Being Audrey Hepburn (27 page)

“I meant getting involved with her to begin with.”

“Why? She’s elegant, obviously intelligent, and…”

“Quite wealthy,” he finished my sentence. “I do admire her. She knows what she wants and gets it. I’m just not that way.”

“Which part?” I asked.

“Let’s see, you choose: her wealth, getting what she wants, and my utter lack of ambition.”

“Phew, that’s a long list to choose from,” I said, and he laughed, flashing that million-dollar smile for a split second.

“Well, I think we should start with my utter lack of ambition,” he said. “That’s the most intractable problem.”

“Why did you run after her?”

“To tell her again what I’ve told her before.”

“And that was?”

“That we’re finished. She never believes me.”

Well, given a chance, I would raise my hand to be a member of the club that would never let him go.

“I’m so sick of living here. This city is old news,” he said. “I had an offer to move to L.A. I should have taken it.”

“Really? You’d leave everyone you know in New York?” I asked.

“Lisbeth, I live in a tiny fishbowl where everybody knows everything about my family, my love life, my net worth. You’ve managed to stay off the radar. I envy you.” Try living most of your life in South End.

“So, Dahlia is a more formidable ‘force of nature’ than you expected?”

“I’m sorry I thought I could handle her,” he said. “The problem is Dahlia thinks like a man. The kind with a double standard. She thinks she can have whoever she wants whenever she wants.” ZK exhaled, exasperated, and I noticed something I hadn’t noticed before.

There was a haunted aspect to his eyes that struck me as lonely. Could the most dashing and sought-after bachelor in Manhattan feel that alone? On the couch, our fingertips made the briefest of contact, and flickers of warmth sparked beneath my skin. Startled, I drew away. ZK’s pleading eyes met mine. We both felt it. That much was clear. But I also felt wary and over my head.

“It’s okay,” I said. “You don’t have to put yourself through this for me.”

“Don’t say that,” he said, looking orphaned. I moved my hand toward his, and he held it gently. His soft hands felt so warm; I sighed, hoping it wasn’t noticeable.

“You know what’s funny?” he asked.

“Nothing appears funny at the moment, so do tell,” I answered. The night had turned so completely serious, not my Audrey fantasy at all, and I felt hugely guilty. I was play-acting, and this guy, who seemed above and beyond me, was spilling his heart out, having sacrificed a relationship with one of the wealthiest, most dazzling women in America. A relationship that perhaps he and his family needed.

“The funny thing is that the person who will be most disappointed is my father.”

“Really? Has he been vicariously living off your love life?” ZK gave me the most confused expression. “I was just making a joke,” I said biting my lip, “maybe not a good one.”

“If you knew my father, you’d know how utterly serious and demanding he is. My father expected a bit more of me.”

“Expectations are overwhelming,” I said. “I had a mother like that.” Oh great, now I was speaking about my mother in the past tense. I must have become light-headed with all the stress.

For a moment, he became extraordinarily serious, as if he were calculating something in his head. I thought he might be tempted to tell me the secret I already knew, about his family’s recent troubles. I couldn’t imagine the shame he felt in being the son of the man who squandered one of America’s greatest family fortunes. But I assumed it hung over his head the way my mom’s drinking and South End hung over mine.

My mother had expected me to become a nurse-practitioner; ZK’s family tasked him to restore the billions his father lost in a Ponzi scheme. Not the same but similar.

His eyes dropped down to our hands, our fingers entwined, and the seriousness lifted. He noticed Nan’s bracelet pooled at my wrist.

“What an interesting bracelet,” he remarked. “May I?”

“I suppose,” I said, then slipped it off and handed to him, feeling inexplicably naked.

“Tuam tutam tenebo,”
he read. Jeez, of course he could read Latin.

God, I hope he doesn’t ask me what it means, I’ll look like an idiot,
I thought, realizing I never asked Nan what the inscription meant.

“‘I will keep you safe,’ but who is Sammy G?”

“A rap star?” I said, making another joke. “It was my Nan’s. I see your Latin isn’t rusty,” I added, hoping to cover for my abject ignorance.

“My Latin teacher literally beat us with a ruler until we learned every word of our lessons,” he said and returned my bracelet. I slipped it back over my wrist. I was surprised at how exposed I felt without it.

