If I didn’t get out much, it didn’t matter; in Los Angeles, there were always people around. I never had to think about it. Nick the weed dealer and I could sneak off alone whenever he dropped by Mary’s, so it wasn’t like I needed to date. Mary herself threw house parties constantly, and included me as a guest, not an employee. I was always welcome. Part of the group. Never looked down upon.

Maybe that’s what my fear of NYC is all about. Here, I feel unwelcome.

Now I have way too much time on my hands and no one to share it with.

Okay. Let’s think. What would Mary say about tonight’s events?

There’s one surefire way to find out. It’s only six p.m. in California, not that that’s good or bad; arbitrary concepts like “time” don’t mean much to Mary.

A voice picks up on the fourth ring.

“Mary, Fuck, Kill, how may I direct your call?” says a smooth male voice.

Stunned, I hang up. My heart beats triple time in my chest. I feel light-headed, and my arms and fingers tingle, the way they always did after a ten-hour day typing. I’m having phantom tendinitis pains from a job I haven’t held in months.

Tears fill my eyes. I’m so stupid. I should have known.

She’s replaced me.

She’s replaced me with someone who doesn’t choke on the name of the company.

I wipe my eyes and shake my head. She told me I was the best assistant she ever had, and I guess I thought that meant she wouldn’t be using an assistant anymore. That after me, she’d just, I don’t know, muddle through or something. Focus on adapting her memoir for the stage like she’d always planned to.

Talk about ridiculous. I was her assistant, not her partner, even if she did ask my opinion on the scripts and let me pitch jokes. Just because she gave me an associate title, just because she sent her car service around to pick me up when I had the flu so she could look after me in her guest room and feed me matzo ball soup from Canter’s Deli, and just because she took me and Nana to Catalina Island for Nana’s birthday, and just because I thought . . . I thought . . .

Okay, get a grip.

After answering her correspondence for eight years and editing her dictation, you know her almost better than you know herself. So. What would Mary say about Bree? Probably something along the lines of, “When life hands you lemons, make Amaretto Sours.”