The Prodigal Daughter: Chapter 3
Author's Notes:
1. A shout-out to mah amazing support group of FANers: Dickie, Vicey, Missy H! Y'all rock my Casbah on a daily basis. Mil gracias!
Visual Reference:
1. Because I will never tire of looking at beautiful women, and neither should you!
a. This is Miranda, Marguerite, Elizabeth James, and Neela Kumar.
b. Since I'm an equal opportunist when it comes to eye candy, this is Charles. You can also click on the picture to magnify.
Audio Reference:
1. I've recently been on a big Ulrich Schnauss kick, and I'm choosing a posh ambient track of his called A Letter From Home.
Disclaimer: Miranda, Bianca, Maggie, Erica, Kendall, Greenlee etc belong to AMC/ABC. No money or profit is being made from their use here. Please don't sue; please work out your existential angst in some other fashion. I recommend either therapy or sex. Marguerite St. Just, Elizabeth James, Neela Kumar, Henri Thierry, Natasha and other original characters belong to me.
Rating: Strong R for the whole series. Please read responsibly.
Feedback: It is most greatly appreciated!
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THE PRODIGAL DAUGHTER
CHAPTER 3: THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER
Her BlackBerry screamed at her at midnight.
Miranda fumbled out of her sleep and reached for it, automatically bringing it to her ear. "Hello?" she rasped.
"Oh, my God!! I'm engaged!!!"
Miranda blinked her eyes open and sat up quickly. "What?? Who is this?"
"Who is this?? You doofus, it's Lizzie!!"
Miranda's heartbeat began to slow. "Jesus! Lizzie!"
"What do you mean, "Who is this??""
"Okay, okay, sorry! I was asleep!"
"Well wake the f*ck up! I'm engaged!!"
"I'm awake, I'm awake. Oh, my God!!"
"I'm engaged!!"
"Congratulations! I'm so happy for you, but for God's sake, Lizzie, please stop screeching!"
"Oh, Mimo! It was such a surprise! I thought it was just dinner at this super posh restaurant, but at the end of it, we were walking outside, and passed the Louvre, and he just dropped down on one knee! Because you know that's where we met! Oh, my God, I'm engaged!"
"Congratulations, darling! I knew Charles had some brains in his head!"
"Oh, my God! We have to celebrate!"
"How about you and Charles come over for dinner tonight?"
"Tonight?! No way, we're having sex all day and all night!"
"Thanks, Lizzie."
"Oh, and I won't be at work today, boss."
Miranda laughed, even in her exhausted state. "Of course. You go have your wild, jungle sex with your very, very lucky fiance."
"You got that right, baby! He's not gonna be able to walk for a week!"
"Lizzie!"
"Miranda! I'm engaged!"
"Lizzie, I love you, but I'm gonna strangle you if you screech in my ear one more time."
"Okay, we've got champagne, and we're home, and you're the first one I've told. I've got to call Mom and Dad, but if she asks you, I told her first."
"Of course, darling. Your secret is safe with me."
"Miranda! I'm--"
"Yes, darling, you're engaged! Congratulations! And to Charles, too! Now don't morph into one of those annoying brides we've always mocked, and you'll be fine."
Lizzie guffawed. "As if! How dare you?!"
Miranda smiled. "I know you, darling."
"Okay, gotta go. Let's do dinner tomorrow night, okay? I'll give you the dish, and you can check out the bling!"
"Is it big?"
"Hmmm...it's big enough, but not gaudy. Thank God!"
Miranda laughed again. "Then it's perfect."
"Okay, my love, must go ravish my man! Call me! Love you!"
"Love you too, Lizzie!"
Miranda hung up and stared at her phone. She was disoriented and jumbled. Her heart rate had slowed, and she breathed deeply. In and out. In and out. In and out.
She reached for her phone again, and scrolled through her e-mail and voicemail. No messages from Marguerite.
She set the BlackBerry back on the bedside table and put her hand to her forehead. She sighed in frustration. She was elated for Elizabeth; Charles had been good for her, and made her happy.
