It shined so bright that I couldn’t see,
That … one … night.
The whole audience sang along to the chorus as it repeated.
That … one … night.
The NYPD took a long time to finalize their report on the investigation, and here’s what I learned: if you pretend to be another real person it’s fraud. And if you pretend to be a doctor and treat someone it’s a crime. But if you pretend to be Audrey Hepburn, there’s no law against that.
You know the clothes you wear?
The color in your hair?
You were so damn fine,
That … one … night.
Jake grabbed me and pulled me up on the stage, in front of the whole crowd at Reilly’s, as the rest of the band came out and played the last verse, that strand of black hair falling across his face as he leaned over to kiss me.
It was a condition of our reconciliation. I had to be there every night for the encore at his last gig at Reilly’s to make up for, well, you know. Can’t say I minded at all.
Time heals everything; it truly does.
Time heals everything, but love.
I held on to him even after the song stopped, his heart still beating fast from the show. His whole body was warm. The audience felt so far away.
“So Lizzy, you ready to take off?” he whispered in that soft Jersey voice as the audience shouted.
I nodded.
We were taking Jake’s ’76 BMW and going for a little road trip, stopping wherever and whenever we wanted to.
Just me and Jake.
And his guitar of course.
I wondered if he could play “Moon River.”
Acknowledgments
To say I owe a debt to Truman Capote is like saying a flea owes a debt to a dog. As a young disaffected writer from the South I read Capote with awe and wonder. It may be obvious that I am beholden to the author who created Holly Golightly and wrote the novella Breakfast at Tiffany’s, as well as to screenwriter George Axelrod and director Blake Edwards, who adapted Capote’s literary work for film. Discerning readers who know the novella and the movie adaptation well will find a multitude of allusions, references, homages, tributes, and deliberate echoes of those works and other movies from Audrey Hepburn’s career woven into the scenes and dialogue of this book. I’m grateful to the bloggers and online fans for their inspiration in culling the most intriguing aspects of Audrey Hepburn’s career.
I would also like to acknowledge the support of a number of generous people who I am lucky to have known and benefited from: novelist Jean Craighead George, my sole source of encouragement for decades; New Yorker fiction editor Veronica Geng, who early on helped me find a writing voice that it has taken a lifetime to recover; my editor, Brendan Deneen, who gave me a cupful of commas and told me to write three more chapters—I’m grateful for his faith in my abilities and his naive belief that I would finish on time; Barbara Marcus, publisher of the Children’s Division at Random House, whom I was fortunate to have found during a brief window in her extraordinary career—her warmth, encouragement, and expertise were crucial to my efforts; Carla Riccio, former Dial Press editor, who worked almost as hard on this manuscript as I did and pointed me down the path toward that “sensuous journey with words” so many people talk about, which I was stumbling around, hoping to find; the Southampton Review editor Lou Ann Walker, who taught me the ropes in this and many other literary and life endeavors; costume designer Lisa Lederer, whose joie de vivre and original take on fashion has informed this book throughout; Amy Berkower at Writers House, Ken Wright, now publisher of Penguin Children’s Books, and Nichole Sohl at St. Martin’s, all of whom launched me on my way and carried me through the storm; Jan Kroeze, lighting designer and director of photography, and Michele Pietra, fashion stylist and couture expert, who gave me invaluable insider advice; Gloria Henn, who came into my life to help me build an empire and made me realize my job was to tear one down instead; Fred Perkins and Henry Guberman, who enabled me to find the room to do so and write again; Anne Richards, who has always been a compass from our earliest days working together; and film and stage director Mike Nichols, who likely has no idea who I am or where we met but who, in a casual conversation, mentioned a bit of advice that he used to try to help his children understand, which I couldn’t stop thinking about and became instrumental to the story of this novel; and finally my kids, Mac, Jake, and Tess, whom I adore—if it weren’t for their lively, wonderful lives and their endless needling and condescension, I wouldn’t have worked so hard to succeed. Without the help of these wonderful people, this book would not have been possible.
Finally, the entire book attests to the enduring legacy of Audrey Hepburn, who intuitively and through her own self-design became the first movie star and actress of the poststudio age. Her personal transformation—the Pygmalion Effect, some call it—stands as a model for everyone, especially those young women living in the gray suburbs and forgotten inner cities aspiring to become something better and happier, intent upon the dangerous work of reinventing oneself despite whatever troubled origins they may have. Audrey Hepburn represents nothing less than the creative transformation of self and will always be an icon for others more for that reason than for her compelling talents as an actress, her advocacy for the world’s children, or her sense of style.
About the Author
MITCHELL KRIEGMAN has been published in The New Yorker, National Lampoon, New York Press, Glamour, and Harper’s Bazaar. A winner of four Emmy Awards and a Directors Guild Award, he was the creator of the classic groundbreaking television series Clarissa Explains It All, as well as executive story editor on Ren & Stimpy, Rugrats, and Doug. Kriegman was also a writer and filmmaker for Saturday Night Live.
www.beingaudreyhepburn.com
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS.
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BEING AUDREY HEPBURN. Copyright © 2014 by Mitchell Kriegman. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
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Cover design by Lisa Marie Pompilio
Cover photographs: Audrey Hepburn © Iuliia Stepashova/Shutterstock.com; jewelry store © Tupungato/Shutterstock.com
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The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-1-250-00146-7 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-250-01349-1 (e-book)
e-ISBN 9781250013491
First Edition: September 2014