The Polo Lounge at the Beverly Hills Hotel is just about as old as old Hollywood gets. Though it is still a place where power breakfasts are played out and celebrities meet their agents for lunch, it is also undeniably anachronistic and tourist-trappy, especially during the dinner hour. The pink-and-green color scheme, the perfumed ladies with facelifts and set hair, the meticulously elaborate settings of crystal and silver—it all screams bygone era. It is not hard to imagine that Debbie Reynolds came to this very room to nurse her wounds while projecting chin-up determination after that minx Elizabeth Taylor stole Eddie Fisher away. So I am not a little perplexed when Jennifer Aniston decides that this is where we are to meet one Thursday afternoon for lunch in early February.

When I arrive at the maître'd station at the appointed time and announce that I'm here to see Aniston, I am whisked away to table 46—the table—a large, round corner booth all the way in the farthest corner of the room. So this is J.A.'s secret hideout. Ingenious! Who would ever think to look for her here? Still, I am puzzled. It is a beautiful, sunny day, and sitting in the dark swank of a hotel bar is not exactly Aniston's style. The first time I met her, in May 2002, she showed up in cutoffs and a tank top, flip-flops, and toe rings. Despite the lurky presence of paparazzi, we window-shopped on Beverly and ate pizza at some random little Italian joint. The next time we met, in the fall of 2003, we sat out on the patio of Il Sole, a supercasual hipster spot on Sunset, smoking cigarettes and drinking too much wine while, again, photographers lay in wait for her. Has the woman who famously loves cheap Mexican food and margaritas grown up and gone fancy? Or perhaps she's taken her new role as divorcée a step too far. I half expect her to make an entrance in a fur coat and Laura Biagiotti sunglasses.

"A Profile in Courage" has been edited for Style.com; the complete story appears in the April 2006 issue of Vogue.

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