Beyond the Call, Epilogue B of 34 & Epilogue
Title: Beyond the Call
Installment: Epilogue (Part B)
Author: duwinter
Fandom: DWP
Pairing: Miranda/Andy
Rating: PG-13
Summery: Miranda is faced with the possibility of losing Andy soon after finding her.
Disclaimer: The Devil Wears Prada and it's characters do not belong to me. No profit being made here. I'm just playing with them for a short while and I promise to put them away neatly when I'm through.
Dedication: This installment is dedicated to goldenruhl who was kind enough to bid and win the recent Fandomaid Auction to benefit those who suffered the effects of Sandy.
Special Auction Thanks: I'd like to bring attention to the fact that our own pdt_bear, while not bidding on stories in the auction, did support the cause by agreeing to match the winning bids on at least two of the DWP stories auctioned off. Also a very special thanks to waltzmatildah who runs the truly unique humanitarian effort FandomAid
Comments: Comments and constructive criticism eagerly encouraged and appreciated!
A/N 1: For the purposes of this story, all events are taking place before the Congressionally directed repeal of the Army's Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy. Truth be told, when I started this project I did not believe that President Obama, even with hard work and the best of intentions, would manage to get the repeal of this outdated and idiotic bias past the hidebound idiots and political hacks that serve in the Congress and Senate of my country.
A/N 2: In this story Andy serves in the 192nd Supply Regiment of the Ohio National Guard. I know that members of the Ohio National Guard have served bravely in the conflicts overseas. I honor that service. The 192nd Supply Regiment and the 161st Military Police Company, in which both DeSaix and Scruggs serve, are however, fictitious units and do not exist.
A/N 4: There is a a very unpleasant character residing in this story. He is racist, misogynistic, corrupt, and one of those individuals the world would truly be a better place without. He is a fictional character and his views in no way express the views of the author of this piece.
A/N 5: The President and the First Lady (both of whom I admire greatly) have become characters in this story. I try to write them carefully and I mean them no disrespect.
Very Special Thanks: to All hail the mighty and powerful beta goddesspeetsden, bow, offer sacrifice, and do proper homage. Thanks, Peet, you saved my bacon when it needed saving!Very Special Thanks: to the wonderful ragelikeafire who gave more than I can say to the development and success of this story. Thank you Good Lady. I learned a great deal from you and I'm a better writer today because of it.
Ten Months, Lucrezia Bianchi sighed, Ten Months since Bella brought the Hero Sachs to Capri, she thought as she swerved to avoid another waiter laden with a tray moving though the ristorante kitchen. One of the tables she was responsible for serving was being exceedingly difficult. The fat middle-aged man at the table had pinched her on the ass and the woman at the table was determined not to be satisfied with anything placed before her. The seating hostess spoke to her in passing, “I've just seated table four. She wants a Champagne Cocktail. I've already placed the order with the bar.”
Lucrezia nodded, acknowledging instructions and changed her course for the bar. Picking up the drink where it awaited her she recognized it as a Flitini, Bella’s drink of choice. Her heart wrenched. She wanted to hate the woman, but her love for her was too strong. For four months, she had been unable to find employment. As Bella had promised no one of worth would have her as an assistant. Her savings began to dwindle and finally, in desperation, she had resorted to looking for other forms of employment. She had found this job and since had slowly started rebuilding her life.
She had, over the intervening months, kept an eye on the tabloids reporting Bella's extravagances. The Italian press found humor in Bella's quest to seduce the new heir-apparent to the Editor-in-Chief's position at the American version of Runway magazine. They reported on the expensive gifts sent and returned. They gleefully chronicled the tempestuous public encounters between Bella, the redheaded woman and her cafe-au-lait skinned lover, who was some kind of law enforcement officer and reality television star.
Then, about six months ago, when the Hero Sachs returned to Italy to continue her good will tour, one of Bella's groundskeepers had sold the story of the night of the Hero Sachs' kidnapping and her escape from Bella's villa in Capri to one of the tabloids. As of the printing of that story, the Italian people, who, before, had tolerated Bella's antics with amused affection, turned on her with a vengeance. While Bella was still the premier fashion model in Europe, no Italian magazine would currently engage her services. Lucrezia had heard that Bella had sold her houses in Italy and left the country of her birth to live elsewhere.
Lost in her thoughts she navigated the maze of tables in the section of the ristorante that she was responsible for and arriving at table four she plastered a smile on her face and moved to deliver the ordered drink. It always helped earn tips if you smiled when you dealt with the patrons. The smile died on her lips. Bella was hiding behind large sunglasses and a wide brimmed hat, but it was unquestionably her. Lucrezia's hand shook. She tried to marshal herself. She could do this. Bella was simply another customer of the ristorante and Lucrezia needed this job. Rent was due and she was struggling to even begin to rebuild what savings she had, had.
Bella looked up at her and Lucrezia could see that her former friend's face was gaunt, her complexion gray. The stories about Bella drinking too much, taking drugs and wild partying were no doubt true. Lucrezia carefully placed the drink on the table before her customer. By rote, she remembered what she was supposed to say. “Welcome to Ristorante Parioli. I am Lucrezia and I will be your server today.”
Bella looked up at her from behind the dark glasses that hid her eyes. “You have been difficult to find, Lucrezia,” she said softly. “It has been very naughty of you to hide from me. It is time for you to come home now.”
Lucrezia looked at the woman seated before her. “I am home Bella,” she replied softly. “This is where I work now to earn my daily bread.”
Bella glanced around. “It is beneath you,” she responded flatly. “You will come back to work for me.”
