Текст книги "Being Audrey Hepburn"

Автор книги: Mitchell Kriegman

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Текущая страница: 19 (всего у книги 24 страниц)

51

It was a clear blue Thursday morning, and I felt as if I were traveling to another world. I boarded the Hamptons Jitney at Fortieth Street with the summer hoards—urban surfer dudes, preppy boys wearing pink and green, giggling well-groomed tweens carrying Vera Bradley travel bags, and an eighties music fanatic playing “Small Town Girl” so loudly that I could hear every word through his earbuds.

But nothing could disturb the tranquility and excitement of escaping the city to visit the unexplored Eden of the Hamptons. Unexplored by me, anyway.

The Jitney was just a bus, honestly, but it felt like transportation for the privileged classes with attendants serving your needs and offering a choice of muffins or granola bars as well as orange juice, water, and Wi-Fi, the lifeblood of any blogger.

As we reached exit 70, the landscape and air changed. We passed through the towns of Southampton, Water Mill, Bridgehampton, Sagaponack, Wainscott, and East Hampton. Gazing out the Jitney windows, each town seemed more beachy than the one before. Hydrangeas were everywhere. The big blue flowers made me think of little old ladies and churches.

“On way 2 Hamptons. Darling will you be there this weekend ? :)” I texted Isak. I hadn’t seen him for a while, and I needed to lock him into Jess’s show. I waited for his reply.

“Hello DFC :) I’m off 2 Italie back in NY 4 FW,” he replied. Not until Fashion Week? That was unfortunate. But since we didn’t know yet exactly when Jess’s show would be, there wasn’t much I could do.

“Hope you’ll b back in time for Designer X ;)” I teased back.

“When ?! When ?! :)”

“Last minute ;) Will let you know.”

The Jitney pulled into Amagansett. As I stepped off the bus, the difference between the scented air-freshened Jitney and the beach air was so revitalizing it practically made me giddy.

As the taxi pulled up to the enormous mansion by the dunes, the balmy ocean atmosphere embraced me: clean, salty, with hints of lilac and privet. The clouds in the sterling-blue sky above were full but not threatening.

A stocky woman in a classic black-and-white maid’s uniform opened the door holding a barking, squirming Pomeranian—Galileo.

“We are so happy seeing you,” she said loudly in a thick Russian accent over Galileo’s yapping. “Miss Eden has been anxiously waiting. My name is Zoya. I welcome you.” She seemed very excited, but when she glanced down and saw my lonely roller and garment bag, she stopped, alarmed.

“Did they lose bags? You want I call them?” she asked. She seemed upset that I had so few.

“No, no, it’s fine,” I said, smiling. “These are my bags.”

“Really? But what will you wear?” she asked as we walked inside. I laughed. “Ah, maybe you go shopping spree?”

Galileo sniffed and remembered me as I walked into a lively, boisterous houseful of people. Even though Tabitha wasn’t there, she had plenty of houseguests. Balty was back, and I had to admit I enjoyed talking to him though he still ogled me. This time it was his sister, Flo, who kept him in line.

“Tabitha told me you’d be here this weekend,” Flo said, excitedly. She was wearing a lovely black one-piece swimsuit and huge red floppy straw hat that almost enveloped her entire body in shadow. I could see she had the kind of skin that would sunburn badly.

“I think you’ll be very pleased with what I’ve cooked up for you,” she said. “We can talk now if you have a moment.” There was a devious sparkle in her eye. I couldn’t wait to hear. Until that moment I hadn’t realized how much I was counting on her.

Balty soon drifted away, utterly bored, as his sister and I sat by the pool droning on and on about click-throughs, e-book links, RSS aggregators, AdSense, AdWords, lions and tigers and bears, oh my. Bottom line: it would take time, but if we worked together click by click, entry by entry, we could develop an income stream and potentially a worthwhile and profitable “brand” from my little blog. Flo Birkenhead’s excitement was utterly infectious.

“This is what I love to do!” she exclaimed, her eyes glowing with excitement beneath her voluminous hat that spread like a flaming mushroom top over her. I could tell it was true. The idea of initially earning three or four thousand dollars a month, which Flo dismissed as negligible, was huge for me. It was at least double what I would have made working at the Hole if I had worked forty hours a week.

