Oh Yeah, Audrey!

by Tucker Shaw

  I unclasp my still-wet ponytail and hand my clip to Bryan. He pulls Telly’s hair into a low chignon and secures it. “There.” He unwraps the scarf from his neck and hands it to her. “Don’t wrap it, just drape it down the front so it covers your T-shirt.” He holds up his sunglasses. “And put these on.”

  Telly is transformed.

  “Yes,” Bryan says. “You almost look the part. Close enough anyway. You could be an artist or something. It’s a good thing you wore all black.”

  The SUV pulls up to the curb in front of a shiny glass and steel building. “Sotheby’s,” says the driver.

  “Thank you, sir,” Telly says. She hands him a one-dollar bill. “A tip.”

  Bryan ducks behind Telly and slips the driver a twenty, winking at me as he does it.

  A pair of women push through the glass doors, one carrying a shiny leather Birkin bag (I’d recognize it anywhere), the other, an even larger bag of pale brown leather with several pockets, each capped with a gold clasp. They have matching chignons, and one is wearing a nearly blinding diamond cuff on one wrist.

  “I don’t know about this,” Telly says, hiking her backpack up onto her shoulders.

  “The backpack stays in the SUV,” Bryan says, tossing it into the car. “Now, remember, girls. We belong here.”

  Trina whispers into my ear, “Yeah, right.”

  “I heard that,” Bryan says. “Listen. Here’s the magic trick. If you act like you belong here, no one will question you. No one will care what you’re wearing. If you want to be important, act important. Got it? Now march.”

  He leads the way through the glass doors and into Sotheby’s.

  11:25 A.M.

  At the top of the stairs, a man in a black suit hands me a catalog: Audrey’s Closet: An Exclusive Event for Elite Collectors of Iconic Couture. I open to a random page and read aloud. “‘Lot 3. Black duchess cocktail dress, 1958.’ What’s a ‘lot’?”

  “It’s what they call the items for sale. Lots,” Bryan says, his neck craning to take in the room, which is slowly filling with women in extremely expensive-looking shoes.

  “Oh,” I say, slightly ashamed that I didn’t know that. “Lot 3 is valued at fifteen thousand dollars.” I gasp. Fifteen thousand dollars!

  “What else is in there?” Trina asks.

  I read on. “‘Lot 11. Crocodile handbag, 1961, valued at seven thousand dollars.’” I flip a page. “‘Lot 16. Faconne satin evening jacket with lace overlay, 1965, valued at twenty-two thousand dollars.’ Oh, my God.”

  “What’s your point?” Bryan says, still looking around. “I’ve never seen so much Chanel in one room.”

  “Twenty-two thousand dollars is my point,” I say, finding the picture of the jacket in the brochure. I know I shouldn’t be so impressed by the prices, but I can’t help it. I can’t imagine a dress costing twenty-two thousand dollars.

  “That’s like a car,” Telly says.

  “You guys are so cute,” Bryan says. “Put that catalog away. Look around! Let’s go see the real thing. We still have a half hour to look at the lots up close before the bidding starts. And Trina,” he says, grabbing her by the hips, “stand up straight. Try to look like you belong here. If you’re going to pass for rich in those yoga pants, you’re going to have to work a little harder.”

  Trina punches him on the arm, and we walk past the auction room to the display room.

  It’s a wonderland.

  A dozen platforms, each about three feet high and six feet square, dot the room. Atop each one stand four mannequins, each in a different outfit. Most of them wear black—dresses, suits, evening gowns. A few wear white. A pale gray cowl-neck sweater hangs over one. I recognize so many of them. “Look!” I say, grabbing Trina’s arm. “There’s the sweater she wore at the police station!”

  “Yes!” she squeaks. “And over there! It’s the dress she changes into for the party in her apartment!”

  Bryan is just silent. He’s staring intently at the room. I don’t know if he’s overwhelmed or what. “Are you OK?” I ask.

  “Oh, yeah,” he says. “Game face.”

