Revenge Wears Prada: The Devil Returns

Andy could only remember the out-of-body anxious sensation that had started the moment the doors swung open. Hearing the first notes to Pachelbel’s Canon had confirmed that her window for fleeing was closed. Clutching her father’s arm, she spotted her brother-in-law’s parents, a pair of her mother’s distant cousins, and Max’s Caribbean nanny, the woman Max thought was his mother until he was four. Her father led her ever so gently, both pulling her along and, perhaps, keeping her upright. A group of girlfriends from college and their husbands smiled at her from the right. In front of them, Max’s gaggle of boarding school friends, nearly a dozen in total, each one irritatingly handsome with an equally attractive women beside him, all turned and watched her. She briefly wondered why they hadn’t divided themselves into the bride’s side and the groom’s side. Didn’t people do that anymore? Shouldn’t she, the resident wedding expert, know the answer? But she didn’t.

A flash of chartreuse from her right side caught her eye: Agatha, the fashion-forward assistant she and Emily shared, who’d apparently gotten a memo from the great hipster in the sky that neons, in addition to beards and fedoras, were a go. The office staff, nearly twenty in all, flanked Agatha on all sides. Some, like her photography director and her managing director, managed to feign delight at spending Columbus Day weekend at their boss’s wedding. The assistants, associate editors, and ad sales girls didn’t do as good a job faking it. Andy thought it cruel to invite them all, to obligate them to spend time at a work function when they already clocked in so many hours, but Emily had insisted. She argued it was good for morale to get the whole office together, drinking and dancing. And so, like she had about the florist and the caterer and the size of the wedding, Andy had conceded.

As Andy neared the front of the room, her legs feeling as though she’d trudged through two feet of snow, one face in particular caught her eye. His blond hair had darkened a bit, but the dimples were unmissable. His suit was fitted, crisp, black – not a tuxedo, of course, because he’d never have been caught dead in so pedestrian a costume. He always said dress codes were for styleless people. He always said a lot of things, and Andy remembered hanging on his pontifications as though god himself had decreed them. The post-Alex, pre-Max mistake: Christian Collinsworth. He looked every bit as gorgeous and pompous and confident as the last time she’d woken up beside him in his room at the Villa d’Este five years earlier, still naked and tangled in his sheets, mere moments before he’d casually announced that his girlfriend would be joining him in Lake Como the following day, and would Andy like to meet her? When Emily had asked Andy to invite him as a personal favor to her, Andy vehemently refused, but when Mrs Harrison placed him at the top of her guest list, right alongside Christian’s parents, who were very dear friends of the Harrisons, there was nothing she could say. Oh, Barbara? So sorry, but perhaps it’s inappropriate to invite someone with whom I had a fabulous affair to our wedding? Don’t get me wrong, he was fantastic in bed, but I’m worried it might make cocktail hour uncomfortable … You understand, don’t you? So there he stood, a hand on his mother’s back, turned toward Andy and giving her that look. The one that hadn’t changed one bit in five years and said, You know and I know that we have a delicious secret. It was the look Christian gave exactly half the women in Manhattan.

‘I’m going to be walking down the aisle and seeing someone I used to have sex with,’ Andy had complained to Emily when she first saw Mrs Harrison’s guest list. Never mind that Katherine had been lopped off the list at Max’s behest. Andy had wanted to cheer when he told his mom over a wedding-planning brunch, ‘No Katherine. No exes,’ despite her status as ‘close family friend.’ When Andy had confessed to Max afterward that Christian Collinsworth was also on his mother’s list, he looked her in the eye and said, ‘I don’t give a rat’s ass about Christian if you don’t.’ Andy had nodded and agreed: it was probably best to leave well enough alone and not further upset Barbara.

Emily had rolled her eyes. ‘That makes you like exactly ninety-nine percent of brides, excluding your odd religious fanatic and the occasional freaks who met in elementary school and never slept with anyone else. Get over it. I guarantee you Christian has.’

‘I know,’ Andy said. ‘I was probably number one hundred something for Christian. But I still think it was weird to have him at our wedding.’

‘You’re a thirty-year-old woman who has lived in New York City for the last eight years. I’d be worried if you didn’t have someone at your wedding you’d slept with besides your husband.’

Andy had stopped marking up the layout in front of her and looked at Emily. ‘Which begs the question …’

‘Four.’

‘You did not! Who? I can only think of Jude and Grant.’

‘Remember Austin? With the cats?’

