“Responsibility,” Audrey says. She looks a little bit sad when she says it, and I make a note to talk about her. To ask about her life. I once again feel bad for pulling her into this—my personal drama.
“It was always there,” Robert says. “It got worse, not better. We fought all the time. I wasn’t around as much as I should have been. She wanted me to leave.”
“Not like that.”
“No,” he says. “Not like that.”
“She remarried,” Jessica says. I look at her. She shrugs. “What?” she says. “She did. And I think she’s happy.”
“Yeah?” Robert looks at me. He looks so hopeful it almost makes me crack.
“Doesn’t make any difference,” I say.
“Yes, it does,” Tobias says. “It means that wasn’t her only shot at happiness, and that maybe she wasn’t happy, either.”
“So?”
“So you can’t just blame the person who leaves. If two people are unhappy, clocking the person who actually walks out the door is just getting them on a technicality.”
“Convenient,” I say.
Conrad clears his throat. “We’re getting ahead of ourselves,” he says.
“Impossible not to,” Audrey says. She looks entertained now. A little bit perkier.
“Everything is happening at once,” Jessica says. She puts a hand to her forehead and holds it there.
“That is true, my dear,” Conrad says. “And it’s all happening right now, so we may as well figure out what it is.”
FOUR
HE WAS LATE. I WAS STANDING at the mouth of the Brooklyn Bridge, on the Manhattan side. This was going to be our first date. He had called and asked me if I wanted to go for a walk. And now here we were.
It was a fall day. September twenty-third. It was chilly, but not cold. I wanted to move, though. I was anxious for him to get there.
He jogged over thirty-three minutes after we had planned to meet. He came up from the Brooklyn side, a sheepish smile on his face.
“We were on opposite ends,” he said. “I guess I should have specified.”
He grinned at me. I grinned at him. We started walking.
The walk over the Brooklyn Bridge is spectacular anytime, but at sunset it’s really something. It was like the universe had put us on opposite sides so we could walk together then, in that moment, with the sky turning from rage (red, orange) to surrender (blue, yellow) right around us.
Somewhere in the middle he slipped his hand into mine. It was thrilling.
“Tell me about you,” I said.
“I’d rather hear about you,” he said.
“I’m not that interesting,” I said.
“Not true.” He reached over with his free hand and brushed some hair out of my face. “You’re the most interesting girl in the world.”
I swallowed. “Well, I graduated from USC and I moved here immediately after. I live with my best friend.”
“In Chelsea,” he said.
“Right. In Chelsea. And I work for a crazy fashion designer.”
“What do you want to do?” he asked.
“I’m not sure,” I said. “I guess that’s the problem.” He squeezed my hand. I squeezed back. “What about you?”
“I got the job.”
“Red Roof?”
He nodded. “I took it,” he said, like he was confessing something.
“That’s great.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. It’s a block away from my apartment.”
I laughed then, embarrassed at what I had just implied. He held my hand a little bit tighter.
“Want to see a movie?” he asked me.
“Yes.”
“You pick, I’ll buy.”
We ended up seeing a showing of North by Northwest at a theater in Williamsburg I had never been to where they served up independent and second-run movies on a pull-down screen along with cheap red wine and four-dollar beers.
We bent our heads together. He put his arm around me. When Cary Grant said, “Apparently the only performance that will satisfy you is when I play dead,” Tobias tilted my head back and kissed me.
It wasn’t a wild kiss. We’d have plenty of those. It was a benchmark. A chalk line on the asphalt. Start. His lips were soft and warm and I remember he tasted like cigarettes and honey. I never knew it was a combination I loved, but soon after I took up smoking, because Tobias did. It was something we’d do together—huddle on the fire escape of my fifth-floor walk-up, our hands chapped and shaking. It was winter by then. He was practically living with me. And we were in love.
8:38 P.M.
“TOBIAS, WHAT DO YOU DO?” Conrad asks. He’s ordered another bottle of Merlot and is filling a glass for Audrey, despite her mock protestations. Jessica is glancing at her watch and looking around for our server.
“I’m a photographer,” he says.
Next to me, Jessica shifts in her chair.
“A man of the arts,” Audrey says. “How lovely.”
“You worked with some of the greats,” Tobias tells her.
Audrey smiles. For the first time all night I find myself inexplicably and uncontrollably drawn to her. The way her lips part, just slightly, like she’s about to spill an age-old secret.
“Bob Willoughby was my favorite,” she says. “He worked for Paramount. We had quite a relationship. He had such a way with light. He used to shoot me in the very early mornings. Can you imagine? It was always dawn.”
Tobias sits back. He looks satisfied. I think he told me this once about Willoughby. Sometimes Tobias would drag me out of bed in the very early mornings, too. He was always chasing the light.
“What about William Holden, really,” Conrad asks. “I always wanted to know.”
Audrey blushes at the mention of her rumored lover. She holds out her wineglass. Conrad chuckles. “Complicated,” she says.
“That’s it?” Conrad asks.
“No,” she says. “But a lady never tells.”
“Well, sometimes after two glasses a lady does,” Conrad says.
Audrey pretends to be insulted, but I can tell she isn’t, not really. She’s warming to him. I can tell she likes him, and that makes me feel good—that she has someone here who can make her comfortable, make her laugh.
Audrey coughs a bit.
“What do you remember most?” Robert asks her.
She takes a small sip. She’s thoughtful. It’s a look that works well on her. “The early years with the children,” she says. “That was all I ever wanted, really. To be a mother.” She stops then, holding up her pointer finger. “Well, wait, are you asking me what I remember most, or what I enjoyed the most?”
Robert looks baffled. I realize, to him, they are, of course, the same.
“Either,” he says.
“Both!” Conrad says.
“I loved Tiffany’s,” she says. “Most people think I didn’t; I never really knew why.” She’s opening up here. She’s like a drop of dye in water that begins to change the liquid. Slowly, fluidly, she becomes colored. “It was a hard shoot. I had a lot of trouble being that outgoing because I’m quite an introvert…” She trails off before picking back up. “But it’s maybe my proudest picture. Capote and all.”
“You don’t say,” Robert says.
“Roman Holiday is my favorite,” Jessica says. “Sabby and I used to watch it all the time.”
“It’s true,” I say. I remember us curled up on the couch. Burnt popcorn between us. It seems like so long ago now.
“That’s very flattering,” she says. “That was my first film. I remember the project fondly. Thank you.”
And then, as if remembering herself, she waves her hand. “I’ve been going on,” she says.
Conrad shakes his head. “Nonsense,” he says. “We want to know.” He looks straight at me.
“It’s fascinating,” I say. “We’re all very big fans.”
Tobias nods. It’s true, of course. He is one. But who isn’t a fan of Audrey Hepburn?
“And I would just like to say we have yet to talk about your global service,” Conrad says, tapping the notebook. “Quite the humanitarian.”
“No, no, it’s just what we must do. Especially now.”
“Especially,” Conrad echoes.
“The world has become a dark place in recent years,” Robert says.
Conrad shakes his head. “It always was. People are just paying attention.”
“You cannot have good without evil,” Audrey says. “They are like DNA strands. Intricately and irrevocably spun together. Sometimes good wins, sometimes evil does. We do not fight for good’s permanent triumph, but for the balance. And so it goes.”
“And so it goes,” Conrad echoes.