Being Audrey Hepburn

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 begi

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.

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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.