‘You never told me you slept with him!’

‘Yeah, well, it wasn’t anything to brag about.’ Emily sipped her coffee.

‘That’s only three. Who else?’

‘Felix. From Runway. He worked in the—’

Andy almost fell out of her desk chair. ‘Felix is gay! He married his boyfriend last year. When did you have sex with him?’

‘You’re so label-conscious, Andy. It was a one-time thing, after the Fashion Rocks event one year. At one point Miranda made us take drink orders in the VIP room backstage. We both had way too many martinis. It was fun. We ended up at each other’s weddings, and who really cares? You’ve got to relax a little.’

Andy remembered agreeing at the time, but that was before she was zipped into a wedding gown and sent strolling down the aisle to marry someone who’d potentially just cheated on her, while the guy she’d always been a little obsessed with grinned at her (naughtily, she could swear!) from the sidelines.

The rest of the ceremony was a blur. It took the sound of the glass shattering under Max’s foot to bring her back to reality. Crash! They’d done it. From here on in, she would never again be just plain old Andy Sachs, herself, whatever that meant. After that split second she would forever carry one of two titles, and neither was particularly appealing at that very moment: married or divorced. How had it happened?

Andy’s office line began to ring. She glanced at the clock: ten thirty. Agatha’s voice came through the intercom: ‘Morning, Andy. Max, line one.’

Agatha came in later and later every day, and still Andy couldn’t bring herself to say anything. She reached over to depress her own intercom button, to tell Agatha she couldn’t take Max’s call, but she simultaneously knocked over her coffee cup and pressed line one.

‘Andy? You okay? I’m worried about you, sweetheart. How are you feeling?’

The coffee, now cold enough to feel worse than if it had been hot, slowly streamed off the desk and directly onto Andy’s pants. ‘I’m fine,’ she said hurriedly. She looked around for a tissue or even a piece of scrap paper to mop up the spill. Finding nothing, Andy watched as the coffee slowly soaked through her desk blotter calendar and into her lap, and she began to cry. Again. For someone who rarely cried, she sure was crying a lot lately.

‘Are you crying? Andy, what’s wrong?’ Max asked, and the concern in his voice only made her tears stream faster.

‘No, nothing, I’m fine,’ she lied, watching the coffee spread into a circular stain over her left thigh. She cleared her throat. ‘Listen, I’m going to have to stop by and change tonight before Yacht Party, so I can walk Stanley. Will you cancel the walker? Are you coming home first or would you rather meet there? What pier does it leave from again?’

They went over details for the evening and Andy managed to hang up without any more talk of her crying jag. She fixed her face in a little desk mirror, popped two Tylenols, chased them with a Diet Coke, and jammed through the rest of her day with barely a breather and, thankfully, no more tears. She even found a half hour to get a blowout at Dream Dry, which in addition to a quick change at home and an ice-cold glass of Pinot Grigio made her feel somewhat human. Max swooped over to her the moment she stepped off the red-carpeted gangplank and into the yacht’s open-air living room; his soft kiss and minty, spicy smell made her dizzy with pleasure. And then she remembered everything else.

‘You look great,’ he said, kissing her neck. ‘I’m so glad you’re feeling better.’

A wave of queasiness hit Andy like a shovel, and her hand flew to her mouth.

Max’s forehead kneaded. ‘The wind is making the water rough and the boat roll. Don’t worry, it’s supposed to calm down any minute. Come on, I want to show you off.’

The party was in full swing, and together she and Max must have fielded a hundred congratulations on their wedding. Could it only have been four days earlier that she’d walked down that aisle? A chilly breeze blew and Andy moved one hand to her hair; with her other hand she tightened the cashmere wrap around her shoulders. More than anything, she was grateful her mother-in-law had some prior social engagement on the Upper East Side and wouldn’t be joining them that evening.

‘This may be the most gorgeous one yet,’ Andy said, looking around the boat’s Moroccan-inspired living room. She nodded toward an intricately woven tapestry and ran her fingers across the hand-carved bar. ‘So tasteful.’

The wife of Yacht Life’s editor, a woman whose name Andy could never remember, leaned in and said, ‘I heard they gave him a blank check to decorate. Literally, blank. As in, unlimited.’

‘Gave who?’

The woman peered at her. ‘Who? Why, Valentino! The owner commissioned him to decorate the entire yacht. Can you imagine? How much must it cost to hire one of the world’s preeminent fashion designers to pick fabrics for your couch?’

