by Tucker Shaw
“What?”
“Are you OK?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, you’ve hardly said a word since you saw your friends outside the Four Seasons,” he says.
“What am I supposed to say?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” he says. “You’ve been surprising me all night with the things you say. But now you seem so far away.”
I have a thought, that if we were talking on the phone right now, I might open up to him, tell him how I really feel, that I made a huge mistake, that I should have stayed with my friends, that I feel like a jerk for letting him and the dress distract me from why I was in New York City in the first place. That I didn’t know what I was doing here in his room. That I didn’t know who I was. That I really, really missed my mother. And wished I could tell her everything right now. Maybe she would understand.
“I’m sorry,” I say, and as soon as I say it, I realize how weak and small I sound.
“Come on, Holly Golightly,” he says, sitting on the edge of the bed and patting it with his hand. “Come sit next to me.”
But instead I walk around to the other side of the bed and hoist myself up onto it. My feet must be three feet off the floor. I undo the straps on my shoes and let them fall to the ground. I lie down, curling my feet underneath myself, and turn away from him, as close to the edge of the bed as I can.
I feel his hand on my shoulder. “Come on, Holly,” he says again. I feel his finger run underneath the edge of my dress, underneath the strap of my bra. I pretend I have an itch on my shoulder and squirm away from him.
“It’s been such a good night, hasn’t it? Don’t ruin it now. Can’t we—”
I can feel his breath on the back of my neck, and it’s warm, too warm, almost hot, and I want to roll right off the bed and fall onto the floor. I feel his hand on my hip. I curl my feet more tightly underneath me. Dusty’s lips are on my neck, kissing me. I feel his body curling around mine, his hands around my waist, drawing up toward my chest.
“Stop,” I say.
“But, Gemma . . .”
“I can’t,” I say.
“What do you mean you can’t?” he says. “You can. We can.”
“Dusty,” I say, and I push his hand away.
“Come on, Holly,” he says. “I thought we had a connection.”
He’s right. We did have a connection. All those hours on the phone, when he seemed like he understood me. All the fantastic places he brought me tonight, when he seemed like he cared. Now everything feels different.
“I bought you the dress. I showed you a good time.” He unbuttons his shirt and puts my hand on his stomach. “Now it’s your turn.”
I pull my hand away. “It is not my turn.”
It feels so good to say that. I slide off the bed and onto my feet.
“What are you doing?” He sits up on the bed. “Where are you going?”
“I’m leaving.”
“You can’t go,” he says, reaching out for my arm. “You said you’d stay with me.”
“I changed my mind,” I say. I jerk my arm away from him and pick up my shoes off the floor. I bend over and start to strap them on, but they’re too hard to fasten when I’m standing up. Forget it. I’ll walk out barefoot.
Dusty falls back onto the bed and sighs. “Can I ask you a question before you go?” he says. “Holly?”
I don’t answer, hoping he won’t keep talking. I move toward the door.
“Why did you say yes?”
“I didn’t say yes,” I say.
“Yes, you did. You said yes when I gave you the dress. You said yes when I asked you out. You said yes when I kissed you. You said yes.”
I reach up to feel my hair in the dark. My ponytail is loose now, not sleek and tight like it was last night, but sloppy. I can feel tendrils of hair on my neck. I try to tighten it, but I just catch it in my rubber band, tearing my hair. I look at him, lying there on the bed, not nearly as beautiful as he was a few hours ago.
“I made a mistake.” I reach the door and step across the threshold and into the hallway, with my shoes hanging from my finger. “And another thing.”
“What?” Dusty asks.
“I’m not Holly.”
Before I can close the door to his bedroom, Dusty jumps up off the bed. He grabs his wallet from his dresser. “Here!” he yells, holding out a fistful of cash. “Here’s your fifty dollars for the powder room. Isn’t that what girls like you expect for your company? Gemma?”
I slam the door and run down the hallway to the front door, the elevator, freedom.
4:20 A.M.
