Audrey Hepburn's Pearls: Part I

Chapter 2.1: 1967, George

Chapter 2.1: 1967, George

 

It felt like something was tugging my blonde wig but I couldn't be sure. It felt like a cobweb was catching it but I was far from cobwebs. The bar was nearly deserted except for a few patrons now, and there was only light piano music being played by the drunken pianoman. The rest of the band had left him like usual, but he stayed behind to drink. Only us alcoholics were left. Just an alcoholic party going on.

"Bourbon," I told the barman, "double."

"I think you had enough, George."

"Fuck you and your 'enough'."

"Okay, George, okay."

The fifth time my wig was tugged I slapped my hand on it. The sixth time I slapped around it. And finally skin met skin. So it was a person. That motherfucker. Probably a patron who had seen me on stage earlier and couldn't get enough of me.

By the seventh time I was prepared. Sipping my bourbon, I felt the cobweb again. This time, I reached around and threw my drink, glass and all.

"SHIT!" Came a male voice.

I whipped around. What my eyes met was something as intimidating as a daisy in the wind, far from what I had expected.

"Oh its just a kid," I sighed, turning back around, ignoring the young man covered in bourbon behind me. His smart looking blue suit was soaked near the top and his face was dripping. It was probably in his perfectly gel'd back hair, too. 

"What choo do that for?" The heavily Italian-American voice accused, sitting down heavily next to me like a man twice his size. He was so slim. Too slim. He looked so young. Too young to be in this club, really. He was a string bean of a kid.

"Shut up, kid," I hissed, holding up my fingers to the barman for another bourbon double.

"I ain't no kid," he said quietly, as if ashamed. So I had hit a nerve.

"Yeah, okay. Get this kid a towel," I told the barman, pointing at him with my thumb. The barman was staring at the kid with cautious eyes and not moving. He had been wiping a large beer glass with a rag and now he had paused.

"What's with you, Carl? Get him a towel," I ordered again.

Carl looked at me, then at the kid. He put the beer glass down on the counter behind him and then extended his hand out to him with deep respect. The kid was wiping his face with his pocket handkerchief. He paused himself to extend a hand back. A surprisingly large hand for one so small.

"Good evening, Mr. Caselotti. How's your father doin'?" Carl asked with reverence.

It was my turn to pause. Oh shit. Oh shit. I stared at my glass of bourbon in front of me. Slowly I realized what I had done. I had fucked up. Fucked up big time. 

"Aw no, I ain't Mr anything. Mr. Caselotti is my father. I'm just Frank jr, Frankie," the kid said, looking embarrassed. 

"Oh yes, Frankie then. Tell your father I send my regards. If it weren't for this job I don't know how my daughter and I would get along. See, look here," Carl said, tapping his pocket and taking out his wallet. He leaned over the bar and opened his wallet to a series a pictures of a pretty girl with dark hair.  "She's going to Tuskegee next Fall. My daughter. Imagine?"

"Oh wow, Mr. Carl, that's cause for celebration, ain't it?" Frankie said, scratching his head nervously. He smiled, blushing. My eyebrow raised as my heart prickled. "Next round's on me, for your daughter," he said, nodding.

"Wow, thanks Frankie. You're one of a kind," Carl beamed. "I'm sure it'll be real great workin' with you."

"'Working with'?" My stupid mouth blurted.

"Heh, yeah," Frankie said, looking at me, his blushing intensifying. He beamed and both of my eyebrows raised as my heart prickling intensified. "Nice to meet cha, I'm Frankie Caselotti, your new boss. My father gave me this club for my twenty first birthday last week. Ain't it great? What's yer name, blondie?"

"Uh..." I said, dumbfounded, extending my hand to him for a handshake, "Its Georgina- it...Its George. Sorry." My face went red.

"Georgina or George, which is it?" Frankie asked, looking confused but serious.

I felt very strange, looking at him being so serious about the girl's name I had just blurted out. Why wasn't he laughing?

"Haha, its kinda both, boss," Carl laughed, clapping his hand on my shoulder and shaking me in how funny it was. 

I forced a laugh. "Ha...yeah. Georgina when I'm dressed like this, George when I'm not."

"You prefer one over the other?"

Oh come on, Frankie. That wasn't funny. My heart started rumbling in my chest.

"Of course its George," I said, staring at him without blinking in my shock at how serious he was still being.

"You sure?" Frankie asked, looking more and more like a little boy in how nervous he was getting. 

"What do you mean?" I asked, my voice taking on an angry tone which I totally didn't mean but couldn't control. Immediately I felt sorry for it.

"Yeah, I mean, you're a woman? Why would a woman be named George?"

I froze for a split second, staring at Frankie wide eyed. But Carl started to roar with laughter and pounded the bar, overcome in the hilarity of Frankie's greenhorn mistake. "Naw, naw, George ain't no woman, Frankie!" he laughed jovially, his belly bouncing like a black Santa Claus.

"Yeah, I'm...not a woman," I said slowly.

Frankie looked very confused and didn't partake in Carl's laughter.

I was left with the weirdest feeling I had ever felt in my life that night as Frankie stared at me. An eerie feeling that started from my heart and crawled up into my veins all over my body. It felt like fuzz, strange clouds of wonder as I stared at that young man staring at me with equal wonder in his eyes.

As Carl went on about his wife and his daughter and how things were going in his home, Frankie and I just looked at each other like two new fawns on a fateful spring morning. For we both knew this meeting was not coincidence. We both knew our lives were forever changed, fate going into motion which neither of us could control. A fate which would define us, change us. Take over us.