The Devil Wears Prada Read Online Free PDF Page B

write about fashion one day.” Where the hell had
I come up with that one? This was becoming an out-of-body experience.
     
     Things
progressed with the same relative ease until she asked her final question:
Which magazines did I read regularly? I leaned forward eagerly and began to
speak: “Well, I only subscribe toThe New Yorker andNewsweek, but I
regularly readThe Buzz . SometimesTime, but it’s dry, andU.S. News is way
too conservative. Of course, as a guilty pleasure, I’ll skimChic, and
since I just returned from traveling, I read all of the travel magazines
and…”
     
     “And
do you readRunway, Ahn-dre-ah?” she interrupted, leaning over the desk
and peering at me even more intently than before.
     
     It had
come so quickly, so unexpectedly, that for the first time that day I was caught
off-guard. I didn’t lie, and I didn’t elaborate or even attempt to
explain.
     
     “No.”
     
     After
perhaps ten seconds of stony silence, she beckoned for Emily to escort me out.
I knew I had the job.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    3
     
     “It
sure doesn’t sound like you have the job,” Alex, my boyfriend, said
softly, playing with my hair as I rested my throbbing head in his lap after the
grueling day. I’d gone straight from the interview to his apartment in
Brooklyn, not wanting to sleep on Lily’s couch for another night and
needing to tell him about everything that had just happened. I’d thought
about staying there all the time, but I didn’t want Alex to feel
suffocated. “I don’t even know why you’d want it.”
After a moment or two, he reconsidered. “Actually, it does sound like a
pretty phenomenal opportunity. I mean, if this girl Allison started out as
Miranda’s assistant and is now an editor at the magazine, well,
that’d be good enough for me. Just go for it.”
     
     He was
trying so hard to sound really excited for me. We’d been dating since our
junior year at Brown, and I knew every inflection of his voice, every look,
every signal. He’d just started a few weeks earlier at PS 277 in the
Bronx and was so worn down he could barely speak. Even though his kids were
only nine years old, he’d been disappointed to see how jaded and cynical
they already were. He was disgusted that they all spoke freely about blow jobs,
knew ten different slang words for pot, and loved to brag about the stuff they
stole or whose cousin was currently residing in a tougher jail. “Prison
connoisseurs,” Alex had taken to calling them. “They could write a
book on the subtle advantages of Sing Sing over Rikers, but they can’t
read a word of the English language.” He was trying to figure out how he
could make a difference.
     
     I slid
my hand under his T-shirt and started to scratch his back. Poor thing looked so
miserable that I felt guilty bothering him with the details of the interview,
but I just had to talk about it with someone. “I know. I understand that
there wouldn’t be anything editorial about the job whatsoever, but
I’m sure I’ll be able to do some writing after a few months,”
I said. “You don’t think it’s completely selling out to work
at afashion magazine, do you?”
     
     He
squeezed my arm and lay down next to me. “Baby, you’re a brilliant,
wonderful writer, and I know you’ll be fantastic anywhere. And of course
it’s not selling out. It’s paying your dues. You’re saying
that if you put in a year atRunway you’ll save yourself three more years
of bullshit assistant work somewhere else?”
     
     I
nodded. “That’s what Emily and Allison said, that it was an
automatic quid pro quo. Work a year for Miranda and don’t get fired, and
she’ll make a call and get you a job anywhere you want.”
     
     “Then
how could you not? Seriously, Andy, you’ll work your year and
you’ll get a job atThe New Yorker . It’s what you’ve always
wanted! And it sure sounds like you’ll get there a whole lot faster doing
this than anything