We talked for hours while dozens of houseguests milled about the house. They were swimming in the pool, sleeping sunburned on the sectional in the living room, watching the US Open on the flat-screen, and driving quads across the lawn, ripping up the manicured grounds for the gardeners to repair. Tabitha had all the toys—a ten-seat theater, skateboard half-pipe, sunken tennis court, and a complete spa facility. I’d heard there was even a two-lane bowling alley somewhere.

Soon my head was swimming and I needed a rest. Zoya showed me to the guest cottage, which would have been a complete house for some people. After she insisted on hanging up my clothes in the massive walk-in closet, I flopped down on the bed and crashed.

*   *   *

“Are you going to sleep all night?” Tabitha asked and shook my arm as if I were dead.

“Night?” I said groggily, trying to sit up. “Really? I thought it was afternoon.”

“It was about four hours ago,” she said and took a sip of some chilled mixed alcohol concoction she was holding. “Now it’s night. That’s the way it always happens. First the afternoon and then the night,” she said. “Now it’s time to play.” She handed me a drink, something with tequila in it.

52

I’m sure there’s a difference between an “event,” “a benefit,” and a flat-out party but I wouldn’t be able to tell you what it is. We drove up to an enormous Bridgehampton beachfront house made of wood and glass, parked Tabitha’s limo with the valet, and stumbled in with our entourage. Everyone in our group was already hammered.

The entire ocean side of the house was made from oversize mahogany-framed glass sliding walls, which were fully opened to the outdoors. We witnessed the last orange and purple rays of sunshine setting over the nearby bay. A glass bridge crossed the infinity-edged pool reflecting the sunset. Tabitha seemed to know everyone, and it didn’t take long for her to be scary drunk. Every direction you turned, there was sushi or a grill or a bar and always lots of people.

The strange thing was that I couldn’t tell who was giving the party and whether just anyone could come. There was no hostess or activity that seemed to be the focus, and I suspected Tabitha didn’t really know these people as much as they knew her in that celebrity way.

I found myself waving, air kissing, and making empty-headed conversation with a long procession of people I didn’t know and who had no idea who I was or wasn’t, which didn’t seem to bother anyone but was exhausting. I wondered, was this how the other half parties? Eating fabulous food at enormous mansions with people they don’t know?

Tabitha couldn’t even tell me whose party it was. I developed my own pet theory that the owner was a plastic surgeon, because this particular group seemed to be filled with so many women who had enhanced surgical recontouring. Even the young women had bodies that were anatomically impossible. I felt positively flat, not for the first time, but this was extreme. At least I wouldn’t have to contend with random injectables in my body for the rest of my life.

I commented to Tabitha about the over-the-top bodies, and she laughed. She proposed a drinking game where we’d each have to throw back a shot every time we saw a woman with a breast augmentation and two for a Brazilian butt lift. But that was a bad idea because there were too many. She told me about a package deal one cosmetic surgeon she knew in the city offered with unlimited plastic surgical procedures (“within reason,” his offer stated), including a Hamptons luxury home rental and a full-time nurse for your recovery, as well as a chauffeur, invites to VIP and celebrity parties (more parties, I assumed, with people you didn’t know), and a budget for a new wardrobe (because your new body would need new, slimmer clothes, I assumed). I just hoped that whoever bought the package didn’t worry about looking puffy.

We left Bridgehampton for another party in Amagansett not far from Tabitha’s. It was a birthday bash for a sixteen-year-old girl who was the daughter of a friend of hers. But you’d never know it was a party for kids.

The adults easily outnumbered the kids and the teenagers were scary. They ran around with a total sense of entitlement and confidence that I assumed only Daddy’s trust fund could provide. Watching them intimidated me. The girls, many of them a mere thirteen or fourteen years old, wore tons of makeup, the tightest skin-tight Lycra tube dresses, and high heels just to look older.

It didn’t take Tabitha long to nab a teenage boy, Maxwell, and that was the beginning of our problems.

As the evening grew later and later, Tabitha decided to take him along. I wondered whether his mother would be panicked, searching for him. Walking the parking lot, we glided through car porn—Lambos, Masers, Ferraris, Bentleys, Aston Martins—until we reached Tabitha’s stretch.

“Where to now?” Maxwell asked, almost giddy arm in arm with Tabitha. You could tell he figured he had lucked out. Drunk pop star, stretch limo, and adults who didn’t care about the drinking age or corrupting a minor. How old was he really? Like fifteen?