I’m not sure what part of town I’m in. I see a clock through a diner window, and it tells me I’ve been wandering around for an hour, maybe more. It’ll be morning soon, something I’m not sure I’m happy about. It’ll be the second morning in a row that I’m wearing an Audrey Hepburn dress before dawn.
Only this time, it really is an Audrey Hepburn dress, not a fake from a secondhand store. A real dress that she actually wore. But I couldn’t feel more like a fraud.
I shiver in the cool air and my feet are killing me. I stop and balance my clutch on the rim of a garbage can, then crouch down to slip on my heels. But my butt knocks into my clutch, which goes tumbling into the garbage can just as I slip my toe into my shoe.
“Crap,” I say. “What is wrong with you? Can’t you put on your shoes without throwing your bag in the garbage?”
A man walking toward me hears me, I guess, and crosses over to the other side of the street. I realize I’m talking to myself again. I’m alone in the street, at four in the morning, trying to put my shoes on, and I’ve just knocked my purse into a garbage can and I’m talking to myself.
I lean over and reach in to grab my clutch, but I lose my balance and teeter over sideways, nearly falling into the garbage can myself. How perfect, flashes through my mind.
I try to catch myself on the edge of the garbage can, lifting one foot up to regain my balance. I feel my heel catch in the dress just as I try to steady myself.
I sprawl to the sidewalk with a loud rip. It’s not me ripping, it’s the dress, and it’s the loudest noise I’ve heard all night. Louder than the music at Boîte. It’s the sound of a ten-thousand-dollar, one-of-a-kind, vintage Hubert de Givenchy dress, once owned by Audrey Hepburn, the most wonderful person and most glamorous movie star who ever lived, being torn to shreds. It sounds like a jet tearing through the sky. Like a page ripping from a book. Like a car screeching around a corner when it should have stopped at the light instead.
I can’t believe this. I’ve put the heel of my shoe right into the seam where the feather-fringed hem starts. I’ve torn Audrey Hepburn’s dress.
I watch as a couple of strands of feathery fringe waft away, into the deserted street.
4:30 A.M.
I’m still sitting on the sidewalk, watching the feathers float away, so tired, so defeated, when I remember the unanswered texts on my phone from my father.
I want to ignore them. I want him to leave me alone. Just for a weekend, is that too much to ask?
I look at my scuffed shoes, twist a piece of feathered fringe in my fingers. And it hits me: Dad is the only person left who actually cares about me. And what kind of daughter doesn’t call her dad to let him know that she’s OK when he’s already lost the other most important person to him? He’ll probably never forgive me after the stunt I pulled this weekend, and for what?
Trina and Bryan don’t care about me anymore, that’s for sure. And who can blame them? I ditched them on what was supposed to be the greatest weekend of our lives.
Telly doesn’t care about me. Why should she? Telly was the only one who saw Audrey Hepburn as more than just a beautiful, talented movie star. Unlike me or Bryan or Trina, Telly fell in love with Audrey Hepburn for the right reasons. For her compassion. For her charity. For the person she was inside, not because of what she looked like. For being there. Telly saw things more clearly than I ever d
id.
Tonight it’s all about you, she’d said. It’s all about Gemma.
And I’ve blown her off, too.
I’ve pushed everyone away—even myself—by pretending to be Audrey Hepburn or Holly Golightly or I don’t even know who, wearing someone else’s dress in someone else’s city, living someone else’s life. And now I’m here, on the cold sidewalk, with mascara streaks on my face and a torn dress. Too ashamed to call my dad, too ashamed to call my friends.
And it’s my fault.
Telly was right. It is all about me.
When are you going to figure out who you really are, Gemma?
4:35 A.M.
I’m on Park Avenue, I think. At least it looks like Park Avenue, this canyon of big shiny buildings, just like where Holly told Paul how much she loved New York, even though she was leaving to marry José the Brazilian.
The sidewalk is mostly deserted, just some taxis heading toward Grand Central Station, taking early-morning people and late-night people to the trains, which in turn will take them where they need to be. Work, maybe, or home.
