Читать книгу Revenge Wears Prada: The Devil Returns - Лорен Вайсбергер, Lauren Weisberger, Lauren Weisberger - Страница 9

She unlocked the door to the West Chelsea loft offices of The Plunge and held her breath. Safe. Never had Andy seen another living soul at work before nine – in keeping with typical New York creative hours, most of the staff didn’t roll in until ten, often ten thirty – and she was thrilled today was no different. The two to three hours before everyone else arrived were by far her most productive of the day, even if she did feel sometimes slightly Miranda-ish e-mailing and leaving voice mails for people before they’d woken up.

No one, including Max, had blinked when Andy suggested they cut short their post-wedding trip to the Adirondacks. After two days of Andy’s puking – and, sadly for Max, no marital consummation – he didn’t argue when Andy said they would both be happier back home. Besides, they had a proper two-week honeymoon in Fiji scheduled over the December holidays. It was a gift from Max’s parents’ best friends, and although Andy didn’t know all the details, she’d heard the words helicopter, private island, and chef thrown around often enough to be very, very excited. Bailing on their three-day getaway in upstate New York when it was already getting too cold to be outside didn’t seem like such a big deal.

Andy and Max had fallen into a routine when they’d moved in together the year before, right after he proposed. Weekday mornings they woke up at six. He made them both coffee while she fixed oatmeal or fruit smoothies. They would head to the Equinox on Seventeenth and Tenth together and spend exactly forty-five minutes there; Max did a combination of free weights and the stair treader; Andy bided her time on the treadmill, speed fixed at 5.8, eyes glued to whatever rom com she’d downloaded to her iPad, fervently wishing the time would pass faster, faster. They’d shower and dress at home together, and Max would drop her at The Plunge’s office on Twenty-Fourth and Eleventh before zooming in the company car up the West Side Highway to his own offices in midtown west. Both were installed at their respective desks by eight each morning, and barring extreme illness or weather, the schedule was unalterable. This morning, however, Andy had set her phone to vibrate twenty minutes earlier than usual and slithered out from underneath the covers the instant her pillow started to shake. Forsaking a shower and coffee, she pulled on her comfiest pair of charcoal pants, her match-anything white button-down, and her most boring black peacoat and slipped out just as she heard Max’s alarm beginning to sound. She sent him a quick text saying that she had to get to work early and that she’d see him later that evening for Yacht Party, although her stomach still felt unsettled and her muscles were achy, exhausted. Her temperature last night had been just over a hundred.

Andy’s cell rang before she’d even taken off her coat.

‘Emily? What are you doing awake?’ Andy checked her delicate gold watch, an engagement gift from her father. ‘It’s, like, two hours too early for you.’

‘Why are you answering?’ Emily asked, sounding confused.

‘Because you called.’

‘I only called to leave a message. I didn’t think you’d pick up.’

Andy laughed. ‘Thanks. Should I hang up? We can try it again.’

‘Aren’t you supposed to be resting up for a grueling day of wine tasting or something?’

‘Leaf-peeping followed by massages, actually.’

‘Seriously, why are you awake? Aren’t you still upstate?’

Andy hit the speaker button and took the opportunity to remove her coat and collapse into her chair. It felt like she hadn’t slept in weeks. ‘We ended up coming back to the city because I feel like hell. Headache, puking, fever. I don’t know if it’s food poisoning or the flu or just some sort of twenty-four-hour thing. Besides, Max didn’t want to miss Yacht Party tonight, which I have to swing by. So we bailed.’ Andy glanced down at her atrocious outfit and reminded herself to leave enough time to run home and change.

‘Yacht Party’s tonight? Why wasn’t I invited?’

‘You weren’t invited because I wasn’t going to go. And now that we’re back, I’m planning to be there for exactly an hour before going home to bathe myself in Vicks VapoRub and watch a Toddlers and Tiaras marathon.’

‘Whose boat is it this year?’

‘I can’t remember his name. The usual hedge fund billionaire. More homes than we have shoes. Probably more wives, too. Apparently he used to be friends with Max’s father, but Barbara thought he was such a bad influence, she forbade her husband from socializing with him. I think he owns casinos, too.’

‘Sounds like a guy who knows how to throw a party …’

‘He won’t even be there. He’s just lending his yacht as a favor to Max. Don’t worry, you’re not missing anything.’

‘Uh-huh. That’s what you said last year and then the entire SNL cast showed up.’