Lucrezia felt slightly hysterical at the absurdity of the situation. She was at work, she needed the job, and she needed to remain calm and professional. “I will never work for you again Bella,” she managed the volume of her deliver rising slightly and the next table over beginning to notice the interaction between the waitress and the fashionably dressed patron of the ristorante.
“Nonsense,” Bella answered. “You, as you say, must earn your daily bread, and I pay far better than what you can earn here.” Bella drew off her sunglasses and shook her head. “And that pitiful little apartment you are living in? One would think that you would run screaming back to what I offer you.”
And with that Lucrezia Bianchi lost both her mind and her job. She picked up the Champagne Cocktail where it sat before Bella and threw it in full in the woman's face. Then for the next five minutes she got nose-to-nose with the seated, shocked diva and vented about five years of loyal service, each word rising in volume and each gesticulation more frantic. “Five years of lying and coercing and spinning what had happened to protect you from your own follies!” she screamed. “Of smoothing over things with photographers, fashion designers, and fashion show management!” Five years of spinning things to the tabloids and the press to cover up your ridiculous antics! Five years of you expecting me to help pander for you! And you never even looked at me! Me! Who would have done anything for you!” By the time she was done screaming at her customer, the manager of the ristorante was at the table frantically apologizing to the famous Arabella Messalina Giovanni and emphatically gesturing Lucrezia out the door, telling her she was fired. With tears running down her face, Lucrezia undid the apron that was part of her waitress uniform and threw it to the floor. Her head held high; she stalked past the staring customers and out on to the street. She stopped at the bus stop on the corner to take the bus she had ridden to and from work each day for the last time.
A moment later Bella was there behind her. “Come home with me,” the beautiful Italian model said again.
Lucrezia turned on her and snarled “Don't you understand Bella!? I can't work for you anymore! I can't! I lied to myself for too long and it cost me too much emotionally when you fired me! I can't be your employee anymore!”
“Then don't come as an employee,” Bella whispered, and for the first time Lucrezia realized that there were tears in Bella's eyes too. “But come home with me.”
Lucrezia shook her head violently. “If you do this Bella. If you take me home with you, as your lover, I will never let you go. If you ever betray me with another woman, I will murder you with my bare hands. Think well before you ask me again, for by holy God and all the Saints, I mean what I say! If you ever do that to me I will wrap my hands about your throat and I will squeeze until the light in your eyes goes out! You will breathe your last breath into my face, and then I will happily spend the rest of my life in prison for what I have done!”
Bella shivered, knowing that Lucrezia had never, ever, lied to her. “Come home with me, Mia Lucrezia” she whispered. “Come home to our bed.”
*****
Eleven months since that red-headed English bitch betrayed me, Senator Beauregard Meriweather thought as he looked across the table at his extremely expensive team of lawyers. The room was silent. “What do you mean that the District Attorney’s office isn't offering a plea deal?” He demanded. “Don't they know who I am?”
“Senator,” said his lead defense council, “the prosecuting attorney has a virtually airtight case. She has video of the crime. She has the testimony of the victim of the crime. Since that crime became public in the media, she has had more victims come forward and offer testimony. In this instance, the District Attorney's office doesn't see any benefit to them cutting you a deal.
“Damn it man!” The Senator swore, “You're my lawyers! You're supposed to be figuring a way to get me out of this! I'm a United States Senator for God's sake! Doesn't that count for anything?!”
The only female attorney in the room was an African-American woman that had been recently brought in by the legal defense team because she was just that damn good. She looked at the Senator with contempt. “Senator,” she said carefully, “I remind you that the title you use is an honorific now. The Senate threw you out soon after the video of you having sex with that underage girl found its way onto the internet. If, and it's a big if, we can convince a jury that the sex on that recording was consensual, you're still looking at the strong probability of a statutory rape conviction.”
Senator Meriweather looked at her with naked hatred. “John,” he said to his lead attorney, “I don't know that I trust this woman...”
The lead attorney cut him off, “Senator, she is the best of the best. If your defense is to have a prayer in front of judge and jury, we need her!”
The lead attorney's cell phone rang and he answered it. After listening for a long moment he looked again at the Senator where he sat. “What relationship do you have with Polina Nazarova, the woman the press calls the Georgetown Madam?”
The Senator looked at the man. “I've had some dealings with some of her associates,” he answered carefully.
“Her associates in the Russian Mob?” The woman defense council asked pointedly.
“Nothing has ever been proven against any of them!” The Senator exclaimed.
“Well, the Washington D.C. Police ran a sting aimed at Ms. Nazarova's operations again last weekend and apparently caught her red-handed in the act of pandering this time.” The lead defense attorney said to the man he was defending. “Now my source close to the District Attorney's office is telling me that she had five more DVD's of you she'd like to trade to make her arrest go away. My source tells me that the District Attorney's Office is much more amenable to a deal with her rather than a deal with you.”
The African-American woman attorney rose and started gathering her things into her brief case. “John,” she said sweetly to the lead attorney. “It was nice of you to consider asking me to aid you, this being a very high profile case, but there are two problems with it. First, it's a dead bang case and one for the prosecution's win column. I have political ambitions a few years down the road and I don't want this loss hung around my neck.”
John looked at her and nodded solemnly. “I understand what you're saying Irene, but it's our job to make sure he gets the best defense possible,” he answered quietly and with a note of desperation.
Senator Beauregard Meriweather bristled. “Madam,” he said, superciliously. “My lawyer thinks we need you to win this case. I am wealthy, very important and extremely well-connected politically. He looked the attractive woman up and down lasciviously. “I'm sure we could come to an arrangement where I could help you with your political ambitions.”
