Part 9
Erotically Chaste
Miranda hung up her phone and then laid it down on the empty space beside her on her bed. She was fully dressed and ready for the long hours she would spend making
Runway the best book in the business. She had made a valiant effort to try and sleep after Andrea had left her home. She had thrown away the empty wine bottle and had washed the wine glasses. She had made it to her bedroom and had carefully cleaned the makeup off of her face. She had donned her pajamas and then climbed into bed and closed her eyes. One solitary, measly, minute passed and her eyes opened again. She hadn't particularly liked what she had seen when her eyes had been shut. She stubbornly refused to allow herself to fall asleep with the image that was painted under the cover of her eyelids. The last thing she saw that night would not be the memory of Andrea leaning towards her to place a kiss on her cheek.
If she fell asleep with the reminiscences of Andrea's lips pressing against her flesh then she would inevitably dream about the young writer and that was unacceptable. Miranda couldn't just go around dreaming about some silly youthful woman, because Miranda didn't dream often, but when she did they were always laid out in the full spectrum of color and availed her to all of her senses. They were intense and vibrant and full of life. She always remembered her dreams; she had since she was a little girl.
The heightened state of being in her dream world would fill in the missing pieces that her brain refused to register while she had been awake. Miranda would remember the way the light had reflected off of Andrea's eyes and how she had seen her own reflection inside of them. She would remember the texture of Andrea's lips past their softness. She would remember the feel of Andrea's eyelash as it fluttered shut and then open against her heated skin. She would remember it all and then would be unable to forget that any of it had ever happened.
Every time Miranda blinked, the little bits of memory returned and it was as if she could remember nothing else. She sat up and got out of her bed. She walked towards her bathroom, shedding all of her clothes along the way. She opened the shower's glass door and then reached inside and turned the left knob as far as it would go. The water began to force through her ridiculously expensive shower head, and she stepped into its flow. It burned her skin and her body's first reaction was to preserve itself by jumping out of the scalding heat, but Miranda forced her body to still itself. She looked up directly into the tiny holes that released the heated water, daring it to make her move.
She gritted her teeth, putting all of her focus on denying herself a hint of mercy. She could feel the redness overtake her skin, hoping that it was somehow burning off the foolishness that had infected her. She stood as long as she could until she lost the battle against those small bits of empty space that pushed the water down to attack the surface of her body. Her right arm shakily reached out and turned on the cold water. It took a few moments, but the temperature of the water gradually evened out until it was cool enough to take away some of the heat on Miranda's overheated skin.
When her body had cooled and she no longer felt like she had stepped through firewater, she turned off the water and exited the shower. She ran a comb through her hair, straightening out the tangles that had somehow formed between the moment she had laid down to sleep and gotten up to forget. She stared at the reflection of her eyes in the mirror. She took an uneasy breath and then slowly closed her eyes as she had when she had tried to fall asleep. The picture under the cover of her eyelids had not changed. It wasn't going to. Her dreams would once again defy her will.
Miranda didn't bother to dry her hair or her body, and left her clothes forgotten on the floor. She went back to her bed and climbed into it, knowing she was too old to try and bate her dreams like a frightened child. So, Miranda closed her eyes and she forced herself to keep them shut. She would not run away from sleep.
It didn't take very long sleep to overtake her. Her body was tired, and her mind was exhausted. She fell asleep, and as she already knew she would, she dreamt of Andrea. Her mind gave her back the intensity of emotion she had learned to block out while she was awake. It gave her Andrea's kiss without filters. It handed her a singular brief illusion of happiness.
She was asleep for three solid hours before she woke up at four in the morning. Her dreams had been pleasant, but a sudden anxiety attached itself to the inside of her chest and instead of dismissing it to grab back onto the sensation of an erotically chaste kiss, she once again removed herself from her bed and immediately towards the nearest phone, picked it up and then was dialing her daughter's cell phone number before her head had fully pushed away the haze of her emotion.
"Mom?"
Miranda began breathing again. "Yes, Darling."
"Is everything okay?" Caroline asked.
"You didn't call earlier so I wanted to check up on you and your sister," Miranda forced the worry out of her voice and effectively sounded as if she had called explicitly to chastise her daughters for their forgetfulness.
"But why are you calling so late?"
"I wanted to speak with you before the beginning of my busy day." Miranda was suddenly thankful for the five hour time difference between New York and Hawaii. "You know how busy my days can get."
"But isn't it, like, four in the morning there?"
Normally, Miranda respected Caroline's constant quest for knowledge. "Yes, it is." She found that respect did not exist at four in the morning. "Now, tell me how things are going with you and your sister."
