" "It's like I said: He's home standing up his own dream. He doesn't want to be in it, so he let's us play our parts without him." "Buddy! Will you st...p it with the 'This isn't real life' bit, already!?" "Hello, everybody!" "You want proof, there!" Buddy rose to his feet. "What proof!? It's Laura!" Sally said to Buddy, before saying, "Hello, Laura. Is Rob with you?" "That *is* Rob!" Buddy insisted. "Buddy!!" "What's going on?" "Oh, Buddy's on one of his kicks, again," Sally looked at him under. “Are you okay?” “No,” I said, “I don’t think I am.” She dropped the script on the counter, and sat down next to me on the couch, putting her arm around me and hugging me. At the contact, I started crying again. She comforted me and shushed me while I wept and blubbered in front of her. She put her hand on my head and smoothed my hair, and rocked me back and forth and listened to me complain about Paul and how stupid I’d been and how humiliated I was. I don’t know how long we sat there, me. Not for the first time, I wondered why I bothered to come to these things. The music was usually shite - even the good bands too out of it to play and the PA often a bodged together pile of crap - and I'd never really been a sociable soul, so meeting lots of interesting new people was hardly the incentive, either. Even if you could find someone capable of having a conversation about something other than some tantric bollocks or what the best acid around was. Actually, finding anyone capable of. ’ She bumped her shoulder against Vholes affectionately. ‘Simon was horrified, of course. But I begged him to take me so I wouldn’t get assigned to someone else. That’s the first time he gave me Dreamwalker tea. And we came here, together.’ She switched the baby to her other breast. ‘I was somewhat more attractive in those days,’ Vholes added wryly. ‘Before anyone asks,’ Anna continued, ‘yes, we were lovers. Both in this world and in the other. From time to time. And Simon was more than.