She turned and regarded him for a brief moment then turning to the lead attorney she continued as if he hadn't spoken. “The second reason is that your client is a self-aggrandizing ass who has completely lost touch with reality. You want to do him and yourself a favor? Plead this out. A judge trial with a guilty plea will likely cut fifteen years off the final sentence. Do that and your client might, and I repeat, might get out of prison before he dies.” She turned and looked at Senator Meriweather. “As for you, you ignorant Red-Neck Cracker, you’re not rich anymore, the Senate Ethics Committee has been looking into your finances and have ordered all your assets seized. You’re not important anymore, you couldn't get elected dog-catcher at this point and you're no longer well connected politically as no one dares go anywhere near you for fear of your taint rubbing off on them. Your wife is divorcing you and with the way the public is feeling about you at the moment I imagine that the divorce decree will likely give her more than half of what ever pittance is left when the courts get done with your multiple corruption trials. On top of that, if you've been stupid enough to be in bed with the Russian Mob to the point that they were providing you with underage girls to rape for your amusement, you're fucked. Them doing something that dangerous to keep you pliable suggests to me that you must be important to their operations. If that's the case, you better hope that the DA convicts your sorry ass soon and buries you so deep somewhere that they can't find you. Because they don't believe in loose ends. In fact, I'd be surprised if you make it to the trial date. “Good day John. I'd wish you luck, but what you've been dealt here is just an all-around losing hand.”
*****
Andy tried not to hyperventilate, as she sat trying to concentrate and go over her presentation. A year, she thought. A year since Miranda and I spent that first night together after I got home from Italy.
She tried hard to bring her thoughts back to her notes as she sat in the green room for the U.S. Senate hearing rooms and waited to be called. She was to give testimony before the Armed Services Committee on the care that returning veterans were not getting from their government. Her book on the subject had gone to the top of the New York Times' best sellers list within days of its publication three months ago. The critics had said that the work had been exhaustively researched and brilliantly written. It took the American Government to task for sending its sons and daughters to a new kind of war. A kind of war where battlefield surgeons had learned to save lives of soldiers wounded in the field. To treat injuries that only years ago would have proved fatal. This meant more severely wounded soldiers being returned to civilian life with little in the way of ongoing care provided to them or their families by an unprepared Government. The work also spoke to the mental illnesses that soldiers, engaged multiple deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan had been experiencing in increasing numbers. It highlighted the complete lack of any kind of comprehensive mental health care for returning vets. It also detailed the Governments' lack of programs to aid returning soldiers in finding meaningful employment. Especially those in service in the National Guard units who had lost jobs they had been in because of multiple deployments overseas.
Her book had also attacked the policy of Don't Ask, Don't Tell and the exclusion of homosexuals from the United States Military. Those sections of the book were made redundant in the final edits, because the Government had outpaced her on that issue and voided those policies. Andy Sachs, ex-Corporal of the 192nd Supply Regiment of the Ohio National Guard, Medal of Honor recipient, had gone from being an unemployed wounded veteran without much hope to being an outspoken and respected advocate for necessary change in matters concerning the care of the Military's men and women when they came home from deployments. She was a regularly invited guest on MSNBC and Fox News, both sides of the political spectrum interested in what she had to say about the unmet needs of those men and women that had selflessly served their country.
Trying to calm herself, she allowed her thoughts to spiral outward to those who inhabited her life now. Her relationship with her father was...well, weird was a good word. He was working hard to accept that Andy was living with a woman twice her age and she was trying to accept that her father was likely to marry a woman who was less than a full year older than she was. It was a work in progress but yet they had managed, with Miranda's and Serena's help, to find the humor in the situation. Her relationship with her mother was non-existent at the moment. When Andy had contacted Janet Sachs after returning from Italy, her mother had given her an ultimatum. Andy must leave New York and return to live with her in Cincinnati. It was either she or Miranda Priestly and there wasn't any middle ground. Andy had cried for days after that telephone call, but her decision had never been in doubt. She hoped that someday her Mom would come around, but she'd grown up enough to know that the choice was her mother's to make and she couldn't do anything to change that reality.
Home was her anchor. Her place of calm and focus. She wanted to find that calm and focus right now because in a few minutes she was going to be questioned by an aging Senator, who she had made look like a flaming idiot during a televised debate last night on MSNBC. A debate about a number of the issues being covered in the hearing today. She was going to need her head about her and to remain calm. Her goal was to talk though all the political posturing and accomplish what she needed to accomplish here.
Home was where Miranda was. It wasn't just at the town house, but it had also been with her in Milan, Florence, Venice and Rome. The peoples in the those cities had been warm and welcoming to the “Hero” and the hero's inamorata. Inamorata was a new word to Andy then, but she'd grown to love it. It roughly translated to Lady Love, but she was assured that it had many deeper, nuanced meanings concerning the intimacy and depth of feeling in a relationship. Its beauty and sound just fit Miranda perfectly in Andy's mind.
Her return to Rome had been nothing less than triumphal. The people of Rome had been embarrassed that their beloved Hero Sachs had been driven from the city in fear for her safety. They meant to make it up to her and her inamorata. All of Rome had opened its doors to the Hero and her white-haired lover and made them welcome. Miranda had been so impressed she had spoken of perhaps, when the time came, honeymooning in the city.
Thinking of Rome made Andy think of DeSaix, Scruggs and Bella. DeSaix she saw on a fairly regular basis, even using the woman as a sounding board and soliciting the ex-soldiers opinions on things that needed to be done for those leaving the Military.
Scruggs, she had discovered, had indeed left the service and returned to his beloved Blue Ridge in South Carolina. Other than the fact that he'd managed to start building the dog breeding business he had dreamed of, he'd been somewhat evasive about what had happened with the rest of his personal life. DeSaix had jovially filled her in one evening when they were both waiting for their respective lover’s in the lobby of the Elias-Clarke building, so the four could go out to dinner “He got married,” DeSaix had laughingly said.
