Being Audrey Hepburn (11 page)

“But they’re fashion. They’re meant to be worn,” I said firmly. “Their
destiny
is to be worn. Preferably, some place fabulous. Like, say, a recording-industry party.”

Jess was silent; her jaw hardened and her eyes glowered.

“Dude, are you insane? We are lucky, LUCKY, that we got away with the whole Audrey thing without getting caught. You know what happens if somebody figures that out? I’m still waiting to see if Joe reviews the security camera footage. I’m hoping they record over them every night, or I get fired. Fired! And both of us get hauled off to jail. End of story.”

“Nan doesn’t think we’d actually do any jail time,” I offered.

“Oh. My. God!!!! Seriously? You told Nan? What part of ‘we can’t tell anybody about this,
ever
’ was unclear?”

“Calm down. The police were at my house—not for me—for Ryan, and I freaked. Nan asked, and you know I can’t lie to Nan. She won’t tell anyone. She thought it was funny.”

Jess shook her head and exhaled sharply with disappointment. “You’ve got to be effin’ kidding me. I can’t believe you’re planning to risk my job just to go to another cocktail round with the trust-fund crowd. To be Tabitha Eden’s
groupie
.”

“It’s not about Tabitha. And we’re not talking about the Audrey dress. It won’t have anything to do with the museum.”

“Don’t be stupid,” she said. “You don’t think that when this whole charade blows up in your face and they start asking questions, they won’t trace it right back to Page Six, the Met, and that gala?” I hadn’t thought about that.

“Don’t be mad at me,” I said. “You’re the one who’s always saying I should find something to be excited about.”

“I meant a career! Shit, even a hobby. Not risking public humiliation, unemployment, and jail to pull an Audrey Hepburn con job on a bunch of socialites and your sad little pop star.” Jess sat down on the chaise lounge, looking annoyed. “And what would you gain if you pulled this off?”

I paused.

“I don’t know.”

“Dude, I think it’s cool and everything, but where does it go? Do you want to become some kind of professional poser at parties for a career?”

She was right. I didn’t have a plan or goal—other than to get to that record party to see what it would be like to hang out with Tabitha Eden for one more night. I craved one more sip of starlight. But how much of a plan did Cinderella have when she went to the ball at the prince’s castle, anyway?

“I’m sorry, Jess. I’m just miserable,” I said. “I feel like my life is hurtling down a mountain at a thousand miles an hour and the destination is all wrong. Last night at the Met in Audrey’s dress, something happened. I know I was a complete fraud, but there was a spark of something inside me that I just can’t let go of. It wasn’t just the dress that fit me perfectly; it was the whole feeling that there was this other person inside me. It’s different for you. You’ve always known what you were meant to be. But I’ve been clueless until now. Last night I could feel it. I could taste it. But if you don’t help me, I’ll never be able to touch it. I don’t know how, but I feel like it could change my life forever.”

A sad, puzzled expression crossed Jess’s eyes.

“You know it’s not like you can just put on a dress and waltz into some world you don’t belong in,” she said. “Don’t you think they’ll check up on you and wonder who you are? Where you came from? What you’re doing there? These are blue bloods. They hang with blue bloods.”

I didn’t know what to say. It was too painful to think about being stuck where I was. I closed my eyes. I didn’t want to cry. When I opened my eyes, Jess had picked up the Dior and was holding it up to her body, looking in the mirror. She inspected a tattered piece of the hem.

“We probably found these dresses just in time,” she said.

“Yeah, nothing lasts forever,” I added wistfully, watching her turn the Dior inside out, running her fingers along the stitching.

“My profs would consider your suggestion blasphemy,” she said. “Taking a pair of scissors to a vintage Dior or reworking a Cassini is crazy.”

“Aw, come on, we don’t have to treat these dresses as history. It’s the perfect combo of everything you know and what you want to do,” I said. “Besides, the dresses are mine. Nan gave them to me.”

I hated that I sounded like a child saying that, but I could see her mind was working a million miles a minute.

“That’s breaking a lot of rules,” Jess said.

“Yeah, we don’t want to break any rules,” I said. Hidden in the corner of her mouth was a budding smile dying to come out, and I knew I had a chance.

“Well, I guess everyone gets to do some idiotic thing before going to college.”