“Let’s stop by the Talkhouse,” Tabitha slurred. “It should be picking up about now.”

Mocha pulled up in front of a bar and live music joint in Amagansett, Stephen Talkhouse, which resembled somebody’s rundown summer cottage. Even though it was almost two in the morning, people were pouring in and out of the club and it seemed like another hot new band was about to go on.

53

Tabitha took the door of the Talkhouse by storm—the big Asian bouncer seemed familiar with her and waved us in. There were too many of us, so they stamped our hands without even counting to get us out of the way. The bartender knew Tabitha and her taste for tequila, so he set up a margarita for her and lined up drinks for us immediately.

A great variety of people were pouring into the club for the next show—some arrived in limos, some on foot. One couple, looking like they just came from a wedding reception, were toasting others in their wedding party, which included the best man and three bridesmaids in identical hideous purple dresses. Others wore sandals and cutoff jeans. It was a totally eclectic mix.

I was surprised to find Chase drinking at the bar across the room. I hadn’t seen him since the paparazzi disaster at D&G and his last-minute rescue. He waved, I smiled, and he sauntered over.

Before he reached me, everything fell apart.

Tabitha was already on her second margarita when the Big Asian guy from the door walked over. Someone at the bar must have alerted him, because he headed straight for Maxwell, our noticeably underage stowaway. Maxwell was taking a sip of his drink when the bouncer grabbed his hand to stop him. Maxwell had the guilty expression of someone waiting to be caught. Being a kid of fifteen, he was totally willing to walk away. But Tabitha wasn’t.

When the bouncer asked Maxwell for his ID, she went ballistic. Maybe she had forgotten that he was only fifteen, maybe she was just so drunk on the parade of drinks that made a wet, dizzy trail through every party we had attended that she didn’t know where she was, or maybe the Princess of Pop was so insecure she needed to impress the little entitled rich kid. Whatever it was, she was indignant.

The Asian guy seemed perfectly capable of handling Tabitha, and it would have just been a drunken rant if a woman at the bar, no less drunk than Tabitha, hadn’t thrown her two cents in. It was all too loud, too crowded, and happened too quickly for me to try to calm Tabitha down.

“He’s just doing his job,” the lady screamed as the Asian dude listened, stone-faced, to Tabitha’s tirade.

“Back off, bitch!” Tabitha countered as friends of the lady at the bar tried to pull the lady away. When the lady lost her footing and accidently wavered toward Tabitha, she overreacted. Let’s face it, in Tabitha’s diminished state a fly buzzing nearby might have made her feel threatened. She, being the totally smashed Princess of Pop, hauled off and punched the woman.

Chaos ensued, and Tabitha, Maxwell, and the lady at the bar were all hustled outside. Mocha had already jumped out of the limo, opened the door, and was ready to hurry her off.

Chase followed me as I trailed Tabitha outside. I didn’t know if Maxwell was already inside the limo or not, but as I approached on the street side, Tabitha’s window rolled down.

“Come on,” she said, “let’s get out of here and go to Robert’s, where we can do what we want. ZK will be there. He’s dying to see you.” As I processed that Robert’s was Robert Francis’s house, I began to panic. At 2 A.M., it was about the last place I wanted to go near.

“Think I’ll stay here with Chase,” I said as gently as I could.

“Who?” She scrutinized Chase in her drunken haze. “You’re the video shooter.”

“Yep, that’s me,” Chase said self-effacingly.

“You’re hooking up with a video shooter instead of ZK Northcott?” she asked drunkenly, sneering at me as if I were a lowlife. Chase took an immediate step back. I sensed he was embarrassed and maybe had a different orientation altogether.

“Tabitha, please,” I said and wanted to explain we were just friends when Mocha tapped the partition to get her attention. A police car was approaching.

“Suit yourself,” she said, silently closing her window as Mocha drove away.

“What’s this world coming to when a pop star can’t score a drink for an underage booty call?” Chase said as we watched her limo get swallowed up in the night. I assumed Tabitha figured it would be better to explain things to the cops when she wasn’t totally plastered.

“Can I buy you a drink?” he asked. “You know, the Talkhouse is a pretty good antidote to the limos and McMansion parties, not that I ever go to those. But you look like you could use a change.”

“Sure, why not?” I shrugged. To think I had just arrived that day. Uh, it was 2 A.M. Okay, the day before.

