Being Audrey Hepburn (39 page)

“What are you going to do?” I asked, wondering if I held her and hugged her, the way Nan hugged me, would it make her feel better. “We have to give these tapes to the police. You have to see someone. You have every right to be free of him.”

“You’re not from here, are you?” she asked. Her eyes pierced deeply into mine as if she could see everything inside of me, a sharpness to her voice I hadn’t heard before. “Why did you have to be the girl in the bathroom who found me? You don’t know. You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.

Fearful I might reveal something unconsciously, with my eyes or my face, I turned away.

“You should leave,” she said and tapped her cup with her stirring spoon. Zoya appeared instantly.

“More coffee.”

62

The taxi smelled of cigarettes and mildew as I watched the dunes and scrub pines whizz by. The Hamptons sky was clouding up. A light rain was falling, or was it just fog? I opened all the windows. It felt good on my face.

I checked the jitney schedule and realized there were only two buses left that could get me back to the city in time for Jess’s show. Four days ago I thought the jitney was special; now they were just buses, glorified Greyhounds.

Too much had happened that I couldn’t understand, that I couldn’t twist into part of my Being Audrey game. Everything had turned too serious for that.

I arrived at the jitney stop, and there were dozens of people waiting to get on, part of the mass exodus that happened every weekend in the Hamptons. You could almost hear the sucking sound of people leaving the eastern end of the island. I didn’t have a chance. I’d have to wait for the next bus.

My phone buzzed, and I dreaded to check it.

“WHERE R U?” It was Jess of course. The little creature inside my stomach woke up, very unhappy.

“WE GO ON AT 7PM.”

I was trying to calculate how long it would take to get from the tip of Long Island to Chelsea on the west side of New York City and if it was even possible in the Hamptons’ summer traffic. I began writing a text, but before I could finish …

“R YUR PEOPLE COMING?”

I deleted my text to begin writing an explanation, trying to find some way to justify myself and why I was late, when I received another text.

“R U COMING?”

I had to stop and take a breath.

“YES.” I thumbed as quickly as I could.

☺ She texted in return.

I sighed, physically and emotionally exhausted, meditating on the smiley face.

On my phone I blogged a new Limelight entry as if I had no worries in the world. I figured it was my one last-minute shot at making Jess’s show a success, even if I couldn’t be there.

Tonight is the Night! The Designer X Pop Up show only happens if you are there! Style mavens, cynical fashion hipsters, fashion addicts, runway fanatics, designer devotees, loyal followers. See her runway show in person. Show your designer devotion. Satisfy your need for immediate gratification. Come take your pictures. Post them everywhere. Rock your Instagram with pix of Designer X’s new looks. Only you can make it happen. #xbelowtheline2nite.

As the fully packed jitney pulled away onto route 27, my last hope for arriving in time, I madly blasted everyone on my list of followers.

I called Isak, but there was no answer, so I texted him again.

“DESIGNER X—BELOW THE LINE GALLERY 7PM. PLEASE SAY YOU’RE GOING.” If Isak made it, I would be okay. I left messages at Flo’s office for her and Gabby to come.

I squinted down the street, but the next jitney was nowhere in sight.

I sat on my roller with my garment bag in my lap and worried I had to be realistic and think of what I could do other than just break down and sob because that’s the only thing I felt like doing. Undone by ZK, I had left everything unfinished. Because I was unhappy, I guaranteed that no one would be happy with me.

I wondered how Jess could forgive me. My Audrey project was coming to an unfavorable end, letting down my best friend, losing ZK, Tabitha, and Jake without a clue what I would do with the rest of my life.

“Hey Lisbeth!” a familiar voice called out. “Need a ride?”

I turned to see Chase in his white van. “I thought I’d drive by just in case. Just a wild hunch, figured I might find you here.”

“Tell me you’re not some weird stalker?” I asked. Chase laughed, getting out of his van, embarrassed in front of all the other people waiting for the jitney.

“No. Okay. Yes. I told you I’ve had you on my radar for a while. Just saw your blog entry, and I figure you needed someone to shoot that fashion show of yours. Am I right?”

I was speechless.