“You’re the best friend ever,” I said, throwing my arms around her and squeezing her tightly, trying to ignore that she’d just said the word “college.”

“Don’t you forget it,” she said.

“It’ll be our little project,” I added. “We’ll call it Being Audrey Hepburn.”

She should have said no, but she didn’t.

16

I needed a secret identity.

“Lisbeth Dulac.” I figured that would work. It was Nan’s maiden name, so it seemed like less of a lie, better than picking a random name out of a phone book.

Sliding the closet door closed, I retreated to the privacy of my tiny childhood refuge. Tabitha’s record party was three days away, and I needed more than just luck and Nan’s old dresses.

Phase 1, Jess and I agreed, was to create a Facebook page. It was the quickest way to invent a present and a past, something that could be googled, proving that the new “me” existed. I wasn’t a tech wiz, but, like everybody, I grew up on Facebook and knew a thing or two.

I chose May 4, Audrey’s birthday, and a birth year three years before my actual one and then opened a new account with a bogus e-mail, but my fingers froze on the keyboard when it was time to start filling in the details. I didn’t have a clue how many languages Lisbeth Dulac spoke, what her favorite music was, or what high school she attended.

Sinking into the pillows, I tried to get my head around the situation. Every piece of information I entered could be the one that blew my cover and exposed me as a fakester. It made my brain ache trying to think about it. The soft hum of the minifridge lulled me, making it impossible to keep my eyes from closing.

The sound of Nan’s music box playing “Moon River” was swimming round and round in my head until I awoke, realizing the song was actually the muffled sound of my phone ringing buried beneath the pillows. Groggy, I answered and figured it was Jess calling. She’d help me figure this out.

“Hey, wuz up?”

“… Lisbeth?”

I froze. Whose voice was that? Crap.

“Lisbeth? Is that you?”

My God. Tabitha.

I powered off my phone and dropped it on the floor like it was red hot. I panicked. Shit.

Then I thought,
My voice message.

Crap. If she called back and heard my normal, goofy, homegirl message, the whole plan was cooked. I had to move faster than Tabitha’s little manicured fingers on her jewel-encrusted phone.

Powering my phone back on, I went to the phone settings, voice mail, greeting and selected default—then sunk back into the pillows, watching, waiting, heart beating. My thoughts raced. Maybe it wasn’t her after all.

Clearly there was at least one problem with living a fantasy life—it made me paranoid as hell.

The phone lit up, playing “Moon River” in my hands. I let it ring through, and allowed myself to breathe.

For a split second, I actually considered forgetting the whole scheme. I wasn’t the kind of girl that lied, even on normal stuff. When I told a lie, I got this queasy, fluttering feeling in my stomach like there was a little trapped creature down there who couldn’t get out.

Even when the little beast calmed down, the second I thought about the lie again, the creature began bouncing around. So I just didn’t lie that much—except to Mom about college, I guess. That wasn’t so much a lie as an omission.

Checking the phone, I saw that Tabitha hadn’t bothered to leave a message. Was she losing interest?

I worried how long Page Six would keep my photo posted, so I dragged it from the Web page to the desktop. I cropped out ZK and Dahlia and created a perfectly good FB picture. But what about the other details?

For sure, everybody lied on Facebook. My sister, Courtney, had a friend, Stephanie, who claimed that a gossip Web site guy was paying her to go to his parties—free bottles of tequila, limo rides, three-course meals, swag bags, and nobody cared if she had an ID. All she had to do was tweet how hot the parties were. It turned out it was just her building an excuse for her flaky, alcohol-soaked behavior. Blatant embellishing was the norm for how good you were doing, how great the party was, and how drunk everyone got.

My phone buzzed, and I looked at the screen.

“HEY U!”

Shit. I’d have to say something. What would Audrey do, I wondered. What if Audrey had grown up in the age of digital distraction?

Audrey knew all her faults and figured out how to make them work for her. She had an inventory of things she disliked about herself—bumpy nose, eyes that were too wide apart, chest too flat—I could relate to that and more. But she developed her own sense of style and found her own look—the updo, gigantic sunglasses, a simple, elegant wardrobe of classics.

Audrey Hepburn created Audrey—like Cinderella without a fairy godmother. I wanted to be my own fairy godmother, too, given that I hadn’t seen anyone with a golden wand my entire life.

“CALL ME! TXT ME!”