“That was quick,” Andy responded. “I know he didn't have a girl waiting for him back home because he told me so. Where and when did he meet her?” she had asked.
“I think it was when she shot him in the shoulder in Rome.” DeSaix had answered.
Andy honestly wasn't quite sure how she felt about that, but she sent a nice wedding present anyway.
She then let her thoughts fall on the Italian Model that had kidnapped her. The beautiful woman had not pursued her after Miranda had made it clear to the woman what the cost of doing so would be. The burden of Bella's crazy infatuations had apparently for a time been Emily's and DeSaix's cross to bear. Bella had regularly sent Emily expensive gifts, which Emily always sent back and once a month or so Bella would fly into New York and try to coax Emily into a private meeting with her under the guise of wanting to appear in Runway. The Italian Model has refused all other American magazine's offers, declaring that the only American magazine worthy of her was Runway and that she and Miranda Priestly's heir apparent were in negotiations to make it happen.
An explanation of the events in Italy finally came to Andy when she received a letter from a Nico Giovanni. The letter was in Italian but Miranda and the girls had managed to translate most of it. Nico was Bella's younger brother. Their extremely Catholic family had shunned both him and Bella when each of them had come out about being gay. To prove that he was a “man” to his father, even though he was gay, he had joined the military medical service, been trained as a nurse and had been deployed to Afghanistan with a medical team doing work with refugee women and children. He had met Andy the day before she was injured, he wrote. She was delivering supplies to the medical team in the village below where she made her stand against the insurgents. They had exchanged nods and smiles as they passed each other in the village square.
Her heroic actions on the mountain top pass overlooking the village was the center point of conversation among the Italian Medical Personnel and the refugees in the village over the days following the event. He had managed some broken communication with some American soldiers that had come to protect the village after the Hero Sachs had so valiantly sacrificed for it. It was from those soldiers that he had learned that the Hero Sachs had survived, but had paid a terrible price. He interpreted what he understood from his broken English and the soldier he spoke with 's broken Italian that the beautiful smiling girl he had seen the day before had lost an arm and a leg and been horribly disfigured.
Bella was all the family that he had left and he had written her in detail about the heroism of an American woman who had willing lain down her life for refugee women and children and the non-combatant medical personnel in the village. He had told his older sister of his sorrow that this woman, who he had recognized as a lover of women as his sister was, was now broken and deformed because she had protected people she did not even know. He had mused in that letter his hope that the Hero Sachs would find a woman that could love her as she was now. From that seed his sister had somehow gotten the insane idea that it was a good idea to try to convince Andy that she was that woman. Bella had confessed all to him. His letter to Andy, in part, was begging her forgiveness for his accidental participation in starting that particular period of craziness in her life. Andy had asked the twins for their help, using this as an exercise in their learning Italian. She asked that they help her write a letter in response to the one she had received. She told Nico Giovanni that, without reservation, she forgave not only him, but his sister as well.
A few weeks ago Andy had visited Miranda's office at Runway to meet her lover for a lunch engagement. She had encountered a buoyant Emily, doing of all things, cutting articles out of various scandal tabloids. When Andy questioned what was going on, Emily explained that she was making a collage of them and she was going to have it framed and present it to her lover, Meriwether. Then she handed Andy one of the articles. Apparently Arabella Messalina Giovanni had married her ex-assistant in a beautiful moonlit ceremony in Bruges, Belgium, where the famous Italian model had purchased a large estate and was now apparently living. Emily looked speculatively at Andy. “I wonder what it is about powerful women and their ex-assistants,” she had mused playfully.
A Congressional Page stuck their head into the room and informed her that the Committee would be ready for her in about five minutes. She rose from her seat and shrugged off the jacket she had put on to stay warm in the over air conditioned room. She had six sets of prosthetics at home now, specialized ones for sport, mechanical arms for particular tasks, an arm and a leg made to look as close her real leg and arm as possible. Those two she used so she could attend events with Miranda in couture the woman had selected for her. But today was about psychological warfare. Today was about making a point. So today she had worn a skirt and a sleeveless blouse to Capitol Hill and she purposefully wore the rudimentary prosthetics that the VA had first issued her after her being wounded. She knew there would be news cameras present and she wanted the world to see her as she was, plastic and metal, a mechanical claw/hook for a hand and a titanium pipe for a leg.
Andy no longer thought of herself as a monster. Miranda Priestly loved her and told her so in every way, every day. Miranda told her daily how beautiful she was and how much being with her meant to the Fashion Maven and Andy felt it in her bones that Miranda had never, ever lied to her. Miranda and her girls made Andy feel whole and loved and safe. So now, confident that her place was at the side of the woman she loved and helping that woman care for her beautiful twin daughters she felt ready to face her future. She was uncertain of what that future was, but she felt it likely that she had more books to write, she also had both political parties sniffing around and floating the idea that she should run for Congress or the Senate. The polls indicated that she would likely win if she chose to go that route. Delegations from both New York and Ohio had approached her and asked permission to set up exploratory committees examining the possibilities of a run for office.
Andy glanced down at her hand. Her promise ring rode there along with an impressive emerald cut diamond engagement ring. The twins were with their father this week and Miranda had surprised her last evening after dinner. The white haired woman had come to stand beside Andy's chair and going down on one knee, offered the ring and asked for Andy's hand in marriage. When Andy was able catch her breath she had kissed the woman until both of them were breathless. As she exited the waiting room and camera flashes started capturing her walk to the table before the hearing panel Andy smiled. She had lost three years of her past, but that was okay because she was building new memories with the woman she loved. She didn't know what the future held, but she was sure that whatever came, it would be side by side with Miranda and caring for Miranda's daughters. Life was good and it was only likely to get better.
