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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      ‘Yeah,’ she agreed, still looking delighted with her own cleverness. ‘That’s probably a good idea.’

      The first girl I interviewed for the nanny position looked positively shell-shocked.

      ‘Oh my god!’ she’d howled when I asked her over the phone if she’d mind coming to the office to meet with me. ‘Oh my god! Are you serious? Oh my god!’

      ‘Um, is that a yes or a no?’

      ‘God, yes. Yes, yes, yes! To Runway? Oh my god. Wait until I tell my friends. They’ll die. They’ll absolutely die. Just tell me where to be and when.’

      ‘You understand that Miranda’s away right now, so you won’t be meeting with her, right?’

      ‘Yep. Totally.’

      ‘And you also know that the job is being a nanny to Miranda’s two daughters, right? That it won’t have anything to do with Runway?’

      She sighed as if to resign herself to the sad, unfortunate fact. ‘Yes, of course. A nanny, I totally get it.’

      Well, she hadn’t really gotten it, because even though she looked the part (tall, impeccably groomed, reasonably well dressed, and seriously underfed), she kept asking which parts of the job would require her to be at the office.

      I shot her a specialty Withering, but she didn’t seem to notice. ‘Um, none. Remember, we talked about this? I’m just doing some initial screening for Miranda, and we just happen to be doing it in the office. But that’s it. Her twins don’t live here, you know?’

      ‘Right, right,’ she’d agreed, but I’d already nixed her.

      The next three the agency had waiting in the reception area weren’t much better. Physically, all fit the Miranda profile – the agency really did know exactly what she wanted – but not one had what I’d be looking for in a nanny who’d be taking care of my future niece or nephew, the standard I’d set for the process. One had a master’s in child development from Cornell but glazed over when I tried to describe the subtle ways this job might be different from others she’d held. Another had dated a famous NBA player, which she felt gave her ‘insight into celebrity.’ But when I’d asked her if she’d ever worked with the children of celebrities, she’d instinctively wrinkled her nose and informed me that ‘famous people’s kids always have, like, major issues.’ Nixed. The third and most promising had grown up in Manhattan and had just graduated from Middlebury and wanted to spend a year as a nanny to save some money for a trip to Paris. When I asked if that meant she spoke French, she nodded. The only problem was that she was a city girl through and through and therefore didn’t have a driver’s license. Was she willing to learn? I’d asked. No, she’d answered. She didn’t believe that the streets needed another car clogging them. Nix number three. I spent the rest of the day trying to figure out a tactful way of telling Miranda that if a girl is attractive, athletic, comfortable with celebrity, lives in Manhattan, has a driver’s license, can swim, has an advanced degree, speaks French, and is completely and entirely flexible with her time, then chances are she does not want to be a nanny.

      She must have read my mind, because the phone rang immediately. I did a few calculations and realized that Miranda would have just landed at de Gaulle, and a quick glance at the second-by-second itinerary Emily had so painstakingly constructed showed she would now be in the car on her way to the Ritz.

      ‘Miranda Pri—’

      ‘Emily!’ she practically shrieked. I wisely decided now wasn’t the time to correct her. ‘Emily! The driver did not give me my usual phone, and as a result I don’t have anyone’s phone number. This is unacceptable. Entirely unacceptable. How am I supposed to conduct business with no phone numbers? Connect me immediately to Mr Lagerfeld.’

      ‘Yes, Miranda, please hold just a moment.’ I jabbed the hold button and called out to Emily for help, although I would’ve had better luck simply eating the receiver whole than actually locating Karl Lagerfeld in less time than it took Miranda to get so annoyed that she’d smash down the phone and keep calling to ask, ‘Where the hell is he? Why can’t you find him? Do you not know how to use a phone?’

      ‘She wants Karl,’ I called over to Emily. The name immediately sent her flying, racing, tearing through papers all over her desk.

      ‘OK, listen. We have twenty to thirty seconds. You take Biarritz and the driver, I’ll get Paris and the assistant,’ she called, her fingers already flying across the keypad. I double-clicked on the thousand-plus name contact list that we shared on our hard drives and found exactly five numbers I’d have to call: Biarritz main, Biarritz second main, Biarritz studio, Biarritz pool, and Biarritz driver. A quick glance over the other listings for Karl Lagerfeld indicated that Emily had a grand total of seven, and there were still more numbers for New York and Milan. We were dead before we started.

      I’d tried Biarritz main and was in the middle of dialing Biarritz second main when I saw that the flashing red light had stopped blinking. Emily announced that Miranda had hung up, in case I hadn’t noticed. Only ten or fifteen seconds had passed – she was feeling particularly impatient today. Naturally, the phone rang again immediately, and Emily responded to my pleading puppy eyes and answered it. She didn’t get halfway through her canned greeting before she was nodding gravely and trying to reassure Miranda. I was still dialing and had – miraculously – made it to Biarritz pool, where I was currently talking to a woman who didn’t speak a single word, a single syllable, of English. Maybe this was the obsession with speaking French?

      ‘Yes, yes, Miranda. Andrea and I are calling right now. It should only be a few more seconds. Yes, I understand. No, I know it’s frustrating. If you’ll allow me to just put you on hold for ten seconds or so, I’m sure we’ll have him on the line. OK?’ She punched ‘hold’ and kept right on jabbing numbers. I heard her trying in what sounded like horrifically accented and broken French to talk to someone who appeared to not know the name Karl Lagerfeld. We were dead. Dead. I was getting ready to hang up on the crazy French woman who was shrieking into the receiver when I saw the flashing red light go out again. Emily was still frantically dialing.

      ‘She’s gone!’ I called with the urgency of an EMT performing emergency CPR.

      ‘Your turn to get it!’ she screamed back, fingers flying, and sure enough, the phone rang again.

      I picked it up and didn’t even attempt to say anything, since I knew the voice on the other end would speak up immediately. It did.

      ‘Ahn-dre-ah! Emily! Whoever the hell I’m talking to … why is it that I’m speaking with you and not with Mr Lagerfeld? Why?’

      My first instinct was to remain silent, since it didn’t appear that the verbal barrage was over, but as usual, my instincts were wrong.

      ‘Hell-ooo? Anyone there? Is the process of connecting one phone call to another really too difficult for both my assistants?’

      ‘No, Miranda, of course not. I’m sorry about this—’ My voice was shaking a little, but I couldn’t get it under control. ‘—it’s just that we can’t seem to find Mr Lagerfeld. We’ve already tried at least eight—’

      ‘“Can’t seem to find him?”’ she mimicked in a high-pitched voice. ‘What do you mean, you “can’t seem to find” him?’

      What part of that simple five-word sentence did she not comprehend, I wondered. СКАЧАТЬ