“Yeah, Mom has been up my ass lately,” Courtney said.
“Lately is an understatement,” I said. She examined her cigarette and spat out a piece of something. It was gross. Still, it was better to wait for Courtney to leave, like a storm passing, than to confront her.
“Yeah, she’s such a cow.” I could tell Jess was dying to leave but was staying out of loyalty. She hated Courtney more than I did. But Courtney was my older sister. She could be mean, but I couldn’t totally hate her.
“So what are you girls doing in here? Cyberstalking some of your high school buddies?”
“We graduated, remember?” I said. “Aren’t you worried about hanging around? Mom should be back soon with Ryan.” I had no idea if that was true or not, but I’d say anything to get rid of her.
“You should start checking out the hot nursing dudes over at Essex County for next year,” she said. “Of course, not you, Jess.”
Lesbian joke. How original.
I couldn’t figure out why Courtney was lingering. From the way she was dressed, I could tell she was planning a big night out. I stopped talking, hoping Courtney would just leave if there was a long uncomfortable silence.
“Listen, brat,” Courtney said after a few excruciating moments. “I need some cash.”
So that was the deal. She’d probably already rifled through all of mom’s hiding places, turned the living room couch cushions upside down, and come up empty-handed. A couple of new packs of cigarettes, mom’s brand, stuck out of her bag. Probably all she could find. I’d buy her off in a second, but I didn’t have anything more than my PATH SmartLink card, a Metrocard, and maybe thirty-five cents.
“Here’s twenty. It’s all we’ve got,” Jess said, rummaging through her things and pulling out a crumpled bill.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Just take it and stop bothering us,” Jess said, thrusting the twenty at her.
Courtney was as surprised as I was, but she took the money. She stood up to leave. “Keep your trap shut to Mom that I was here, understand?” I hated that I nodded yes.
Jess and I waited until we heard her junker start up and tear off.
“You totally didn’t have to do that. I’ll pay you back,” I said. But Jess wasn’t even listening. She had opened up my laptop and was clicking through all the photos on TMZ.
“I should kill that bitch.”
“My sister’s not worth it…”
“No, I mean Tabitha Eden.”
“What?”
“Check this out—she looks like she’s about to vomit on my pumps.” Jess laughed. I did, too. Jess clicked over to the Guest of a Guest blog and instantly found a picture of me in the Dior, arm in arm with Isak Guerrere. She began reading intently.
“Wow, they called you ‘Isak Guerrere’s fashionable companion.’ You know, I should have done more with the Dior, I think. I could have pushed it further. I was intimidated.”
If only we hadn’t gone back to the Met, she would have been fine with all this. The Met was a big mistake.
Jess scrolled through the Web sites, trolling for pictures, and for some reason I flashed on a story I had read about Audrey when she was cast in Sabrina. The Queen of Wardrobe, Edith Head, dressed everybody who was anybody: Elizabeth Taylor, Grace Kelly, Marilyn. She controlled the fashion and appearance of those Hollywood actresses even when they attended the Oscars. But for Sabrina, the director, Billy Wilder, wanted Audrey to wear something different, something French. So he went behind Edith Head’s back and asked the wife of the head of Paramount Pictures in Paris for help. She introduced Audrey to Hubert de Givenchy.
Audrey asked for a strapless evening dress, modified to hide the hollows behind her collarbone. The lovely dress that Givenchy created for her—a strapless bodice with a voluminous embroidered skirt—made Sabrina the belle of the ball and established Audrey’s look for the rest of her career.
Edith Head famously received an Oscar for Audrey’s dress in Sabrina without ever crediting Hubert de Givenchy, the designer of that crucial piece of wardrobe. Years later, when a biographer outed her, Edith snapped back, “I lied. So what? If I bought a sweater at Bullock’s Wilshire, do I have to give them credit, too?”
But Givenchy was no mere department store designer, and Audrey remained loyal to him until she died. “In a certain way,” Audrey is famously quoted, “one can say that Hubert de Givenchy created me over the years.”
“Oh. My. God. There you are, walking and talking,” Jess laughed. She clicked on a video, and there I was with Isak from the night before.
Who was that? I mean, it was me—a beaming, graceful, Technicolor me. I appeared so at ease, as though standing in front of a camera arm in arm with a famous designer was something I did all the time.
Jess was watching me as I watched. “You might want to close your mouth a little or bugs might fly down your throat,” Jess advised, lifting my jaw.
“I’m in shock.”
Bright lights, stunning dress, famous designer, winsome smile … for a second I felt warm all over again, just like I did in front of the camera.
Jess clicked through the video to a party Web site.
“Whoa! What’s this?” she said. There were photos of me on the party page. No name, just my picture and a question mark.
“You’re just a mystery inside a riddle wrapped in a remade Dior,” Jess joked.
“How many pictures is that?” I asked.
“There are eight pictures of you, including Audrey’s Givenchy,” said Jess. “But I don’t think we should use that one on that blog of yours.”
“You know about my blog? I was going to tell you,” I said, embarrassed.
“It’s pretty hard to avoid a fashion blog that Isak Guerrere comments on from the first post. I think every young designer in the country has a Google Alert on that one.”
“What?”
“You didn’t see?” Jess asked as she clicked over to Shades of Limelight. “He loves you.”
There it was: Isak’s ringing endorsement of everything I said and already one-thousand-plus hits and followers.
“I thought it was pretty good, too. I especially like the Designer X part. Hmm, wonder who she could be…?” she said, smiling.
“Listen, the Met is off-limits,” Jess added. “I can’t afford to give Myers a chance to fire me. I want to keep my job, all my jobs, until I get my line going or at least finish school. I’ll hang in with you on this. If you’re going to become famous, someone’s got to dress you. And I don’t want to miss it.”
“You’ll be my Givenchy!” I said.
“That makes you Audrey,” she countered.
Not quite, but I was on my way.
22
I had no idea what I was dreaming that night, but woven into the soundtrack of my dream was a version of “Moon River” that sounded like a mash-up with the theme from Hellraiser II. It creeped me out so much I snapped awake, sitting up with my eyes open.
My cell phone was ringing. Who would call at … what time was it? The clock said 5:49 A.M. Shit. I thumbed ANSWER, put the phone to my ear, and fell back on my pillow.
“You up?”
“Jake!?” I croaked.
“Hey Lizzy. Good morning at ya!”
“Uh, good morning…?” I tried to reboot my brain.
“Yeah, don’t you think?” He sounded a little slurry.
“Think what? I kind of just woke up, Jake. I don’t start thinking until much, much later.” He laughed.
“You’re a hoot, Lizzy. Look out your window. Awesome sunrise, right?” I glanced at the clock by my bed.
“Jake, it’s five forty-nine. No, now it’s five fifty.”
“Come on, Lizzy,” Jake said. “Just take a look out your window.”
“Okay, fine … if you really want me to.” I dragged myself out of bed, stumbling my way to the window, and looked out. The sun was just rising, and the purple night was giving way to a pink and yellow sky over our sad, sleepy neighborhood.