“Well, I’ll take that as a yes,” he said, grabbing my suitcase and putting it in the back of his van. “Let’s hurry. I’ve got to do some tricky driving while I pull together a crew if we’re going to make this happen.”

63

There was a succession of texts as Chase madly wove his van through the expressway traffic taking access roads and conduits that I thought for sure would wind up at a dead end.

“IT’S 6:30. NOBODY’S HERE.”

“YOU PROMISED.”

I decided not to respond. We were either a half hour away or going to be stuck in traffic forever. I would be there or not.

I had to do a quick inventory of what we needed. Like music. We hadn’t even considered that. I figured I might know one person who would be willing to show up at the last second and sent a text. While I was texting, my phone buzzed again.

“WE ARE SUPPOSED TO START IN TEN MINUTES.”

“Tell her to stall.” Chase insisted looking over my shoulder as we zipped around the line of cars exiting the Midtown Tunnel.

“WILL BE THERE SOON,” I texted back. I saw the three dots that meant she was responding when my phone died. I plugged it into Chase’s car charger and waited.

“Are we going to make it?” I asked.

“Shouldn’t be a problem. Do you want to change?” he asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Designer X—don’t you have something of hers to wear?” He was eyeing my garment bag. At Tabitha’s I hadn’t been able to bring myself to put on Jess’s dress.

“I’m supposed to change here in front of you?”

“No!” he said, looking mortified. “Back there, behind the equipment crates.”

I crawled my way back to the van as it bounced around, out of Chase’s line of sight, and stripped down to my underwear, pulling out Designer X’s exquisite signature creation. In the bumpy minivan I stared at it, afraid to put it on.

Slipping on the tight nude satin underskirt, I felt the familiar hug of it and pulled up the rest of the dress, the overskirt and the blouse. It made me feel exactly as it had when I tried it on the first time.

“This is your signature dress,”
I remembered saying to Jess.
“Isak will love it. Everyone will.”

It’s something every woman can tell you—there’s one pair of shoes or a sexy bra that makes you feel beautiful and strong in those gut-wrenching moments—like going to a wedding after breaking up with your boyfriend or to some terrible high school reunion.

I guess guys have their lucky underwear or shirts, like Jake and his flannels. Jess’s dress gave me that sensation. It communicated through the fabric, cut, and texture. The van came to a stop.

As I put on my heels, I peered out the tiny dirty window in the back of the van. I could make out two other vans that seemed as though it might be Chase’s crew already unpacking. I saw Sarrah and a man I assumed was the gallery owner on the street screaming at each other. That couldn’t be good. Squinting, I could see Jess on the sidewalk, totally stressed, surrounded by her models sitting on fire hydrants, leaning against streetlights, sitting on flattened cardboard boxes on the curb in her finest designs.

I tried to open the van door from the inside but it wouldn’t budge, so I pounded on the window. When the door opened I almost fell on my face.

“Sorry about that,” Chase said. “Gotta get that fixed.”

As soon as Jess saw me, she let out a scream and ran over. She was wearing one of her self-made tiered iridescent skirts and her vintage Sonic Youth T-shirt tied at the waist. Across her shoulder she carried the ever-present monster bag filled with all kinds of emergency makeup, hair spray, and sewing stuff.

We both screamed and hugged.

“I’m sorry I’m so late,” I said.

“It’s okay, it’s okay, but what are we going to do?” she said.

“I don’t know. Why are all the models outside?”

“What?! You don’t know? I texted you.” My cell phone was still connected to the car charger.

“Know what?”

“There’s no room!” she shouted.

I took in the whole scene for the first time and almost fell into shock. Serious apoplectic shock. There were literally hundreds of people everywhere. The tiny gallery was crammed with them. And really cool people, I might add. Hundreds of fashionable people had converged on the Below the Line Gallery, proof that the posting and e-mail blasts worked. These were at least some of the fashionistas who followed my blog. I wanted to stop and examine each and every one of them—how they were dressed, their ages, their style. But there was no time.

“I guarantee you, they were not here twenty minutes ago,” Jess said. “It just happened.”

Chase sauntered over. “You’re the promotional genius,” he said, giving me a smirk. “Where are we setting up?” People were clogging the street. Cars were honking, having trouble getting by.

