Being Audrey Hepburn

His phone buzzed.

“Shit. Here now?” He looked up, and I saw the stu

Dahlia wore a tight beige skirt with towering heels and a see-through blouse under a YSL boyfriend jacket—it screamed money, power broker, and sex in the same breath. There was a makeup person trying to catch up behind her. As she made long, elegant strides our way, I could see the curl of her wicked smile. I wanted to run.

“Lisbeth, nice to see you,” she said, swooping in, her eyes all daggers. “Slumming with our little Tabby?”

Chase leapt to make amends. “My apologies, Miss Rothenberg. We had just set up for you when we saw…” But Dahlia walked right past him.

“It’s nice to see you’re finally getting a touch of class, Tabby, trying to buy something with taste instead of wearing those slutsuits you usually wear.” Mysteriously silent, Tabitha seemed easily intimidated by Dahlia. Then again, Dahlia rendered everyone speechless, and you could see the satisfaction on her face. We had just been through this crazy situation, yet she managed to make us feel apologetic. For reasons unclear to me, I felt uncharacteristically obligated to stand up for all of us.

I took a deep breath and did my best to cha

Dahlia was stu

Dahlia took the longest time glaring at me, hoping I’d sizzle to vapor, I suppose. If I hadn’t just rambled on in the silliest way, I assume, I would have. But on this strangest of days, I had something I don’t think I’ve ever had before—audacity. Why the effin’ not? I thought. I wanted to make the sign of the horns and dance around her sorry ass like some football player who’s made it to the end zone.

“Well, thank you, Lisbeth,” she said finally, regaining her composure. “Chase, come along. I only have a few moments now, or we’ll have to reschedule.” She spun around and walked back toward Harry Winston, awkwardly waiting to cross the street with Chase following obediently behind her.

Tabitha seemed dazed as we piled into the limo and headed “home” to East Seventy-seventh Street. We sunk back into the black leather seats, and she looked at me with a sense of admiration, it seemed. I felt for a moment like the older sister I never had. As Mocha pulled up to the Mark, I stopped worrying about my fake address and told him to let me off by the lobby. He deposited the Dolce & Gabbana handbags inside with the young hotel doorman’s help. Tabitha hardly noticed me leave—she was pretty hung over anyway.

There I sat in the middle of the Mark Hotel lobby with all those bags and not a clue where I should go or what I should do. I felt only disgust for the D&G marketing woman and these handbags that were likely worth thousands of dollars. I considered hocking them on eBay. I remembered the little black and gold card in my purse, and the tiniest thought occurred to me. I rose, and the attentive doorman sprinted over immediately.

“Can I be of service?” he asked.

“Would you retrieve an item I checked?” I asked, handing him the ticket from the concierge. “And also if you wouldn’t mind, please call the number on this card and have them collect these bags? I’d be so grateful.”

“Certainly,” he said.

I smiled in thanks and he tipped his hat.

I stepped through the doors onto the street with my tiny white La Perla bag and my clothing bag and headed home feeling like a million dollars.

36

Once in the eleventh grade, I attended an art opening at my high school in South End Montclair. They hung paintings and drawings all the way up to the ceiling in the main entranceway of the school for a night. I think they even served juice and Coke. The kids who were good at drawing were buzzing with self-importance. Some of them were pretty talented. This one guy made these dot paintings that were almost like optical illusions, sort of ethereal visions of heaven that he called Change, Loss, Memory and AIDs. Then there was this girl who specialized in photographs of roadkill, mostly deer and rabbits. Sometimes she’d frame the actual flattened creature next to the photograph. I’m not sure what that statement was supposed to mean, but it started smelling pretty funky after a while. That’s what I used to consider an art opening.

Wrong.

Actually, I had never really been to an art opening before. Think fashion, celebs, glamour—a “Schnabel opening,” at the Mary Boone Gallery in Chelsea, was more like a Hollywood premiere.

El Schnabel, as ZK referred to him, would be the larger-than-life artist Julian Schnabel, as I discovered in a Guest of a Guest post. The bearded, barrel-chested, sixty-something art provocateur was famous for painting with broken pottery on giant canvases and making art-savvy movies that never quite made it to the Clearview Clairidge Cinema near me. Fashion-wise, he attended art openings in his jammies and slippers, wearing yellow-tinted sunglasses, looking like a homeless bum out squandering his lottery wi

ZK effortlessly swept us through the throngs standing outside, who stared at us like deer in the headlights of an onrushing sixteen-wheeler of boho-chic wealth and status. Art openings were challenging for even the most dedicated celebrity stalkers because the superstar art attendees tended to be better disguised and more clandestine. We brushed past the Olsen twins, those trench-coated spies from the Kingdom of Anorexia.

Holding on to ZK’s arm, I felt content to be completely swept up in his graceful motion as he expertly navigated the gallery overflowing with guests.

Inside, boldfaced names were sprinkled generously throughout the crushing crowd. My heart skipped as I brushed past James Franco wearing a knitted hipster beanie and holding a plastic cup of white wine. Even Courtney Love struggled to get to the main gallery. She wore a strapless white Vivie

I noticed that ZK seemed to make eye contact with a few key individuals as we moved forward. Some seemed to be security and some didn’t, but his eye contact miraculously parted the waves of people, enabling us to smoothly enter the very center of the gallery without pausing for a second. He had so much grace and bearing, everyone seemed to make way for him.

We came upon a thin old guy in bleached-white ski

“What an interesting-looking man,” I said. “He looks like an old version of that Talking Heads guy,” I whispered in ZK’s ear.

“That is the Talking Heads guy,” ZK chuckled.

“Oh,” I said, feeling instantly embarrassed.

How would I keep up with ZK? Despite Tabitha’s wealth and fabulous music career, she wasn’t particularly sophisticated. ZK, on the other hand, was utterly well educated and co