‘I can’t even fathom,’ Andy murmured, although of course she could. Little shocked her after her year at Runway, and what still did was certainly not the extent to which crazy rich people would spend their money.

Once again Andy watched as the woman (Molly? Sadie? Zoe?) scarfed a miniature tartare-topped tortilla and gazed, munching, past Andy.

The woman’s eyes grew wide. ‘Ohmigod, he’s here. I can’t believe he’s actually here,’ she mumbled through her half-chewed food, the hand in front of her mouth doing little to hide it.

‘Who’s here?’ her husband asked with seemingly zero interest.

‘Valentino! He just arrived! Look!’ The woman managed to swallow her chip and reapply lipstick in one almost-graceful motion.

Max and Andy swiveled toward the red carpet and sure enough, a tanned, taut, and pulled-tight Valentino gingerly removed his loafers and stepped aboard. A lackey standing just off to the side handed him a snorting, wet-faced pug, which he accepted without comment and began to stroke. He brazenly scanned the party and, appearing neither pleased nor displeased, turned to offer his one free hand to his date. Longtime partner Giancarlo was nowhere to be found; instead, Andy watched in horror as five long fingers with red-lacquered nails reached up from the belowdecks stairwell and wrapped themselves, talonlike, over Valentino’s forearm.

Noooooo!

Andy glanced at Max. Had she screamed that aloud or just thought it?

As if in slow motion, the woman materialized inch by dreaded inch: the top of her bob, followed by her bangs, and then her face, twisted into an all-too-familiar expression of extreme displeasure. Her tailored white pants, silk tunic, and cobalt high-heeled pumps were all Prada, and her military-inspired jacket and classic quilted bag were Chanel. The lone jewelry she wore was a thick, enameled Hermès cuff in a perfectly coordinating shade of blue. Andy had read years earlier that the cuffs had replaced the scarves as her Hermès security blankets – apparently she had collected nearly five hundred in every imaginable color and size – and Andy sent up a silent thanks that she was no longer responsible for sourcing them. Watching in a sort of fascinated terror as Miranda refused to remove her shoes, Andy didn’t even notice when Max squeezed her hand.

‘Miranda,’ she said, half whispering, half choking.

‘I’m so sorry,’ Max said into her ear. ‘I had no idea she was coming.’

Miranda didn’t like parties, she didn’t like boats, and it stood to reason that she especially didn’t like parties on boats. There were three, perhaps five people on the planet who could convince Miranda to board a boat, and Valentino was one of them. Even though Andy knew Miranda would only deign to stay for ten or fifteen minutes, she was panicked at the idea of sharing such a small space with the woman of her night terrors. Had it really been almost ten years since she’d screamed F you on a Parisian street and then fled the country? Because it felt like only yesterday. She clutched her phone, desperate to call Emily, but she suddenly realized Max had dropped her hand and was reaching out to greet Valentino.

‘Good to see you again, sir,’ Max said in the formal way he always reserved for his parents’ friends.

‘I hope you will excuse the intrusion,’ Valentino said with a small bow. ‘Giancarlo was planning to attend on my behalf, but I was in New York tonight anyway to meet with this lovely lady, and I wanted to visit with my boat again.’

‘We’re thrilled you could be here, sir.’

‘Enough with the “sir,” Maxwell. Your father was a dear friend. I hear you are doing good things with the business, yes?’

Max smiled tightly, unable to discern if Valentino’s question was merely polite or fraught. ‘I’m certainly trying. May I get you and … Ms Priestly something to drink?’

‘Miranda, darling, come here and say hello. This is Maxwell Harrison, son of the late Robert Harrison. Maxwell is currently overseeing Harrison Media Hol—’

‘Yes, I’m aware,’ she interrupted coolly, gazing at Max with a cold, disinterested expression.

Valentino looked as surprised as Andy felt. ‘Aha! I did not realize you two knew each other,’ he said, clearly looking for a further explanation.

At the exact same moment that Max murmured, ‘We don’t,’ Miranda said, ‘Well, we do.’

An awkward silence ensued before Valentino broke into a raucous laugh. ‘Ah, I sense there is a story there! Well, I look forward to hearing it one day! Ha ha!’

Andy bit her tongue and tasted the tang of blood. Her queasiness had returned, her mouth felt like chalk, and she couldn’t for the life of her figure out what to say to Miranda Priestly.

