Anyway, I met Trina, if you can call it "meeting" her, when she first made a comment on Oh Yeah, Audrey! It surprised me because, like I said, I didn't think anyone ever looked at it. Underneath a photo of Audrey in pretty much the same strappy black dress I'm wearing now, she wrote: Thank you, dahling, for not calling the above picture a little black dress like everyone always does. That dress is hardly little. Audrey doesn't wear a little black dress until she goes to Sing Sing to visit Sally Tomato!
I responded: Who are you and why are you living in my head?
Obviously, Trina doesn't actually live in my head. Trina Belen lives in Denver, Colorado, which is a place I don't know anything about, but who cares? She doesn't know anything about Philadelphia, either, and we talk mostly about Audrey Hepburn anyway, which is totally fine by me because it's pretty much all I ever want to talk about these days. We've seen all of her movies, or at least clips. They're all over YouTube. Talking to Trina about Audrey Hepburn is like talking to myself, only not exactly. She knows all the same things I do, but she doesn't always see them the same way. Like, Holly Golightly insists on calling Paul Varjak, her handsome upstairs neighbor, Fred. Holly tells Paul she wants to call him Fred because he reminds her of her brother in the army, whose name really is Fred. Trina just doesn't understand why Holly would do that. But to me it makes perfect sense.
"She misses him," I told her.
"Whatever. I miss my brother in Afghanistan. But I don't call other people Timmy just because Timmy's not around."
Just last month she told me he's been gone for three years. "I barely even know him anymore," she said. "Of course, he's all my parents can talk about. Tim this and Tim that. They don't even call him Timmy anymore, the way they used to. But the way they talk about him, like he's some kind of god or something, it's like they're talking about someone else."
"He's still your brother, Trina."
"Whatever. It's like nothing I do will ever be as great as what he's doing. I work all the time, too, busting my butt at the restaurant. Does anyone notice that? No."
"That sucks," I said.
"Well, I can't expect them to notice. It's not like they aren't working sixty-hour weeks waiting tables, too. It's a family curse, I guess."
"All of you?"
"Yep. Me, my sister, and my parents. Not at the same restaurant, though. Or I should say restaurants. Mom and Dad each have two jobs. No one will give them a full-time schedule so they pick up shifts from two different places. Each."
"Wow," I said.
"It sucks," she said. Then, after a pause, "I bet I won't even recognize him when he comes home. If he comes home."
"Who?"
"My brother," she said.
"Trina, don't say that."
"Whatever. I'll be out of here soon." She paused a moment. "And until then, I'm not going to go around calling my friends by my brother's name," she said. "I think it's just weird. Dahling."
I laughed. Trina cracks me up. She's half-dainty, all dahling this and dahling that, and half-tough. She doesn't hold back her opinion. Like two opposite people in one. But I like them both and, besides, who isn't at least two opposite people in one? Sometimes I feel like four or five people during the course of a day.
I gave her the password so she could start posting pictures of Audrey Hepburn, too.
"So tell me about your parents," she asked. "All you ever do is listen to me complain about mine!"
Sometimes I wanted to tell her. I really wanted to open my mouth, or start typing away on the keyboard, and let everything I felt about my dead mom and depressed dad come flowing out of me. Like if I just spilled it all, everything would be better and I'd feel lighter. But I never knew exactly what to say or how to start. What's the first word to use when you tell someone that your mother died? So I'd usually just turn the conversation back to her and get her started on another funny story. It was just easier that way.
A pool of cool air bursts up the sidewalk, and I hunch my shoulders. A glint of light reflects off the windows of the Louis Vuitton store across the street, sending beams of white-pink light onto the sidewalk, where they dance around my slippers.
I grasp my coffee tighter, looking for warmth, but I can feel it getting cold in my hand. I don't pop the lid and take a sip. Not yet.
5:40 A.M.
Bryan found the Tumblr page at around the same time as Trina. He posted a picture of Audrey lying by a pool, a really glamorous pool with palm trees just behind it. Here she is in 1954, in the pool at the house right across the street from me, when Lauren Bacall lived there.
Bryan Akito from Bel-Air, in Los Angeles, California. He doesn't ever brag about how rich he is, but he doesn't ignore it, either. "I live in a mansion. My neighbors are Will Smith and Chelsea Handler. I got a Mercedes for my seventeenth birthday. I took horseback-riding lessons on our ranch in Santa Barbara. What can I say?"
His parents are television producers. They made millions off some science fiction series in the 1990s. I forget which one, something about a high-tech colony marooned on a space station that had to fight off a different kind of alien in each episode. Not really my kind of show.