Home.
It’s gray and wet this morning — not raining, just . . . wet.
My phone vibrates through my clutch. It’s a text from Dusty.
I need the dress back. It doesn’t belong to you.
I don’t answer. I wouldn’t really know what to say to him anyway. The dress is ruined.
I’ve never felt so alone. I want to go back to the Four Seasons, find my friends and crawl into bed, and just pretend it’s yesterday again.
Maybe I’ll just keep walking, past Grand Central and through midtown to Penn Station, and get a train back to Philadelphia. I don’t need all my stuff at the hotel. I can do without it. I think there’s a train to Philadelphia every hour. I can be back to the apartment by nine o’clock. I could buy a hoodie at the station for the ride home, one of those cheap NYPD ones they sell to tourists. No one would think anything about a scraggly girl in a torn dress and a tourist hoodie on the morning train to Philadelphia. They’d just think . . . I don’t know. They’d just think I was the kind of girl who takes the train alone in a torn dress and a disheveled ponytail, after a night out partying with men who give her fifty dollars for the powder room.
Maybe I am that kind of girl. This isn’t Audrey Hepburn’s life. This is mine.
4:45 A.M.
I wander up and down Seventy-first Street, trying to find Holly Golightly’s building. But in the darkness I can’t tell which one it is.
There’s scaffolding over some of them, and I can’t see the striped awning and red stairs that Holly’s apartment had. I cross the street and go one block farther. I still can’t see it. I double back. All the buildings look the same, bricks and stair railings and ivy-covered walls. I’m not even sure if I’m heading east or west.
I feel a little dizzy. My feet hurt. I’m hurt.
I sit down on a stoop, just to give my feet a rest.
I slip off my slingbacks and am rubbing my heels when I look up the stoop. There are the striped awnings. This is the building. If I squint my eyes just right, I can see Holly Golightly sweeping up the stairway, past the step I’m sitting on now, and slipping through the door into the foyer. Paul Varjak is chasing her, a man who loves her, but Holly’s intent on leaving him behind.
I can see her up in the apartment, inviting people in, one after the other, each in fabulous dresses and chic suits, filling the apartment with people, music, and fun. I see drinks flowing freely, people stealing off into the bathroom to kiss. I hear laughing and singing. I see Holly floating from guest to guest, surrounded by people she loves.
Only, when I look closer, when I see the way she closes her eyes when she talks to them, I can see something more: She doesn’t love them. She’s too afraid to love them. She’s even too afraid to love her cat.
Because she knows that someday, everyone she loves will go away.
In my mind, I see my mother’s face. So clear, like I just saw her yesterday. Like I was sitting on her lap again, and she was asking me whether I had any ideas for her to write about, and I was telling her about what was happening in my imagination. About a girl who learns how to fly, not with a jet pack or a hang glider, but with wings she sprouts from her shoulders, and how she flies to New York City. In search of something better, a place where no one dies, especially not mothers, and where everyone is as beautiful as they want to be, and everyone knows who they are. And the girl decides to fold up her wings for the last time, because she doesn’t want to fly anymore, because there’s nowhere else she wants to go but home.
“I sure have a story for you now, Mom,” I say out loud. “I ran away.”
And in my mind I hear her answer me.
Oh, Gem. Don’t you know? No matter where you run, you just end up running into yourself.
5:15 A.M.
My phone buzzes and brings me back to reality. I’m still alone here, on a stoop on Seventy-first Street. A moment ago I thought it was Holly’s stoop. But now, as the sky begins to lighten, I see the truth. It’s just an apartment building, one they used to film some scenes in a movie fifty years ago. It’s not Holly Golightly’s building anymore. Maybe it never really was.
There are five texts from my father, texts I now remember ignoring last night. Last night, when I didn’t want to talk to him. When I didn’t want him to know where I was, or who I was. When I didn’t want him to need me.
I decide to read them.
7:34 P.M.—What time will you be home, Gem? I’m ordering pizza.
