"Riding On The Back Of Peter Pan" (The Devil Wears Prada Fanfiction)

Pairing: Miranda / Andrea

Rating: PG

Words: 2,293

Disclaimer: All recognizable characters have been borrowed without permission but without any purpose or intent of commercial gain.

Well, it has finally come to this...There is an opening.

I stare at David’s email and for a moment, I don’t know what to do.  The New Yorker is the perfect vehicle to harness her young talent and I still hesitate.

Preposterous.

This sort of thing happens to others, never to me.  Every so often you get your regular Page Six story where some sodding old fart, beguiled by the newest bimbette of the month, leaves his wife of 40 years and later finds himself dump and penniless.  It is disgraceful, really.  So no, this does not happen to me.  I have dignity, I have class, I have vision and most of all, I have a hard earned common sense that it has always protected me from making a fool of myself.

Well, except for that time in Paris, some 15 years ago or so.  Yes, yes…that story Nigel cannot help himself to remind me of every so often. The little weasel.  Fortunately though he knows when to stop before I access my vast memory bank and look for the perfect retaliation.

What was her name? Sandra? Tanya? No, Sophia.

Yes, Sophia.  Brown-eyed girl like this one.  Young, sweet , intelligent.  Just like this one is.  I still remember the day.  Just like any other regular day I stepped out of my car at the Rue de Rivoli and she was standing there in the rain. She was obviously distressed and looking rather miserable.  But she reminded me of myself and for some odd reason completely impenetrable to me at this time, I helped her.  And she looked so lost (just like this one does, sometimes too) and so wholesome that I…I guess…I wanted to believe, yet one more time, that genuine goodness actually did exist.

Six months later, she finally stayed the night over.  It took us six months…six bloody months! Unthinkable.  But she would not be rushed so I played along, patiently. I guess I was just happy having her stare at me as I worked at home, writing for VOGUE and trying my hand at designing for my friend, Jean Paul Gaultier.  Every so often she would standup, come up to me and guide my hand to draw the shadows I had left out and that, in fact, were needed to give the designs their rightful character and volume.  “Those are good…” she’d say and smile.  And after a few weeks we progressed from the proverbial take away and badly cooked pasta to quick lunches of baguettes and salad outside her school.

And finally one day we had dinner and a movie, I think.  A month to go out for a meal, three months for a kiss, six months for…

Six months.  Six months of bliss.

Two years later the sun would find us in bed, lazily; she, talking about her professors at the Sorbonne and me, listening with my head in the clouds, enthralled by the soft cadence of her voice.

But one day, one ordinary day just like any other day, she was late coming home from school.  I dismissed it, of course.  I chose to believe that the sun would shine the next morning and would find us again in bed…together.  But she came the next morning with an odd story that lacked so many details I should have known something had changed.  Now in hindsight and with the knowledge life has imparted, I guess I wanted to believe that everything was just the same, that life was flowing the same way it had until then.  So I pegged it to her usual ‘mysterious’ ways and went on.

Two weeks later, she was gone.  “Hush…let it go now…” she whispered.  “Nothing can be done…”

So brown eyes stopped staring at my blues.

“Miranda? I am sorry…it’s Lacroix’s assistant; Mr. Lacroix will be late…Oh, and Gabriel is waiting on line 2…”

Brown eyes just like yours…

“Did that lowly assistant know who was calling..?”

“Yes Miranda, I clearly stated it was you…”

“Fine, fine, don’t bore me with your details…At what time, then?”

“At 3:30…”

“Very well…that’s all…”

And you’re off again.  I talk to Gabriel and I cannot help but smile.  He loves me.  He loves the girls.  He is such a kind and nice man…so unlike the rest that came to be before him. How did I, Bitch Extraordinaire that I am, come to be loved by such a gentle soul I will never know.  I supposed I love him too, to be honest…How could I not?

But hearts, I’ve discovered, can accommodate a lot more people and things, than we think.

Like these new pair of brown eyes that sometimes, just sometimes, seem to look at me in a way that I…that I really cannot fathom.

“I am sorry again for interrupting Miranda but Nigel just called…he has the shoot ready but the belts have not arrived…”

“And I need to know this…why?”

And her round, extraordinarily large eyes, change.

That’s it, see? That’s the look.  That is the look I was talking about.  These large brown eyes that so often seem to laugh quietly, with repressed emotion, are just gazing at me now with more than laughter peering through their black pupils.  Is that…longing? No, no, no, it cannot be.  And even if it was, I am sure it would not be a longing...for me.

But they tug at me.  Every day.  I wish I knew how to untangle myself from this, whatever ‘this’…is.

“He said you’d said that…He asked me to tell you one word…”

“Go on then, spit it out, I do not have all day…”

“VOGUE”

And my commotion makes her smile.  Kindly, softly even, like an angel would smile on a naughty child who suddenly repents.

“I’ll take care of it Miranda, don’t worry…”

Her words soothe me.  They shouldn’t, though.  She is nothing, she is no one.  She should not matter.  

But she does. 

"Shit..."

She heard my not so silent whisper. She turns and cocks her head gently, “You all right..?”puckered up lips ask me.

“Of course I’m alright Andrea…”

I should have gone to drama school.

“Whatever gave you the idea I was not..?”

