Oh Yeah, Audrey!

by Tucker Shaw

  “Oh, yes,” I said, breathing again. “One of the most beautiful ever. Don’t you?”

  “I suppose she’s cute,” he said.

  “But?”

  “But she’s not really my type.”

  I paused.

  “What is your type?”

  No answer.

  “I mean . . . ,” I said.

  “What type are you?” he asked.

  5:55 A.M.

  I didn’t tell Bryan and Trina about that first phone call with Dusty. Or the second one, or the third. And if you asked me right now, I don’t know if I even remember what we talked about during all those phone calls. Have you ever just found yourself so relaxed on the phone that you forget you’re actually talking to someone else, and it just feels like you’re talking to yourself? Not like talking to a brick wall, but just going through your head and finding things that feel like they need to be said so you say them, and then before you know it you’re just talking.

  Just a few nights ago, we were talking about—I don’t even remember—when my father interrupted us.

  “Gemma!” he yelled from the doorway. He was just getting home from work.

  I covered the phone with my hand. “I’m on the phone!”

  “Hang up! I need you!”

  “I’m busy!”

  “What could be so important? Just hang up!”

  “In a minute!” I spoke into the phone again. “Sorry.”

  “Who was that?” Dusty asked.

  “My dad,” I said. “He’s driving me so crazy lately. He’s totally on my case and I don’t know why. It’s like he doesn’t care what I want to do, where I want to go. And he never wants to leave me alone. I mean, I’m a sixteen-year-old girl. I can’t spend all of my time with my dad, you know? It’s been that way ever since Mom . . .”

  I stopped myself.

  I hadn’t talked to Dusty about my mother. I hadn’t wanted to. Maybe that was why he and I always had such an easy time talking to each other. Everyone else in my life, as soon as they found out that my mother was dead, would freak out. They’d treat me differently, like I had some kind of disease or something.

  “What about your mom?”

  “Whatever. It doesn’t matter.”

  “Yes, it does,” Dusty said. “It matters. You matter, Gem.”

  I didn’t say anything. I just held my breath for a moment. I didn’t want to start to cry. Holding my breath is my most reliable technique for that. I don’t know why I wanted to cry just then. No one had called me Gem since Mom. And You matter isn’t really the kind of thing you hear every day when you’re Gemma Beasley.

  “Are you there?”

  I let my breath go. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “She’s dead. A few months ago. Cancer.”

  At first, Dusty didn’t say anything, and I braced myself for what always happens when people find out that your mother’s dead.

  I noticed it right after she was gone. Even at the funeral. People look at you funny, with these sad eyes, like they’re trying to look like they understand. As if.

  They try to come up with words that will have it make sense. It’s like I can hear their brains turning over in their heads, like a computer trying to reboot, whirring and clicking. I’m so sorry, they say, as if it’s their fault. Or, I can imagine how hard that must be. Or, It’s so good you can be there for your father. Or, the very worst, At least she’s in a better place now.

  They say things that people have always said about things like dead mothers. They become actors, trying to remember whatever line sounds right.

  Only, none of the words ever sound right. There are no words that can. I mean, it’s not your fault she’s dead, so why would you say you’re so sorry? And no, you can’t imagine how hard it must be. Honestly, I don’t want to have to be there for my father. And no, frankly, she’s not in a better place now. She’s in the ground. You really think that’s better?

  But those are the words people say to you when they find out that your mother’s dead. It’s like the news knocks them out of being themselves and into being someone else. Someone they think they’re supposed to be instead of someone they really are.

  It’s the first step in distancing themselves, in getting away from you. Like you’re contagious or something, or they just don’t want to deal with you anymore.

  I guess it’s why I never told Trina and Bryan. I never really wanted them to know. I didn’t want them to start saying things they didn’t mean, just because they thought they should.

  But I took a chance with Dusty. And all Dusty Sant’Angelo said was, “That sucks.”

  Just as easy as could be: “That sucks.”

  It was the best answer he could have given.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “For what?”

  “Nothing.”

  Which was kind of a lie, because I was thanking him for something. Something major.

