Crossing Figures

If there is one movie that you must have seen once in your entire life, it has to be Love Actually. The most heartwarming film with the most intricate, complicated but romantic love lives, and a common thread throughout the story. In each character you can find a part of yourself back, but it has no real significance. It revolves around the fact that Love Actually has obtained a major significance in the lives of many women in love, and therefore also in mine.

Nobody really expects it of me because of my casual, even bedraggled impression I give, but I was addicted to my work. That makes me think of The Devil Wears Prada, which I find myself also back into. I loved my job as a secretary, but my boss was sometimes hard. And that's more in the fashion business where I was at. I didn't work for a famous magazine like Anne Hathaway, I wasn't barked at every five minutes, but it came somewhere close.

We called her at work, Miss Prada - another reference to the movie - because she liked posing as the head of Vogue, though the magazine that we made was a modest magazine not too familiar, only in the country and some neighboring countries. Every hour I got a call from her, then heard her monotonous voice sneering through the horn and not much later I was sweating in her office. Everyone feared her, stress was conceived and Thierry - Miss Prada's assistant - explained his dramatic loss of hair through the stress that his boss delivered.

Normally, our work would be a moment of relaxation. All the people who worked very hard to make our magazine Fashion Supersize an international success, loved all the new fashion and the news around, but mostly the mood was spoiled by the devil in person. Nobody felt safe when she wasn’t in her private office on the top floor, but crept around throughout the building, each floor searching for the tiniest flaws. Miss Prada loved neatness and order, and she was always pleased to show it to us.

When she came on the second floor, where I responded with Thierry letters, business forms and other paperwork, she was always on her guard. It seemed like she loved to make our lives sour the most, because we were a little higher at the top then all other employees of the magazine. Sometimes I had the feeling that she was afraid to lose her top position, that we would take the seizing power and continue the work without her. In the ears of the company this sounded hilarious, without Miss Prada we couldn’t continue, she was the only driving force who had contacts with foreign countries and the top models. And we wanted to keep that security.

However, as secretary, I also often connected with famous stars. So I had ever superstar Keira Knightley on the line stating that she was to be found for a photo shoot with our magazine. She told me she found it interesting to pose in a slightly smaller, more modest magazine than Vogue or Glamour, and that she liked the way that we were standing up for ourselves among all the big names. Supersize Fashion had never sell as well as then with the photo shoot with Keira Knightley.

That was also the first time that Miss Prada had praised me for a deal that I had made. As her secretary it’s usually the intention to take messages and transmit them, but because it had to be handled last minute, I decided myself that the photo shoot would go on. That was also the first time that Miss Prada showed a smile. Forced and distorted, but that didn’t matter. The smile showed me I had won.

Still, every day goes by as a routine, a routine that I couldn’t get away from. Each day began the same: wake up as a sleepy head, stumble to the bathroom and get scared by my own reflection, make myself ready as quick as lightning, jump into my car, get a phone call from Miss Prada with the news that she wanted a latte coffee, sprinting to Starbucks, ordering the coffee, jump back in my, park my car in the parking lot at the building, take the elevator to the second floor, flop down in my chair, listening to Thierry with all his 'interesting' news, browse through all documents and answering phones.

However I kept on loving my job. Every day I walked - or rather, ran - into the office with a big smile on my face and I answered all the phone calls friendly. There was a sort of motive behind me that didn't prevent me from loving my life. But there was something missing, something that didn’t have anything to do with my job.

I couldn’t describe it because I hadn’t heard a long time of it. Well, I heard about it, but I heard nothing that was related to my life. First I didn’t realize what I was missing, my work was always in the first place. One day Jeanine, the woman at the desk, got warmly surprised by her boyfriend Luke with a marriage proposal. I had seen everything from my own made sidelines, and that’s when I finally understood.

I had felt a knot grow in my stomach, and how my heart stopped beating for a few seconds. Everything was so idyllic, perfect, and moving. It sounded like a proposal from a romantic story. A story I never had the chance to play the leading role in.

I missed love in my life, a subject that for many women seems as a fairy tale, but for me it felt like a hell. Thanks to my cluttered schedules and the short time I stayed in the outer world, the innocent flirts and love affairs had a very little chance of survival. Every time the men slunk off, and I remained alone with my work.

Not that I always noticed something about it, about some guys, I felt relieved that they had disappeared from my life. Something broke inside when a man obstructed my work by going on grumbling about my rare presence with them. If they couldn’t live with busy business woman like me, but sought someone with a sea of free time, it was their problem. I had to work, it was my entire life.

Of course I dreamed of a prince in shining armor, someone who loves me like a man might have never done before, but that didn't work. All these men were already occupied by the handsome superstar where I conducted two minute interviews with. Charm and passion seemed to be perished out of the man, and I had not found a single person that I could stir the flame back up with. And that was unknowingly the final decision for me to not really deal with men anymore, let alone date them.

So I led a lonely existence, and every night I sat alone in my simple apartment, on the outskirts of town. Until the middle of the night I was still with my nose in paperwork, it was often late when I crawled into bed exhausted. The only company I had in the bustling city was a goldfish, named Casanova, other pets were not allowed in the apartment block.

But Casanova was good company, he never whined about my bad habits, or that I was too busy in deals where we were not even sure about whether they would be signed or not. He kept his mouth shut and watched as I isolated myself from the rest of the world, and tried to make Fashion Supersize a top company.

Yet, one day I was startled by an encounter I hadn’t expected, an encounter that meant a turnaround in my life. A meeting like in every romantic movie occurred, and now was added into my reality. But whether this introduction came at a good time... That was something completely different.