Yacht Life magazine hadn’t made a single dime in profits during its ten years in existence, but that didn’t stop Max from declaring it one of the most valuable holdings in all of Harrison Media. It gave them prestige and panache; everyone who was anyone wanted their boat featured in the magazine. Every October Yacht Life threw Yacht Party to celebrate their Yacht of the Year award, and every year the event drew an impressive stable of celebrities to roam the deck of some totally over-the-top yacht as it sailed around Manhattan and allowed its guests to slurp Cristal, nibble truffle-infused whatevers, and overlook the fact they were on the polluted Hudson in late fall instead of the warm waters of Cap d’Antibes.

‘That was kind of fun, wasn’t it?’ Andy asked.

Emily was quiet for a moment. ‘Is that all? You’re sick? And Yacht Party? Or is something else going on?’

Say what you will about Emily – she could be brash, aggressive, often downright rude – but she was more perceptive than anyone Andy had ever met.

‘Something else? Like what?’ Andy’s voice pitched higher, the way it always did when she was lying or uncomfortable.

‘I don’t know. That’s why I was calling. You put on a pretty good show all weekend, but I think you’re freaking about something. Is it just some perfectly normal buyer’s remorse? I’ll tell you, I had panic attacks the week after Miles and I got married. Cried for days. I just couldn’t believe he’d theoretically be the last man I’d ever sleep with. The last one I’d ever kiss! But it gets better, Andy, I promise.’

Andy’s heart started to beat a little faster. In the two days since she’d found the note, she hadn’t breathed a word of it to anyone.

‘I found a note from Max’s mother in his bag. She basically told him he was making a huge mistake marrying me – if he decided to go through with it.’

There was silence on the other end.

‘My god, I thought it was something way worse than that,’ Emily said.

‘Is that supposed to make me feel better?’

‘Seriously, Andy, what do you expect? The Harrisons are so old-school. And really, whose mother-in-law likes them? No girl is ever good enough.’

‘Apparently Katherine’s good enough. Did Miles ever tell you Max saw her in Bermuda?’

‘What?’ Emily sounded surprised.

‘Barbara wrote how Katherine had been so great and didn’t Max think it was a sign they’d bumped into each other in Bermuda! How delighted he’d been to see her.’

‘Katherine? Oh please. You can’t possibly be worried about Katherine. She used to send him links to her favorite pieces of jewelry before every birthday and anniversary. She wore sweater sets, Andy. Granted, they were Prada – but still, sweater sets. She was our least favorite of all his girlfriends.’

Andy pressed her fingertips to her forehead. Emily and Miles knew Max before she did, knew his entire dating history and had met all the girls over the years. Now, more details Andy didn’t really want to hear.

‘Glad to hear it,’ Andy said, her head beginning to ache.

‘He didn’t mention it because it doesn’t matter,’ Emily said. ‘Because he’s crazy about you.’

‘Em, I—’

‘Head over heels in love with you, not to mention a pretty great guy, despite some poor choices in ex-girlfriends. So she was in Bermuda. Big deal. He wouldn’t cheat with her. With anyone! You know it and I know it.’

Two days earlier Andy would’ve sworn Emily was right. Max wasn’t a Boy Scout, but Andy had fallen in love with a man who was, at heart, a genuinely good person. To even consider the alternative was almost too horrible. But she couldn’t deny that his omission freaked her out …

‘It’s his ex-girlfriend, Emily! His first love! The girl he lost his virginity to. The one he supposedly didn’t marry because she wasn’t “challenging.” He’s only ever said nice things about her. I can’t help but wonder if he didn’t test the waters one last time. For old times’ sake? He wouldn’t be the first guy to do something stupid at his bachelor party. Maybe a life like his father’s, with a sweet little stay-at-home wife, wouldn’t be so bad? Instead he decides he wants to rebel and he finds me? How wonderful for him.’

‘You’re being dramatic,’ Emily said, but something in her voice made Andy wonder. Besides, Emily had been the first to use the word cheated. Andy hadn’t really let herself go there until her friend came right out and said it …

‘So what do I do now? What if he did cheat?’

‘Andy, you’re being ridiculous. Not to mention hysterical. Just talk to Max. Get the real story.’