  This person who I didn’t know, this person who I had never met and probably had nothing in common with, who knew nothing about me, this person—this boy—just did the only thing I ever wanted anyone to do. He just said, “That sucks,” and that’s it. Just like I’m a normal person. A regular girl who happens to have a huge Audrey Hepburn obsession and a dead mother. Somehow—through the phone, the Internet, the atmosphere—he understood me. Just plain me. And he didn’t freak out.

  Later that night, he e-mailed me a playlist. Four different renditions of “Moon River,” including the one that Audrey Hepburn sang on the fire escape in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. I listened to all four of them twice. I thought maybe I’d cry, but I didn’t.

  Later, I went back and looked at those pictures on his Facebook page. The ones on the yacht. I hadn’t noticed it the first time, but he looked just like George Peppard, a.k.a. Paul Varjak, a.k.a. “Fred,” from Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

  6:10 A.M.

  How did I miss that it’s past six?

  The traffic is picking up and I’m looking less and less enchanting and more and more weird, standing here outside Tiffany’s in my Audrey Hepburn getup. Then again, I wonder if anyone will even notice. I mean, I guess it’s not that weird for New York City. The bar is pretty high for weird here. I’m sure I’m not the first girl to stand out in front of Tiffany’s in a strappy black gown at dawn, waiting.

  Waiting.

  Waiting.

  The sidewalk is filling up now. Women in business suits. Men in workout shorts. Students with backpacks, texting as they walk. But no Bryan. No Trina.

  I don’t know why I thought they’d actually come. I shouldn’t be surprised. I guess I don’t really know them at all. I’ve decided having friends just sets you up for more disappointment.

  Whatever, I’ll have my breakfast at Tiffany’s alone. It was good enough for Holly.

  I open my deli bag and pop a pastry between my teeth, just like she did. I hold it there while I peel the lid off my paper coffee cup, just like she did. The coffee’s lukewarm now. I bet hers was, too, I think.

  I drop the lid back into the bag and turn toward Tiffany’s.

  “Hey, sweetheart, do you mind?”

  I spin around to see an old man with lopsided glasses and a wrinkly sweatshirt and hair coming out of his ears. He’s pointing at my foot, which is being sniffed by a tiny little dog with a tiny little rhinestone collar. White, puffy, with mean eyes. Really mean eyes. And teeth, white and sharp and on full display. Growl. Yap. I feel the leash wrapping around my ankle.

  The man sighs. “Gladiator always walks along the edge of this building,” he’s saying. “Right along here. Every morning.” He says it like it’s something I’m supposed to know. Like everyone knows this is where Gladiator walks every morning.

  “I’m sorry, sir.” I pull off my sunglasses and step out of the leash, spilling lukewarm coffee on my shoes just as Gladiator lifts his tiny, fuzzy little leg just inches from my pump.

  “Close call,” I say, smiling at the man, who is now mumbling in a different direction. Th
e romance of this moment—I’ve imagined it so many times—is beginning to fade. I mean, a bichon frise named Gladiator just about peed on my pump.

  “Excuse me!” a jogger yells from behind me. She clips my left arm and sends my sunglasses flying into a shallow puddle. “Sorry,” she breathes, but she doesn’t sound like she means it. She trots off, yoga pants tight across her butt.

  I bend down to pick up my glasses, shaking the dirty water off them as I stand back up.

  Enough. I’m out of here.

  6:15 A.M.

  I nearly stumble to keep from stepping on the toes parked in front of me. I start to lose my balance, falling forward, but I can’t take my eyes off the wingtips. Such a beautiful cognac color. So softly shined.

  “Leaving already, Audrey?” he says, catching me by the elbow.

  “Huh?”

  “It’s only six fifteen. Don’t you know that, in New York, ‘on time’ means fifteen minutes late? It’s some kind of rule, I think.”

  Bryan.

  I look up from the shoes, the mesmerizing shoes, past the trim trousers, to the skinny purple tie, to the slim jacket. That suit. Just like Paul’s, in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Springtime gray, tailored to just graze the tops of the cognac wingtips.