She reached into one of the drawers on her bedside table, and felt beneath the books to the very back of the drawer. She pulled out a crushed envelope. Opening it gingerly, she pulled out a strip of Xanax. All she needed was one tablet to calm herself, to help her sleep .
To take the edge off, darling.
She broke the foil seal and knocked a pill onto her open palm. It was small, round, and slightly yellowish.
Miranda walked into her bathroom to fill a glass of water, the pill held securely in her increasingly sweaty palm. She dispassionately watched the water gush to fill the glass. With one hand, she shut off the faucet, and cupped her other palm, the pill laying in the middle.
It would take the edge off.
She thought of the past three months of being clean since she got out of rehab. Not a drop of alcohol, not one prescription pill, not one line of coke.
Three months; twelve weeks; ninety days; two thousand one hundred and sixty hours; one hundred and twenty nine thousand and six hundred minutes; seven million seven hundred and seventy six thousand seconds.
And counting.
She recalled her conversation with her psychiatrist three months ago:
"What are you afraid of?"
"I'm afraid these are going to make me a zombie."
"Selective Seratonin Reuptake Inhibitors, or SSRIs for short, don't make people zombies, Miranda. They regulate the amount of seratonin in your brain. That will help reduce the fluctuations in your moods."
Miranda said nothing.
"Miranda?"
"So these are supposed to make me less...volatile?"
"Partly, yes. That, in addition, to therapy can be a great treatment."
"They will make me less impulsive?"
"They won't change your personality, Miranda."
"But they will."
"What is your real concern here?"
Miranda sighed deeply. "A month ago, I finished two-month long stint in rehab, for coke and alcohol."
"I know. It's in your file."
"I've been sober for the past month."
"That's wonderful. The first month is always the hardest."
"Before rehab, I used to have a...thing...with Xanax."
"Xanax is an anti-anxiety. It's understandable that you used it. Were you addicted to it?"
Miranda nearly smiled. "No, it was recreational. To take the edge off the cocaine."
"But?"
"It was more of a...flirtation."
"Well, should you get on these SSRIs, you will have to stay off any Xanax, Miranda."
"Not even a flirtation?"
"No flirting."
Miranda smiled that brash smile that had charmed so many. "Aw, but Doc, it's my best talent."
The woman across from her smiled, but was unmoved. "Flirt with beautiful people, Miranda. Not Xanax."
Miranda sighed again. She did that a lot in this office. "So how do these SSRIs work?"
"We'll start you off at 10 miligrams per day, and ease you into it."
"When will it hit me?"
Her psychiatrist smiled. "I prefer to call it a normalizing process than "hitting" you."
"Okay, when it will normalize?"
"In two to three weeks, you should be settled in. They work much faster these days."
Miranda smiled drolly. "Great."
"I will warn you that the first few weeks can be rocky. If you make this commitment, I strongly advise you to stick with it. We can, of course, experiment until we find the right medicine. But it's often a complicated journey. The long-term effects are usually worth the trouble, however. It will a take a very strong commitment from you. Do you want to do this?"
Miranda looked away for a moment, and then firmed her jaw, her eyes hardening. "Let's do it."
Her psychiatrist smiled. "I've already given you list of side-effects, but here's the official literature for you to have."
Miranda glanced down at the pamphlet and smiled slightly. "Sexual side-effects? Don't worry, Doc, my libido is too strong to be knocked sideways by a little pill."
Her psychiatrist laughed.
Miranda snapped back to reality, still standing in her bathroom.
She felt her toes squirm against the cold marble floor of her bathroom, and the adrenalin rushing through her body; her brain was excited at the thought of comfort, her body craving an old, familiar ease.
Her throat felt arid, and her tongue fell away from the roof of her mouth. She bit her lip as she breathed heavily. She kept staring at the Xanax in her hand.
She walked the short distance to the toilet, and carefully turned her palm upside down, hand trembling slightly. The pill dropped into her toilet bowl. She flushed.