  Women in brightly colored suits and artificially colored hair stroll around the room in groups of two and three, pointing to the clothes and pointing out details to one another. Two men, one in a wheelchair, circle the perimeter, carefully taking notes on an iPad. A young man and woman lean on one of the platforms, talking in Chinese. A guard taps one of them on the shoulder and motions for them to stand up. He points at a discreet sign on one wall: PLEASE DO NOT LEAN ON THE PLATFORMS. Waiters walk among the crowd with trays of glasses filled with champagne and stacks of little triangle-shaped sandwiches.

  “Boudoir sandwiches!” Bryan says. “How chic.”

  “What sandwiches?” Telly asks.

  “Boudoir. The kind of thing you nibble on while you powder your nose. Have one,” Bryan says, waving down a waiter.

  “Cucumber or pâté?” the waiter asks.

  I take in a breath, a deep one. I hold it a moment, eyes closed. I’m anxious and excited and terrified and thrilled, all at the same time. And I have that feeling that something’s going to happen, something big and exhilarating and dangerous, like when you’re on a roller coaster and you’ve ratcheted your way to the top of the first hill. Click, click, click. And then the clicks start to slow down, and you feel the front of the car start to drop. You want to scream, but you hold it in. Then you feel yourself dropping, slowly at first, then faster, and you know that full speed, straight down, is just in front of you, so tantalizingly close . . .

  Up until now, it’s been just us. Our own little crew, talking about the weekend, about one another, about Audrey, like we knew her better than anyone else possibly could. Like she belongs to us, and only us, because no one could love her more.

  But now here we are, surrounded by Audrey Hepburn. By her clothes, by her aura, by her people. There are probably people here who even knew her. And people who would—and could—spend thousands of dollars just to own something she wore, just to be that much closer to her. So much closer to her than I’ll ever be.

  Oh, I wish I could wear every one of these dresses. I never knew I had that dream until now. But it feels like a dream I’ve had every night of my life.

  I should feel like an impostor. But something tells me I belong here. Me, Gemma Beasley.

  I feel my phone vibrate. It’s a text from Dad. Hi, honey. Are you up?

  I don’t text back. He still thinks I’m at Casey’s. And that we haven’t even woken up yet. He has no clue.

  11:40 A.M.

  Bubbles!” exclaims Trina, waving at a waiter. “Over here, dahling!”

  “Do you think we’re allowed?” I whisper. I’ve only had champagne once before, and that was just a sip at midnight that Mom gave me on New Year’s Eve once. I fell asleep about four minutes later. And we’re not old enough to drink.

  “Ever had champagne before noon before?” Trina asks.

  I shake my head.

  “Well, then.”

  “Don’t mind if we do,” Bryan says to the waiter, taking two glasses from the tray and handing one to Trina and one to me. He takes two more. “Where’s Telly?”

  “Right here,” Telly says from behind him.

  He hands her a glass of champagne.

  Trina grabs my elbow. “Oh, my God,” she says, dragging me to a brown-and-white-checked “traveling suit, 1959,” on a nearby platform. “Look at that belt. It sits so high on her waist!”

  “And look!” I say, pointing at one right behind Trina. “There’s the one Bryan was sketching this morning!” I exclaim. A group of women turn to look at me. I’m obviously being too loud. I smile at them. “Sorry,” I say. I raise my glass. “Cheers,” I whisper, and sip my champagne.

  I move closer to the black jersey dress with the feathers at the hem, Lot 14. “You only see it for a few seconds in the movie.” I reach out to run my hand along the waist. “Oh, I love this dress. Look at the drawstring!” I flick th
e tiny bow. The sign says: VALUED AT $4,000.

  “Pardon me, miss,” says a waiter, wagging a finger at me. He points at a sign at the mannequin’s feet: PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH THE GARMENTS, it says.

  “Oops,” I say, snapping my hand back and almost knocking Telly’s champagne out of her hand. “I’m sorry.” I giggle. Am I tipsy? I take another sip.

  “It’s the dress Holly is wearing when Doc comes to her apartment to try and convince her to move back to Texas,” I say to Telly.

  “I totally remember,” Telly says. “She’s late for dinner at the ‘21’ Club, and Paul knocks on her door and calls her Lulamae, and she thinks it’s because her brother Fred is there, but it’s not Fred, it’s Doc, and then—”

  “Look at the skirt, that flippy layer of fringe. The shape is so classic, but that flirty little attachment at the bottom of the skirt—remember how it moves when she jumps up in Doc’s arms?” I swish my hands back and forth at my knees.

