The Devil Wears Prada: Loved the movie? Read the book!. Lauren Weisberger

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СКАЧАТЬ over a note I’d forged with Miranda’s signature that instructed them to release the car to me. No one seemed to care whatsoever that I was in no way related to this woman, that some stranger had cruised into the place and requested someone else’s Porsche. They tossed me the keys and only laughed when I’d asked them to back it out of the garage because I wasn’t sure I could handle a stick shift in reverse. It’d taken me a half hour to get ten blocks, and I still hadn’t figured out where or how to turn around so I’d actually be heading uptown, toward the parking place on Miranda’s block that her housekeeper had described. The chances of my making it to 76th and Fifth without seriously injuring myself, the car, a biker, a pedestrian, or another vehicle were nonexistent, and this new call did nothing to calm my nerves.

      Once again, I made the round of calls, but this time Miranda’s nanny picked up on the second ring.

      ‘Cara, hey, it’s me.’

      ‘Hey, what’s up? Are you on the street? It sounds so loud.’

      ‘Yeah, you could say that. I had to pick up Miranda’s Porsche from the dealership. Only, I can’t really drive stick. But now she called and wants me to pick up someone named Madelaine and drop her off at the apartment. Who the hell is Madelaine and where might she be?’

      Cara laughed for what felt like ten minutes before she said, ‘Madelaine’s their Persian kitten and she’s at the vet. Just got spayed. I was supposed to pick her up, but Miranda just called and told me to pick the twins up early from school so they can all head out to the Hamptons.’

      ‘You’re joking. I have to pick up a fucking cat with this Porsche? Without crashing? It’s never going to happen.’

      ‘She’s at the East Side Animal Hospital, on Fifty-second between First and Second. Sorry, Andy, I have to get the girls now, but call if there’s anything I can do, OK?’

      Maneuvering the green beast to head uptown sapped my last reserves of concentration, and by the time I reached Second Avenue, the stress sent my body into meltdown. It couldn’t possibly get worse than this, I thought as yet another cab came within a quarter-inch of the back bumper. A nick anywhere on the car would guarantee I lose my job – that much was obvious – but it just might cost me my life as well. Since there was obviously not a parking spot, legal or otherwise, in the middle of the day, I called the vet’s office from outside and asked them to bring Madelaine to me. A kindly woman emerged a few minutes later (just enough time for me to field another call from Miranda, this one asking why I wasn’t back at the office yet) with a cat-carrier, through the wicker bars of which I could see a mass of white fluff. The woman told me to drive very, very carefully because the kitten was ‘experiencing some discomfort.’ Right, lady. I’m driving very, very carefully solely to save my job and possibly my life – if the cat benefits from this, it’s just a bonus.

      With the basket on the passenger seat, I lit another cigarette and rubbed my freezing bare feet so my toes could resume gripping the clutch and brake pedal. Clutch, gas, shift, release clutch, I chanted, trying to ignore the kitten’s pitiful meows every time I accelerated. She alternated between crying, hissing, and some sort of unidentifiable high-pitched screeching. By the time we reached Miranda’s building, the kitten was nearly hysterical. I tried to soothe her, but she could sense my insincerity – and besides, I had no free hands to poke through the bars to offer a reassuring pat or nuzzle. So this was what four years of diagramming and deconstructing books, plays, short stories, and poems were for: a chance to comfort an over-pampered fur ball while trying not to demolish someone else’s really, really expensive car. Sweet life. Just as I had always dreamed.

      I managed to dump the car at the garage and the cat with Miranda’s doorman without further incident, but my hands were still shaking when I climbed into the chauffeured Town Car that had been following me all over town. The driver looked at me sympathetically and made some supportive comment about the difficulty of stick shifts, but I didn’t feel much like chatting.

      ‘Just heading back to the Elias-Clark building,’ I said with a long sigh as the driver pulled around the block and headed south on Park Avenue. Since I rode the route every day – sometimes twice – I knew I had exactly eight minutes to breathe and collect myself and possibly even figure out a way to disguise the ash and sweat stains that had become permanent features on the Gucci suede. The shoes – well, those were beyond hope, at least until they could be fixed by the fleet of shoemakers Runway kept for such emergencies. The ride was actually over in six and a half minutes, and I had no choice but to hobble like an off-balance giraffe on my one flat, one four-inch heel arrangement. A quick stop in the Closet turned up a brand-new pair of knee-high maroon-colored Jimmy Choos that looked great with the leather skirt I grabbed, tossing the suede pants in the ‘Couture Cleaning’ pile (where the basic prices for dry cleaning started at seventy-five dollars per item). The only stop left was a quick visit to the Beauty Closet, where one of the editors there took one look at my sweat-streaked makeup and whipped out a trunk full of fixers.

      Not bad, I thought, looking in one of the omnipresent full-length mirrors. You might not even know that mere minutes before I was hovering precariously close to murdering myself and everyone around me. I strolled confidently into the assistants’ suite outside Miranda’s office and quietly took my seat, looking forward to a few free minutes before she returned from lunch.

      ‘And-re-ah,’ she called from her starkly furnished, deliberately cold office. ‘Where are the car and the kitten?’

      I leaped out of my seat and ran as fast as was possible on plush carpeting while wearing five-inch heels and stood before her desk. ‘I left the car with the garage attendant and Madelaine with your doorman, Miranda,’ I said, proud to have completed both tasks without killing the car, the cat, or myself.

      ‘And why would you do something like that?’ she snarled, looking up from her copy of Women’s Wear Daily for the first time since I’d walked in. ‘I specifically requested that you bring both of them to the office, since the girls will be here momentarily and we need to leave.’

      ‘Oh, well, actually, I thought you said that you wanted them to—’

      ‘Enough. The details of your incompetence interest me very little. Go get the car and the kitten and bring them 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 kitten 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 that would be a shame.

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