*****
Fini
Installment: Epilogue (Part B)
Author: duwinter
Fandom: DWP
Pairing: Miranda/Andy
Rating: PG-13
Summery: Miranda is faced with the possibility of losing Andy soon after finding her.
Disclaimer: The Devil Wears Prada and it's characters do not belong to me. No profit being made here. I'm just playing with them for a short while and I promise to put them away neatly when I'm through.
Dedication: This installment is dedicated to goldenruhl who was kind enough to bid and win the recent Fandomaid Auction to benefit those who suffered the effects of Sandy.
Special Auction Thanks: I'd like to bring attention to the fact that our own pdt_bear, while not bidding on stories in the auction, did support the cause by agreeing to match the winning bids on at least two of the DWP stories auctioned off. Also a very special thanks to waltzmatildah who runs the truly unique humanitarian effort FandomAid
Comments: Comments and constructive criticism eagerly encouraged and appreciated!
A/N 1: For the purposes of this story, all events are taking place before the Congressionally directed repeal of the Army's Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy. Truth be told, when I started this project I did not believe that President Obama, even with hard work and the best of intentions, would manage to get the repeal of this outdated and idiotic bias past the hidebound idiots and political hacks that serve in the Congress and Senate of my country.
A/N 2: In this story Andy serves in the 192nd Supply Regiment of the Ohio National Guard. I know that members of the Ohio National Guard have served bravely in the conflicts overseas. I honor that service. The 192nd Supply Regiment and the 161st Military Police Company, in which both DeSaix and Scruggs serve, are however, fictitious units and do not exist.
A/N 4: There is a a very unpleasant character residing in this story. He is racist, misogynistic, corrupt, and one of those individuals the world would truly be a better place without. He is a fictional character and his views in no way express the views of the author of this piece.
A/N 5: The President and the First Lady (both of whom I admire greatly) have become characters in this story. I try to write them carefully and I mean them no disrespect.
Very Special Thanks: to All hail the mighty and powerful beta goddesspeetsden, bow, offer sacrifice, and do proper homage. Thanks, Peet, you saved my bacon when it needed saving!Very Special Thanks: to the wonderful ragelikeafire who gave more than I can say to the development and success of this story. Thank you Good Lady. I learned a great deal from you and I'm a better writer today because of it.
Ten Months, Lucrezia Bianchi sighed, Ten Months since Bella brought the Hero Sachs to Capri, she thought as she swerved to avoid another waiter laden with a tray moving though the ristorante kitchen. One of the tables she was responsible for serving was being exceedingly difficult. The fat middle-aged man at the table had pinched her on the ass and the woman at the table was determined not to be satisfied with anything placed before her. The seating hostess spoke to her in passing, “I've just seated table four. She wants a Champagne Cocktail. I've already placed the order with the bar.”
Lucrezia nodded, acknowledging instructions and changed her course for the bar. Picking up the drink where it awaited her she recognized it as a Flitini, Bella’s drink of choice. Her heart wrenched. She wanted to hate the woman, but her love for her was too strong. For four months, she had been unable to find employment. As Bella had promised no one of worth would have her as an assistant. Her savings began to dwindle and finally, in desperation, she had resorted to looking for other forms of employment. She had found this job and since had slowly started rebuilding her life.
She had, over the intervening months, kept an eye on the tabloids reporting Bella's extravagances. The Italian press found humor in Bella's quest to seduce the new heir-apparent to the Editor-in-Chief's position at the American version of Runway magazine. They reported on the expensive gifts sent and returned. They gleefully chronicled the tempestuous public encounters between Bella, the redheaded woman and her cafe-au-lait skinned lover, who was some kind of law enforcement officer and reality television star.
Then, about six months ago, when the Hero Sachs returned to Italy to continue her good will tour, one of Bella's groundskeepers had sold the story of the night of the Hero Sachs' kidnapping and her escape from Bella's villa in Capri to one of the tabloids. As of the printing of that story, the Italian people, who, before, had tolerated Bella's antics with amused affection, turned on her with a vengeance. While Bella was still the premier fashion model in Europe, no Italian magazine would currently engage her services. Lucrezia had heard that Bella had sold her houses in Italy and left the country of her birth to live elsewhere.
Lost in her thoughts she navigated the maze of tables in the section of the ristorante that she was responsible for and arriving at table four she plastered a smile on her face and moved to deliver the ordered drink. It always helped earn tips if you smiled when you dealt with the patrons. The smile died on her lips. Bella was hiding behind large sunglasses and a wide brimmed hat, but it was unquestionably her. Lucrezia's hand shook. She tried to marshal herself. She could do this. Bella was simply another customer of the ristorante and Lucrezia needed this job. Rent was due and she was struggling to even begin to rebuild what savings she had, had.
Bella looked up at her and Lucrezia could see that her former friend's face was gaunt, her complexion gray. The stories about Bella drinking too much, taking drugs and wild partying were no doubt true. Lucrezia carefully placed the drink on the table before her customer. By rote, she remembered what she was supposed to say. “Welcome to Ristorante Parioli. I am Lucrezia and I will be your server today.”
Bella looked up at her from behind the dark glasses that hid her eyes. “You have been difficult to find, Lucrezia,” she said softly. “It has been very naughty of you to hide from me. It is time for you to come home now.”
Lucrezia looked at the woman seated before her. “I am home Bella,” she replied softly. “This is where I work now to earn my daily bread.”
Bella glanced around. “It is beneath you,” she responded flatly. “You will come back to work for me.”
Lucrezia felt slightly hysterical at the absurdity of the situation. She was at work, she needed the job, and she needed to remain calm and professional. “I will never work for you again Bella,” she managed the volume of her deliver rising slightly and the next table over beginning to notice the interaction between the waitress and the fashionably dressed patron of the ristorante.