And brown beacons morph yet again. This time they look at me with a patronizing smirk or a cheeky grin, I have yet to work out.  Like the way one would look upon a derailed soul who has engaged us in conversation on any street of New York.  I hate it when she looks at me like that…like she knows what I am thinking.

Or worst…feeling.

“Oh…nothing…”

“Go on, then, go…”

She stands there, like a child.  She bends one ankle, unconsciously, and folds her arms over her chest…clear indication she really does not want to go…”

“Okay…I’ll peel myself away, then…”

Did she just say ‘peel’?

“Call me, you know…should you need anything..?”

I shoo her away with my hand and she leaves with a deflated look on her face.  Wish I could just keep her.  Keep her.  Keep her? For what? So we could be friends, lover, what?

I was fine.  I was on top of my game.  Irving had resigned and ‘Runway” had defeated VOGUE in overall sales for 5 months straight.  I had Gabriel, I had my children.  I was fine…I was perfect.  I had just been proposed and unlike the previous men of my past, this lover, this man so unpretentious and quiet actually made me want to -not just show my ring- I wanted to flaunt it.  And I did, shamelessly.  We went out, we travelled.  He spoiled me rottenly with a lavish and steadfast kind of love I knew nothing of.  And it got me hooked.

And then she came along.  The little assistant who never asked for anything but seem so willing to give me anything I wanted.  And one day, out of the blue, with no clear prior indication of any impending assault, that little assistant established camp in my heart and would not leave.

What do I do with you now, Andrea..?

Furthermore…

What would you like me to do with you, if anything?

Two nights ago I heard her chat on the phone.  Yes, yes, I know I should not have spied on her lively conversation but truthfully, what could I have done? It took place right outside my office and well, I could not help it.  She spoke with someone close…a friend, perhaps, but all she kept saying was that this time things would be different; that she was hopeful, that she could not believe how lucky she was to have the chance.  Then she hung up and being as late as it was, she sat down to type while she listened to some music.    I do not mind music as long as it is after hours and it is tasteful, quiet and soft enough, that I would not be able to make up the words. 

Haha…under normal circumstances I would not have made up the lyrics but this time, all I could do was listen.

And all the songs spoke of new chances, new possibilities, of strong emotions yearning to come out and declarations of love one could not push oneself to utter.  They were not corny or sickly, I would have not pegged Andrea to be a fan of such lowly musical taste, but they did have a strong emotional content that caught me by surprise.  And I wondered, tired but stirred by my own imagination, as I was…

Are they for me?  Could it be...me?

What if they were? What would I do?  More importantly, what could I do? What could I offer her?  I have my life, my work, my public persona, my responsibilities.  I have Gabriel, the girls, my home. 

What? How?

Would I be able to accommodate? Would I be willing?

Yes. Yes.  To all that…yes!

Somehow I would make it work.  Somehow.  I guess I just want to have the chance at one last fantasy flight, one last ride with Alice down the hole or Dumbo or the Mad Hatter or Tinker Bell, who cares? It is the same, is it not? Fantasy…And fantasy takes us and engulf us, comforts us.  Tales of Knights and Princesses that need to be rescued and loved and cherished are the stuff of our dreams.

Please, brown eyes, please, sprinkle me with one more dash of fairy dust.  

Please, Andrea, please…Want me, girl. Pick me. Choose me.

And just as I had decided to jump onto the back of Peter Pan, I see my hands with their blue veins underneath the thin, pale skin.  I see my reflection on the side mirror and catch a glimpse of that damned double chin. I look down and realize my waist is not what it used to be.

What am I thinking?

I remember, then, that I am 25 years older than she is.  I remember she could be my own daughter.  And that more than a lover all I can possibly be for her is a mentor, an example…a guide.  Because really, what could a twenty-something year old girl, a youngling of our times, could possibly want from someone so much older than she is?  How could she possibly find me attractive, desirable…lovable..?  I sigh, beaten.

Her music haunts me again.  The songs I thought were for me.

For me?

No, no.  They are not for me.  I am sure they are inspired by a young, carefree lover who wants her and whom she wants back. 

Miranda…you are such an idiot…stop.

And I do, obeying the voice inside my head that prevails on despite the screams of my aching soul.   A dull ache takes abode on the pit of my stomach and prevents my thin lips from curling upwards.  I guess that the Mad Hatter is busy and somehow, in this chimerical tale, we have run out of fairy dust.

I open my laptop, click the icon for iTunes and desperately search for Bach, any Bach.  I settle for the Art of Fugue and let it play as I slump in my leather chair so beaten all I want to do is cry.  But of course, haha, I do not.  It is not the first time I have to kill a little bird.  Even if I have to carry his death inside of me…forever.

“Andrea..?”

“Yes, Miranda?"

And her brown eyes look at me again, with kindness and gentleness and yes, maybe even love.  Love I will never know, taste or feel.

Don’t look at me like that, girl, please. Don’t use that tone.  That softness…

“I am really good friends with David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker…”

“Yes?”

“I believe it is time for you to move on from Runway to do what you really want to do…”

“Excuse me?”

And just like that, the dream is gone.  Time of death? 9:27 pm.

Time to stop riding on the back of Peter Pan.

THE END