In the beginning it had been delightfully simple.
It must not however be assumed that it had not occupied almost all of my spare time. I will even admit now that it also ate vivaciously into the time I did not have to spare.
Time that should have been spent, for example, humiliating the sorry individual who had presented me with a particularly poorly constructed article on an up and coming designer I cannot quite recall the name of. Or on the fact that Gillian appeared to be wholly incapable of understanding that three new pairs of designer shoes does not a competent Miranda Priestly Assistant make, particularly when the feet they are placed upon insist on clomping about like a very excitable Patricia, an observation I never managed to voice due to my preoccupation at the time with the single purple bruise on my inner wrist that I had found not two seconds before Gillian lumped herself into my office.
The cause of my preoccupation, that little circle of purple, had been an unexpected consequence of a quick encounter in the closet the night before, but at the time of its infliction I had not felt the pain. To see it in daylight, in my office of all places, had been humiliating. The girl who administered it showed concern in place of triumph when my sleeve snagged on my bracelet and revealed our dirty little secret to the whole room (the fact they didn't know what it meant is irrelevant. I knew what it meant. It mattered to me).
However, I had not seen the significance of her reaction at all, and I continued doing what I was doing before she had bruised me and then shown me concern in public. That is, having my way.
It had been simple ultimately because I had decided, confidently and with out reserve at the time, not to care for it or see anymore into it what was right in front of my face, which was simply temporary, but nevertheless intense, desire for a body.
I suppose things change.
I had tried to force Andrea from my head tonight as I climbed the sadly quiet staircase to a bedroom that she had never seen but frequently asked to with a hope even I found hard to deny. Though I had managed to refuse her every time she asked so far, it had been proving more difficult to decline the girl. Woman. Whatever. It had been getting difficult.
As I removed my make up, I thought of the custom made Liliana Casanova Arc De Triomphe nightdress freshly hung in my closet awaiting only me, and imagined how it would feel as I slipped it over my body, hoping it would not catch too severely at the waist I was sure had expanded on account of the handfuls of jelly beans I did not have the ability to decline from the girl I was trying not to think about.
I would need to do something about that. I would not turn into one of those frumpy, old and lonely...nevermind.
My face, when free from make up, is quite ordinary. Plain despite the hundreds of dollars I would have spent on products that promise me quite the opposite, had they not been offered to me freely and with increasing persistence over the past thirty years from manufacturers that I can only assume believe I am a suitable candidate for an advertising campaign.
Still, she had seen me twice like this, and neither time did she turn away from me like I turn away every night from the mirror, disappointed and displeased.
The second time she saw me like this, after trying unsuccessfully for five whole minutes to extract heartfelt conversation from me (had she really expected me to be grateful for her condolences?), she stopped with the questions and got on her knees like she still found me attractive. That had been all I wanted, and she had complied eagerly when all I offered was a flick of my head in that way that means I want her to make me come.
She made me come twice that night, and at the time it shamed me beyond measure that the first orgasm had only made me want more of her, and instead of showing her the door, I grasped onto the back of her head until it happened again.
It was like I couldn't help myself.
I wondered, and really that was what took up all of the time I did not have to spare, I wondered what she saw in me, even bare faced and sad she saw it, and I wondered whether what she saw was actually there or if it was merely a trick of the light that one day very soon would be switched off, leaving me in the usual darkness.
When I look in the mirror, I only ever see an empty plane of recurring disappointment. I wondered, once the light I cannot see but Andrea is blinded by goes out and dark shocks in... well. What would be my chances or recovery?
The lamp cast a cozying glow across the bedroom but did nothing for my restlessness, and my eyes drifted to the freshly pressed Egyptian Cotton sheets, cream and clean but for the heavy weight of The Book. I had thrown it there in despondency before I had even turned the first page.
I knew, as I removed each rose gold hooped earring, that I could not possibly entertain the thought of going over The Book tonight because, yet again, this simple thing called desire had whipped me into quite a state of displacement. I was in no state to be making decisions and asserting my authority at a time when my stomach whirred with loneliness and my skin prickled with a vengeful want.
You see, although I repeatedly denied her anything more substantial than a physical collision of bodies, skin against skin and mouth against mouth, her fondness for the rest of me had always, in hindsight, been shadowing the simplicity.
Tonight I saw it completely, and found it not at all repulsive.
The crushing anger I felt over her unexplained absence tonight, and how she had instead asked that lumping Gillian girl to deliver the book without any notice whatsoever, had not lasted long before it was replaced with a sense of great helplessness and what can only be described as a heavy loss. An actual feeling of loss, when she did not appear in the hallway tonight with her little skirt and her big eyes and her pleasing mouth.
It had swept over me rapidly, and were it not for the door-frame that I had eagerly emerged from to greet her wearing what I knew was her favourite sweater, I have no doubt Gillian, who stood nervously in her place, would have seen me sway with the shock of an absent Andrea.