“Nonsense,” Bella answered. “You, as you say, must earn your daily bread, and I pay far better than what you can earn here.” Bella drew off her sunglasses and shook her head. “And that pitiful little apartment you are living in? One would think that you would run screaming back to what I offer you.”
And with that Lucrezia Bianchi lost both her mind and her job. She picked up the Champagne Cocktail where it sat before Bella and threw it in full in the woman's face. Then for the next five minutes she got nose-to-nose with the seated, shocked diva and vented about five years of loyal service, each word rising in volume and each gesticulation more frantic. “Five years of lying and coercing and spinning what had happened to protect you from your own follies!” she screamed. “Of smoothing over things with photographers, fashion designers, and fashion show management!” Five years of spinning things to the tabloids and the press to cover up your ridiculous antics! Five years of you expecting me to help pander for you! And you never even looked at me! Me! Who would have done anything for you!” By the time she was done screaming at her customer, the manager of the ristorante was at the table frantically apologizing to the famous Arabella Messalina Giovanni and emphatically gesturing Lucrezia out the door, telling her she was fired. With tears running down her face, Lucrezia undid the apron that was part of her waitress uniform and threw it to the floor. Her head held high; she stalked past the staring customers and out on to the street. She stopped at the bus stop on the corner to take the bus she had ridden to and from work each day for the last time.
A moment later Bella was there behind her. “Come home with me,” the beautiful Italian model said again.
Lucrezia turned on her and snarled “Don't you understand Bella!? I can't work for you anymore! I can't! I lied to myself for too long and it cost me too much emotionally when you fired me! I can't be your employee anymore!”
“Then don't come as an employee,” Bella whispered, and for the first time Lucrezia realized that there were tears in Bella's eyes too. “But come home with me.”
Lucrezia shook her head violently. “If you do this Bella. If you take me home with you, as your lover, I will never let you go. If you ever betray me with another woman, I will murder you with my bare hands. Think well before you ask me again, for by holy God and all the Saints, I mean what I say! If you ever do that to me I will wrap my hands about your throat and I will squeeze until the light in your eyes goes out! You will breathe your last breath into my face, and then I will happily spend the rest of my life in prison for what I have done!”
Bella shivered, knowing that Lucrezia had never, ever, lied to her. “Come home with me, Mia Lucrezia” she whispered. “Come home to our bed.”
*****
Eleven months since that red-headed English bitch betrayed me, Senator Beauregard Meriweather thought as he looked across the table at his extremely expensive team of lawyers. The room was silent. “What do you mean that the District Attorney’s office isn't offering a plea deal?” He demanded. “Don't they know who I am?”
“Senator,” said his lead defense council, “the prosecuting attorney has a virtually airtight case. She has video of the crime. She has the testimony of the victim of the crime. Since that crime became public in the media, she has had more victims come forward and offer testimony. In this instance, the District Attorney's office doesn't see any benefit to them cutting you a deal.
“Damn it man!” The Senator swore, “You're my lawyers! You're supposed to be figuring a way to get me out of this! I'm a United States Senator for God's sake! Doesn't that count for anything?!”
The only female attorney in the room was an African-American woman that had been recently brought in by the legal defense team because she was just that damn good. She looked at the Senator with contempt. “Senator,” she said carefully, “I remind you that the title you use is an honorific now. The Senate threw you out soon after the video of you having sex with that underage girl found its way onto the internet. If, and it's a big if, we can convince a jury that the sex on that recording was consensual, you're still looking at the strong probability of a statutory rape conviction.”
Senator Meriweather looked at her with naked hatred. “John,” he said to his lead attorney, “I don't know that I trust this woman...”
The lead attorney cut him off, “Senator, she is the best of the best. If your defense is to have a prayer in front of judge and jury, we need her!”
The lead attorney's cell phone rang and he answered it. After listening for a long moment he looked again at the Senator where he sat. “What relationship do you have with Polina Nazarova, the woman the press calls the Georgetown Madam?”
The Senator looked at the man. “I've had some dealings with some of her associates,” he answered carefully.
“Her associates in the Russian Mob?” The woman defense council asked pointedly.
“Nothing has ever been proven against any of them!” The Senator exclaimed.
“Well, the Washington D.C. Police ran a sting aimed at Ms. Nazarova's operations again last weekend and apparently caught her red-handed in the act of pandering this time.” The lead defense attorney said to the man he was defending. “Now my source close to the District Attorney's office is telling me that she had five more DVD's of you she'd like to trade to make her arrest go away. My source tells me that the District Attorney's Office is much more amenable to a deal with her rather than a deal with you.”
The African-American woman attorney rose and started gathering her things into her brief case. “John,” she said sweetly to the lead attorney. “It was nice of you to consider asking me to aid you, this being a very high profile case, but there are two problems with it. First, it's a dead bang case and one for the prosecution's win column. I have political ambitions a few years down the road and I don't want this loss hung around my neck.”
John looked at her and nodded solemnly. “I understand what you're saying Irene, but it's our job to make sure he gets the best defense possible,” he answered quietly and with a note of desperation.
Senator Beauregard Meriweather bristled. “Madam,” he said, superciliously. “My lawyer thinks we need you to win this case. I am wealthy, very important and extremely well-connected politically. He looked the attractive woman up and down lasciviously. “I'm sure we could come to an arrangement where I could help you with your political ambitions.”