"Mine, either," Bryan said once. "The only way I'd watch a sci-fi movie is if it had Barbara Stanwyck in it."
I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe anyone else had ever even heard of Barbara Stanwyck. But Bryan knows everything about old movies. Everything. He knows the difference between Betty Grable and Betty Bacall, between Gary Cooper and Cary Grant. He can recite All About Eve the whole way through, line for line, and he can tell you what color dress Rita Hayworth was wearing in the nightclub scene in Gilda even though it's a black-and-white movie. He can describe exactly every set in Auntie Mame, down to the cocktail cart. He can recite Elizabeth Taylor's full name, accounting for all eight of her marriages: Elizabeth Taylor Hilton Wilding Todd Fisher Burton Burton Warner Fortensky. He can sketch every outfit Grace Kelly wore in To Catch a Thief and her hairstyles, too. He can strike every pose Joan Crawford did in Mildred Pierce. He knows which of Bette Davis's gowns were designed by Edith Head and which were designed by Adrian, although Bryan says Edith Head's designs were better almost every time. He even knows Marilyn Monroe's measurements by heart. "I use them as my PIN number."
But Audrey Hepburn is his favorite. Of course.
"Audrey Hepburn is the greatest movie star of all time," he said to me once. "The ultimate. Exquisite. Perfection. She wasn't the greatest actor or the most successful or the greatest beauty. But she was perfect. There was never any movie star like her before her, and there will never be anyone like her again. Ever. Period."
I love the way Bryan talks in absolutes. He never says things like "in my opinion" or "I think"; he just says, "Audrey Hepburn is the greatest movie star of all time." Like it's a fact.
Sometimes I wonder whether Bryan has any friends in Bel-Air. He never talks about his social life. Well, that's not totally true. There's that one time, a couple months ago, that he told me he had to get some stitches removed from his forehead.
I asked, "Stitches? From what?"
"You know how it is, Gemma," he told me.
"What happened?"
"Nothing, really, just some guys from school," he said.
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"Look, remember last week when I mentioned I'd gotten these great new Thom Browne pants, midcalf, and the bright orange Cole Haan oxfords?"
"Yeah! You sent me a pic. So cute."
"And remember how I told you they were really women's oxfords because they didn't make men's oxfords in that exact color?"
"So what?" I said. It's not like the shoes are any different. "I buy guys' shoes all the time, you know."
"Those oxfords didn't survive the day, Gemma. And neither did my forehead." He paused a moment before going on. "There's this jerk who's constantly harassing me at school. He's a complete meathead. You know the type. Can't really form a sentence but still seems to have tons of friends around all the time? Anyway, he came up to me in the stairwell and asked me where I got my quote-unquote fabulous shoes. He pointed them out to the five other guys who were standing there, too. 'Aren't they fabulous?' he said. I didn't answer, of course, because he's not the kind of person to use the word fabulous unless he's up to something. Anyway, he pretended to bend over for a closer look and quote-unquote accidentally spilled his Powerade all over them."
"Bryan."
"So of course, being an idiot, I bent down to wipe it off. Well, let's just say you shouldn't bend down to wipe off stains at the top of a staircase in front of six guys you know hate you."
"I'm so sorry," I said. "I wish I'd been there. I'd have pushed them all down the stairs and watched them pile up into a heap at the bottom."
"That would have been awesome," he said. "Except they would have landed on me."
We both cracked up. When we were done, we were silent for a moment. Then Bryan spoke.
"I just can't wait to get out of here," he said.
"I know the feeling," I said.
"What do you mean?" he asked.
"I just-" And then I didn't know what to say. It was like my breath caught in my throat and I felt this wave come over me, like maybe I'd cry.
"Gemma?"
"Nothing," I said.
"I don't believe you," he said. "Something's wrong."
"I'm OK," I said.
"Of course you are. That doesn't mean nothing's wrong. I can tell. This will sound really weird, but it's like I can see you. I know I'm in California and you're in Philadelphia, but I can see you."
"That's crazy," I said.
"I know. But, Gemma, if you ever want to talk… "
"About what?" I said.
"About anything. You know that, right?"
I did. I knew it. But I couldn't get the words I know out without my voice cracking. "Thanks" was all I said, and then I changed the subject to the Oscars, which were coming up in a couple of weeks.
I see a young guy in a suit walking up Fifth Avenue toward me. Is it him? He strides closer, talking on his phone, before stepping off the curb and crossing the street. I can see his trousers are too long, bunching at the hems.
