I must fall asleep on the way home, because when I return to awareness, it’s still nighttime and I’m in my bed.
I sit up, blinking at my bedroom. The lamp is on. There’s a cup of water next to me, a note with Alex’s cell number on it, and Dolly’s half-man, half-woman costume laid out on the chair in the corner.
Well that’s great. I finally got him to come upstairs, but I slept through the whole thing.
A glance at the clock shows the time. It’s only eleven.
Through the walls, muffled sobbing.
My heart drops.
No. No no no no.
I don’t know what to do. I sink deeper in the bed and press my palms to my eyes. This shouldn’t be happening. I fixed it. We fixed it. No one should be crying.
Dolly seemed okay, but apparently not.
Why? She’s in the show, she nailed the audition . . . Why didn’t that work?
Was it Harry not showing up, or something else?
There has to be a way to fix this. Whatever it is, I’m going to figure it out.
Chapter Sixteen
“Sprinkle me.”
I roll over in bed. The note Alex left me is gone. Dammit, I should have put it in the magic closet as a keepsake or something.
Knock knock knock.
“Hugo! Come on, man, it can’t be that bad.”
Hugo.
The crying. He seemed okay last I remember. He was smiling, we were laughing. But what do I know, I was a giggly, drunken buffoon.
“It’s Monday! I have a call in thirty minutes. Help me out here, huh?”
What would make this day better for Hugo? Maybe it was the booze. This time, I’ll do a repeat but make it so we don’t get so drunk. Alcohol makes everyone sloppy. It’s a depressant. Maybe if he gets into the show but then doesn’t get all drunk, he’ll be happier and less likely to cry. It’s worth a shot.
Keeping a six foot seven glamazon queen sober when she’s in a celebratory frame of mind is a lot harder than I thought it would be.
I get accused of being a Polly puritan pussy and manage to limit her to a couple drinks instead of twelve, but it doesn’t help. We get home and she still cries loud enough to be heard through the apartment walls. So maybe it’s not the booze.
I try other things. Maybe if we talk more about Harry, Hugo will feel better. Maybe he needs to get it out there, share it so it won’t haunt him.
I even try to find the elusive Harry. Maybe if Hugo had some kind of closure it would help? Could I get Harry to at least show up and talk? Ugh. No, that won’t work. He sounds like a terrible person and what if it makes everything worse? I wouldn’t even know where to start anyway.
In addition to working on Hugo’s mental state, I spend more and more of my days designing and stuffing projects into my magic closet.
Maybe I should go back to at least making an attempt to keep the job I have, to avoid, you know, homelessness and such. If the day moves on, I might be totally screwed out of a job and out of a good reference since I pulled a no-call no-show.
But the days don’t move forward and I’m not going to worry about it. For now.
It’s surprisingly easy to not worry about my job when I have dresses to work on, designs to mull over and try out. I experiment and try new things. I make Dolly dresses and I even manage to get measurements for Bee and Fifi so I can experiment with different fabrics, colors, and styles depending on height and body type.
The work never lasts. If they take it home, it disappears into the ether overnight never to be seen again, but I make some replicas of the good stuff they like and save them for . . . someday. It will happen eventually, right? It has to.
I forgot how much I enjoyed creating something beautiful from nothing, the rush of adrenaline when I finish a project, the hum of the sewing machine under my hands. Not to mention the joy on Fifi’s face when I hand her the lush purple satin A-line dress, and the squeal and exuberant hug I get from Queen Bee when I show her the gold lamé ball gown.
“You should sell these things, baby.”
“Oh no, I couldn’t do that. It’s just a hobby.”
She holds the dress up, shaking it in my face. “This is not just a hobby. You are lying to yourself, but you can’t lie to Queen Bee. Anyone would pay good money for this attention to detail. It’s beautiful. Let them have it! The world deserves your gift.”
I blush, but not in an oh-my-gosh-I’m-so-embarrassed normal way, in a oh-my-gosh-she-actually-likes-it-and-I-was-sure-it-was-terrible way.
Actually, the stuttering and racing heart and tunnel caving in around me have continued to get better. My anxiety hasn’t totally disappeared, but the normal extreme symptoms lessen with each passing day. Is it because I’m distracted with a specific purpose each day, giving me something else to focus on? Or because I know none of it matters since the reset button gets hit every night? Some kind of combination of all these things?
I don’t know, but it’s got to be a good sign. Right, universe?
But the universe, that salty bitch, doesn’t respond.
And the days don’t move on. And every night, Hugo cries.
I try everything I can think of. I design a dozen beautiful dresses and wait to give them to him at the end of the night, when we get home. Something to make him happy before bed?
Doesn’t work.
I get Dolly to open up a little bit about her depression one evening when we get back to the apartment. Maybe if she lets it out, if I can give her comfort before we part ways, she’ll feel better, and there will be no late-night weeping.
So I go to her apartment with her, under the pretense of getting the costume back once she changes out