She turned and regarded him for a brief moment then turning to the lead attorney she continued as if he hadn't spoken. “The second reason is that your client is a self-aggrandizing ass who has completely lost touch with reality. You want to do him and yourself a favor? Plead this out. A judge trial with a guilty plea will likely cut fifteen years off the final sentence. Do that and your client might, and I repeat, might get out of prison before he dies.” She turned and looked at Senator Meriweather. “As for you, you ignorant Red-Neck Cracker, you’re not rich anymore, the Senate Ethics Committee has been looking into your finances and have ordered all your assets seized. You’re not important anymore, you couldn't get elected dog-catcher at this point and you're no longer well connected politically as no one dares go anywhere near you for fear of your taint rubbing off on them. Your wife is divorcing you and with the way the public is feeling about you at the moment I imagine that the divorce decree will likely give her more than half of what ever pittance is left when the courts get done with your multiple corruption trials. On top of that, if you've been stupid enough to be in bed with the Russian Mob to the point that they were providing you with underage girls to rape for your amusement, you're fucked. Them doing something that dangerous to keep you pliable suggests to me that you must be important to their operations. If that's the case, you better hope that the DA convicts your sorry ass soon and buries you so deep somewhere that they can't find you. Because they don't believe in loose ends. In fact, I'd be surprised if you make it to the trial date. “Good day John. I'd wish you luck, but what you've been dealt here is just an all-around losing hand.”
*****
Andy tried not to hyperventilate, as she sat trying to concentrate and go over her presentation. A year, she thought. A year since Miranda and I spent that first night together after I got home from Italy.
She tried hard to bring her thoughts back to her notes as she sat in the green room for the U.S. Senate hearing rooms and waited to be called. She was to give testimony before the Armed Services Committee on the care that returning veterans were not getting from their government. Her book on the subject had gone to the top of the New York Times' best sellers list within days of its publication three months ago. The critics had said that the work had been exhaustively researched and brilliantly written. It took the American Government to task for sending its sons and daughters to a new kind of war. A kind of war where battlefield surgeons had learned to save lives of soldiers wounded in the field. To treat injuries that only years ago would have proved fatal. This meant more severely wounded soldiers being returned to civilian life with little in the way of ongoing care provided to them or their families by an unprepared Government. The work also spoke to the mental illnesses that soldiers, engaged multiple deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan had been experiencing in increasing numbers. It highlighted the complete lack of any kind of comprehensive mental health care for returning vets. It also detailed the Governments' lack of programs to aid returning soldiers in finding meaningful employment. Especially those in service in the National Guard units who had lost jobs they had been in because of multiple deployments overseas.
Her book had also attacked the policy of Don't Ask, Don't Tell and the exclusion of homosexuals from the United States Military. Those sections of the book were made redundant in the final edits, because the Government had outpaced her on that issue and voided those policies. Andy Sachs, ex-Corporal of the 192nd Supply Regiment of the Ohio National Guard, Medal of Honor recipient, had gone from being an unemployed wounded veteran without much hope to being an outspoken and respected advocate for necessary change in matters concerning the care of the Military's men and women when they came home from deployments. She was a regularly invited guest on MSNBC and Fox News, both sides of the political spectrum interested in what she had to say about the unmet needs of those men and women that had selflessly served their country.
Trying to calm herself, she allowed her thoughts to spiral outward to those who inhabited her life now. Her relationship with her father was...well, weird was a good word. He was working hard to accept that Andy was living with a woman twice her age and she was trying to accept that her father was likely to marry a woman who was less than a full year older than she was. It was a work in progress but yet they had managed, with Miranda's and Serena's help, to find the humor in the situation. Her relationship with her mother was non-existent at the moment. When Andy had contacted Janet Sachs after returning from Italy, her mother had given her an ultimatum. Andy must leave New York and return to live with her in Cincinnati. It was either she or Miranda Priestly and there wasn't any middle ground. Andy had cried for days after that telephone call, but her decision had never been in doubt. She hoped that someday her Mom would come around, but she'd grown up enough to know that the choice was her mother's to make and she couldn't do anything to change that reality.
Home was her anchor. Her place of calm and focus. She wanted to find that calm and focus right now because in a few minutes she was going to be questioned by an aging Senator, who she had made look like a flaming idiot during a televised debate last night on MSNBC. A debate about a number of the issues being covered in the hearing today. She was going to need her head about her and to remain calm. Her goal was to talk though all the political posturing and accomplish what she needed to accomplish here.
Home was where Miranda was. It wasn't just at the town house, but it had also been with her in Milan, Florence, Venice and Rome. The peoples in the those cities had been warm and welcoming to the “Hero” and the hero's inamorata. Inamorata was a new word to Andy then, but she'd grown to love it. It roughly translated to Lady Love, but she was assured that it had many deeper, nuanced meanings concerning the intimacy and depth of feeling in a relationship. Its beauty and sound just fit Miranda perfectly in Andy's mind.
Her return to Rome had been nothing less than triumphal. The people of Rome had been embarrassed that their beloved Hero Sachs had been driven from the city in fear for her safety. They meant to make it up to her and her inamorata. All of Rome had opened its doors to the Hero and her white-haired lover and made them welcome. Miranda had been so impressed she had spoken of perhaps, when the time came, honeymooning in the city.
Thinking of Rome made Andy think of DeSaix, Scruggs and Bella. DeSaix she saw on a fairly regular basis, even using the woman as a sounding board and soliciting the ex-soldiers opinions on things that needed to be done for those leaving the Military.
Scruggs, she had discovered, had indeed left the service and returned to his beloved Blue Ridge in South Carolina. Other than the fact that he'd managed to start building the dog breeding business he had dreamed of, he'd been somewhat evasive about what had happened with the rest of his personal life. DeSaix had jovially filled her in one evening when they were both waiting for their respective lover’s in the lobby of the Elias-Clarke building, so the four could go out to dinner “He got married,” DeSaix had laughingly said.