It's not Bryan. He'd never wear his pants that way.
5:45 A.M.
If I "know" Trina and Bryan, I guess that means I know Telly, too. Not that I really want to. Not after all the horrible comments she's made on Oh Yeah, Audrey! If she even is a she. You never really know on the Internet. For all I know, "Telly" is a lumberjack from the Northwest Territories.
The person who calls himself/herself Telly found Oh Yeah, Audrey! a few months ago. The first comment she posted was underneath a beautiful picture of Audrey Hepburn lying on the floor in a black turtleneck and black cigarette pants, propped up on her elbows with her long legs stretched out behind her. Big deal. I could starve myself and look like that, too, he/she wrote.
After that, she never stopped posting. She was always complaining about how skinny Audrey was. Starvation chic, she'd write, or Emaciated, or I bet she was on drugs, or Somebody give her a sandwich.
Once, she even posted a link to her own Facebook page, where she'd put up a screenshot of Audrey Hepburn as Holly Golightly in the belted trench coat she wore in the final scene of Breakfast at Tiffany's when she goes looking for the cat named Cat in a back alley during a rainstorm. Only, on Telly's Facebook page, the picture had been blown up in Photoshop to make Audrey look really, really fat. Like, really fat.
That's more like it was the accompanying comment. (For the record, it only had two "likes," and I have a feeling they were both from Telly herself.)
Her comments made Bryan really mad, because for one thing, Audrey was beautiful (or to be more precise, "the most beautiful creature who ever lived and anyone who doesn't agree just doesn't know what they're talking about"), and for another thing, Audrey didn't choose to be so skinny. She just was skinny. In fact, Bryan said that he'd read in a biography about her that when she was a child during World War II, she had to hide from the Nazis in a basement in Holland. For a month. A month! Kind of like in The Diary of Anne Frank, only Audrey was in a basement instead of an attic. Bryan said that some producers in Hollywood tried to get her to play Anne Frank in the movie but Audrey said no way. It was too close to home for her and, besides, she was in her twenties when they asked and shouldn't a teenager play the part? Anyway, Bryan said that her metabolism was never really the same after that experience, and she always had a hard time eating and putting on weight.
And don't even ask what Trina thinks about Telly. I'll paraphrase: "Does she have a neck? If so, I look forward to wringing it."
Personally, I find Telly totally annoying, but there's a part of me that also wonders what kind of person would be so committed to bringing someone like Audrey Hepburn down. Either she's just plain evil or she's totally insecure and hates herself. Maybe both. I feel sorry for whoever this Telly is. Maybe she's trying to put down Audrey because her life sucks, too. Like Trina's. Like Bryan's. Like mine.
Telly knows about the Breakfast at Tiffany's meeting. Anyone who follows Oh Yeah, Audrey! knows about it. Everyone's invited. But only Bryan and Trina have said they will show up.
I can't wait for midnight.
They say the Ziegfeld Theater has one of the biggest movie screens anywhere, and soon I will see Audrey Hepburn sashay across it. So far, even though I've watched Breakfast at Tiffany's around one million times, I've only ever seen it on a small television screen and on the laptop Dad got us after… you know.
I straighten my pearls (fake, obvs). I tell myself that even if six o'clock comes and goes and I'm still alone on the sidewalk, my breakfast at Tiffany's will still be perfect. Holly had her breakfast alone. So can I.
Maybe it'd be better that way anyway.
5:50 A.M.
The misty air has left a sparkly sheen on the pavement, and the street glistens as the sky gets brighter. Still no one else here. Not Bryan, not Trina, not Telly. Not even Dusty.
Have I mentioned Dusty? Dusty-haired Dusty with the slate-gray eyes? I wonder if he's coming. Yesterday I hoped so. Today I hope not.
I don't know.
A town car lumbers by, followed by a school bus, crawling slowly downtown.
A school bus? In New York City? I wonder what school it belongs to. I wonder if it's Dusty's school. His fancy private school on the Upper East Side. I wonder what it's like there, with all those rich kids in expensive clothes. I wonder if it's like Gossip Girl. I wonder how many beautiful girls are there, how many of them Dusty likes. How many of them Dusty has dated. Is dating.
I wonder what he really means when he says stuff like "You seem really cool," or "Do you have a boyfriend?"
I know what you're thinking. You think I have a crush on Dusty. But I don't. How could I have a crush on someone I've never met in person?
Dusty follows the Oh Yeah, Audrey! page also, but not for the same reasons the rest of us do. He's not obsessed with Audrey Hepburn or anything like that.