ZK rose from the love seat. “My apologies, Lisbeth, for a night of drama. You’re more than generous not to be screaming at me right now,” he said. “Allow me to get you a drink and we can discuss more pressing issues, like why El Schnabel hasn’t made an appearance at his own opening party in his own penthouse. People must be having fun somewhere … let’s find them.”

I rose to go with him but thought better of it.

“I’d love to, ZK, but I think I better go home,” I said, not believing my own words.

“Ah, now I’m really flying solo. Can’t I convince you otherwise?”

There really wasn’t a choice.

“Well, at least allow me to arrange a taxi for you.”

We silently walked to the elevator and rode down to the first floor. Outside, standing at the curb, he didn’t seem to know whether to hold my hand or not. I didn’t know what I wanted either.

A cab stopped at the curb, and at the last second ZK turned to me, my face gazing up into his golden-flecked eyes. He gently brushed an eyelash from my face and, catching me unprepared, kissed me, our lips pressing together, his arm sweeping around me, pulling me in with sudden urgency, making me want to open my mouth and close my eyes, my whole body molded around him. His kiss was so focused and intense that my fingers clutched for something to hold on to—his jacket, his hands holding my face, his hair.

“Hey buddy,” the cab driver said, “why don’t you guys put it in the cab. So I can finish my shift.” We were still on the street.

ZK released me, but he held my hand tightly, preventing me from entering the cab.

“You’re certain I can’t rescue this night and charm you endlessly?”

“You already have,” I said, catching my breath, “but I have to go.” I stepped inside the taxi, gathering myself, still tasting him on my lips.

After all, I thought as the taxi pulled away, I have a super-rat to meet tomorrow.

39

What do you wear to a meeting with a super-rat?

I couldn’t help but go all out with a scarf over my head, some giant sunglasses, and Jess’s redux of a vintage Burberry trench we had snagged at St. Anne’s Thrift for twelve dollars; it felt very
Charade.

When I woke up at Jess’s Chinatown flat that morning, Jess helped me put the whole look together. The trench coat didn’t come with a belt, which is why it was so cheap. Jess shortened the coat a bit and made a new belt out of this very cool pink fabric that she had lying around, and I was ready for my rendezvous.

Coming up the stairs of the subway exit, I made my way through the people on the crowded uptown sidewalk, clutching my purse, aware of how much my trench coat with the bright pink sash stood out from the army of New Yorkers wearing shades of black and gray.

I had two more voice mail messages from my mother, and I was planning to call her back until she texted me.

“I NEED YOU HOME NOW!” As I read those words, my urge to call vanished. She would have to wait.

Tabitha had sent me simple instructions where to go.

“ST. REGIS HOTEL KING COLE BAR 11:30.”

As I reached the red-carpeted stairs at the entrance of the St. Regis, I didn’t know how well I would fare with Robert Francis, but I did know my look was a hit. Two women had stopped me in the subway station and on the street to tell me how much they loved my coat. I felt as if I should have started taking orders for the Designer X line.

The exceedingly polite doorman told me where to find the King Cole Bar and motioned me inside. As I entered the hotel I was momentarily stunned by its opulence. Crossing the lobby, with its frescoed ceiling and elaborate marble staircase, gold-framed mirrors, and stunning terrazzo, was like stepping back in time.

Drawing my trench coat tightly around me, hugging my purse, I entered the King Cole Bar. A fairy-tale mural of King Cole, serenaded by three fiddlers, covered an entire wall behind the bar.

I lowered my oversize glasses and peered around the room.

“Hello Lisbeth,” an older man’s voice said from the table behind me. I turned to see Mr. Armani—Robert Francis—standing at his banquette behind me.

“Oh hello, sorry I didn’t notice you when I came in,” I said as politely as I could manage.

“Come join me,” he said, holding up a glass of champagne. “I promise not to bite.” He put out his hand and directed me to the chair. He couldn’t keep a smirk from creeping into the corners of his mouth.

“Thank you,” I said and quietly stepped into the banquette.

“You are stunning as usual,” he said. “What an original knack you have. You’ve remarkably established yourself as the new girl on the rise in such a short time. You’ve certainly garnered my attention. Quite an accomplishment.”