  “Hello, Gemma,” he says.

  “Hi,” I say. Stupid, I know, but it’s all I could come up with. Here I’d been maintaining perfect posture all morning, my cape draped just right, my sunglasses perfectly placed—and Bryan appears when I’m tripping over my own feet, dripping sunglasses hanging from one hand. “I’m sorry.”

  “For what?” he says. “You’re perfect.”

  His eyes are darker than I expected. Deep brown, with flecks of chestnut. His black hair, so precisely parted and carefully combed, shines. He’s tall, taller than I am anyway, which maybe isn’t that tall really, but it’s tall enough. Lean. His voice is deeper than the one I’m accustomed to on the phone. “I meant to be here on time,” he says. “But I had a slow start.”

  He raises one eyebrow, perfectly, like he’s practiced it, like a movie star. An old Hollywood movie star, like Cary Grant. Montgomery Clift. Clark Gable. I devolve into a goofy smile and look at my feet.

  “You’re right on time,” I say.

  “Take a look at you,” he says, and he strokes his chin with his thumb and forefinger. As though he has a beard, which he doesn’t. I feel his eyes inspect every stitch and hem and drape. Scrutinizing. Studying. Appreciating?

  “Give me a turn,” he commands.

  I spin, holding up my skirt with my thumb and forefinger. Will he approve?

  Bryan smiles, first with his eyes, and then with his lips. He claps, just once. “Givenchy?” he asks. “Tell me it’s real!”

  “As far as you know,” I say.

  He steps back. “You look just like . . .”

  “Don’t say it.”

  “Just like her.”

  “Stop,” I say. I fan myself in mock bashfulness. “And what about you, Bryan?” I chew on the arm of my sunglasses, doing my best Audrey. “You look just like Fred. Paul, I mean! Varjak, Paul! Charming. Positively . . . rakish. New suit?”

  “You think I wear wool gabardine in Bel-Air?”

  Of course it’s a new suit. This is Bryan. He can afford it. He can afford just about anything, as far as I can tell.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” I say. I really am.

  He kisses my forehead. “Anyone else?” He looks up and down Fifth Avenue. “Trina?”

  “No.”

  “Ah.” He nods his head, then smiles again. “This is more than enough for me.”

  “Pastry?” I hold open the white deli bag.

  He takes a croissant and bites off the end. “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” he says. He holds out his arm, I crook mine around his, and together we walk over to the window.

  “Must be at least fifty or a hundred carats altogether,” Bryan says, pointing at an elaborate wrist cuff. “That centerpiece stone, that’s easily six or seven carats alone. And the smaller ones, they must be a half carat each, and they go all around the wrist. Three strands. Amazing.”

  “How much?” I say.

  “Half mil at least,” he says.

  “Are you kidding?”

  “Hardly. My dad got a tennis bracelet from Tiffany’s for my mom last year when she turned forty,” Bryan says. “He told me he spent two hundred on it, and that was only one strand, with no centerpiece stone.”

  “Wow” is all I can say. I don’t even understand what numbers like that mean. A half million dollars? Isn’t that, like, a couple of houses?

  I look into the window and think how perfect everything inside is. Everything is so beautiful. Everything is right where it belongs.

  “They’re so beautiful,” I say.

  “So are you,” Bryan says.

  A flash lights up the window. And another. A camera.

  “Tourists,” Bryan whispers.

  I slide on my sunglasses. We’re tourists, too, I’m thinking, but I don’t say it out loud. It would ruin the illusion, the illusion that we belong here. That I belong here. Just like the diamonds in the window.

  “Let’s go around the corner,” he says after the next flash. “There’s another window there.” We bow our heads and turn away, giggling.

  We get two steps away when a voice stops us. “Dahlings!”

  I look up. Of course it’s Trina, in a dress exactly like mine, except four inches longer because she’s four inches taller, at least. She, too, has the big sunglasses and the ivory-colored cape. Her hair is piled high just like mine, only hers is red. Very red. So much redder than it looks in her profile picture. I can’t see her eyes yet, because she’s holding a camera in front of her face, pointed straight at us. “Smile, dahlings!”