I had wanted to fuck Andrea. How dare she not be there.
We had been fucking for months, after she delivered the book mostly, but sometimes also at work if the day had been particularly tiresome, and I had expected tonight to be no different. Why would I? The pattern had been fairly constant for weeks, but tonight I had really wanted it.
I had wanted it like the time when I had cried and she made me come twice with her mouth, despite my plain face, despite me. I had wanted to press her hard against a wall and have her wrap her legs around my fattening waist until she gurgled my name through her full and waiting mouth, for no other reason than it felt good to do.
It was, I maintain, as simple as that.
Sex evidently counteracts the effects excess sugar has on the body and mercifully the nightgown fit me perfectly. Some small comfort. I rolled onto my back and hitched up my knees and thought of how it may look on Andrea, and whether she would like it at all, if I ever cared to ask for her approval. A ridiculous thought I know, being the Editor In Chief of American Runway.
Excepting a select few who have been through years upon years of strict coaching by Nigel or I, everybody asks me for fashion advice. Everybody. It should never be the other way around, and the desire for her approval was as present as it was unexpected.
I realise now I had been wanting to look good for her for weeks, as evidenced by my increasingly flamboyant collection of silk nightgowns and lace underwear. I have imagined her in a multitude of nightgowns like this on more occasions than I care to admit, though in reality it is quite probable she prefers to wear flannels. Or perhaps a worn nightshirt in periwinkle with little pockets, a row of sea blue buttons running up the centre but for the top two that she would leave unbuttoned only for me. Her hair would be pulled over one shoulder, frizzy from the humidity but still entirely touchable. She would see me in my new nightgown and together we would be oddly mis-matched in attire but blissfully matched in mind.
I hoped for a commonality of vision. But of course she wanted more than I wanted. They always want more than I want.
I should have been disappointed in her persistence for more, whatever that meant, but I only found disappointment in myself.
And that, I realised as I flicked my thumb over the display on my cellphone, was how I knew this was no longer simply about sex and it likely had not been just about sex for a very long time.
This was about a connection, and we had it when we had sex and we had it when we were apart. I could feel her with me, in my bed, on me, for me.
I recalled the field of reassuring smiles and brief nods she would offer when no one else was looking. Those looks had been absent of sex and full of compassion and I only saw it for what it was when she denied me the only thing I thought I wanted.
Last night, after I had yet again denied her my bed, she had told me she was fed up with my behaviour as she thrust angry fingers into me. Her spare hand wrapped painfully about my wrist, and I came heavily as she told me she could not do this anymore.
Although worry kept me company well into the night and into this morning, I had never thought she was serious, but her absence tonight showed that she was.
Sex is nothing compared to this. A lesson was being taught, though the teacher not at all present in body. She was there in spirit, however, most certainly. The lesson was difficult but brief. I wanted her more than I had ever imagined.
"Miranda?" It was strange to hear her voice whilst I lay in bed, even if it was subdued by distance, and a river of nerves ran from my head to my toes. I gripped to the cellphone as though it could keep me grounded.
"Get here."
But for static, there was silence.
"Did she bring the book?"
"She brought the book." My throat worked double time, reassuring me I was doing the right thing. This was not simple. This was more than I had ever anticipated.
"Dry cleaning. She forgot the dry-"
"She brought the dry cleaning." Could she not hear it in my voice? But again a heavy quiet came where my stomach rolled and complained at my idiocy.
"Then why..."
I hung up and softly threw the cell phone to the end of the bed. What do I do now?
I had no desire to lay in the same place that humiliatingly uneventful conversation had occurred, and instead I raised quickly to sit with impeccable posture, hands quietly resting in my lap at the bottom corner of the bed nearest the door, just as I had sat in the study tonight as I waited for the book that she...Andrea. Did. Not. Deliver. I had never felt so stupid.
And where do I go from here? Without covers, the nightgown did little to deflect the cool air that rolled in from the open window and onto my back, but that only caused me to sit more properly, and so I forgave the minor discomfort in favour of appearing collected and calm, despite the fact that nobody was there to witness it.
You see, I did not want to want this and I was angry at myself for a litany of reasons and they whipped about my head, at odds with my exhaustion. I prayed I could just get through the night. One simple, dark and ordinary night.
I should have stopped this thing months ago. Before it had even begun. Even before she had the opportunity to place her hand on my own in the car after hearing me pray for my girls in the archive room not ten minutes earlier. I still do not know what on earth she was doing in there. She...
What was that? I thought I heard...No. Nevermind.
She should not have been there in the first place. Nobody has authority to go into the archive room except for Stuart or Harriet, who were both occupied with Nigel at the time, so I thought it had been safe to take a little time-out of my own to think about the things that really mattered to me.