She drank her glass of water all in one go; she had never felt more parched. Miranda closed her eyes and breathed deeply, feeling torn yet not particularly comforted. There was no medal for her achievement, but she told herself that she was proud of herself.
Miranda stood in the middle of her expansive bathroom in her office at twenty minutes past midnight, and she was proud of herself.
She turned off the lights in her bathroom and walked back to bed, setting the empty glass on the bedside table. She lay down on her very comfortable bed, and began counting sheep.
_________________________
At 6AM That Morning...
At the best of times, Miranda was not a morning person. She always awoke cranky, and unhappy to be awake, a leftover symptom from her years of often using sleep as an escape from reality.
Awareness came slowly to her now, and she noticed the dimmed lights of her office's bedroom, and blinked blearily as the early dawn came into focus.
Suddenly, she tensed and flipped her body quickly to her bedside table, and she saw Marguerite sitting not ten feet from her, calmly sipping her morning coffee.
Miranda was speechless for a few moments. She wasn't sure if she was furious or relieved to see the other woman. So, she settled on curious.
She looked at her CEO with sleep-addled eyes. "So what happened?"
Marguerite set her coffee cup gently down on its saucer, the clinking sound of expensive china reverberating through the room anyway. "We have a battle."
Miranda frowned, unsurprised that both of them had done away with plebeian pleasantries. She supposed that after six years of working together, and having had a year-long affair made such things as "Good morning," more perfunctory and useless than it would otherwise be.
Miranda pushed the hair from her face. "I thought her shareholder's approved the deal."
"They did. She, however, doesn't."
Miranda scoffed. "That doesn't really matter." Marguerite looked back at her from beneath her lashes. Miranda raised her eyebrows. "Does it?"
Marguerite licked her lips. "Technically, no. But she's going to delay by calling on her Board for a special resolution to look into various things. It's a stall tactic." Marguerite twitched, the movement so unlike the contained woman that Miranda narrowed her eyes.
The CEO sighed and rose from her seat, to turn away and walk to the windows that ran from the ceiling to the ground. The windows were tinted so that no one could look in, not that anyone would be looking in at the thirty-fifth floor of the Cambius office.
Miranda knew there was more to it. "Margo?" she asked gently, not jostling the delicate air of the early dawn.
Marguerite put her hands on her waist as she took one last look at the breaking day, which apparently promised to be cold and rainy.
She turned to face her Chairwoman, still sitting on her bed across the room. "She did make an offer."
Miranda dropped her chin, and raised her eyebrows, a silent request for more information.
_____________________
"Are you suggesting that I have sex with you in order for you to approve this acquisition?"
"Well, I didn't expect you to put it so bluntly."
"Then you don't know me very well."
"But I've heard so much about Marguerite St. Just's unbridled ambition. I believe the quote was, "She would make a deal with the Devil if it got her what she wanted.""
"Then your sources were wrong."
"You haven't responded."
Marguerite was not naive. One did not become the Vice President at Chanel as a black woman by being slow-footed or idealistic. Marguerite had no qualms about being harsh or even underhanded when the intention was honorable.
Europe, and France in particular, was not altogether friendly towards minorities; she knew in many eyes she would never be French, regardless of her father being one of the most prominent former ambassadors of the French government. Because her black mother had been a former Sudanese refugee. Marguerite's brusqueness was not of choice; it was survival instinct.
She wiped at the corners of her mouth delicately with her dinner napkin, and placed it back on her lap. "Ms. Kumar--"
"It's Neela."
"Ms. Kumar," Marguerite continued, looking at her companion with unfeeling eyes, "While I am, of course, flattered by your offer, I'm afraid I cannot accept."
Neela squinted, while she subtly clenched her jaw. "Is it because your boss won't let you whore yourself for anyone but her?"
_________________________
"I'm going to kill that bitch," Miranda said, fury dripping from every word.
"Miranda..."
"No! I am going to kill her! Peel the skin from her body very slowly. And then make her eat it!"
