That Ridiculous Dress, Part 2
see first page for disclaimers
Part 2
Three months later, Andy and Doug were celebrating Doug’s minor promotion and Andy’s skimpy raise over a quiet dinner in their shared apartment. Lily was no longer speaking to either of them, but she’d shown signs of softening lately. Andy had hope that their friendship would eventually be repaired. Nate was a lost cause, though. He wasn’t quite as upset as Andy thought, hypocritically, that he should have been, but he was firm about not wanting to see her for a while.
Andy didn’t miss him as much as she thought she should have, either. She missed his cooking, and she missed joking around with him, but that was about it, really. Doug’s schedule was much more compatible with hers, and he never tried to make her feel guilty about working late. He was also a great cuddler…they spent a lot of time snuggled on the couch together that winter, watching TV together or just reading.
Andy was amused to discover that Doug had every issue of Runway from the last six years arranged meticulously by date on the bookshelf next to his bed. She tried to tease him about it, but Doug was passionate in the defense of his favorite magazine.
“Runway is like the fashion Bible, Andy. You have no idea what you’re talking about. Miranda Priestly is a freaking icon. Look!” He seized the latest issue off the coffee table and began listing reasons why he admired the magazine.
Andy froze. “Who did you say, Doug? Miranda…something?”
“Miranda Priestly, editor-in-chief of American Runway.” Doug shook his head in disbelief at Andy’s ignorance. “Seriously, Andy? You’re in publishing, for god’s sake. How have you not heard of Miranda Priestly? She’s been the fashion icon for almost twenty years!” He flipped to the editorial page and showed Andy a picture.
Andy felt numb. “Oh my god,” she said weakly. “Oh my god.” She thought she might hyperventilate.
Doug just stared. “Andy? What on earth…do you know her?”
Andy took several deep breaths. “Doug…you remember when I went to that stupid awards banquet in Billie’s place? “
Doug nodded. “How could I not?”
Andy quirked a bitter half-smile. “The woman in the bathroom…remember how she only told me her first name? And that she worked at Runway?”
Doug’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Andy, are you telling me that you had sex with Miranda Priestly in a hotel bathroom and you didn’t recognize her?”
Andy winced. “Um…yes?”
Doug seemed to have lost the power of speech. They stared at each other for at least a minute in mutual disbelief before Doug pulled himself together enough to start talking.
“Andy-I’ve never met her, obviously, but she has a reputation for being kind of…mean. You wouldn’t believe the number of people she’s blackballed, just because they pissed her off.”
Andy looked thoughtful. “Actually, I’m not surprised. She wasn’t particularly nice to me. I told you she basically ripped my entire appearance to shreds almost as soon as she saw me. She wasn’t very…gentle with me, either.”
Doug shook his head. “That’s just it, Andy. That’s all she did. She didn’t make you swear to secrecy on your grandmother’s grave. She didn’t get you fired and tell every other newspaper and magazine on the east coast not to hire you. She basically just told you to read Runway, right?”
Andy was suitably horrified. “She can do that? She could get me fired?”
“Andy, she is the single most influential person in the entire fashion industry, and probably in the top ten for publishing. There isn’t much she couldn’t do if she really wanted to.”
“Oh,” said Andy, in a very small voice. “Doug, I was incredibly casual with her. I asked her all kinds of stupid questions and I wasn’t very…gentle with her, either.”
Doug blushed.
“Why didn’t she do something? I don’t understand.”
“I don’t know either, Andy, but I’m glad she didn’t. I guess we’ll just have to wonder.”
Andy suddenly sat straight up. “Oh shit. Oh my god, Doug, I just remembered something. Right before she left, she told me not to forget about reading Runway and she told me…” Andy swallowed. “She told me I never knew who might be paying attention.”
Doug looked simultaneously impressed and stunned. “Andy,” he said slowly, “do you know what this means?”
Andy shook her head.
“Miranda Priestly is watching your career. Miranda Priestly! You really must have impressed her.”
Andy blushed and stammered her way through a decidedly unconvincing denial, but she was never able to look at fashion in quite the same way again.
She soon found that she was taking more care with her appearance…and noticing much more about the appearances of others. She also started reading every issue of Runway as soon as it arrived. It wouldn’t do to be uninformed, after all, in the unlikely event that she ran into Miranda again. She even started reading the back issues, although she was careful to put them back on the shelf in their proper sequence before Doug got home. He got enough ammunition for teasing from her first clumsy attempts at self-beautification.
It was just plain luck that allowed Andy to be within hearing distance when Billie told Jake she had decided to quit the paper and stay home with her newborn daughter. And it was pure coincidence that Andy had worn a rather stylish new outfit that day, one of several that Doug had helped her put together for work. Billie glanced up, did a double-take at Andy’s new look, and began to smile.