He wore a deep-gray suit with a yellow tie and a pocket square, his salt-and-pepper hair neatly trimmed, gray eyes, polished skin. Up close in the sunlight, he seemed older. I couldn’t help noticing his hands, their perfectly manicured nails delicate, almost vampirish. Robert Francis had a Dracula sophistication about him, I thought, a superficial elegance with a threat lurking beneath.

“It’s nice to be able to spend time with you,” he said.

“I didn’t really think this would be a social call,” I replied. He reclined in his seat, spreading his arms across the banquette, that devious smirk barely suppressed.

“Oh? What were you expecting? Some furtive encounter filled with threats and demands?” he asked. “The trench coat, by the way, is quite wonderful and original. Your so-called Designer X?”

I nodded.

“Clever marketing, that,” he added. “The Limelight blog, as well. However do you keep so much going on?”

I wanted to respond that it wasn’t that much going on, just me tapping in a blog entry or two before bedtime. And that the clever marketing was just my name for my friend who was a gifted, unheard-of designer and had worked hard for everything she had ever done and that no one I grew up with ever sat in an expensive hotel like this drinking champagne at 11:30
A.M.
But I didn’t say a thing.

“You’ve been here before, of course?” he asked, eyeing me unnervingly. I nodded yes, though I’d never been there in my life.

“It’s my favorite hotel, an absolute time capsule, you know, built by John Jacob Astor the Fourth in the Gilded Age. If Astor came back, he would feel perfectly at home. Everything is exactly as he left it, including the butlers in white tie and tails scurrying about upstairs like little well-dressed mice. Astor himself collected the thousands of leather-bound books on the shelves here over a hundred years ago, and not a volume has been moved since his tragic death.”

“Tragic?” I asked, trying to calculate how many times I had met this odd man. I realized that each of his appearances had been more discomforting than the one before.

“Indeed, don’t you know your history, young lady?” he admonished. “He died in the sinking of the
Titanic.
It was one of the great ill-fated romances of all time.”

“No, I didn’t know.” I was intrigued to see how enthusiastic he was to talk to me. Not at all how he had behaved before. The hotel, this banquette, was clearly where he spent a lot of time. He enjoyed whatever game he was playing.

“Well, eight years after the Saint Regis opened, Astor divorced his wife and married his secret lover, a lovely schoolgirl named Madeleine. She was actually a year younger than his son. Although these things happen all the time, it caused such a huge uproar that Astor fled with his young wife on an extended yearlong honeymoon through Egypt and the Middle East and the Orient to ride out the controversy. But after seven months, the lovely child bride became pregnant. Considering the state of child care in the Mideast, he decided to return to the States immediately. His misfortune is that he booked passage on the maiden voyage of the RMS
Titanic.
”

“I take it they didn’t survive?”

“Yes and no. As the ship was sinking, Astor helped his young pregnant wife and her dog Kitty through the cabin window into the last lifeboat.”

“Funny name for a dog, Kitty,” I said. “Mrs. Astor must have had an interesting sense of humor.”

“I suppose,” he answered, seeming annoyed at a detail he considered minor.

“And what happened to Mr. Astor?”

“He found a deck chair, lit a cigar, and perished as the ship went down. Now that’s the movie that James Cameron should have made.
That’s
a romance. But Hollywood prefers to spin tales about a pauper instead. The ninety-nine percent, I believe your generation calls it.”

“That’s quite a story, Mr. Francis.”

“Please call me Robert,” he said, immensely pleased with himself. I took a deep breath and gathered my courage to bring our conversation to the point. Being the fly in his spiderweb was exhausting.

“Well …
Robert,
I appreciate the vivid history lesson, but I’d prefer to discuss what I came here for,” I said. “Tabitha asked that we discuss you stepping aside and allowing her to control her own affairs.”

“Ah, a girl who gets to the point! Do relax, dear Lisbeth. Nothing bad is going to happen here. I’m sure the ghost of John Jacob Astor the Fourth would protect an attractive young woman such as yourself in his hotel,” he said, self-satisfied. “Have a sip of champagne. Are you hungry? Can I order you a something to eat?”

“No thank you,” I said, feeling oddly helpless.