“There’s not enough room,” I said, stunned.

“Gee, you just figured that out?” Chase asked. He eyed Jess. “This could take awhile.”

“Well, we’ll just have to go up there.” I pointed to the elevated highway above us. “Have you ever shot up there?” I asked. Chase acted like he was afraid of me, as though I might bite him.

“Do you mean—the High Line?”

The High Line is an official New York City park built on the rusty remains of a derelict elevated railway that used to wind down the West Side Highway. It is now filled with walkways, plantings, seating areas, and little amphitheaters. Jess and I would walk up there every time we went to the stores in the Meatpacking District. There were happenings and events staged up there every day. Jess and I had talked about it, but never in our wildest dreams did we think we’d have the chance to do a fashion show there.

“Yeah,” Chase said. “I’ve shot a bunch of times for Tommy Hilfinger after he waited about three months to get a thousand permits from the mayor’s office.”

“Can we do it on the fly? It’s a pop-up, right?”

Chase grinned. I could see he was into it.

“Okay, boss, it’s your show.” Chase whistled to his crew, and they sprinted ahead with all of their equipment and lights.

“Have all the models come with us. I’m sure everyone else will follow,” I said. Jess and I began marching straight down Ninth Avenue, just ahead of our entourage of provocative models in their dazzling dresses and a horde of gawking fashionistas gathered behind us. It felt like a movable party. It felt like we could take these people anywhere.

“There are no chairs and no stage,” Jess said to me as we walked. “Where will the important people be?”

“With everyone else,” I said. “Who knows who’s the most important person in this crowd anyway? They all could be.”

As the crowd snapped pictures with every conceivable camera and phone, we made our way to the High Line stairs at Fourteenth Street. They would post these pictures on their Instagram and Twitter accounts, but we had to make sure that the runway was the show they’d remember.

Walking into the covered Chelsea Passage, where the High Line cuts through the Chelsea Market building, we encountered a sea of cool blue fluorescent light that bathed the tunnel columns mingling the High Line’s industrial architecture with the cityscape around us.

Chase had already set a backdrop curtain, and we took the models behind there. Massive concert speakers and a DJ deck already had been set up on either side of the runway, and there was my friend Bennie doing a last-second tech check.

“Lisbeth baby! I knew you’d call me!” Curly haired Bennie, wearing a funky pinstripe suit and shades like some tripped-out mobster, was scratching an electronic turntable. He had gotten my text. Jess and I felt like the littlest kids at the biggest party of our lives.

“You’ve got about thirty minutes, I figure, before the cops shut us down, so we have to start right away,” Chase yelled over the rising din of people settling in. “Good luck.”

Everything in Jess’s monster bag came out. We lined up the girls, touched up their makeup and hair, straightened the lines of the dresses, pinning anything back that didn’t look right. Then, abruptly, the lights went out and the whole area was dark, muted, and quiet. In hushed whispers, Jess reordered the models at the last second.

A spotlight snapped on, and Bennie kicked up the music, cranking the volume. An infectious beat reverberated, turning the cavernous space into a giant stereo speaker.

“Go! Go!” Jess yelled, pushing the first model onto the stage.

Bright flashes lit up the architecture as a wall of fans with iPhones and photographers fired their shutters. The models had to walk toward that blinding spotlight just concentrating on keeping their heads up and putting one foot in front of the next while trying to look natural. I’m not sure they could see anything in the extreme contrast of dark and light.

I slipped out from behind the backdrop to see the show and the audience from the wings. Jess’s last-minute sequence ordered the dresses by color, and it was a revelation.

The show opened with a series of white looks that quickly evolved. Sea-foam green was followed by solar yellow and honey orange. Little by little the bolded colors emerged, illuminating the chiffon dresses and the layered skirts within skirts.

The dresses came to life with attractive details—a ripple of sequins, a plunging neckline, a backless dress, a cuff—offering new energetic concepts of style and design. The shimmering blues were the most stunning. They had an almost stellar depth.

No ordinary models, Sarrah’s friends were an entire show unto themselves. They were as lithe and lovely as any girl that had ever hit the runway. But these were massively tattooed, slash-and-burn, hard-core, multiracial beauties with some seriously hairalicious hairstyles.