Tears spilled down my face. I tried to stifle my crying noises, but the sniffling sounds were hard to disguise. “Maybe you should get a job as a driver for a rich family on Long Island, huh, huh, huh. Then we could move out of the doghouse.”
“What?” Pops said. “So we can have an apartment above the garage and you can fall in love with one of the handsome sons who lives in the mansion? Remember how things turned out when we lived on Park Avenue? Life isn’t like Sabrina.”
“Why can’t it be?” I moaned. “Don’t we deserve a happy ending?”
“I never should have let you watch those old films. They ruined you for real life.”
“No, they didn’t,” I said, snorting up some phlegm. “They were my escape growing up. I really believed that someday you were gonna take me on a Roman holiday like you promised. Stupid, stupid me.”
“C’mon, Holly, stop bellyaching,” Pops said. “Do you see me mooning over my life? Right now, my entire net worth is in my pocket—twenty-seven fifty. Do you hear me groaning about it? Do you?”
“No,” I admitted, “and that’s nothing to write home about.”
“You’re damn right it isn’t,” Pops said. “But you know what? I feel like the richest man in the East Village. You know why?”
“Why?”
“Because I have you.”
“Yeah, and look how brilliantly I’ve turned out,” I groused.
“Now, stop. In every great life, there’s angst,” Pops said. “Think about it. The best movies are the ones that put you through the wringer before the happy ending. Rejoice! This is your wringer, kid.”
“So, in other words, if the movie of my life was An Affair to Remember, this would be the part where I got run over and paralyzed and missed my rendezvous with Cary Grant on top of the Empire State Building?”
“You got it.”
“How long do you think my wringer’ll last?”
“It could be a while,” he said. “Mine started over twenty years ago and shows no signs of letting up.”
“That’s encouraging.”
He held out an apple. “Hungry?”
“Thanks.” I sat on the floor by his side and took a bite.
“At least we have each other,” Pops said. He got up and opened the cage door for a large chocolate-colored dog. “Have you met Benny yet?” he said. “He’s sixth-generation Labradoodle. Stays with us a lot because his human is some kind of Internet guru who consults all over the world. BL always puts him in the Presidential Suite. Doesn’t she, Benny? Yes, she does. You are so sweet, yes, you are,” he said, kissing the dog right on the mouth.
“You shouldn’t do that, Pops,” I said. “He was just licking his balls.”
Pops wiped his mouth with his sleeve. “Sorry, Benny, Holly’s just jealous. C’mon, Benny. C’mon, boy.” The dog curled up next to Pops. “Benny’s a natural electric blanket. ’Night, Holly.”
“’Night,” I muttered. After washing my headgear in the canine bathtub, I slipped it over my face and inserted the metal prongs into their holders. Even as my life disintegrated around me, I remained committed to orthodontia.
I don’t remember ever being so spent. As I fell into a despair-induced coma, I wondered how I could go on. The next thing I knew, sunshine was streaming in the window and Pops was headed out with five dogs on leashes, all agitating to do their morning business.
“Who let the dogs out? Who? Who?” he sang.
The world would keep spinning whether I liked it or not.
LATER THAT MORNING, I gave Gus his coffee and glazed doughnuts, and told him what happened the night before, sparing no details.
He looked me over and sighed. “Say no more, my dear. You’ll need something from Corny’s closet. Come.”
I sighed. What am I doing, wearing clothes that belong to the museum? It’s unprofessional, I thought. But what choice do I have? My wardrobe was decimated. I should never have taken that first suit the other day. Borrowing from the vault is getting easier and easier. It’s a slippery slope.
“So what do you think?” Gus said, gesturing toward Corny’s collection.
“Well, let’s see. It should be newer, nothing too valuable. I suppose it has to be black and somber looking,” I said. “I’m mourning the loss of my love.”
“You mean Alessandro?” Gus said.
“Yes,” I said.
“Wait. I’m confused. Is he dead?” Gus asked, eyes wide.
“To me he is.”
A simple black cotton Prada dress circa 1990 would work fine. Corny had the perfect mesh veil that would have completed my grief-stricken widow look, but I passed on that. We were tearing down the Audrey Hepburn exhibit, so I needed to see what I was doing.
Unforgettable
The Audrey Hepburn retrospective at the National Fashion Museum is one of the most entertaining fashion exhibits ever produced in our city.
—THE NEW YORK TIMES
How can it miss with all the memorable roles Hepburn played in her life: Gigi, Holly Golightly, Sabrina Fairchild, Jo Stockton, Princess Ann, Eliza Doolittle, Reggie Lampert, Gabrielle Simpson, Maid Marion? It can’t and it doesn’t.
—THE DAILY POST
TANYA WASN’T IN HER office when I got to my desk. Good. My plan was to answer e-mails quickly, then hide for the rest of the day. The phone rang.
“Get down here stat,” Nigel ordered. “Tanya and Sammie are five minutes away.”
“How do you know?”
“Tanya called Elaina to yell at her,” he said. “They’re at Starbucks. She’s still fuming over yesterday.”
“What about yesterday?” I said.
“You didn’t see the Post? I’ll tell you when you get here. Hurry. You’d best steer clear of her today.”
My feelings exactly, I thought.
When I arrived, Nigel and Elaina were standing in the Funny Face area of the show. Nigel was wearing his surgical magnifying glasses, inspecting the midlength wedding gown that Audrey wore in the last scene of the movie where she and Fred Astaire floated into the sunset on a river barge singing “’S Wonderful.”
“There’s a slight worn spot on
