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.