  “Trina!” Bryan whispers, and we both smile.

  Trina snaps a photo, and another, then lunges forward, falling into us, and we all embrace, bouncing a little as we do.

  “You’re here!” she squeals.

  “No, you’re here!” I squeal back.

  “You guys!” Bryan squeals.

  A foursome of tourists in track jackets and walking shoes splits in half to walk around the little bouncing scrum we’ve formed on the sidewalk. Two of them stop and stare at us.

  “They think we’re famous,” Bryan says.

  “Or crazy,” I say.

  “What’s the difference?” Trina says. “Don’t you read TMZ? Fame and loco go hand in hand.” She yells to the tourists, “You want a picture?” One takes out a camera, then another does. Soon all four are pointing cameras at us.

  “You two, here,” Bryan says, squaring his shoulders and crossing his arms. “One of you on each side. Straight backs, one leg forward. Work it.”

  “I’ve never had my picture taken by a stranger before,” I say. “At least not before breakfast.”

  Trina nudges me in the ribs. It’s a riff on a line that Paul says to Holly in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. She answers with Holly’s line: “‘We’ll spend the day doing things we’ve never done before!’”

  Bryan smooths his hair and holds out his hands, palms up. He mimics Audrey Hepburn’s voice. “‘We’ll take turns. First something you’ve never done, then me.’”

  I finish the quote. “‘Of course, I can’t think of anything I’ve never done.’”

  The cameras flash and we laugh. Soon the tourists are joined by another photographer. “Are you famous?” he calls to us.

  “Of course we are!” Trina yells back. “Aren’t you?”

  We pose for another round before the crowd shuffles away.

  “Have a nice day, dahlings!” Trina yells after them, waving.

  “Here we are,” I say.

  “Yes,” Trina says.

  “All of us,” Bryan says.

  “All of us,” Trina and I repeat.

  6:30 A.M.

  The first thing Bryan and Trina can think of that they’ve never done before is have breakfast in a New York City d
iner.

  “Good thing that’s the next item on our itinerary,” I say. I reach into my handbag and pull out a printed copy of the day’s schedule. “Says so right here.”

  “Oh, my God, you printed it out,” Trina says.

  “Phone batteries die,” I say. “And I don’t want to miss anything. We’re only here for—”

  “Don’t finish that sentence,” Bryan says. “I don’t even want to think about going home.”

  “Me, either,” Trina says. “As far as we’re concerned, we’re staying here forever. Our lives will be full of fancy parties and cocktails, just like Holly’s!”

  I smile. “Fine,” I say. “But we still have a schedule.”

  “You’re amazing,” Trina says.

  “I’m starving,” Bryan says.

  I pull out my iPhone. “I found one on Yelp that’s right over on Third Avenue,” I say. “The reviews say it’s pretty good.”

  “How far is that?” Bryan says.

  “A few blocks. We can walk it,” I say.

  “Ex-squeeze me?” Bryan says. “Walk? Have we met?”

  “What, you don’t walk?” Trina says.

  Bryan backs up two steps and points to a big black SUV idling at the corner. A guy with a visored cap sits in the driver’s seat. “Mademoiselles, your chariot awaits.”

  “You rented a car?” Trina says, framing it in her iPhone camera. “With a driver?”

  Bryan shrugs. “I guess it comes with my room at the Four Seasons. My suite, I mean. They seemed to take pity on me when I told them how gruesome my flight was. I only exaggerated a little.”

  “How little?” I ask.

  “Let’s put it this way. I’m in the Imperial Suite now.”

  “The who?”

  “It’s more expensive than the Presidential.”

  A man in a gray cap opens the door to the backseat, driver’s side.

  “Of course it is,” Trina says. “Hello,” she says to the driver. “Can I take your picture?”

  “Third Avenue, was it?” Bryan asks after we all slide in. The SUV pulls away from the curb.

  I realize that riding in the back of a chauffeur-driven SUV is the most glamorous thing I’ve ever done in my life. “This qualifies,” I say.