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Miranda Priestly smelled like money. More specifically, she smelt like dark vanilla musk with sandalwood, caramel, and a little something else that had successfully burrowed its way into one Andrea Sachs’ cultural zeitgeist.
While most would forget the scent that stuck to the leather interior of a Mercedes town car, or the air of a dimly lit den— Andrea Sachs was not most people. Instead, she smelt the bits and pieces of her former life strewn across New York City.
The smell of cherry caramel accompanied by the sharp clicks of prada pumps; dark ambergris and the brief blur of white hair.
Despite images of the prada-clade devil herself haunting Andrea Sachs, the writer hadn’t paid the small fortune of a flight back only to still be consumed by the Priestly. So, she carried on— pretended as if the sandalwood soap of the elderly Arabic man beside her hadn't caused her to bite her cheek raw.
Nonetheless, New York was only so big and Miranda Priestly, even with her petite stature, had a presence larger than any city; It was only a matter of time till the shards of her reputation had combined and amalgamated into the woman herself.
When Andrea Sachs had finally felt that entirely inexplicably Miranda-esk scent again, she knew she had finally lost it.
It had been two months of the deficit, and there on a late Thursday afternoon, Andrea’s head spun in a way not entirely displeasurable. The glaring black numbers against the stark white of the monitor screen, ‘11:30 pm’ it screamed. An overflowing trash. The quiet rage of the clicking clock like a gunshot in the solemn bullpen. A cluttered desk.
An isolated woman hunched over and starved.
She wondered if her mind had finally broken down— the base instincts ten months with her had cultured. Surely, the sudden clammy nature of her palms, and the rush of her thumping blood, could all be attributed to a pavlovian push and pull? Surely.
Clack. Clack. Clack. She moves.
The sound dulls as her foot hits the carpeted portion of the pen— perhaps six or seven desks from Andrea’s.
She’s frozen, her hands waiver but stay still on the keyboard; she wills herself to pay attention to the floating words on the screen, which is it— New York fashion week, or the Mayoral elections? She can’t bring herself to read and remember.
“Have I taught you nothing?” Miranda. Andrea looks up to see her standing across the desk, a hand on her hip and head cocked. Shining gold hoops, with a perfectly pressed dress shirt and pencil skirt. She seems as poised as ever; and why wouldn't she be? Prim, Proper, Perfect, Miranda Priestley.
She eyes Andrea disinterested, none of the initial fascination the younger woman had grown accustomed to during their interactions. Instead, Miranda, who is tapping her fingers rhythmically upon her belt, looks bored beyond words.
“I-” Andrea opens her mouth, but her words die within her throat, it's raw and dry from disuse; the last person she spoke to was well over 4 hours ago.
“Polyester, Andrea? Really?” In the blink of an eye, Miranda boredom has dissipated. She walks till in front of Andrea, before pushing her weight into the desk. Her wedding band shines in the dark. Miranda leans into her with a smile fit for a caricature; too wide with all her white, pointed teeth. This ‘stuff’? The smile screams, and Andrea’s body tightens.
“Miranda—” Andrea's voice is scratchy and rough, as if it pains her to speak. Hesitant and yet holding an edge all too loud for the intimacy of the room. Miranda doesn't dignify the splutterings with a response, sat upon the desk like a queen, her heels tap yet don't echo. She raises an annoyed eyebrow.
“That’s all.” Miranda whispers. She pushes herself off the desk, before turning her back against Andrea. Her heels finally echo in their departure— and Andrea simply can’t contain it.
“You aren’t here!” Andrea doesn't remember what happened next. Just that there was a loud bang, and the plastic of her chair screeched against the flooring. She stood— level with brown wide eyes. Buzzed hair and furrowed eyebrows, the man holds a mop.
“I–I’m sorry, Miss.” He looks around for anyone else who has witnessed the aggression. At the sight of the desolate room; he begins small, quiet steps towards the rolling cart a few meters away. His grey jumper jerks up and down with a heaving chest.
Andrea feels her heart lurch within her throat. The man is frightened. His knuckles, a pale white, with his gaze, a nervous darting. What is wrong with her?
And why the fuck does she find herself already craving that god forsaken fragrance.
Andrea’s cheeks burn as blood floods her red face. The sensation combines with her almost dizzying pulse to create a glaring reminder of her anger. And it is all too much to bear. He is younger than she is, perhaps twenty or so? A smooth face that still carries the fat of its youth in his buccals. She feels sick.
In a huff, she shuts down her desktop without bothering to resave the file, and walks away with her hands gripping her coat. Before she can think not to, she leaves that wretched place; and pretends not to notice how the man flinches as she all but runs past him — pretends not to wonder if this is simply another way Miranda has tainted her.