Andy felt her throat close. She rarely cried – when she did, it was almost always out of stress and not genuine sadness – but her eyes filled with tears. ‘I know. I just can’t believe this is happening. If it’s true, how could I ever forgive him? For all I know, he’s in love with her! I thought we were going to spend the rest of our lives together, and now—’

‘Andy! Just talk to him,’ Emily said. ‘Stop with the waterworks for now and talk to him, okay? I’ll be in late today, I have a breakfast meeting with the Kate Spade people. But I’ll be on my cell …’

Andy knew she had to compose herself before her coworkers arrived. She took a deep, shuddering breath and promised she’d ask Max, although she knew she was going to put it off as long as possible. Suddenly, she couldn’t help but entertain the darkest questions: Who would move out of the apartment? Why, she would, of course – it was Max’s family money that had bought it in the first place. Who would keep Stanley, their Maltese? What would she tell people? Acquaintances? Her parents? Max’s sister? How would they go from being best friends who lived together, slept together, supported each other’s dreams and aspirations, to total strangers? They had intertwined their lives together, their home and families and work and schedules, their plans for the future, the magazine. Everything. How could she survive losing him? She loved him.

As though he could sense something forty blocks away, an e-mail from Max pinged in her inbox.

Dear Wife,

I hope your early departure this morning means you’re feeling better? I missed our morning together. Can’t stop thinking about our amazing weekend and hope you’re still smiling, too. I’ve gotten a hundred e-mails from people saying they had a great time. I’m in meetings until two, but I’ll call you then to talk plans for tonight. I want you there, but only if you’re up for it. LMK.

Love,

Your Husband

Wife. She was Max’s wife. The word reverberated in her head, sounding both strange and wonderfully familiar at the same time. She took a deep breath and reminded herself to stay calm. No one was dying. It wasn’t terminal cancer. They didn’t have three kids and a crushing mortgage. Plus, despite his oppressive mother, she loved him. How could she not love the man who for last Valentine’s Day – a holiday Andy had repeatedly said she hated for all the usual Hallmark, pink-and-hearts-overkill reasons – had draped their tiny balcony in black sheets with stick-on, glow-in-the-dark stars and a table set for two? Who had served grilled cheese sandwiches with anchovies (her favorite) instead of filet mignon, extra-spicy Bloody Marys instead of Cabernet, and her own pint of Häagen-Dazs coffee ice cream to devour instead of some fancy boxed chocolates? They’d sat out there until well past midnight, looking up at the night sky through the industrial-grade telescope Max rented because Andy had once complained, months earlier, that the only thing she hated about city living was not being able to see the stars.

They would get through this.

It was easy enough to repeat this to herself the next couple hours while all was quiet and the office was entirely her own. But she felt her panic ratchet up a notch when everyone arrived at ten, dying to rehash every minute of the weekend, and it escalated even further when Daniel, the art director, showed up at ten with a disk full of digital images that he couldn’t wait to go over with her.

‘They’re gorgeous, Andy. Just breathtaking. You made absolutely the right call going with St Germain for the photo work. He’s a diva, I know, but he’s so damn good. Here, look at these.’

‘You have photos of the weekend already?’ Andy asked.

‘Unretouched. Don’t ask how much we paid to expedite them.’

Daniel, whom Andy had hired last year after interviewing no fewer than ten potential candidates, slipped a memory card directly into Andy’s iMac. Aperture popped open and asked if she wanted to import the photos and Daniel hit yes. ‘Here, check these out.’ Daniel clicked around and a photo of her and Max filled her twenty-seven-inch screen. She gazed directly at the camera, her eyes intensely blue and her skin flawless. Max had his lips pressed to her cheek; his jaw was defined, his profile perfect. The leaves behind them almost burst out of the background, their oranges and yellows and reds serving as an intense contrast to his black tuxedo and her white dress. It looked like a picture right out of a magazine, one of the most beautiful she’d ever seen.

‘Spectacular, isn’t it? Here, look at this one.’ A couple more clicks and a black-and-white image of the reception filled the screen. Dozens of their guests gathered around the perimeter of the dance floor, smiling and clapping, while Max embraced her for their first dance, to ‘Warm Love.’ The angle showed Max leaning down to kiss Andy’s forehead, his arms wrapped around her middle, her chestnut hair cascading down her back. The button detail they’d decided to add to the train after the last fitting looked fantastic, Andy thought. And she was pleased she’d decided on the shorter kitten heels; it gave them a more clearly defined height difference that looked more elegant in photos.

‘Here, check out your solo shots. They’re stunning.’ Daniel moved his cursor to a folder labeled ‘portraits’ and opened it to thumbnails. He scrolled for a minute and then clicked on one. The screen came alive with Andy’s face and shoulders, dusted just so with a subtle shimmer powder that made her glow. In most of them she’d kept her smile deliberately restrained (according to the photographer, fine lines and wrinkles were harder to mask with a ‘full face’ smile), but there was a single image of her grinning unabashedly, and although it made her crow’s-feet and laugh lines more noticeable, it was by far the most authentic of the photos. Clearly it was taken before she’d visited Max’s suite.

