Being Audrey Hepburn

Jess and Jake sat down on the couch in the living room. I couldn’t help realizing that when I was younger we never sat in the living room. I never spent any time downstairs if I could help it.

Jess was wearing all black. Since the runway show, she had dropped out of FIT and become even more devoted to her fashion line, if that was possible. Judging by her clothes she had definitely made the transition to being a city dweller. After all, in New York City black is always the new black.

Jake wore his usual jeans and fla

“How’s Nan?” Jess asked.

“She’s more upset about how angry Grandpa would have been that the bracelet he gave her is sitting in a federal lockup somewhere than anything else,” I said. “On the plus side, an old NYPD sergeant in the precinct where they questioned her said that she had the nicest smile he’d ever seen from someone not high on something and asked her for a date.” Jess and Jake laughed.

It felt unbelievable to be sitting so close to Jake again, watching him. I kept flashing back to the Talkhouse, where he leapt around the stage like a panther, ripping the music out of his guitar like it was a screaming beast. That song of his started repeating in my mind.

“Is she here?” Jess asked. “It’d be so cool to see her.”

“Nah, she’s at the hospital with Mom,” I said.

“And your mom?” Jake piped up. He caught me looking at him, but I averted my eyes, worried I’d fall apart if I actually met his glance.

“She hates that she’s crossed over to the other side of the bed rails. I think the problem is that she’s flat-out scared of all the stuff that can go wrong in surgery. She keeps telling us these horror stories from her years on the ward, about catheters that kink, wrong medicines being prescribed. She’s a mess basically.”

Jake just sat there staring down at his shoes, pretty quiet. I didn’t know what else to talk about. I was starting to feel really pathetic.

“Thanks for getting me fired at the Met, by the way,” Jess said.

“I’m sorry. I kind of screwed things up for everybody.”

“Just kidding, actually. I was going to quit anyway. I think they transferred Myers to the Met Museum Design Store at Newark International Airport, Terminal C,” she said, smiling. “So what’s next for you?”

“Just waiting to see what the court does. Pretty much being at the hospital all the time, seeing if Mom gets a transplant and cooperates, trying to make things up to Nan. Thinking about college, I guess.”

Jess gave me a woeful look and I could see Jake fidgeting.

“You know, Lizzy,” Jake said finally, as if he were lifting a heavy weight. “I asked to come along with Jess to see you because I wanted to say that I know you’re in all this trouble for what you did but I think it was actually pretty cool. You lived your dream. It’s got to count for something.”

Same old Jake—sincere, earnest, heartfelt—but I couldn’t stand it. He was being supportive like always, but I couldn’t look at him. After all, I blew it. I didn’t see how to put a good spin on that. I wanted to ask him how Monica was. That would have been the civil thing to do, but I couldn’t.

“Thanks,” I finally stuttered out. “So how’s the big-rock-star tour going?”

Jake excitedly went on about the cities they were hitting and everything about the tour bus and the band. I didn’t really hear any of it.

For some reason I couldn’t help thinking about the final scene in Roman Holiday, when Audrey faces the reporters and she and Gregory Peck share that unspoken feeling between them. They shake hands, pretending as if they never met, even though he’s been the love of her life, and then she leaves him alone standing at the rope, gazing at the empty spot where she was last. After everyone is gone, he leaves, taking the long, endless walk out of the palace hall, contemplating what might have been if life were different.

But life isn’t different. And there I was, still thinking that everything in my life was like a scene from an Audrey Hepburn movie.

I realized Jake had stopped talking moments ago, and I felt awkward. Jess piped up to fill in the uncomfortable space.

“Have you checked Limelight recently?”

I shook my head no.

“I haven’t even turned on my phone,” I said.

“Well you should, where is it?” Jess asked.

I went to the kitchen. My phone had been on the counter, sitting there for ages. I didn’t even know if it had any power. I was too depressed to turn it on, so I just gave it to Jess. She powered it up and handed it to me.

In my hand it kept buzzing as one after another voice message kept showing up. Lots of random phone numbers and texts, lots from Jess, even a few from Jake and lots and lots of calls from Isak.

And in my hands, at that very moment, it started to ring.

Isak was calling.

69

“You better hurry or you’ll be late,” Jess called as I slipped on a floral top and Designer X’s first pair of jeans—still in prototype actually. Her coated ski

A light evening breeze was flowing through the open window in the guest room. As I snapped the window latch shut, I noticed the yellowed front page of The New York Post tucked in a shelf in the corner. I couldn’t believe Jess still had a copy.

Throwing a few things in one of Jess’s monster bags, I dashed out of her West Village apartment to catch the PATH train at Christopher Street for my nightly reverse commute.

Truthfully, all the notoriety didn’t hurt my blogger following. After a while the fan mail came back. You can’t win an argument with a troll, so I never tried, and slowly they faded to the bottom of the comments list.

“I have more than a grudging admiration for you,” one commenter wrote. “Fabulously brazen,” another said. Flo stood by me, thankfully. She didn’t mind how my fraudulent behavior exploded our “brand.” Honestly, my brand was very much in keeping with who I was. Even if I wasn’t who I said I was. As you can guess my clicks and visits skyrocketed—everyone had to check it out.

I gu

The New York district attorney’s office examined my case and determined that I hadn’t gained any money or valuables from the hoax. In fact, I had even managed to lose a valuable bracelet. So I hadn’t actually committed a prosecutable crime. I fell back on Nan’s advice and apologized like mad, promising to never, ever do it again.

The investigation was much harder on Nan. She’s forgiven me over and over, but I couldn’t stop feeling terrible about it. If Dahlia hadn’t hired the private detective to investigate me, I don’t think Nan would have ever told us her secret.

Everybody was astounded that the little ole lady in apartment 5A of Montclair Manor had been a major fugitive all that time. Only Betty claimed that she had been suspicious. She told cha

Turns out, Grandpa was a well-known member of Cosa Nostra from the fifties who mysteriously dropped out of sight. Frank Wachowicz, aka Sammy Graziano, was known as the Gentleman Gangster, famous for dressing well and carrying his gun in a paper bag so that when he walked down the street, it looked like he was bringing you a sandwich.