Haunted her body and soul.
The glass doors open to a rush of frozen air, the type that bites at your extremities, and pains your joints. It’s only then, in the enlightening doom of a New York winter night, Andrea realises her metrocard sleeps steadily in the bullpen, strewn across the floor in the company of her messenger bag.
Her coat limps at her side, with her blackberry at only thirty-seven percent. And still, the dusting of snow seems more enticing than the room behind her. Perhaps the walk would do her good— clear the memory of that woman from her lungs.
The streets are cold, and laden with a sheet of ice. Her footsteps are precarious, as she inches towards her apartment at Hell's Kitchen.
left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot— Andrea watches her feet sink into the snowed mud.
The flickering yellow gaze of a lamp post. It bleeds into the blinking of a car's emergency lights. The tire croak of a speeding motorcycle, and the laugh of a young girl— “Mummy!” It yells and the void whispers with “Bobbsey.”
Andrea turns around perhaps harder than she should— and the act is promptly rewarded by a sharp pain at her tail bone and damp trousers. Her hands clench the grit of cold dirt. Still, the sensation is secondary to her frantic search, as the only figure in her horizon is that of two teenagers. They pull at each other's sweaters in an unconscious dance of love and war, and whisper into their necks at the fallen woman’s wide-eyed stare.
“Who is that sad little person?”
“Are we doing a before-and-after shoot I don't know about?”
They laugh to each other. Her fingers feel numb, and she isn’t fully sure it’s simply because of the frost anymore. Nonetheless, it’s only six more blocks. Six more blocks, till Andrea could wash away this dream.
Left foot. Right foot. She continues.
Her eyes are fixated on the brogues of her shoes, a delicate curling pattern that climbs the toe caps like an all-consuming ivy. The snowfall has gotten worse. And Andrea is sure it will only get more forceful the longer she's out.
She's not built for the cold, she summerises, the angry winters of New York. It's another difference between them, the gloomy calm of East London and the warm buzz of a Midwestern barn. Miranda's cheeks freckle in the sun, while Andrea's redden in the cold. Absolute opposites.
And if Andrea can hear the echoes of Miranda’s laugh morph into her own, then that's just another trick of memory.
“He is a philistine— Truly that man’s vision is offensive to Kandinsky’s legacy!” Miranda exclaimed, her tone facetious and effervescent.
“He’s four, Miranda!” Valentino laughs into his palm, breaking his persona of faux outrage.
Andrea thinks of that memory often; how she couldn’t hear Miranda’s response before Christian came crashing in.
She can hear the laugh distantly, with that same fragrance flooding her senses. It blossoms a warm pain at Andrea’s chest. The succumbing pain of late nights, blistering coffee, and the feeling of Miranda’s eyes on her. She kicks down the emotion. Fixates on the buckles of her shoes instead, it’s reflective silver metal. Her blue socks, with its white frayed stitching.
A gasp.
Andrea’s head spins with the smell. The contact. The sudden airborne stance. Her stomach lurches for just a moment before it’s pulled back into Earth.
A warm hand grasps her forearm. The fingers press into her cold skin, unintentional leaving rose marking— The same warm pain.
“Andrea.”
“Miranda.”
She is backlit by fluorescent city lights that diffuse through white hair and the fur of a large coat. She looks unreal. Her breath leaves in small fogged intervals and her cheeks are flushed. She looks like a memory.
But her hands clench, and she is here.
In front of Andrea. Touching Andrea. Looking at Andrea. It is void of anger, or judgement, or the sudden anxiety that consumes the woman in her gaze.
“It’s–” A pause. “It’s nice to see you.”
It’s surprisingly truthful. And Andrea is somehow caught off guard by the words that tumble out of her own mouth. She thinks Miranda is too— can see it reflected in her eyes.
Miranda opens her mouth to answer, before swallowing it down again. In their closeness she smells more heady, alcoholic even. Andrea wonders if one can get drunk from proximity alone. But of course, it must be a fragrance; Andrea knows Miranda is much too careful to do something ever so common as—
“Miranda.” A masculine voice calls out. He towers over them both, wearing the same rosy glow as her former boss does.
Miranda’s head jolts slightly, and Andrea wonders if that surprise is tainted by the same disappointment she feels. He’s staring at the both of them, in his sunday best with salt and pepper hair, and blue-ish tinted teeth. He holds all the impatience Andrea was sure Miranda would.
The older woman’s unyielding grip is dropped immediately, as if Andrea's skin suddenly burnt the flesh of her palm. She moves her gaze towards him, and in a volume that barely agitates the air around them, replies—
“Darling.”
Oh.