Everyone had told her St Germain would be an impossible get, but she couldn’t resist trying. It had taken over a month and no fewer than a dozen calls for St Germain’s agent even to take a message from Andy, repeatedly telling her that The Plunge was much too puny a publication for his world-famous client to consider, but he’d pass along her info if she would agree to stop calling. When Andy hadn’t heard back after another week, she wrote St Germain a handwritten letter and messengered it to his Chinatown studio. In it she promised him two future cover shots of his choosing, all expenses paid to any far-flung location, and volunteered The Plunge to cosponsor his next fund-raising benefit for the Haiti earthquake victims, his favorite charity. That had elicited a phone call from a woman who identified herself only as St Germain’s ‘friend,’ and when Andy agreed to the woman’s request for The Plunge to do a cover story on St Germain’s much-adored niece, who was engaged to be married next fall, the impossible-to-book photographer signed on the dotted line. It had been one of her biggest coups at work, and she smiled thinking about it.

Andy had been terrified to be photographed by such a famous photographer – and one who specialized in nudes – but St Germain had immediately put her at ease. She could see right away what made him so good.

‘What a relief!’ he had crowed the moment he stepped into Andy’s bridal suite with two assistants in tow. When they arrived at the estate, Andy remembered feeling inexplicably grateful they’d even shown up. Despite wearing only a strapless bra and knee-to-chest Spanx, Andy felt nothing but joy and appreciation at the sight of the photographer.

‘What? That you only have to shoot one average bride rather than an entire brigade of swimsuit models? Hi, I’m Andy. It’s so nice to finally meet you in person.’

St Germain couldn’t have been an inch over five-six, with a slight build and a lily-white complexion, but his voice sounded like it belonged to a linebacker. Not even his indeterminate accent (French? British? A hint of Aussie?) seemed to fit. ‘Hah hah! Yes, exactly. Those girls were crazy, completely aberrant! But seriously, ma chérie, I am so happy we do not need full-body makeup. It is so tiresome.’

‘No full-body makeup, I promise. If all goes as planned, you will not be able to tell whether I’m up to date on my bikini wax, either.’ Andy laughed. All the drama his booking required had prepared Andy to hate him, but St Germain was irresistibly charming. She knew from his ‘friend’ that he’d flown in directly from Rio, where he’d been shooting the latest Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition. Five days, two dozen models, hundreds if not thousands of inches of tanned and toned legs.

St Germain nodded as though she’d just said something very serious. ‘This is good. Ach, I am so tired of looking at skinny girls in bright bikinis. Of course, this is a dream of most men, but you know what they say … show me a beautiful woman, and I will show you a man who is tired of … well, you probably have heard the rest.’ He smiled devilishly.

‘It really doesn’t sound like you had such a terrible time,’ Andy said with a smile.

‘Yes, perhaps not.’ He reached forward and turned Andy’s chin toward the light. ‘Don’t move.’

Before she knew what was happening, an assistant handed him a camera with a lens the size of a fire log, and St Germain clicked twenty or thirty times.

Andy’s hand flew to her face. ‘Stop! They haven’t done my eyes yet. I’m not even wearing the dress!’

‘No, no, you’re beautiful just like that. Gorgeous! Does your fiancé tell you you look marvelous when you’re mad?’

‘He does not.’

St Germain thrust the camera to his left. A black-clad assistant immediately reached for it and exchanged it for another. ‘Mmm, well he should. Yes, just like that. Twinkle for me, darling.’

Andy let her shoulders drop and turned to face him. ‘What?’

‘Go on, twinkle!’

‘I’m not sure I know how to twinkle.’

‘Raj!’ he barked.

One of the assistants leaped up from behind the couch, where he was holding a reflector. He jutted out a hip, pursed his lips, cocked his head slightly to the side, and lowered his eyes in an approximation of a sexy, come-hither look.

St Germain nodded. ‘See? Like I tell all the swim babies. Twinkle.’

Andy laughed again now, remembering it. She pointed to one of the thumbnails Daniel was scrolling past. Her eyes were heavy lidded to the point of looking drugged and her mouth was puckered like a duck’s. ‘See? I twinkled there.’

‘You what?’

‘Never mind.’

‘Here,’ Daniel said, enlarging a photo of Andy and Max, midkiss during the ceremony. ‘Look how beautiful.’

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.