But for now, I keep breathing, right there in Evelyn’s foyer, centering myself as he taught me.
And then, when I feel calm, I pick up my phone and dial Frankie.
“Monique.” She answers on the second ring. “Tell me. How’s it going?”
“It’s going well,” I say. I’m surprised at how even and flat my voice is. “Evelyn is pretty much everything you’d expect from an icon. Still gorgeous. Charismatic as ever.”
“And?”
“And . . . things are progressing.”
“Is she committing to talk about any other topics than the gowns?”
What can I say now to start covering my own ass? “You know, she’s pretty reticent about anything other than getting some press for the auction. I’m trying to play nice at the moment, get her to trust me a bit more before I start pushing.”
“Will she sit for a cover?”
“It’s too early to tell. Trust me, Frankie,” I say, and I hate how sincere it sounds coming out of my mouth, “I know how important this is. But right now, the best thing for me to do is make sure Evelyn likes me so that I can try to garner some influence and advocate for what we want.”
“OK,” Frankie says. “Obviously, I want more than a few sound bites about dresses, but that’s still more than any other magazine has gotten from her in decades, so . . .” Frankie keeps talking, but I’ve stopped listening. I’m far too focused on the fact that Frankie’s not even going to get sound bites.
And I’m going to get far, far more.
“I should go,” I say, excusing myself. “She and I are talking again in a few minutes.”
I hang up the phone and breathe out. I’ve got this shit.
As I make my way through the apartment, I can hear Grace in the kitchen. I open the swinging door and spot her cutting flower stems.
“Sorry to bother you. Evelyn said to meet her in her office, but I’m not sure where that is.”
“Oh,” Grace says, putting down the scissors and wiping her hands on a towel. “I’ll show you.”
I follow her up a set of stairs and into Evelyn’s study area. The walls are a striking flat charcoal gray, the area rug a golden beige. The large windows are flanked by dark blue curtains, and on the opposite side of the room are built-in bookcases. A gray-blue couch sits facing an oversized glass desk.
Grace smiles and leaves me to wait for Evelyn. I drop my bag on the sofa and check my phone.
“You take the desk,” Evelyn says as she comes in. She hands me a glass of water. “I can only assume the way this works is that I talk and you write.”
“I suppose,” I say, sitting in the desk chair. “I’ve never attempted to write a biography before. After all, I’m not a biographer.”
Evelyn looks at me pointedly. She sits opposite me, on the sofa. “Let me explain something to you. When I was fourteen years old, my mother had already died, and I was living with my father. The older I got, the more I realized that it was only a matter of time until my father tried to marry me off to a friend of his or his boss, someone who could help his situation. And if I’m being honest, the more I developed, the less secure I was in the idea that my father might not try to take something of me for himself.
“We were so broke that we were stealing the electricity from the apartment above us. There was one outlet in our place that was on their circuit, so we plugged anything we needed to use into that one socket. If I needed to do homework after dark, I plugged in a lamp in that outlet and sat underneath it with my book.
“My mother was a saint. I really mean it. Stunningly beautiful, an incredible singer, with a heart of gold. For years before she died, she would always tell me that we were gonna get out of Hell’s Kitchen and go straight to Hollywood. She said she was going to be the most famous woman in the world and get us a mansion on the beach. I had this fantasy of the two of us together in a house, throwing parties, drinking champagne. And then she died, and it was like waking up from a dream. Suddenly, I was in a world where none of that was ever going to happen. And I was going to be stuck in Hell’s Kitchen forever.
“I was gorgeous, even at fourteen. Oh, I know the whole world prefers a woman who doesn’t know her power, but I’m sick of all that. I turned heads. Now, I take no pride in this. I didn’t make my own face. I didn’t give myself this body. But I’m also not going to sit here and say, ‘Aw, shucks. People really thought I was pretty?’ like some kind of prig.
“My friend Beverly knew a guy in her building named Ernie Diaz who was an electrician. And Ernie knew a guy over at MGM. At least, that was the rumor going around. And one day, Beverly told me she heard that Ernie was up for some job rigging lights in Hollywood. So that weekend, I made up a reason to go over to Beverly’s, and I ‘accidentally’ knocked on Ernie’s door. I knew exactly where Beverly was. But I knocked on Ernie’s door and said, ‘Have you seen Beverly Gustafson?’
“Ernie was twenty-two. He wasn’t handsome by any means, but he was fine to look at. He said he hadn’t seen her, but I watched as he continued to stare at me. I watched as his eyes started at mine and grazed their way down, scanning every inch of me in my favorite green dress.
“And then Ernie said, ‘Sweetheart, are you sixteen?’ I was fourteen, remember. But do you know what I did? I said, ‘Why, I just turned.’?”
Evelyn looks at me with purpose. “Do you understand what I’m telling you? When you’re given an opportunity to change your life, be ready to do whatever it takes to make it happen. The world doesn’t give things, you take things. If you learn one thing from me, it should probably be that.”
Wow. “OK,” I say.