As the East Hampton Police pulled up, we squeezed our way back in the door. Chase grabbed us a couple of beers and found a spot at the corner of the stage on the far left of the club near the soundboard. The flashing red police light reflected intermittently on the windows of the club, but everyone inside seemed to have moved on. The cops appeared content to confine their investigation to people outside. I wondered if they would follow up with Tabitha.

The whole club was so small you could literally step up on the stage if you wanted. It was only a foot or two off the floor and about twenty feet wide and fourteen feet deep. The ceiling was low enough to almost touch on your tiptoes.

Behind the stage was a backdrop, an ancient sepia-toned picture of a stoic man with long black hair, his shirt buttoned at the top with a scarf tied at the neck, holding a walking stick in one hand that almost looked like a rifle but wasn’t.

“Who is that?” I asked.

“That’s Stephen Talkhouse,” Chase told me. “He was one of the last chiefs of the Montaukett Indians. Where we’re sitting used to be their land, before the tribes of Laurens and Von Furstenbergs invaded.” I laughed.

“And what brings you out here?” I asked.

“I had a gig shooting a charity event that turned into a weeklong job,” he said. “I thought I’d hang out a little, get some sun, maybe pick up another gig before heading back. And what’s your angle out here?”

A seizure of insecurity washed over me, and I wondered if I had already let my guard down with Chase.

“Some family matters to clear up in East Hampton,” I lied, hoping to sound superior. “Then back to the city for Fashion Week.” His inquisitive brown eyes brightened, and he ran his hands through his tousled auburn hair.

“For Designer X?” he asked with a knowing hipster smile that renewed my fears he was on to me.

“Yes,” I said, leaving it at that. He had been following my blog. I worried why. Moments later, the energy inside the steamy club inexplicably ratcheted up as people started to clap in unison. Everyone seemed to know that the band was about to come out.

The first band member onstage was a hot-looking drummer followed by a tall, languid bass player who reminded me of Max from Tabitha’s band, then a keyboard player and the lead singer.

“With all these fans, they must be local,” Chase said. The lead singer picked up his guitar to wild cheers. I nearly spit my beer.

It was Jake.

He wore the same sky-colored Blue Note Records T-shirt he used to wear at the Hole. He threw a nod to cue the band, and the bassist slid his finger all the way down the neck of his guitar, thumping a low bass-line intro as Jake hammered four chunky power chords, then kicked the distortion pedal. Immediately, everyone was on their feet, dancing and singing along.

It was one of those classic guitar hooks you couldn’t forget, a throwback, like the opening to Rick Springfield’s “Jessie’s Girl.” His immediate feedback loop with the audience encircled the room. Preppies and locals were dancing together.

I was awestruck.

He had no idea I was standing a few feet away, and I hoped he wouldn’t see me. On the second chorus, Jake allowed the noise of the band and the crowd to build to a crescendo. Watching him move with such grace and power, I found I couldn’t swallow or speak or breathe. I could only remember my mistakes, starting with the fact that I just didn’t have the confidence to believe that Jake Berns was really interested in me.

I had been right about one thing though. Hearing his yearning, soulful voice opened a hole in my heart. The band joined in with husky harmonies while Jake’s distinctively silky lead guitar ripped across the melody. Why couldn’t I have confided in him? Why couldn’t I have let him know what was going on?

As he stalked across the stage, totally in his element, I had to admit to myself that I had always been hopelessly attracted to him and afraid of what that might mean. Probably like every other girl here, I guessed.

Some chick in a cropped shirt in the front row got up on the other end of the stage and started dancing, and he played off her excitement. The crowd loved it. At the end of the song Jake politely escorted her offstage, and that’s when he caught sight of me. He appeared shocked momentarily but recovered immediately, turning away.

I don’t think anyone noticed except Chase.

“Do you know him?” he shouted above the music. I shrugged yes, hoping I didn’t look as totally undone as I felt.

Jake’s whole set was mind-blowing with its emotional anthems and flat-out rockers. I was standing so close that I could almost touch him.

He pretty much avoided looking my way through most of the performance, although he gave me a soft smile near the end. Just enough to be kind, I thought. He leapt around the stage with his unassuming charm in the same old tennis shoes he used to wear at the Hole.