She could hear Cassidy saying something in the background and then a rustling sound before Caroline's voice returned. "Mommy, I put you on speaker phone so we can both talk."
"We want to come home," Cassidy intercepted before Caroline had even finished talking. "Rayne wants us to go fishing tomorrow. She refuses to recognize that I'm a vegetarian now."
"Oh, so you decided to remain in the same school of thought as Ingrid Newkirk?"
"Mommy!" Miranda knew her daughter would realize she was not being complimented.
Miranda shook her head. "Cassidy, you know I will support whatever you decide to do." She had every confidence Cassidy would return back to normal once she was away from her father. "We can go ahead and give Marisela a vegetarian menu for you. I'll have Emily come up with a suitable one."
"I still like meat," Caroline bragged. "When we went to dinner tonight I ordered the biggest steak and ate it all."
"That's wonderful." Miranda knew her daughter well enough to know that Caroline hadn't eaten an ungodly amount of red meat in search of her mother's approval, but had instead done it with the simple motivation of annoying her sister. "How is everything else?"
"We went surfing today," Cassidy responded. "I was really good at it, but Caroline fell down a lot."
"I did not!" Caroline defended herself. "You kept pushing me off."
"No I didn't!" Cassidy riposted.
"Girls," Miranda warned. "I refuse to spend this time hearing you two bicker."
"Sorry Mommy." They both replied.
"How are you doing?" Caroline asked. "We read about the divorce," she mumbled.
Things had been finalized a long time ago. It had just taken a while for all the dotted lines to be properly signed. "I am doing quite well."
"Rayne said you eat men's souls, and that's why Stephen left," Cassidy rushed out, her words barely understandable.
"Shut up!" Miranda heard Caroline yell and something that sounded a lot like a slap.
"Caroline."
"What?"
"Apologize to your sister for hitting her."
"But..."
"Now."
Miranda could hear Caroline offer Cassidy an insincere apology. "Now," she cleared her throat. "Rayne does not know what she is talking about." And if she continued to talk to her girls about things she knew nothing about Miranda would see to it that Rayne would lose her ability to speak at all.
"We want to come home," Cassidy pleaded.
The pit of anxiety had not faded as she spoke to her daughters. She was convinced that they were doing well, and were not in any immediate danger, but that was no guarantee that their safety would carry on throughout the day. "If you still want to leave when you wake up in the morning then I will speak with your father about you coming home early."
And because her girls thought she controlled the universe, they cheered as if they were guaranteed tickets on the next plane heading towards New York. There was a knock in the background and then Miranda heard her ex-husband's voice telling Caroline and Cassidy that they should be in bed.
"But we're talking to Mom," Cassidy explained. "She wanted to talk to us before she did anything else."
Their father replied, but Miranda couldn't clearly hear what it was he said. Although, it did sound something like, 'isn't it four in the morning there?'.
"Your father is right," Miranda interrupted any protests her daughters could offer their father. "You should be sleeping."
"But Mommy..." Cassidy began, but Miranda would not let her finish.
"I need to get ready for work. My love to you both."
"Love you!" Her girls yelled. She hung up, satisfied with their conversation. She then made her way back to her bathroom and picked up her forgotten clothes along the way. She began readying herself for her day knowing that any chance she had at sleeping had already passed her by.
She took another shower, this one much less intense than the one she had taken a few hours prior. She had just finished getting dressed when she heard her phone ring a little after five. She almost assumed she was hearing things since she had already talked to her girls and they would be the only ones calling this early. She looked down at the caller ID and laughed aloud when she saw Andrea's name appear; her girls were no longer the only ones that dared take such personal liberties.
When she answered the phone, Miranda made sure to make herself sound properly put out, and she made sure to hang up abruptly without any useless lingering over goodbyes. Miranda had even feigned a yawn. It wouldn't do for Andrea to know that she was wide awake after a restless night. Andrea might get the wrong idea and assume that the reason Miranda hadn't slept had something to do with her. Andrea wouldn't know that Miranda often didn't sleep well, she would believe that she had in some way affected Miranda, and that simply was not the case.
Miranda now looked down at the phone that had offered a brief reprieve from the anxiety inside of her, and for some idiotic reason she wanted to pick it back up and dial Andrea's number. She wanted to say...things to Andrea that would somehow make Andrea's day okay again. She wanted to let Andrea know that the grief that accompanied the loss of a relationship didn't last forever, because Miranda suspected this was the first time Andrea had exited a relationship still loving the person she had been with, but hadn't loved enough to stay with.