“That was quick,” Andy responded. “I know he didn't have a girl waiting for him back home because he told me so. Where and when did he meet her?” she had asked.
“I think it was when she shot him in the shoulder in Rome.” DeSaix had answered.
Andy honestly wasn't quite sure how she felt about that, but she sent a nice wedding present anyway.
She then let her thoughts fall on the Italian Model that had kidnapped her. The beautiful woman had not pursued her after Miranda had made it clear to the woman what the cost of doing so would be. The burden of Bella's crazy infatuations had apparently for a time been Emily's and DeSaix's cross to bear. Bella had regularly sent Emily expensive gifts, which Emily always sent back and once a month or so Bella would fly into New York and try to coax Emily into a private meeting with her under the guise of wanting to appear in Runway. The Italian Model has refused all other American magazine's offers, declaring that the only American magazine worthy of her was Runway and that she and Miranda Priestly's heir apparent were in negotiations to make it happen.
An explanation of the events in Italy finally came to Andy when she received a letter from a Nico Giovanni. The letter was in Italian but Miranda and the girls had managed to translate most of it. Nico was Bella's younger brother. Their extremely Catholic family had shunned both him and Bella when each of them had come out about being gay. To prove that he was a “man” to his father, even though he was gay, he had joined the military medical service, been trained as a nurse and had been deployed to Afghanistan with a medical team doing work with refugee women and children. He had met Andy the day before she was injured, he wrote. She was delivering supplies to the medical team in the village below where she made her stand against the insurgents. They had exchanged nods and smiles as they passed each other in the village square.
Her heroic actions on the mountain top pass overlooking the village was the center point of conversation among the Italian Medical Personnel and the refugees in the village over the days following the event. He had managed some broken communication with some American soldiers that had come to protect the village after the Hero Sachs had so valiantly sacrificed for it. It was from those soldiers that he had learned that the Hero Sachs had survived, but had paid a terrible price. He interpreted what he understood from his broken English and the soldier he spoke with 's broken Italian that the beautiful smiling girl he had seen the day before had lost an arm and a leg and been horribly disfigured.
Bella was all the family that he had left and he had written her in detail about the heroism of an American woman who had willing lain down her life for refugee women and children and the non-combatant medical personnel in the village. He had told his older sister of his sorrow that this woman, who he had recognized as a lover of women as his sister was, was now broken and deformed because she had protected people she did not even know. He had mused in that letter his hope that the Hero Sachs would find a woman that could love her as she was now. From that seed his sister had somehow gotten the insane idea that it was a good idea to try to convince Andy that she was that woman. Bella had confessed all to him. His letter to Andy, in part, was begging her forgiveness for his accidental participation in starting that particular period of craziness in her life. Andy had asked the twins for their help, using this as an exercise in their learning Italian. She asked that they help her write a letter in response to the one she had received. She told Nico Giovanni that, without reservation, she forgave not only him, but his sister as well.
A few weeks ago Andy had visited Miranda's office at Runway to meet her lover for a lunch engagement. She had encountered a buoyant Emily, doing of all things, cutting articles out of various scandal tabloids. When Andy questioned what was going on, Emily explained that she was making a collage of them and she was going to have it framed and present it to her lover, Meriwether. Then she handed Andy one of the articles. Apparently Arabella Messalina Giovanni had married her ex-assistant in a beautiful moonlit ceremony in Bruges, Belgium, where the famous Italian model had purchased a large estate and was now apparently living. Emily looked speculatively at Andy. “I wonder what it is about powerful women and their ex-assistants,” she had mused playfully.
A Congressional Page stuck their head into the room and informed her that the Committee would be ready for her in about five minutes. She rose from her seat and shrugged off the jacket she had put on to stay warm in the over air conditioned room. She had six sets of prosthetics at home now, specialized ones for sport, mechanical arms for particular tasks, an arm and a leg made to look as close her real leg and arm as possible. Those two she used so she could attend events with Miranda in couture the woman had selected for her. But today was about psychological warfare. Today was about making a point. So today she had worn a skirt and a sleeveless blouse to Capitol Hill and she purposefully wore the rudimentary prosthetics that the VA had first issued her after her being wounded. She knew there would be news cameras present and she wanted the world to see her as she was, plastic and metal, a mechanical claw/hook for a hand and a titanium pipe for a leg.
Andy no longer thought of herself as a monster. Miranda Priestly loved her and told her so in every way, every day. Miranda told her daily how beautiful she was and how much being with her meant to the Fashion Maven and Andy felt it in her bones that Miranda had never, ever lied to her. Miranda and her girls made Andy feel whole and loved and safe. So now, confident that her place was at the side of the woman she loved and helping that woman care for her beautiful twin daughters she felt ready to face her future. She was uncertain of what that future was, but she felt it likely that she had more books to write, she also had both political parties sniffing around and floating the idea that she should run for Congress or the Senate. The polls indicated that she would likely win if she chose to go that route. Delegations from both New York and Ohio had approached her and asked permission to set up exploratory committees examining the possibilities of a run for office.
Andy glanced down at her hand. Her promise ring rode there along with an impressive emerald cut diamond engagement ring. The twins were with their father this week and Miranda had surprised her last evening after dinner. The white haired woman had come to stand beside Andy's chair and going down on one knee, offered the ring and asked for Andy's hand in marriage. When Andy was able catch her breath she had kissed the woman until both of them were breathless. As she exited the waiting room and camera flashes started capturing her walk to the table before the hearing panel Andy smiled. She had lost three years of her past, but that was okay because she was building new memories with the woman she loved. She didn't know what the future held, but she was sure that whatever came, it would be side by side with Miranda and caring for Miranda's daughters. Life was good and it was only likely to get better.
*****
Fini