“Look, Jake-you’ve already got a new style columnist waiting in the wings. You don’t need me at all.”
Jake stared. “Wow, Andy. When did this happen?” He waved a hand vaguely at her clothes.
“I, uh, started reading Runway,” Andy admitted sheepishly.
Billie looked thrilled. “This is perfect, Andy. It’ll be a seamless transition…the column’s not hard at all. I’ve only been doing it for a year or so, anyway. It’s not like I’m a longtime ‘presence’ on the fashion scene. And you can always call me for advice. ” She turned to Jake. “I’ll work out my two weeks, okay? This is wonderful!” She grinned broadly at both of them and walked back to her desk.
Andy was at a loss for words, but Jake seemed to consider it a fait accompli. Before she had really grasped what was happening, he was outlining her new duties and promising her a modest raise.
The new column was incredibly hard, at first. Andy had very little idea what she was doing and none of the accumulated knowledge that Billie had amassed from years of reading fashion magazines and her year-long internship at Bazaar. She spent hours and hours researching for her little five hundred word column every week, and she felt like a fraud when readers praised her eye for detail or her (second-hand) knowledge of the latest trends. She thanked any available deity for Doug, Billie, and back-issues of Runway on a regular basis.
The transition was so gradual she barely noticed it, but less than a year later, Andy suddenly realized that she actually knew things about fashion. She couldn’t always identify outfits on sight, but she could make a shrewd guess, and she was right almost as often as she was wrong. It was disconcerting to realize that she had changed so dramatically in less than two years. And it was all Miranda’s fault.
Andy wasn’t quite sure when she had mentally transferred the blame from Billie’s shoulders to Miranda’s, but she no longer questioned it. Miranda’s responsibility for Andy’s newly acquired interest in fashion was firmly ingrained on Andy’s consciousness by now, but she found that she didn’t resent it. Miranda had somehow recognized Andy’s potential and given her a push in the right direction.
Not too long after this realization, Andy found that she had more to say about fashion than could reasonably fit in her now twice-weekly column…or in the Mirror, for that matter. Its readership was not especially fashion-conscious, after all. She soon began moonlighting for a popular fashion blog. Four months later, her very first magazine submission was accepted by Harper’s Bazaar (following a recommendation by a friend of Billie’s), and after that things began to snowball.
She was doing less and less of the reporting she had originally joined the Mirror to do, and even what little she did was unable to hold her interest. It only made sense to focus on her new interest in fashion. And her articles were accepted on a regular basis by almost all of the women’s magazines.
It was a little scary not having a regular paycheck, but Andy was able to make the adjustment to freelance with less difficulty than she had anticipated. An excitable but competent young woman named Claire Kingsley had practically begged to be Andy’s agent, and Andy, though startled, was quick to accept. It was wonderful to be able to focus on writing again, rather than promoting herself.
She still refused, though, despite Claire’s urging, to submit anything to Runway. Miranda might have semi-unwittingly gotten Andy started in her new career, but that didn’t mean she wanted to publish Andy’s articles. Andy was worried that Miranda would think she was being blackmailed if Andy submitted anything, although Miranda’s reputation had certainly weathered worse storms than could be generated by rumors of a two-year-old lesbian encounter.
Her third divorce had hit the press more or less at the same time some sort of foiled coup-attempt by Elias-Clarke chairman Irv Ravitz hit the gossip circuit. Since that time, she had been regularly escorted by a wide range of attractive single men, but, to everyone’s surprise, no fourth husband was forthcoming. Andy followed every Priestly-based rumor with interest, although she was careful to conceal the fact from everyone but Doug. Miranda was her secret obsession, for reasons that Andy very carefully did not analyze. So what if work was a flimsy excuse for her miserable dating record lately? It certainly had nothing to do with Miranda. They barely even saw each other, for heaven’s sake.
She and Miranda seemed to avoid each other by unspoken consent at the few fashion-related events attended by both, and of course Miranda usually left as soon as humanly possible.
It still shocked Andy sometimes, that she was considered important enough to receive legitimate invitations to the same events as Miranda Priestly. And she wasn’t sitting against the back wall, either. Andy wasn’t important enough to be seated near Miranda, of course, but it was still nice to be recognized for her work, even if it wasn’t the heavy-hitting journalism she had once expected to be known for. She still got a small thrill every time someone escorted her past the waiting crowds to a decent seat at fashion shows.
The fashion community was somewhat incestuous at times, and almost inevitably fraught with drama, so Andy was unsurprised when rumors began circulating about a supposed rift between her and Miranda. Apparently someone had noticed that Andy had been published in every major women’s fashion magazine…except Runway. Their careful avoidance at public events had only bolstered the rumors, but since there was no actual evidence of a falling-out, the speculation remained relatively low-key.
Part 3