The emotional aftermath of my visit with Neil was brutal. While I’d thought seeing him would make me miss him less, it only made my longing for him worse. So, too, did the hope I had now. Neil hadn’t been catatonic or miserable. He was actually getting better. Knowing that, somehow, made waiting for him interminable.
Worse, Olivia was going to be gone for ten days. Ten days, and over her first birthday. I wouldn’t be there to celebrate, and I seethed with envy knowing that Valerie would get to have that milestone without us. It was weird, how much Olivia had started to feel like my kid, instead of someone else’s. More and more, the guilt attached to those feelings seemed to ebb. Without her, I was really going to be alone and with nowhere to direct that energy. Mom would be in Cabo with Tony, and I supposed I could go back to work in Brooklyn, but I’d been gone for so long I would just be a pain in the ass around the office. So, I ended up spending the first two days of my alone time working from home, before abandoning myself to despair.
On day four, Deja threatened me with an emergency visit from Holli. On day five, she delivered.
I was laying on the floor in the den, listening to Boys for Pele and eating cookies when I had the will to lift my head. Then, I heard Holli’s voice somewhere in the house, shouting “I drove all the way out here, bitch, you better not be hiding from me!”
“I’m in here,” I called, reaching for another Oreo. I took a miserable bite and rested my head back on the carpet.
I listened to Holli’s footsteps and waited for her shoes to come into view. Her perfect black ballet flats stopped just inches from my nose.
“What the fuck are you doing?” she demanded.
I lifted my head to look her in the eye. “I like your shoes.”
She looked around, perplexed, as “Talulah” blasted over the sound system. “Jesus Christ. Is this Tori Amos? Are you listening to Tori Amos and crying?”
“No. I’m listening to Tori Amos and eating floor cookies,” I corrected her. “It’s different.”
“You’re different. And not in a good way. How do I turn this harpsichord shit off?” She walked to the nearest panel on the wall.
“She speaks to me,” I mumbled, turning my face back to the rug.
“No, she doesn’t. She speaks to Neil Gaiman and girls who collect porcelain fairies and that’s it.” The music cut off, and Holli came back. “How high are you?”
“Very,” I admitted.
“And your last shower was…”
“Last night, actually.” I left off the part where I’d been sitting on the floor, sobbing and trying to keep water from getting into my wine.
“Okay. Get up. You’re getting cookie all over your white carpet.” She gently toed my side. “Get up. Get up.”
“Okay! God!” I snapped. “You know, my life is in fucking shambles, do you really have to be such a bitch?”
“It would be bitchy if I didn’t help.”
She had a point.
Taking the hand she offered, I got to my feet and brushed the crumbs off my shirt.
“You are going to go take a shower, and I’m gonna take a luxurious dump in one of your many fantastic bathrooms,” she instructed. “Then, we are going to get blazing high and watch Charmed.”
“I threw out all Neil’s drugs,” I told her. “Except for the weed. And that’s gone. Right down to the stems.”
She raised an eyebrow.
“But you obviously brought your own.”
I went to the master bath and took a shower like she instructed, put on clean clothes—I’d slept in the ones she’d found me in—and tried my hardest to raise my energy level above everything-sucks-and-I-want-to-sleep-until-it’s-over. Having Holli here, and having a sense of purpose—even if that purpose was to just watch Netflix—was helping.
“Where are you?” I asked over the house-wide intercom, and she answered back, “In the movie theater.”
Shortly after moving in, Neil had remodeled part of the walk-out basement level with a home theater similar to the one we had in the Fifth Avenue penthouse. The difference with this one was that, rather than individual seats like a real movie theatre, there was one huge, square pit with a padded floor and tons of throw pillows to just wallow on.
“How much semen do you think is on this thing?” Holli asked, patting the squishy floor beside where she lay stretched out on her side. “You can give your estimate in gallons, if you need to.”
“Ew, gross.” I stuck out my tongue at her.