I imagined Audrey on Facebook. No, she’d never do that. But maybe a blog? A blog could be my magic wand, helping me create something out of nothing.

I envisioned flamboyant opining’s on fashion and life. I imagined blog entries while traveling with my beloved Nan. I could post from anywhere around the world without ever leaving home.

“JUST CALLED—WAS THAT U!?” Tabitha wasn’t giving up this time.

Like it or not, it was a moment of truth. Either move forward and renew contact or pack it in. Screwing up my courage, I texted back.

“HAVE BN TRAVELING. JST BOARDING MY FLT. WILL B BACK N TIME 2 C U @ YR PARTY.”

Traveling? With Nan? Where had we gone?

“CAN’T W8,” I added.

There was no turning back now. I had to remind myself to breathe.

Okay,
I thought,
just make some choices and get this done.

I discovered there were dozens of ways to blog anonymously, so I created a page where I posted the links to a few worthy causes that Audrey would have supported, a party calendar from Guest of a Guest, and a few of my favorite New York stores that I’d never be able to buy anything from. It still seemed pretty empty; I had so little to work with.

The Page Six Web lift was perfect for “about me,” but the blog needed a title and some kind of image. I thought back to the night Jess and I unlocked Nan’s storage area, remembering all the dresses we saw, the paintings and the jewelry. I dug in my bag, found Nan’s tiny rhinestone tiara, and marveled at it.

It said everything. I took a picture of the tiara with my phone and placed it at the top of my blog page.

Using Bodoni Seventy-Two font, the one they used for the titles in
Breakfast at Tiffany’s,
I typed the name of my blog above the tiara. Shades of Limelight—it just came to me. It’s from one of my favorite Audrey quotes.

For the first time, I was putting myself out there, exposing myself to some of the limelight … just not too much, I hoped.

“K C U SOON,” Tabitha texted.

I started to text back but figured in first class they were already serving me cocktails.

So I had a new identity and a blog—but did I have anything to say? Strong opinions were the key to Audrey Hepburn’s success.

Now if only I had some.

17

I felt like an operative for the CIA preparing to go deep cover.

The next phase of the Being Audrey project was to build a photo history of me appearing at superswanky events wearing Jess’s redo of Nan’s fabulous gowns.

There were only two problems, of course. The first was that my status as a New Jersey diner waitress didn’t exactly land me on the guest list of the city’s coolest parties. Solution? I’d just have to crash.

The second was that the press had no reason whatsoever to take pictures of me. Because, you know, I was nobody. So I was going to have to basically photobomb a bunch of trust funders and celebrities. I had a feeling that wasn’t quite as easy as it sounded.

Okay, three problems. What if I got caught? I’d be dragged out of the party and humiliated in front of the very people I had been trying to impress. The worst part, the part I feared most, was that my whole adventure would go up in flames before I’d even started. Solution? None.

Jess had arranged with a girl from one of her classes who worked as an assistant at a PR firm to get us into a Bar3 party as gossip bloggers. We ditched work at the Hole, which was no small sacrifice, considering we both needed the tips.

The first event was one of those sponsored parties for a new vodka made from really expensive designer potatoes in the Hamptons. No kidding. This was the kind of event where they paid a celebrity wrangler to populate the room with young movie stars and press-hungry celebstitutes and a few “real housewives,” plus all the gossip bloggers and reporter types they could beg, borrow, or bribe. This sort of party would be slumming for Tabitha and her crowd, so I wasn’t worried about running into her.

Inside, we flashed press IDs that we literally made on Jess’s printer and laminated an hour before. Jess was dressed in one of her slightly punk’d pixie getups and I wore the most bland and unremarkable outfit I could dig out of my closet. My black skirt, black flats, and white button-down blouse practically guaranteed I’d be invisible in the sea of New Yorkers. No one would notice me until I changed into tonight’s glorious ensemble.

We ducked into the bathroom, and Jess lifted the remade Dior out of the huge shoulder bag she always carries. The dress was outrageous. With a fitted bodice and a full tulle skirt, it was stunning. I was so excited I could hardly stand still. Jess didn’t do a lot to the dress, but her modifications were really fresh. It was kind of like the way rappers cop a riff from a classic song you know by heart and turn it into something so cool and original you couldn’t wait to get on the dance floor. Jess did the same thing, except with timeless couture.