I had prayed for my girls and for a happiness all of their own, and I had prayed they would recover from this divorce sooner than had been predicted in multiple articles on divorce and its affect on children. I had read them nightly, before all of this began. But then there was a comforting hand, and then I spread my legs for my assistant, and then I stopped reading the articles. I am terrible mother.
I should question her on why she was in the archive room when she had no need or right to be there. If it had been anybody else, anyone at all, they would have been on the receiving end of a barrage of softly potent insults and serious threat of unemployment, but I had done none of that with Andrea. I had allowed her to comfort me. It had not been at all sexual.
But now it is far too late to do anything about it. It was months ago and to challenge her now would seem like...
The door. Somebody was at the door.
I had forgotten slippers in haste, and the cold hallway floor against bare feet prevented any inclination to pause and consider who it could be at such a late hour, and before common sense prevailed the door was wide open and in the front of me stood one red-nosed, glassy eyed Andrea Sachs.
All of the breath was removed from my lungs and along with it went any kind of polite greeting, instead I stared at her and she at me for long seconds where I contemplated whether the lack of key in her hand was by conscious decision or plain forgetfulness, and what either of those scenarios could mean.
She was the first to speak, and when she did it was with determination.
"I'm not having sex with you."
"I don't want sex." I offered with quiet conviction. Looking at her like that, tired and certain in my doorway, I knew what I wanted, it was as clear as the sun.
"Then what."
Whatever she was willing to give, I thought, however the words seemed weak and cowering and inappropriate considering the fight that was held in her own voice. She shivered and I allowed her in.
By the time I had closed the door and checked the latch not once but twice, appropriate words were still no clearer to me. I am supposed to be good at words. I wondered where they had gone.
In silence I brought my hands to her shoulders where she allowed me to remove her coat, and I placed it in the closet next to my own. Another door closed and again I had no words to remedy the anger in her face, and so I took her hand, it was so cold, and pulled her towards the stairs.
She dragged behind in reluctance or uncertainty, I will never be sure which, until we got to my bedroom door where I had to squeeze her hand to get her to follow.
She did not move her eyes from my own. This girl who had pressed on and on about wanting to sleep in my bed, did not care to see it at all, nor did she care for my nightgown, nor the fact my nipples were unrelenting against its thin fabric. None of those things caught her attention.
"Stay."
She is good at her job, and blinked in rapid succession only three times before I had her bullet eyes back on mine, acting as though what I had just asked was not impossible or ridiculous or a promise, even though we both knew it was all of those things.
"I have nothing to wear."
Her in a worn nightshirt with sea blue buttons, her in my nightgown, her completely naked, her in my grey robe from Paris.
Before I realised it, I held the grey robe towards her like some kind of pathetic olive branch and she took it without brushing her hand across mine, like she would have done in order to get me impossibly worked up as she passed me a Starbucks and a winning smile at work. Because this was different.
I sat again at the corner of the bed, at a loss for what else to do as she changed in my bathroom, and when the door opened her face was bare and her body was wrapped in my grey robe and I wanted her like never before.
We stood either side of the bed. So far this evening I had only touched her hand in order to coax her up here, and we both felt the strangeness owing to the lack of immediate contact between bodies and walls.
She followed my lead, dipping limbs into cool sheets without question, as though she was on her best behaviour just for me, knowing how I despise unnecessary questions and how they can cause quite a tornado inside me. I would have done my best for her if she had asked me anything at all however, no matter how embarrassing or revealing, I would have tried for her, because this was no longer simple and I was no longer her boss, I could not force my personality on her any longer.
The action was strangely mundane, and I found in it a warm comfort. This could actually be okay.
We stayed like logs a foot apart in the bed she had always wanted to fuck me in. The bedside light kept us in a soft glow and allowed me to observe her quite still but for a worried lip that was tugged and chewed resolutely through the minutes. I guess I had expected sex after all, but our bodies were absent of it. She would not look at me, but neither was she making any signs of running.
After sometime, where neither of us moved and breathed only barely, I gained some semblance of trust that she was not about to run away. As I slid my hand across to hers beneath the covers I held a breath that was taken from me in a painful sigh when she grasped onto my questioning hand with her own tight fist.
"Don't leave."
This time, the words came from Andrea's mouth, though I had uttered them myself exactly once to Andrea in Paris and exactly zero times to Stephen, Greg, or Helena.
"I don't intend to."
I prayed for myself then, that she would know intention was as much as I could offer and promises of forever were too much to give. I guess it was enough for her, because she pulled me towards her body so that our knees knocked awkwardly, but the feeling, oh the feeling of our joined hands locked and trapped against each others breasts left me with no desire to ever move. How could I ever have not wanted this?
"What is this?" she asked softly.
"It's simple," I replied. "This is our future."
It is just getting light. I awoke softly some minutes ago in her arms, un-fucked and more contended than I have been in three decades. Though she is sound asleep, happiness glows from her and into me. I have simply, finally, fallen in love.