Thankfully Max, ever more socially graceful than she, placed his hand on Andy’s back and said, ‘And this is my wife, Andrea Harrison.’

Andy almost reflexively corrected him – professionally, it’s Sachs – until she realized he’d deliberately avoided using her maiden name. It didn’t matter, though. Miranda had already spotted someone more interesting across the room, and by the time Max’s introduction was out of his mouth, Miranda was twenty feet away. She had not thanked Max, nor even so much as glanced in Andy’s direction.

Valentino shot them an apologetic look and, clutching his pug, dashed off behind her.

Max turned to Andy. ‘I’m so, so sorry. I had absolutely no idea that—’

Andy placed her open palm on Max’s chest. ‘It’s okay. Really. Hey, that went better than I could have ever hoped. She didn’t even look at me. It’s not a problem.’

Max kissed her cheek and told her how beautiful she looked, how she didn’t have to be intimidated by anyone – least of all the legendarily rude Miranda Priestly – and asked her to wait right there while he went to find them both some water. Andy offered him a weak smile and turned to watch as the crew drew up the anchor and began to motor off the pier. She pressed her body into the boat’s metal railing and tried to steady her breathing with deep inhalations of the brisk October air. Her hands were shaking, so she wrapped her arms around herself and closed her eyes. The night would be over soon.

6

writing the obit doesn’t make it true

The morning after Yacht Party, when Max’s alarm went off at six, she thought she might bludgeon it (or him). Only with his prodding was she able to drag herself out of bed and into a pair of running tights and an old Brown sweatshirt. She slowly chewed the banana he handed her on their way out the door and followed him, listlessly, around the block to their gym, where the mere effort of swiping her membership card felt overwhelming. She’d climbed atop an elliptical machine and optimistically set it for forty-five minutes, but that was the extent of her capabilities: as soon as the program moved from warm-up into fat burn, she hit the emergency stop button, grabbed her Poland Spring and her US Weekly, and retreated to a bench outside the spin studio. When her cell phone rang with Emily’s number, she almost dropped her phone.

‘It’s six fifty-two in the morning. Are you kidding me right now?’ Andy said, bracing herself for the Emily onslaught.

‘What, are you not up yet?’

‘Of course I’m up. I’m at the gym. What are you doing up? Are you calling from jail? Or Europe? This is, like, the second day this week I’ve heard from you before nine.’

‘You’re not going to believe who just called me, Andy!’ Emily’s voice contained a level of excitement that was usually reserved for celebrities, presidents, or unresolved ex-boyfriends.

‘Nobody, I hope, before seven in the morning.’

‘Just guess.’

‘Really, Em?’

‘I’ll give you a hint: it’s someone you’re going to find very, very interesting.’

Suddenly Andy just knew. Why was she calling Emily? To confess her guilty conscience? Defend herself with claims of true love? Announce she was pregnant with Max’s baby? Andy had never been more certain of anything in her entire life.

‘It’s Katherine, isn’t it?’

‘Who?’

‘Max’s ex-girlfriend. The one he saw in Bermuda and—’

‘Have you still not asked him about that? Seriously, Andy, you’re being ridiculous. No, it wasn’t Katherine – why on earth would she be calling me? – it was Elias-Clark.’

‘Miranda!’ Andy whispered.

‘Not exactly. Some dude named Stanley who didn’t bother much with details or job titles, but I think I figured out from some Googling that he’s the general counsel for Elias-Clark.’

Andy leaned over and put her head between her knees for just a moment before ‘Call Me Maybe’ began blaring from the spin studio. She stood up and placed a hand over her free ear.

‘So yeah, I have no idea why he’s calling, but he left a message late last night saying it was important and to please call him back at my earliest convenience.’

‘Christ.’ Andy paced between the women’s locker room and the stretching mats. She could see Max doing lat pull-downs in the free-weight area.

‘Interesting, no? I have to say, I’m intrigued,’ Emily said.

‘It must have something to do with Miranda. I saw her last night. First in person and then in my nightmares. It was a very long night.’

‘You saw her? Where? On TV?’ Emily laughed.

‘Ha ha. Because my life is so unfabulous you can’t even imagine it, right? I saw her at Yacht Party! She was there with Valentino. We actually all had cocktails together and then the four of us went to Da Silvano for dinner. She was quite charming, I have to say. I was surprised.’

‘Oh my god, I’m dying right now! How could you not have called me the second you got home? Or from the bathroom of the restaurant? Andy, you’re lying right now! This is insane!’

