The Devil Wears Prada Read Online Free Page B

She
sat next to me and looked me over, earnestly but with little apparent interest.
Perfunctory. And then, unprompted and still having not introduced herself, the
girl I presumed to be Emily launched into a description of the job. The monotone
of her statements told me more than all of her words: she’d obviously
gone through this dozens of times already, had little faith that I was any
different from the rest, and as a result wouldn’t be wasting much time
with me.
     
     “It’s
hard, no doubt about it. There will be fourteen-hour days, you know—not
often, but often enough,” she rattled on, still not looking at me.
“And it’s important to understand that there will be no editorial
work. As Miranda’s junior assistant, you’d be solely responsible
for anticipating her needs and accommodating them. Now, that could be anything
from ordering her favorite stationery to accompanying her on a shopping trip.
Either way, it’s always fun. I mean, you get to spend day after day, week
after week, with this absolutely amazing woman. And amazing she is,” she
breathed, looking slightly animated for the first time since we started
speaking.
     
     “Sounds
great,” I said and meant it. My friends who’d begun working
immediately after graduation had already clocked in six full months in their
entry-level jobs, and they all sounded wretched. Banks, advertising firms, book
publishing houses—it didn’t matter—they were all utterly
miserable. They whined about the long days, the coworkers, and the office
politics, but more than anything else, they complained bitterly about the
boredom. Compared with school, the tasks required of them were mindless,
unnecessary, fit for a chimp. They spoke of the many, many hours spent plugging
numbers in databases and cold-calling people who didn’t want to be
called. Of listlessly cataloging years’ worth of information on a
computer screen and researching entirely irrelevant subjects for months on end
so their supervisors thought they were productive. Each swore she’d
actually gotten dumber in the short amount of time since graduation, and there
was no escape in sight. I might not particularly love fashion, but I’d
sure rather do something “fun” all day long than get sucked into a
more boring job.
     
     “Yes.
It is great. Just great. I mean, really, really great. Anyway, nice to meet
you. I’m going to go get Allison for you to meet. She’s great,
too.” Almost as quickly as she finished and departed behind the glass in
a rustle of leather and curls, a coltish figure appeared.
     
     This
striking black girl introduced herself as Allison, Miranda’s senior
assistant who’d just been promoted, and I knew immediately that she was
simplytoo thin. But I couldn’t even focus on the way her stomach caved
inward and her pelvic bones pushed out because I was captivated by the fact she
exposed her stomach at work at all. She wore black leather pants, as soft as
they were tight, and a fuzzy (or was it furry?) white tank top strained across
her breasts and ended two inches above her belly button. Her long hair was as
dark as ink and hung across her back like a thick, shiny blanket. Her fingers
and toes were polished with a luminescent white color, appearing to glow from
within, and her open-toe sandals gave her already six-foot frame an additional
three inches. She managed to look incredibly sexy, seminaked, and classy all at
the same time, but to me she looked mostly cold. Literally. It was, after all,
November.
     
     “Hi,
I’m Allison, as you probably know,” she started, picking some of
the tank top fur from her barely there leather-clad thigh. “I was just
promoted to an editor position, and that’s the really great thing about
working for Miranda. Yes, the hours are long and the work is tough, but
it’s incredibly glamorous and a million girls would die to do it. And Miranda
is such a wonderful woman, editor,person, that she really takes care of her own
girls.