Lauren Weisberger 5-Book Collection: The Devil Wears Prada, Revenge Wears Prada, Everyone Worth Knowing, Chasing Harry Winston, Last Night at Chateau Marmont. Lauren Weisberger

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СКАЧАТЬ lack of control. I didn’t know how she had survived as long as she had.

      I thought about eating the steak myself, but the mere thought that it had been on Miranda’s desk only moments earlier made me feel nauseated. I took the tray to the kitchen and tilted it so every single item would just slide directly into the garbage – all the expertly cooked and seasoned food, the china plate, the metal butter container, the salt box, the linen napkin, the silver, the steak knife, and the Baccarat glass. Gone. All gone. What did it matter? I’d get it all over again the next day, or whenever it was that she may again be hungry for lunch.

      By the time I’d made it to Drinkland, Alex looked annoyed and Lily looked wasted. I immediately wondered if Alex somehow knew that I’d been asked out on a date today, by a guy who was not only famous and older, but also a complete and total dickhead. Could he tell? Did he sense it? Should I tell him? No, no need to get into it with him when it was so insignificant. It wasn’t like I was admitting to being interested in some other guy, not like I would actually ever act on it. So there was nothing to gain by mentioning the conversation at all.

      ‘Hey there, fashion girl,’ Lily slurred, waving her gin and tonic toward me in a salute. Some of it splashed down the front of her cardigan, but she didn’t seem to notice. ‘Or should I say, future roomie? Get a drink. We need to have a toast!’ It came out sounding like ‘toath.’

      I kissed Alex and sat down next to him.

      ‘Don’t you look hot today!’ he said, eyeing my Prada outfit appreciatively. ‘When did this happen?’

      ‘Oh, today. Right around the time it was all but spelled out that if I didn’t fix my look I might not have a job anymore. Pretty insulting stuff, but I have to say, if you’ve got to put something on every day, this stuff isn’t half bad.

      ‘Hey, listen, guys. I’m really, really sorry I’m late. The Book took forever tonight, and as soon as I dropped it off at Miranda’s she had me run to the corner deli and pick up some basil.’

      ‘I thought you said she had a cook,’ Alex pointed out. ‘Why couldn’t he do it?’

      ‘She does indeed have a cook. She also has a housekeeper, a nanny, and two children. So I have no idea why I was the one sent out for dinner spices. It was especially annoying since Fifth Avenue doesn’t have any corner delis, and neither does Madison or Park, so I had to go all the way to Lex to find one. But, of course, they didn’t sell basil, so I had to walk up nine blocks until I found an open D’Agostino’s. It took me an extra forty-five minutes. I should just expense a fucking spice rack and start traveling with it wherever I go. But let me tell you, those were a really, really worthwhile forty-five minutes! I mean, think of how much I learned shopping for that basil, how better prepared I am for my future in magazines! I’m on the fast track to becoming an editor now!’ I flashed a winning smile.

      ‘To your future!’ Lily cried, not detecting a single hint of sarcasm in my diatribe.

      ‘She’s so far gone,’ Alex said quietly, watching Lily with the look of someone watching a sick relative sleep in a hospital bed. ‘I got here on time with Max, who already left, but she must’ve been here for hours already. Either that, or she drinks really fast.’

      Lily had always been a big drinker, but it wasn’t weird, because Lily was a big everything. She was the first one to smoke pot in junior high and the first one to lose her virginity in high school and the first to go skydiving in college. She loved anyone and anything that didn’t love her back, so long as it made her feel alive.

      ‘I just don’t understand how you can sleep with him when you know he’s never going to break up with his girlfriend,’ I’d said about a guy she’d been secretly seeing our junior year.

      ‘I just don’t understand how you can play by so many rules,’ she’d shot back instantly. ‘Where’s the fun in all your perfectly planned, mapped-out, rule-filled life? Live a little, Andy! Feel something! It’s good to be alive!’

      Maybe she had been drinking a little more lately, but I knew that her first-year studies were incredibly stressful, even for her, and that her professors at Columbia were more demanding and less understanding than the ones she’d had wrapped around her finger at Brown. It might not be a bad idea, I thought, signaling to the waitress. Maybe drinking was the way to handle it. I ordered an Absolut and grapefruit juice and took a long, deep swig. It made me feel more sick than anything, because I still hadn’t had time to eat anything except the raisins and the Diet Coke Emily had scraped together for me earlier that day.

      ‘I’m sure she’s just had a rough couple of weeks in school,’ I said to Alex as though Lily weren’t sitting with us. She didn’t notice we were talking about her because she was preoccupied giving some yuppie guy at the bar heavy-lidded, come-hither looks. Alex put his arm around me and I snuggled closer on the couch. It felt so good to be near him again – it seemed like it had been weeks.

      ‘I hate to be a buzz-kill, but I really have to get home,’ Alex said, pushing my hair back behind my ear. ‘Will you be OK with her?’

      ‘You have to leave? Already?’

      ‘Already? Andy, I’ve been here watching your best friend drink for the past two hours. I came to see you, but you weren’t here. And now it’s almost midnight, and I still have essays to correct.’ He said it calmly, but I could see that he was upset.

      ‘I know, I’m sorry about that, I really am. You know that I would’ve been there if I could’ve helped it at all. You know that—’

      ‘I do know all that. I’m not saying you did anything wrong or that you could’ve done anything differently. I understand. But try to understand where I’m coming from, too, OK?’

      I nodded and kissed him, but I felt awful. I pledged to make it up to him, to pick a night and plan something really special for just the two of us. He did, after all, put up with a lot from me.

      ‘So, you won’t even stay over tonight?’ I asked hopefully.

      ‘Not unless you need help with Lily. I really need to get home and work on those papers.’ He hugged me good-bye, kissed Lily on the cheek, and headed toward the door. ‘Call me if you need me,’ he said as he walked out.

      ‘Hey, why’d Alex leave?’ Lily asked, even though she’d been sitting there through the entire conversation. ‘Is he mad at you?’

      ‘Probably,’ I sighed, hugging my canvas messenger bag to my chest. ‘I’ve been a shit to him lately.’ I went to the bar to ask for an appetizer menu and by the time I came back, the Wall Street guy had curled up on the couch next to Lily. He looked to be in his late twenties, but his receding hairline made it impossible to know for sure.

      I grabbed her coat and tossed it at her. ‘Lily, put that on. We’re leaving,’ I said while looking at him. He was on the shorter side, and his pleated khakis didn’t help his pudgy figure. And the fact that his tongue was now two inches from my best friend’s ear didn’t make me like him any more.

      ‘Hey, what’s the rush?’ he asked in a whiny, nasal voice. ‘Your friend and I are just getting to know each other.’ Lily grinned and nodded, trying to take a gulp from her drink but not realizing her glass was empty.

      ‘Well, that’s very sweet, but it’s time for us to go. What’s your name?’

      ‘Stuart.’

      ‘Nice СКАЧАТЬ