Andy laughed. ‘Of course it’s insane, you lunatic. You think I just happened to share a plate of tagliatelle with Miranda and didn’t mention it to you? She was there last night, yes, but she didn’t so much as glance in my direction, and my entire interaction was with her Chanel Number Five as she blew past me without a glimmer of recognition.’

‘I hate you,’ Emily said.

‘I hate you, too. But seriously, don’t you think that’s too much of a coincidence? I see her last night for the first time in forever and she calls you the very next day?’

‘She didn’t call me. Stanley did,’ Emily said.

‘Same thing.’

‘Do you think they’re somehow onto our little habit of dropping Miranda’s name to book celebs? That’s not a crime, is it?’ Emily sounded concerned.

‘Maybe they finally figured out that you stole her entire two-thousand-person address book and they’re suing you to keep it under wraps?’ Andy offered.

‘From nine years ago? I don’t think so.’

Andy kneaded her aching calf muscles. ‘Maybe she decided that she wants you back. That you were the best dry-cleaning dropper-offer and lunch fetcher she’s ever had, and she simply can’t live without you.’

‘Adorable. Look, I’m jumping in the shower now and I’ll be out of here in thirty minutes. Meet me at the office?’

Andy looked at her watch, thrilled for the excuse to leave the gym. ‘All right. I’ll see you there.’

‘Oh, and Andy? I’m making the steak tonight. Come early and help me, okay? You can do the zucchini. Miles won’t be home until eight.’

‘Sounds good. I’ll tell Max to get in touch with Miles. See you soon.’

Pan-seared strip steaks and zucchini matchsticks had become their go-to meal for every dinner the girls had cooked for each other in over five years, ever since they’d learned to make it together in a remedial cooking class. It was the only dish either of them had actually mastered the entire semester. And no matter how many times they made the damn steak and zucchini – probably in the neighborhood of two or three times a month – it always made Andy think of 2004, the year after she left Runway and her entire world had changed.

Andy wasn’t one of those girls who remembered what she wore on every first day of school, third date, or birthday, or even when she had met certain friends or how she’d celebrated most holidays. But the year after Andy left Runway was etched forever in her mind: it wasn’t every year of your life that you quit your job, your parents got divorced, your boyfriend of six years dumped you, and your best friend (okay, fine, only friend) moved clear across the country.

It had started with Alex, a mere month after she returned from her infamous Fuck You Miranda Paris trip. Yes, she cringed inwardly every time she remembered the exchange, aghast at her own bad behavior. Yes, she thought it was just about the most unprofessional and uncouth way of leaving a job, no matter how dreaded said job was. And yes, if she had it to do all over again, could go back in time and relive that moment once more, she probably wouldn’t change a damn thing. It had just felt too good. Coming home – to Lily, to her family, and to Alex – had been the right thing to do, and the only part of it she regretted was not doing it earlier, but to her surprise, she didn’t just get to snap her fingers and have everything fall back into place. The year she’d spent at Runway fetching and finding and learning to navigate the scariest fashion shark tank imaginable had Andy so wrapped up in her own exhaustion and terror that she’d barely had a moment to notice what else was happening around her.

When had she and Alex grown so far apart that year that he no longer thought they had enough in common? He kept claiming everything had changed between them. He didn’t know her anymore. It was great she’d quit Runway, but why didn’t she realize she’d become a different person? The girl he’d fallen in love with answered only to herself, but the new Andy was too eager to do what everyone else wanted. What does that mean? Andy would ask, biting on her lip, feeling alternately sad and angry. Alex would just shake his head. They bickered constantly. He always seemed disappointed in her. By the time he finally said that he wanted a break, and oh, by the way, he was accepting a Teach for America transfer to the Mississippi Delta, Andy was devastated but not surprised. Officially, it was over, but it didn’t feel that way. They talked on the phone and saw each other intermittently for the next month. There was always a reason to call or e-mail, a fleece left behind, a question for her sister, a game plan to sell the David Gray tickets they’d bought months earlier for a concert in the fall. Even the good-bye felt surreal, perhaps the very first time Andy had ever felt awkward around Alex. She wished him good luck. His hug was brotherly. But deep down she was in denial: Alex couldn’t live in Mississippi forever. They would take some time, use the distance to think and breathe and figure things out, and then he’d realize he’d made a horrible mistake (both with Mississippi and with her) and come racing back to New York. They were meant to be together. Everyone knew it. It was only a matter of time.