She didn't bother trying to hold back the tears this time. That would have been a futile effort, and besides, she thought, she was more than entitled to them.

When she finished, she didn't know for how long she had stood there weeping. Just that it had been a long time.

She reached for her bag, searching for something to wipe away the tears and reapply her makeup when she saw two objects that grabbed her attention.

On the right was the little orange pill bottle, exactly where she had placed it at the beginning of the week. It was hard to believe, but she had almost forgotten that she had left them there over the past few days. There were a few moments when she'd wanted them, but they had been fleeting. But then, she had never been set up for heartbreak quite like this since, well, since the last time she'd taken a few of the .

On the left was her phone. The little light indicating that she had a message was on. She remembered that she'd promised to meet up with her friends later. They must have started texting and calling when she hadn't shown up.

She could take the phone and call her friends back, saying she'd meet them at the bar. She could quite clearly use a shot - or a fifth - of vodka. And when combined with the warm, boozy afterglow of inebriation, the sympathy she'd be sure to receive would be soothing, gratifying, and reinvigorating.

Or she could take the pills. They'd take a while to kick in, but she had a bottle of whiskey in the cabinet back at home, and that could bridge the gap in the mean time. And when they did take effect, the artificial euphoria they provided would make everything seem perfectly fine.

She thought about taking the pills and heading to the bar briefly, but the logistics of the situation just didn't add up. Not like in Boston. Even putting in a token appearance at the bar would lead to questions about why she was leaving so early, questions that would delay her from getting back to the apartment on time. And she was in no mood to encounter anyone in the business while she was still under the influence. As it turned out, she still had something to lose, however meager it may have seemed.

No, it was one or the other. Drinks at the bar or pills back at her place.

So which was it going to be, she wondered, booze or pills?

Booze or pills?

She let out a sigh and picked up the phone.

It was odd, she briefly thought, that almost nobody would find it anything less than completely and totally understandable that she was sitting here in a bar pouring what looked and felt like half of the GDP of Russia down her throat, but if anyone thought that she'd taken the pills again, the whispers about her being "unstable" and "uncastable, not even for the chorus" would stop being whispers and become a settled consensus. But she quickly moved on from pondering the comparative morality and perception of the various forms of self-medication to amusing herself by watching her friends' indignation on her behalf. It was terrible and unfair and cruel, they had unanimously agreed.

And then she heard someone, she couldn't be sure who, suggest that she try and see if she knew anyone who might be able to lend her the money to cover the extra insurance payment.

Now there was an idea. Who did she know that could help her out?

Tom might be able to. He'd almost certainly at least promise to try and chip in. Sure, "never lend money to your friends" was a cliche for a reason, but she knew that she'd pay him back as soon as she could, and so did he. And lots of people helped pay for their kids to go to school and this was sort of the same thing, she thought, an investment in her future. And sure, she was biased, but dammit, she was still a pretty good investment.

But then, even if he would, he might not have the cash. Tom's money was tied up in his place, and sure, Heaven on Earth was a hit now but there was no guarantee that it would last much longer. There was never any guarantee that any show would last. And there was no guarantee Bombshell, or any other show, would be a success. His future income was uncertain and would always be uncertain.

But while she was on the subject of parents investing in their kids, there was always her actual parents. Leigh had retired a while ago, but Daddy was still working. He was a partner at a small boutique investment firm, although she had no idea what he actually did. She had heard words like "private equity," "mezzanine capital," "leveraged buyout," and "secondary markets" being tossed around while she was growing up, but they had always gone over her head, never managing to catch her interest. But regardless of precisely how the money was made, her family did not lack for cash. They had enough to cover the insurance.

Or at least, they probably did. Although the big house in Greenwich wasn't close to being paid off, and then there was that dealership that Jimmy had convinced Daddy to invest in. Evidently, her big brother hadn't realized that opening a series of luxury car dealerships in the wake of a financial crisis and the resulting recession and then expanding in the midst of the Occupy movement and the ensuing governmental and regulatory pushback against Wall Street and the affluent was not a sound business strategy, not even in the tony suburbs of Westchester County, New York and Fairfield County, Connecticut. Now he was in danger of losing the business and with it, a hefty chunk of Daddy's cash. Well, she thought, there was a reason why he was now taking evening classes and getting his MBA. Clearly, business school still had plenty to teach him.

"What, like my family?" she asked aloud. "Clearly you don't know them very well."

Bobby, replied with "No we don't. You've never told us about them. We had to find out Leigh Conroy was your mother when she showed up at the workshop."

"And we still don't know anything about your dad," added Dennis.

"He works on Wall Street. Well, not actually on Wall Street, but he's in Wall Street, except he's in Connecticut. Wait, that doesn't make sense either. I mean, he's a Wall Streeter in Connecticut? Yeah, that works. Okay, I've had too much to drink but you know what I mean. He's based in Connecticut, but he's in finance. His firm has an office downtown and he visits the city on business about every other week. He hasn't been to see me once this year."

And despite all that, she thought, he was still about ten times as supportive as Leigh had ever been. Sure, Jimmy had always been the favorite and sure, Daddy had always been busy, but when he was there, he always had a kind word for her. That was something Leigh could never say.

"But there's also your mom," Jessica said cheerfully, attempting to fill the awkward silence that had resulted from Ivy's description of her father and accidentally stumbling on to an even more awkward subject. "I mean, she's Leigh Conroy. That must have been a real experience growing up with her. Remember when she sang to you at the workshop?"

"She wasn't singing to me," Ivy said, disgustedly. The excited way that her friends were saying her mother's name, the way that none of them had picked up on her discontent with that subject, either now or back in the workshop, was making her feel particularly unwanted and worthless. "She was singing at me. There's a difference. I can't remember her ever singing to me, actually. I've never been anything more to her than just another prop in the Leigh Conroy show."

"We're sorry," Jessica said meekly.

"In our defense, she did win a Tony," added Bobby.

"It's so heartwarming to know that our friendship can be so easily sidetracked by some shiny awards," snipped Ivy.

"What he means is that the Tony proves that she's one hell of an actress," replied Jessica, slapping Bobby on the shoulder, "and we were taken in by the act. Come on, give us a break here, we're sorry. How about we buy you another drink?"

"Make it a double and we'll see."

A/N: Again, thanks for reading/reviewing.

Guest - I'm glad you decided to start reading this and that you like it so far! And thank you for your comments. I don't think I've portrayed anyone as thinking that Karen is untalented, and if it's coming across that way then I'm not writing it clearly enough. Here's what I was going for: I don't think experience is solely about "paying your dues" and "waiting your turn." That's part of it, yes, but that's not all of it. So what I was trying to do was portray how Karen's inexperience presents her with more substantive drawbacks beyond just "being new and naive" and that those disadvantages do show up in rehearsal. In the last chapter, it wasn't that Karen couldn't handle the song vocally, but that she was having trouble getting all the nuances of the number and taking the right tone in her interpretation to make it fit in with everything else. It's not that she doesn't have the chops so much as she just can't pick things up as quickly and requires a bit more direction, even if she usually does get it right in the end. Similarly, in the chapter before that, it takes Ivy three tries to put in her new moves while Karen requires the entire day plus some extra help, and Ivy directly credits her many years in the chorus for helping her figure out how to fix things. Ivy's taking a less charitable interpretation of things and focusing on the negatives because she still thinks she deserved the part (and in many ways, she does) and there's still some resentment there. She might have been getting better, but it is a process and it's only been about a week. But I don't think she thinks of Karen as talentless either.