10:44 P.M.—Gemma?
12:22 A.M.—Gem, I’m worried. I called Casey’s and she said you aren’t there. You said you’d call. Send a text if you don’t want to talk to me. Just let me know you’re OK. Please, Gemma.
2:22 A.M.—I miss your mother so much. I know you do, too. Come home.
I don’t text back. I don’t know what I would say to him right now. I don’t know what I would say to anyone right now.
I miss your mother so much. I know you do, too.
I can hear his voice when I read it.
5:20 A.M.
I stand up, smooth out my torn skirt, and fish around in my clutch for a piece of gum. Instead, I find the itinerary.
Itinerary for the First (Annual?)
Beyond-Fabulous Breakfast at Tiffany’s Weekend!
Saturday and Sunday, June 11–12
SATURDAY
6:00 A.M. Meet at Tiffany’s with pastries and coffee.
7:00 A.M. Breakfast at a Third Avenue diner.
9:00 A.M. Return to individual hotels to change.
10:00 A.M. Begin walking tour of Breakfast at Tiffany’s landmarks, starting at Holly’s apartment building on Seventy-first Street . . .
I stare at it for a moment. It seems a lifetime ago that I handed copies of it to Bryan and Trina.
I read the last item aloud.
SUNDAY
6:00 A.M. Reconvene at Tiffany’s for another breakfast. Decide whether to stay in New York forever, and if not, why not?
Why not?
I stare at it and read it again. More evidence that I’ve ruined this weekend. Not just for myself, but for Bryan and Trina and even Telly, who I didn’t ever expect to care about, but now, here, in the cold morning on the hard sidewalk, I know that I do. I’ve even ruined it for Audrey. Which sounds stupid, I know, because she’s been dead for twenty years. But she’s my hero. The focus of my life ever since I first saw her picture in that magazine. And I’ve torn her dress.
I know what to do.
I’m going to Tiffany’s.
5:30 A.M.
Just like yesterday morning, there’s a tiny hint of pinkish light oozing between the New York City buildings. It’s soft and quiet and beautiful as it drips down from the tower tops.
I start walking toward Tiffany’s. It’s not that far away, but my feet are killing me.
I catch a glimpse of myself in the glass door of a bank as I walk past. No trace of Holly Golightly or A
udrey Hepburn. Just me. I’m disheveled. My hair is all over the place, my eyeliner is smudged, and, of course, there’s the torn dress, which is falling apart a little bit more with each step, the fringe feathers falling away on currents of air behind me as I walk, heavily, along the sidewalk.
Up ahead, I see a set of police barricades blocking off a side street. Behind it, men and women are putting up little white tents with tables beneath them. A street fair. One man, tall and slender, is spreading sweatpants and T-shirts on his table. I stop and watch him for a moment.
“Hello,” he says.
“How much?” I ask. “For the sweats.”
“Ten dollars,” he says.
“And the T-shirts?”
“Five dollars. But we don’t open until eight.”
“Oh,” I say, and I turn around to walk away.
“You want them now?” he says. He looks around. “I’m not supposed to, but . . .”
I reach into my clutch and unfold a twenty from the tightly wrapped bunch of bills. “Here,” I say. “Black, please.”
He puts a pair of black sweats and a black V-neck T-shirt into a plastic bag that says “I Heart New York”—it actually spells out the word heart.
“Shh,” he says, and he takes my twenty. I stand there waiting for change, but he turns away and goes back to work. I’m obviously not getting any change.
I walk around the corner and find a doorway. I hike up the dress and slip the sweatpants on over my shoes. I look around to see if anyone’s looking before I unzip the dress and, in one quick motion, slip the dress off and the T-shirt on. I stash the dress in the “I Heart” bag and walk on, strappy black shoes clicking along the sidewalk under my baggy black sweats.
5:40 A.M.
I’m walking, faster now, still a few blocks from Tiffany’s. My phone buzzes again. It’s another text from Dusty.