Instead of taking the risk of saying anything, Miranda removed herself from the temptation. She left her bedroom, walked down to the first floor of her home, and again began focusing on the day ahead of her. She worked on the minute details of her job until Roy was outside of her home ready to take her into work.
She kept herself busy the entire day, creating more chaos inside of an already dynamic environment, and when others found that they couldn't keep up with her pace she criticized them for their incompetence. If she could get up at four in the morning after having slept only a few hours, and accomplish the amount of work she had then everyone else should be able to do something as simple as being able to adjust to a few simple changes on their schedules. Everyone was simply acting as if she had asked them to perform a task involving a needle and a haystack.
Emily was proving to be completely useless without a second assistant, and Nigel was having one of his fits again since she still absolutely refused to talk to him about Andrea's article. She had told him to take care of it, not to run to her with his questions. She already had enough distractions with the covert rumblings that were springing up about Irv and his broken ego. He was still trying to show her that he was in charge and that she was a dying breed. He failed to understand that she was not like the racehorse being ridden until it was no longer profitable, but instead she was like the gambler that bet their life savings on every race and, to her great fortune, she hadn't lost in a very long time.
Irv could, and would be replaced. Eventually, he would be forced to retire and would be supplanted by another man in a suit that had convinced a room dominated by greedy men that Irv no longer suited their purposes. Miranda had lived through the cyclical changes of the boardroom repeatedly unscathed. Above everything, Miranda was a survivor, and Irv, simply, was not. He was too scared to risk everything for the chance of being victorious. Miranda suspected Irv was a terrible poker player.
Miranda let the hours of the day tick by, and paid little attention to them. She worked until she felt she had accomplished enough to wipe away the weaknesses she had started to show. Miranda knew there was not a single person within
Runway that believed she was publishing Andrea's article on the merits of the work. They could not question the quality of it, but they knew that Miranda was granting someone a favor that did not rightfully deserve one. They expected cruelty but saw compassion instead. Rumors started filtering through their hedonistic pores and they made speculations that ranged from Miranda being near death to somehow having been blackmailed by a hideous secret Andrea had learned during her tenure at
Runway.
Miranda did not leave work until the Book had been ready. She told Emily to forget about picking up the dry cleaning and returned home alone. Her phone rang as soon as she opened her front door. It was the girls' father, and she had to force herself to answer the phone.
"Hello."
"The girls said you were buying them tickets to come home early."
"I told them I would talk to you about it." The girls had called her as soon as they had woken up demanding she buy them tickets home. She had not outright refused their request.
"Well, I don't think they should leave yet."
She had loved the girls' father at one time, but at the moment she couldn't remember why. "They are obviously not enjoying themselves."
"They're not giving Rayne a chance, Miranda."
"Don't be ridiculous, the girls have simply realized what everyone else in the world except you have; Rayne is a sophomoric opportunist who loves you about as much as I do."
"Miranda, you should be careful about judging Rayne since the news of your third divorce is still selling papers."
Miranda remembered that she had chosen looks over personality when she had pursued a relationship with him. "If you consider the truth to be judgmental then so be it."
"I thought you weren't going to interfere, Miranda." His voice was getting louder. "We agreed you would give Rayne a chance."
Miranda made her way through the house, dropping the Book off in her study as she went. "I agreed to no such thing. I only said that I would not speak ill of her to the girls, and I have not done that. It is unfortunate that you cannot tell me Rayne has shown me the same respect."
"What are you talking about, Miranda?"
"Did you think I would not hear about her belittling me in front of my children? Did she honestly think she could win their favor by insulting me?"
"Miranda I..."
"No, no," she interrupted him. "I will not listen to your excuses. Say what you will about my parting with Stephen, but at least you know that while the girls were around him he wasn't cursing your name. You know I would not allow that."
"Miranda..."
She had heard enough from him. "It is time for Caroline and Cassidy to return home, Alain. Emily has already forwarded you their flight information." She ended the call, and then returned to the Book. Alain did not call back; her girls would be home by tomorrow evening.
Miranda carried on with her night, and even cooked herself something to eat, making a little extra telling herself it was just in case she got hungry later. She resisted her body's urge to rest as the night wore on, until she could no longer put up a fight. As she laid down onto her bed, she looked over at her phone and then to the clock on her nightstand. It was after one in the morning. Andrea had not shown up at her doorstep and she had not called. And Miranda told herself that Andrea's absence didn't affect her at all. Andrea, with her silly confessions and ridiculous apologies, could not affect her. Miranda was a grown woman who had no time to pay any attention to her dreams.
Continued