  “And the attached rhinestone brooch,” Telly says. “The whole thing is—”

  “Four thousand dollars!” I squeal.

  The women turn and look at me again. I smile at them. “Sorry,” I whisper. I put a hand to my mouth.

  “I don’t know. It’s just so weird, don’t you think?” Trina says. “Dahling?”

  “What’s weird about it?” I say. I sip.

  “I don’t mean the dress is weird,” Trina says. “I mean, the way Holly acts like she’s still in love with Doc or something. The way she acts so excited to see him when he shows up, even though she ran away from him. She left him in Texas, you know? She took off and changed her name! She didn’t ever want to see him again!”

  “Yeah, but,” Bryan says, “Holly still kind of loved Doc. Don’t you see? Even though she left him. She didn’t leave him because she hated him. She left him—left everything—because she wanted to be someone else. She knew she didn’t belong in Tulip, Texas. Think about it. She was always acting like a lost little girl in that movie. Living in that apartment with hardly any furniture. Sitting out on the fire escape and sneaking up to the apartment above to see Paul Varjak. Pretending not to know what Sally Tomato was really up to even though she was going to jail to visit him. All she wanted was for people to like her. Anyone—gangsters, ex-husbands—whoever. She just didn’t want to get too close to anyone. She just wanted, you know, affection.”

  For a second, lost in his words, it almost feels like he’s talking about me. I wanted people to like me, too. I wanted affection. But sometimes it’s easier to get people to like you if you don’t let them get too close. As soon as you open up, they start to find reasons to not like you. Or to feel sorry for you.

  “Is that what they call it, Dr. Freud?” Trina says. “Affection?” She shakes her head and takes another sip of champagne. “I don’t know. Sometimes it seems more like a transaction when she’s getting fifty dollars for the powder room!”

  “That’s not how I see it,” I say. “I mean, what is she supposed to do? She’s in the city by herself, you know? She has to make a living somehow. And once you start getting fifty dollars to go to the powder room, it’s not easy to give it up for a job checking coats at a dollar fifty an hour.”

  “Good point,” Trina says. “If anyone gave me fifty dollars to hit the ladies’ room you can bet I’d ditch my job at the Corral. Pronto.”

  This is dangerously close to a game of speculation about what Holly Golightly did or didn’t do for a living in the movie—or worse, a fight about it. I don’t know how many times I’ve deleted comments from Oh Yeah, Audrey! about how Holly Golightly was really just a prostitute. She might have hung out with rich men and accepted their money and gifts, but she definitely didn’t sleep with them. Definitely. I don’t even like to think about it.

  Bryan seems to sense my annoyance, and he breaks the silence with a subject change: back to fashion. “Do you remember the hat she was wearing in that scene?” He makes a motion over his head, tracing the shape of a tall, flat-topped hat. “It was like something between a fez and a pillbox, very London bobby with the fur appliqué on the front.”

  “Yes, white fur!” Trina says.

  “Like a little snowball of fur!” Telly says, motioning to show where it was on the hat, smack-dab in the middle.

  “And feathers! Little black feathers sticking out! Remember? Feathers!” I say, or maybe I yell it, because a bunch of people turn to look at me again.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, shrugging to no one in particular and turning back to the dress. “Could you imagine wearing such a beautiful dress?” I can’t wait to see it on that massive Ziegfeld screen tonight.

  “You would look great in it, Gemma,” Trina says. “It would be such a good length for you.”

  “Yeah, right, Trina! Like I’d even fit into it,” I say, though even as I say it, my mind is racing, picturing myself in the dress, the four-thousand-dollar dress, spinning in front of a mirror, then out for a fancy dinner somewhere, with Paul, a.k.a. Fred, and maybe to a cocktail party or dancing or just walking the streets of the city, holding hands and staying out all night, not coming home until morning, being someone else, being Holly, being Audrey, in this beautiful dress . . . “Be serious,” I say.

  “A girl can always dream,” Trina says. “Right, Bryan?”

  “Always,” Bryan says. He kisses me on the cheek. “Always.”

  11:55 A.M.