Marguerite sighed, and moved closer to a now standing Miranda, and she felt the rage coursing through her ex's vibrating body. "We have to stay focused on the company."
"F*ck her company! I'll get her little company and her! How dare she! The miserable little C**t!"
Marguerite raised her eyebrows, and nearly smiled at her Chairwoman's swearing. The older woman's lip twitched. "I've heard worse," she said, trying to soften the charged air in the room.
Miranda's blazing eyes were snapped out of their imagination of doing painful things to one Neela Kumar as she looked at her CEO. Her shoulders slumped. "I'm sorry, Marguerite. If I'd known she was going to..."
"I know."
Miranda desperately wanted to put her arms around the other woman, to hold her, to console her, and to assure her that Marguerite was one of the finest women she'd ever known.
But she had no idea if Marguerite would rebuff her. So Miranda did what she thought was the next best thing. She stalked to her phone and hit a speed dial button she hadn't used in her entire tenure as a Chairwoman.
"Joseph? It's Miranda Montgomery."
Marguerite's head went up. "Miranda--"
But the Chairwoman silenced her with a furiously raised palm. Marguerite sighed; she knew from experience that when Miranda got like this, she was be an unstoppable force. At least until the first tremors subsided.
"Good morning. I'm sorry to disturb you so early, but I need your help urgently. I need any and all information on Neela Kumar, CEO of DFB Industries. And I mean all information, Joseph. What she eats, whom she's sleeping with, everything. What? Yes, of course, I'm sure! I don't care if you have to go through her garbage or f*ck her maid, just get me something I can bury her with! How long? No, no, not two weeks, Joseph. This is urgent. One week. Double the fee if you have to, but one week. What? What? Fine, triple it. Okay. Thank you."
Without pausing for a moment, Miranda hung up and pressed another speed dial button, this one far more used.
"Whom are you calling?"
Miranda didn't look up. "Henri. I need to call an emergency Board session so that we can launch a hostile bid on that bitch's little firm."
Miranda saw Marguerite's finger come down on the phone's dial tone, disconnecting the call. "What are you doing?"
"Miranda, stop," the other woman said gently. Marguerite took the handset from her and laid it gently to rest in its cradle. "Just stop. For now."
Miranda was still quivering with repressed anger, and Marguerite was undone by it. She gently took the younger woman in her arms. "It's alright."
And with that, Miranda shuddered in her CEO's arms, speechless at the depth of emotion screaming through her body. She was on the verge of tears, and it occurred to her that she should be the one comforting the other woman. "I'm so sorry, Margo. So, so sorry," she whispered into the other woman's shoulder.
"I know. I know."
And as the sun dared to peek through the gathering storm in the world outside, the two women just held on to each other for the time being.
Slowly, they disengaged from each other, Miranda almost breathless from the rush of intimacy now surrounding them. She felt strangely vulnerable, and completely helpless in her desire to soothe her ex. Miranda moved to remove herself from such close proximity, when she felt Marguerite's fingers on her chin urging her face up to meet her CEO's eyes.
It had been slightly over one year since they broke up, and still, looking into those malachite eyes could make Miranda quiver in places she hardly knew existed. It was, in one way, reassuring to know the connection was still strong. On the other hand, it hurt her more to realize that it would perhaps never quite be rekindled.
Marguerite was studying her, and it surprised the CEO to realize that as beautiful as she always considered Miranda, looking at her now, in the early hours of the day, still mussed from sleep and an eventful morning, Marguerite had never seen her Chairwoman look lovelier.
She smiled at the younger woman, admitting not for the first time, that the most troublesome aspect of being in love was the absolute lack of sensible control. "Have breakfast with me."
The Miranda of yore would have raised a saucy eyebrow or prolonged the suspense for her own delight. But now she was without artifice because the delicacy of their interactions had stripped her of any illusions of frivolity. "Yes," she breathed as Marguerite raised Miranda's hand to her mouth and softly kissed her fingers.
- TBC -