Lauren Weisberger 5-Book Collection: The Devil Wears Prada, Revenge Wears Prada, Everyone Worth Knowing, Chasing Harry Winston, Last Night at Chateau Marmont. Lauren Weisberger
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one sent out for dinner spices. It was especially annoying since Fifth Avenue doesn’t have any corner delis, and neither does Madison or Park, so I had to go all the way to Lex to find one. But, of course, they didn’t sell basil, so I had to walk up nine blocks until I found an open D’Agostino’s. It took me an extra forty-five minutes. I should just expense a fucking spice rack and start traveling with it wherever I go. But let me tell you, those were a really, really worthwhile forty-five minutes! I mean, think of how much I learned shopping for that basil, how better prepared I am for my future in magazines! I’m on the fast track to becoming an editor now!’ I flashed a winning smile.
‘To your future!’ Lily cried, not detecting a single hint of sarcasm in my diatribe.
‘She’s so far gone,’ Alex said quietly, watching Lily with the look of someone watching a sick relative sleep in a hospital bed. ‘I got here on time with Max, who already left, but she must’ve been here for hours already. Either that, or she drinks really fast.’
Lily had always been a big drinker, but it wasn’t weird, because Lily was a big everything. She was the first one to smoke pot in junior high and the first one to lose her virginity in high school and the first to go skydiving in college. She loved anyone and anything that didn’t love her back, so long as it made her feel alive.
‘I just don’t understand how you can sleep with him when you know he’s never going to break up with his girlfriend,’ I’d said about a guy she’d been secretly seeing our junior year.
‘I just don’t understand how you can play by so many rules,’ she’d shot back instantly. ‘Where’s the fun in all your perfectly planned, mapped-out, rule-filled life? Live a little, Andy! Feel something! It’s good to be alive!’
Maybe she had been drinking a little more lately, but I knew that her first-year studies were incredibly stressful, even for her, and that her professors at Columbia were more demanding and less understanding than the ones she’d had wrapped around her finger at Brown. It might not be a bad idea, I thought, signaling to the waitress. Maybe drinking was the way to handle it. I ordered an Absolut and grapefruit juice and took a long, deep swig. It made me feel more sick than anything, because I still hadn’t had time to eat anything except the raisins and the Diet Coke Emily had scraped together for me earlier that day.
‘I’m sure she’s just had a rough couple of weeks in school,’ I said to Alex as though Lily weren’t sitting with us. She didn’t notice we were talking about her because she was preoccupied giving some yuppie guy at the bar heavy-lidded, come-hither looks. Alex put his arm around me and I snuggled closer on the couch. It felt so good to be near him again – it seemed like it had been weeks.
‘I hate to be a buzz-kill, but I really have to get home,’ Alex said, pushing my hair back behind my ear. ‘Will you be OK with her?’
‘You have to leave? Already?’
‘Already? Andy, I’ve been here watching your best friend drink for the past two hours. I came to see you, but you weren’t here. And now it’s almost midnight, and I still have essays to correct.’ He said it calmly, but I could see that he was upset.
‘I know, I’m sorry about that, I really am. You know that I would’ve been there if I could’ve helped it at all. You know that—’
‘I do know all that. I’m not saying you did anything wrong or that you could’ve done anything differently. I understand. But try to understand where I’m coming from, too, OK?’
I nodded and kissed him, but I felt awful. I pledged to make it up to him, to pick a night and plan something really special for just the two of us. He did, after all, put up with a lot from me.
‘So, you won’t even stay over tonight?’ I asked hopefully.
‘Not unless you need help with Lily. I really need to get home and work on those papers.’ He hugged me good-bye, kissed Lily on the cheek, and headed toward the door. ‘Call me if you need me,’ he said as he walked out.
‘Hey, why’d Alex leave?’ Lily asked, even though she’d been sitting there through the entire conversation. ‘Is he mad at you?’
‘Probably,’ I sighed, hugging my canvas messenger bag to my chest. ‘I’ve been a shit to him lately.’ I went to the bar to ask for an appetizer menu and by the time I came back, the Wall Street guy had curled up on the couch next to Lily. He looked to be in his late twenties, but his receding hairline made it impossible to know for sure.
I grabbed her coat and tossed it at her. ‘Lily, put that on. We’re leaving,’ I said while looking at him. He was on the shorter side, and his pleated khakis didn’t help his pudgy figure. And the fact that his tongue was now two inches from my best friend’s ear didn’t make me like him any more.
‘Hey, what’s the rush?’ he asked in a whiny, nasal voice. ‘Your friend and I are just getting to know each other.’ Lily grinned and nodded, trying to take a gulp from her drink but not realizing her glass was empty.
‘Well, that’s very sweet, but it’s time for us to go. What’s your name?’
‘Stuart.’
‘Nice to meet you, Stuart. Why don’t you give Lily here your number and she can give you a call when she’s feeling a little better – or not. How does that sound?’ I flashed him a smile.
‘Uh, whatever. No worries. I’ll catch you guys later.’ He was on his feet and headed to the bar so fast that Lily hadn’t yet noticed he’d left.
‘Stuart and I are getting to know each other, aren’t we, Stu?’ She turned to the place where he had sat and looked confused.
‘Stuart had to run, Lil. Come on, let’s get out of here.’
I pulled her drab green peacoat on over her sweater and yanked her to her feet, where she swayed precariously until she regained her balance. The air outside was searing and cold and I figured it’d help her sober up.
‘I don’t feel so good.’ She was slurring again.
‘I know, sweetie, I know. Let’s get a cab back to your apartment, OK? Do you think you can make it?’
She nodded and then leaned over very casually and threw up. All over her brown boots, with some of it splashing up the sides of her jeans. If only the Runway girls could see my best friend now, I couldn’t help thinking.
I sat her down on a window ledge that looked reasonably like it wouldn’t have an alarm and ordered her not to move. There was a twenty-four-hour bodega right across the street, and this girl clearly needed some water. When I got back, she’d thrown up again – this time all down her front – and her eyes looked droopy. I’d bought two bottles of Poland Spring, one for her to drink and one for cleaning, but she was too gross now. I dumped one all over her feet to wash away the sick, and half of the second one over her coat. Better to be soaking wet than covered in puke. She was so drunk she didn’t even notice.
It took a little persuading to get a cabbie to let us in with Lily looking in such bad shape, but I promised a really big tip on top of what was sure to be a really big fare. We were going from the Lower East Side to the far Upper West, and I was already figuring out a way to expense what was sure to be a twenty-dollar ride. I could probably just write it off as a trip I had to make in search of something for Miranda. Yes, that would work.
The trip to her fourth-floor walk-up was even less fun than the cab, but she’d become more cooperative after the twenty-five-minute ride, and she even managed to wash herself in the shower after I’d undressed her. I pointed her in the direction of her bed and watched as she collapsed face-down when her knees hit the box spring. I looked down at her, unconscious, and was momentarily nostalgic for college, for all the things we’d done together then. It was fun now, no question, but it would never again be as carefree as then.
I briefly wondered if Lily might be drinking too much these days. After all, she did seem to be drunk pretty consistently. But when Alex had brought it up the