The Rockets finished with a rollicking dance song that everyone in the crowd seemed to know by heart. As soon as Jake ripped the last chord, the Talkhouse was on its feet, demanding an encore. After a few moments, the band gave them what they wanted: two more songs.

Still, they asked for more. These were his fans, his following from all walks of life, not just locals. They wouldn’t let him go.

They began to cry out for a third encore.

“One night! One night!” they chanted. I didn’t know what that meant, but even when the houselights went on, the fans wouldn’t let up, they wouldn’t stop. Usually when the lights come up people leave, but no one moved an inch.

“One night! One night!” It seemed like a song they had come to expect.

Finally the lights dimmed, but the band didn’t come out. Only Jake. The audience quieted down as soon as they saw him.

He plugged the lead to his Sunburst electric into the amp and flicked on the power switch.

“Okay, I wasn’t going to sing this one tonight, but I guess I will,” he said in his soft, melodic voice. He was looking down at his guitar, adjusting the tuning. “This song is for a friend of mine.”

Even though I was standing right next to the stage, what he said didn’t register in my mind until he lifted his head and I saw that Jake was looking at me.

“You know when there’s someone so awesome and you love her with all your heart and it doesn’t work out?” The crowd moaned, but I barely heard them. The room seemed very far away, like I was alone in a tunnel with Jake Berns at the other end.

“Take me, Jake Berns, I’m yours!” someone yelled in the back and everyone laughed, but then got real quiet again.

“This song is for that girl,” he said, and I had to look away. I didn’t want to see him looking at me. “It’s about what didn’t happen … that one night.”

With a palm-muted intensity he played the solo rock chords on his guitar and started singing.

One night the look in your eyes was like a light,

It shined so bright that I couldn’t see,

That … one … night,

The whole audience sung along to the chorus as it repeated.

That … one … night.

Jake poured himself into the song, singing to me as if no one else was in the room. Chase knew—I could tell by the way he was looking at me. The crowd didn’t know why Jake was staring offstage, and they were straining to see who he was looking at. I wanted to run out, run away, but there was nothing I could do.

You know the clothes you wear?

The color in your hair?

You were so damn fine,

That … one … night.

Though muted, Jake rocked through the mournful chords of the bridge. He had everyone in the room completely under his spell.

Hey I was the one,

I was the one with the bird in the hand that let her get away.

His voice went into a dark, haunted place and then rose back up only to plunge again, and everyone was singing along …

That … one … night.

He kicked into the bridge, and the crowd knew every word.

Time heals everything; it truly does.

Time heals everything, but love.

There was a serious key change, and Jake cut off into a sailing riff on the guitar, spinning around onstage until he jumped and landed right in front of me, and somehow they turned the spotlight on us.

We both knew he was singing to me and only to me, driving his muffled guitar down to almost nothing. I was flat-out embarrassed, trying to keep my composure, but I couldn’t turn away.

Hey I’m the one,

I’m the one with the bird in the hand that you let get away,

One night,

Just one night,

That one night.

Everyone knew every single word to the song but me.

They were all singing along to a song that was about that night in the parking lot behind the diner when I ran away. And as Jake sang, I knew the real reason I fled. I thought I was going on an adventure to the Big Apple. I thought I was Being Audrey—and I was—but, more than that, I was afraid of Jake Berns, afraid of how he made me feel and afraid of how he felt about me.

He repeated the chorus one more time.

One night,

Just one night,

That one night.

He allowed the final chord of the bridge to ring out, and it was over. Jake exited offstage, never glancing back.

As soon as the crowd began to leave, I tried to run out. I wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible, but Chase stopped me.

“You have to stay,” he said and handed me a handkerchief. I hadn’t realized I was crying.

“Why?” I said. “I can’t.”

“You’ve got to say hello to the guy,” he said. “Whatever you guys had, he put his heart out on the line.” Through my tears I nodded no, looking at Chase as if he were crazy. It was too much to ask.

I couldn’t handle it, but we stayed as the club goers poured out onto the street. I tried to pull myself together as best I could.

“Here he comes,” Chase said. We saw Jake, wearing one of his vintage flannels, enter the wings on the other side of the stage, about to walk our way when someone called him from behind and he turned.

As I feared, the woman from Reilly’s, the one in the swag cowboy gear, appeared. She came running up to him, giving him a kiss.

It was more than I could stand.

Even Chase stared in stunned silence.

I ran out of the club as quickly as I could and kept running.