He first posted a note on the page a few weeks ago, asking for help on a school report he was working on. Something about Hubert de Givenchy, the one who designed all of Holly Golightly's dresses. "It's my punishment for skipping film class," he wrote. "Three days in a row." He said that he needed help figuring out which dresses to include in his report. "Can you help me pick? I don't know anything about this stuff."
I heard my dad's voice. How is this little obsession of yours ever going to help anyone?
"I'm going to help him," I told Trina later on the phone. "Why not? It's like being a Good Samaritan."
"Save the world, Gemma," Trina said.
I sent Dusty a dozen pictures of Audrey Hepburn for his report. He said thanks. I said you're welcome. He asked me questions about her, like where she was from and how old she was and stuff, and I answered. Born in Belgium, but lived in England, Amsterdam, Los Angeles, and Switzerland. She would be eighty-four now, but she died in 1993, when she was sixty-three. Cancer. She was twenty-four when she won an Oscar for Roman Holiday. Thirty-one when she made Breakfast at Tiffany's. She was on everyone's Best Dressed list. She always wore clothes by the designer Hubert de Givenchy, even when the movie she was working on had a different costume person.
"Didn't that piss off the costume person?" Dusty asked.
"Probably," I answered. "But it was part of her contract."
"Thanks," he said. "I really appreciate this."
It felt good to be helpful. Even in a non-saving-the-world way.
"You're welcome," I wrote.
Later that night, Bryan e-mailed me and Trina. "Anyone else look him up on Facebook? He's beyond cute. There's a picture of him on a yacht. No shirt. Great smile. Cute sneakers. Pecs. That little vein running down his biceps. Yum."
"A yacht?" Trina wrote back. "Is he rich?"
"I'm sure," I wrote.
"What!?" Trina wrote. "A girl needs to know these things! I mean, is he the kind of guy who gives a girl fifty dollars for the powder room?" That was from Breakfast at Tiffany's.
"We know what Holly Golightly is really doing in that powder room for fifty dollars!" Bryan joked.
"As if!" I scolded him. "Holly gets fifty dollars for being her fabulous self. And that's the end of it!" I exclaimed.
"Gemma Beasley, I love Holly just as much as you do, but it takes more than being fabulous for men to throw money at you. You need a reality check."
But that was the thing. Who wants a reality check when you can be having breakfast at Tiffany's?
"Anyway," Bryan continued, "Dusty's dad is Jimmy Sant'Angelo, the music producer. You know, the guy who produces all those rap stars. Do you know how rich that guy is? Crazy rich."
"Out of my league," Trina wrote. "Whatever. He's probably a jerk. All those rich bros are. Quel rat." Another line borrowed from Breakfast.
I'll admit that I thought Dusty looked cute, and those biceps were-well, I noticed them. And he was obviously incredibly rich. But those weren't the reasons I decided to help him. There's something about someone asking for help with something that you know about that makes you just want to help. You know what I mean? I'd asked people questions on the Internet before and been totally ignored, and it sucked. I didn't want to be that person. Besides, it was no big deal. It's not like I didn't have hundreds of pictures of Audrey Hepburn to share.
Dusty asked if he could call me to ask me more questions. "I really need to ace this paper. I need to graduate on time. Can I have your number?"
I told him no, but that I would call him. I blocked my number before I did it. I may be helpful, but I'm not stupid. I've seen those shows about what happens to people who share their numbers with strangers. You never really know who's out there on the Internet. Ax murderers, for example.
"Hello?" Dusty's voice was sleepy when he answered, like he'd just woken up.
"Is this a bad time?" I asked.
"No," he said, and I think I heard him yawn. "It's perfect."
We talked for an hour about Audrey Hepburn. Or more like, I talked and he listened. I could hear him typing in the background. I told him just about everything I know about her movies and her fashion and everything else. I explained what cigarette pants are and why they're called that, and what the difference is between an A-line skirt and a pencil skirt, and what slingbacks are, and mules, and kitten heels. I explained why you call it a tiara and not a crown, why long dresses have slits, and why women love to dress in black.
"How do you know all this stuff?" he asked.
"I just know it, I guess," I said.
"No, seriously, you're really smart."
"I'm not that smart," I said.
"Yeah. You are," he said.
I didn't answer. I just sat there with my phone to my ear, blushing.
That's right. I was alone, at home, on the couch with my laptop and phone, talking with someone I didn't know, and I blushed.
"Hello?" he said.
"Sorry."
"I thought you'd gone."
"Nope," I said.
"So people really think Audrey Hepburn was beautiful, huh?"
"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?"
