her eagerness to get in touch with people at other magazines who might just be interested in some freelance stuff. Which is exactly what put me at that Starbucks on that overcast winter day—I was headed back to Elias-Clark. It had taken a lot of insisting on her part to convince me that Miranda wouldn’t hunt me down the minute I walked in the building and knock me out with a blow dart, but I was still nervous. Not paralyzed with fear like the old days when a mere cell phone ring was enough to cause my heart to flip-flop, but jittery enough at the thought—however remote the possibility—of catching a glimpse of her. Or Emily. Or anyone else, for that matter, except for James, who had kept in touch.

Somehow, someway, for some reason, Loretta had called her old college roommate who just so happened to edit the city section of The Buzz and told her that she’d discovered the next new “it” writer. That was supposed to be me. She’d arranged an interview for me today, and even forewarned the woman that I’d been summarily dismissed from Miranda’s employ, but the woman had just laughed and said something to the effect that if they refused to use anyone whom Miranda had fired at one point or another, they’d barely have any writers at all.

I finished my cappuccino and, newly energized, gathered my portfolio of different articles and headed—this time calmly, without either an incessantly ringing phone or an armload of coffees—toward the Elias-Clark building. A moment or two of reconnaissance from the sidewalk indicated that no Runway Clackers were amid the crowds in the lobby, and I proceeded to heave my weight against the revolving door. Nothing had changed in the five months since I’d last been there: I could see Ahmed behind the register in the newsstand, and a huge, glossy poster advertised thatChic would be hosting a party at Lotus that weekend. Although I technically should’ve signed in, I instinctively walked directly toward the turnstiles. Immediately, I heard a familiar voice call out, “I can’t remember if I cried when I read about his widowed bride, but something touched me deep inside, the day, the music died. And we were singing . . .” “American Pie”! What a sweetie, I thought. This was the good-bye song that I’d never gotten to sing. I turned to see Eduardo, as large and sweaty as usual, grinning. But not at me. In front of the turnstile closest to him stood a toweringly skinny girl with jet black hair and green eyes, wearing a dynamite pair of tight, pinstripe pants and a navel-revealing tank top. She also happened to be balancing a small tray with three Starbucks coffees, an overflowing bag of newspapers and magazines, three hangers with complete outfits dangling from each one, and a duffel monogrammed with the initials “MP.” Her cell phone began to ring just as I realized what was happening, and she looked so panicked I thought she might cry on the spot. But when her repeated banging against the turnstile failed to elicit entry, she sighed deeply and sang, “Bye, bye, Miss American Pie, drove my Chevy to the levee, but the levee was dry, and good old boys were drinking whiskey and rye, singing this will be the day that I die, this will be the day that I die . . .” When I looked back to Eduardo, he smiled quickly in my direction and winked. And then, while the pretty brunette girl finished singing her verse, he buzzed me through like I was someone who mattered.