11:05 P.M.

JESSICA IS HOLDING HER SHIRT OUT, and when I look over at her I see that her top is soaking. She’s leaking again and trying to conceal the milk stains.

“Excuse me,” she says. She collects her bag from where it sits on the floor and scurries into the bathroom. Watching her scuttle away, holding out her top, hits me straight in the gut. I wish we hadn’t fought just now.

“I need some air again,” I say. Conrad makes a move to stand, but Audrey puts a hand firmly on his shoulder.

“I’ll go,” she says.

It’s the first time she’s stood up tonight, and I notice her crisp black pants end at her ankles and she’s wearing a pair of black patent-leather ballet flats. She unhooks her Chanel sweater from where it sits on the back of her chair and loops it over her shoulders.

“After you,” she says, gesturing toward the door.

Once we’re outside, I want a cigarette. The one from earlier, with Conrad, has reignited my craving. I feel like I want to peel off my skin, roll it up, and burn it when Audrey takes out a pack.

“I don’t think this could possibly hurt me now,” she says, echoing Conrad earlier. “Would you like one?”

Her whimsical drawl has me nervous. I am alone with Audrey Hepburn.

“Please,” I say.

She lifts one, hands it to me, and takes one for herself. She lights mine first, then hers. We both inhale what can only be called excessively. Audrey exhales first; a cloud of smoke envelops her.

“That’s better,” she says, coughing a bit. “Non?”

I smile and follow suit.

“Do you know much about me?” she asks. She wants to know why she’s here.

“A little,” I say. “Mostly your work.” I know more—I know a lot—but it seems a strange thing to say, standing outside with her now. Because the truth is I don’t know, not entirely, why I chose to include her. Except that her movies represented something to me. Not just with Tobias, but with my father. One of the only things I had from him besides the watch was an old movie collection: Charade, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and Sabrina.

She nods. “Did you know I was in Holland during World War Two? We thought it would be safe there, you see. We didn’t think they’d invade…” She trails off and puffs again. “It was a terrible time. Those five years we were barely fed. We used to crush up tulip bulbs and bake with them. I watched friends get carted off. My own brother was shipped off to work in Germany. Had we known what was coming, we may have all shot ourselves.”

“I’m so sorry,” I say. “I did know, a bit. That must have been horrific. I can’t imagine.”

“But do you want to know what was worse?” she asks me.

“What could be?”

She shifts her weight, what little there is, delicately from one foot to the other. I’m transfixed—all at once reminded of her riding around Rome, singing in a flat in Paris.

“Decades later I started work with UNICEF, and before I died I traveled to Somalia. Seeing that famine, those children starving…” She swallows and I see, even in the lamplight, her eyes filled with tears. “It was worse,” she says. “Because I wasn’t in it with them. And I couldn’t fix it. Two million people starving.” She shakes her head and wipes at her eyes. “When you suffer alone it’s terrible,” she says. “But when you watch other people suffer, innocent people, those that cannot help themselves—it is worse.”

She looks at me, and I know what she’s saying, what she’s trying to convey. “Thank you,” I say. “For sharing that with me.”

“I was an introvert my whole life,” she says. “Quiet, reasoned. Perhaps it’s time to open up a bit.”

“Can I ask you something?” I say.

She puffs again. “Of course.”

“If you could do it all over again, all of it, what would you change?”

Audrey considers this. “I would have gotten married again,” she says. “A third time, to Robert. I loved him dearly. If I had to do it again I would.”

“That’s all?” I ask.

She smiles. “Oh, plenty of things,” she says. “But it was a good life. It’s best not to dwell.”

She turns to me abruptly and I am caught again by the profound beauty of her features here together. She is stunning, radiant. A delicate rose petal—perfect in its symmetry. One that does not ever fade. And she hasn’t, has she? I wonder what it must have been like for her at the end, if she ever withered. I can’t imagine it.

“I was a romantic,” she says. “Until the very end. People always associate me with romance, but I don’t know if they think I was. I was often considered the object, not the one longing, so to speak. I think when people watch my films that’s the image they get.”

I think about her films. About my father’s collection. About Roman Holiday that first afternoon with Tobias. The myth, the magic, of this movie star. But Audrey Hepburn isn’t Holly Golightly, in the little black dress and trench coat in the rain. She isn’t Nicole, in Paris, planning a museum heist and falling in love with the handsome burglar. She isn’t Eliza Doolittle, climbing the ranks of society. All that was fiction. Ideas concocted in the minds of studio heads. Audrey Hepburn is simply the woman standing beside me now.

She looks at me curiously, like she’s waiting to see if I’ll ask it. The reason we’re out here together. The reason, perhaps, she’s here tonight. Her advice, finally.

“What do I do?” I ask her.

“Do you have a choice?” she says.

I look back inside. I see Tobias.

“I don’t know,” I say. “I thought I could…” I trail off.

Audrey puts her hand on my shoulder. It startles me. Her fingers are light, cool in the night air. They feel like raindrops.

“Sweetheart,” she says. “You could not wish me alive.”

“I know,” I say. “Of course. But Tobias … It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. We weren’t supposed to end like this.”

“Maybe,” she says. Her hand is still there. I have a feeling that the punch line hasn’t been delivered yet—she’s trying to soften the blow. “But knowing what I do,” she says, “having a partner you can exist in the world with, not one who you need to tuck away with, makes life a lot easier.” She threads her thumb across my shoulder. “What’s done is done.”

“No,” I say. I have the urge to throw her hand away, to stomp off, to yell at Audrey Hepburn. “It was my fault.…” All of a sudden I’m crying. Big, hiccuping tears, and Audrey takes me in her arms. She’s a tiny woman, of course, all bones, but she still feels nurturing—bigger and softer than her frame.

“What I’m telling you,” she whispers, rubbing my back in small circles, “is that it’s not your place. You do not get to reignite someone else’s life.”

“But what about all of this?” I say. “How is this happening? And why?”

“My love,” she says. She pulls me back. She holds me at arm’s length. “You know why.”

“No,” I say again. I step back from her, but she holds me steady, and I feel it rising, that tide of water—threatening to carry me out to sea.

“You need to,” she says. “You asked me what you do?”

I nod.

“You say good-bye.”