Being Audrey Hepburn

I lowered my oversize glasses and peered around the room.

“Hello, Lisbeth,” an older man’s voice said from the table behind me. I turned to see Mr. Armani—Robert Francis—standing at his banquette behind me.

“Oh hello, sorry I didn’t notice you when I came in,” I said as politely as I could manage.

“Come join me,” he said, holding up a glass of champagne. “I promise not to bite.” He put out his hand and directed me to the chair. He couldn’t keep a smirk from creeping into the corners of his mouth.

“Thank you,” I said and quietly stepped into the banquette.

“You look stu

He wore a deep-gray suit with a yellow tie and a pocket square, his salt-and-pepper hair neatly trimmed. Up close in the sunlight, he seemed older. I couldn’t help noticing his hands, their perfectly manicured nails delicate, almost vampirish. Robert Francis had a Dracula sophistication about him, I thought, a superficial elegance with a threat lurking beneath.

“It’s nice to be able to spend time with you,” he said.

“I didn’t really think this would be a social call,” I replied. He reclined in his seat, spreading his arms across the banquette, that devious smirk barely suppressed.

“Oh? What were you expecting? Some furtive encounter filled with threats and demands?” he asked. “The trench coat, by the way, is quite wonderful and original. Your so-called Designer X?”

I nodded.

“Clever marketing, that,” he added. “The Limelight blog, as well. However do you keep so much going on?”

I wanted to respond that it wasn’t that much going on, just me tapping in a blog entry or two before bedtime. And that the clever marketing was just my name for my friend who was a gifted, unheard-of designer and had worked hard for everything she had ever done and that no one I grew up with ever sat in an expensive hotel like this drinking champagne at 11:30 A.M. But I didn’t say a thing.

“You’ve been here before, of course?” he asked, eyeing me u

“It’s my favorite hotel, an absolute time capsule, you know, built by John Jacob Astor the Fourth in the Gilded Age. If Astor came back, he would feel perfectly at home. Everything is exactly as he left it, including the butlers in white tie and tails scurrying about upstairs like little well-dressed mice. Astor himself collected the thousands of leather-bound books on the shelves over a hundred years ago, and not a volume has been moved since his tragic death.”

“Tragic?” I asked, trying to calculate how many times I had met this odd man. I realized that each of his appearances had been more discomforting than the one before.

“Indeed, don’t you know your history, young lady?” he admonished. “He died in the sinking of the Titanic. It was one of the great ill-fated romances of all time.”

“No, I didn’t know.” I was intrigued to see how enthusiastic he was to talk to me. Not at all how he had behaved before. The hotel, this banquette, was clearly where he spent a lot of time. He enjoyed whatever game he was playing.

“Well, eight years after the Saint Regis opened, Astor divorced his wife and married his secret lover, a lovely schoolgirl named Madeleine. She was actually a year younger than his son. Although these things happen all the time, it caused such a huge uproar that Astor fled with his young wife on an extended yearlong honeymoon through Egypt and the Middle East and the Orient to ride out the controversy. But after seven months, the lovely child bride became pregnant. Considering the state of child care in the Mideast, he decided to return to the States immediately. His misfortune is that he booked passage on the maiden voyage of the RMS Titanic.”

“I take it they didn’t survive?”

“Yes and no. As the ship was sinking, Astor helped his young pregnant wife and her dog Kitty through the cabin window into the last lifeboat.”

“Fu

“I suppose,” he answered, seeming a

“And what happened to Mr. Astor?”

“He found a deck chair, lit a cigar, and perished as the ship went down. Now that’s the movie that James Cameron should have made. That’s a romance. But Hollywood prefers to spin tales about a pauper instead. The ninety-nine percent, I believe your generation calls it.”

“That’s quite a story, Mr. Francis.”

“Please call me Robert,” he said, immensely pleased with himself. I took a deep breath and gathered my courage to bring our conversation to the point. Being the fly in his spiderweb was exhausting.

“Well … Robert, I appreciate the vivid history lesson, but I’d prefer to discuss what I came here for,” I said. “Tabitha has asked that you step aside and allow her to control her own affairs.”

“Ah, a girl who gets to the point! Do relax, dear Lisbeth. Nothing bad is going to happen here. I’m sure the ghost of John Jacob Astor the Fourth would protect an attractive young woman such as yourself in his hotel,” he said, self-satisfied. “Have a sip of champagne. Are you hungry? Can I order you a something to eat?”

“No thank you,” I said, feeling oddly helpless.

He reached for his champagne glass, revealing a sleek platinum cufflink, and took a leisurely sip.

“Very well, where to begin…” As he placed his champagne glass on the table, a Cheshire Cat grin crept into the corners of his mouth. “Clearly you don’t know your friend Tabitha very well or you would know that her mother is not in good health.”

“I have heard that actually,” I felt compelled to say, growing irritated at his condescension. I took a sip of champagne to calm myself.

“Her mother, Eva, came into quite a large fortune when her first husband died, and ever since she has drugged and boozed her way through Europe and Asia and South America, leaving poor Tabby alone and bereft with no one to care for her. In the process, Eva has remarried time and again with disastrous results. Now with the passing of her recent husband, she will likely inherit an even larger fortune. But she is an unreliable and selfish woman with no mothering instinct whatsoever. I’ve done my best to protect Tabitha’s trust while developing her natural singing and dancing talents. Spent quite a bundle on getting her the best of everything. You’ve met them.”

I wondered how he knew I had visited Tabitha’s recording studio. Was Robert the “boss” they reported to?

“We vastly overpay her people. That teenager, Be

“Yes, I believe I do know most of that.” I was trying not to give him the satisfaction of appearing threatened. “So, if you are her benefactor and protector, as you say, why is Tabitha upset with you?”

“An excellent question, to which I do not actually have an answer,” he said, lightly stroking the top of his own champagne glass with his fingertip, over and over, until it seemed intentionally inappropriate.

“Her therapist tells me that being abandoned by your mother at such a tender age can be very traumatic. As a result, she has a huge amount of anger, and she projects that anger onto the people who love and care for her because she can do so safely. Her mother is nowhere around and too fragile. Hence I have become a convenient target. I simply want to help her.”

He stopped and lit a cigarette. It was remarkable how he felt entitled to smoke anywhere. I expected the waiter, another customer, frankly anyone to object, but no one said a thing. He held his cigarette between his thumb and forefinger like one of those concentration camp commandants in a movie.