  Ladies and gentlemen, the auction will begin in five minutes in the main auction room. Please take your seats.”

  I follow the others into the auction room, which is filled with cushioned fold-up chairs and people wearing dark suits and holding white paddles with numbers on them. They’re milling around, looking for seats. Some clearly want to be up front; others crowd toward the back.

  I wobble a little as I snake my way to a seat near the back. It’s only just getting on noon and I have had a glass and a half of champagne. Which is about a glass more than I’ve ever had in my life.

  Trina hands me a triangle sandwich and sits down next to me. “Isn’t this lovely?” she asks. “Dahling?”

  “Divine,” I say, scarfing down the sandwich so fast I don’t even know what’s in it.

  “How dainty,” Bryan says, handing me his sandwich, too.

  “Chicken salad?” I ask.

  “Chopped liver,” he says.

  “I hate chopped liver,” I say, swallowing and holding my hand out for another one.

  Trina cracks up. “You’re awesome,” she says.

  “No, I’m starving,” I correct her.

  “Shh!” Bryan says. “It’s starting.”

  12:00 NOON

  The auctioneer stands at the front of the room, behind a lectern on a small platform. A mannequin is wheeled in, wearing what looks like a raincoat. The 150 people or so in the audience lean into one another, whispering. The lots are rolled out, one after another, and displayed.

  “Lot 13. Khaki trench coat, impermeable treated cotton, 1960. One of the few items offered today not created by Monsieur de Givenchy. This simple but impeccable overcoat was designed by Paco Rabanne and worn by Miss Hepburn in several photographs made in the early months of 1961. It is valued at three thousand dollars.”

  The first paddle shoots up almost immediately. “Three,” says a young, well-groomed black man sitting next to an elegant Asian woman with jet-black hair pulled tight into a chignon.

  “Who is that woman?” I say. “She’s beautiful.”

  “That’s Yoko Shimada,” Bryan says. “And her agent, I guess.”

  “Who?” Trina says.

  “She’s a Japanese actress,” he says. “She’s super famous back in Japan. My mother loves her.”

  “Does she live in New York now?” I ask.

  “I doubt it. I bet she came from Tokyo just for this auction. They are obsessed with Audrey Hepburn in Japan. Obsessed.”

  “They can’t be as obsessed as we are,” I say.

  “You have no idea,” Bryan says.

&nbs
p; “Three thousand five,” says a gray-haired woman in a brocade jacket sitting just behind the slick-haired man, as she flashes her paddle. She rolls the r in three, which makes her sound like she’s from far away. Maybe Argentina or someplace exotic.

  The man puts his paddle under his arm and shakes his head.

  “Three thousand five hundred is our current bid. Any others?” No paddles go up.

  “Last chance?”

  No one bids.

  “Done. Next item, please,” the auctioneer says.

  “I’ll be right back,” Telly says, stepping over a couple toward the aisle.

  12:40 P.M.

  After several lots—including a red gown Audrey Hepburn wore in Funny Face and a simple shift from Sabrina, a young woman in a black shirt wheels out another mannequin. It’s the one wearing the dress I’d just been gushing over in the other room. I gasp.

  “Lot 14,” the auctioneer says. “Black jersey day dress with shoulder straps and a drawstring waist. Note the feather-fringe detail at the hemline, ladies and gentlemen. The skirt swings flirtatiously with every step, but the garment remains modest, sophisticated, and structural. A Givenchy classic. Worn by Miss Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s during the day but originally intended as a cocktail-hour gown. It’s been kept in cold storage since the film wrapped in 1960, so the fabric is pristine and undamaged. Valued at four thousand dollars.”

  “Dahling! That’s your dress!” Trina says.

  I can’t answer. I’m mesmerized by how beautiful it is. “Could you imagine?” I said. “If I had that dress I’d frame it.”

  “Are you crazy?” Trina says. “A dress like that is meant to be worn.”

  “Four thousand!” Bryan says confidently, raising his paddle.

  “Bryan!” I whisper. He just smiles, staring intently at the auctioneer.

  “Four five,” says a woman in the front row, nodding her head pleasantly. I crane my neck, but all I can see is her pitch-black hair, cropped short, like a pixie cut.

  “Thank you,” the auctioneer says.