Alice was pretty sure that her most recent assigned project from the studio was direct punishment for her latest Dana-related embarrassment on the air.  She hadn’t planned on talking about Dana and had frankly avoided any topic that would remind her of Dana since her best friend’s death…but how was she supposed to control what people who called in said?  Was it not her responsibility as talk show host to address all of the questions raised by her astute listeners?  Well, that may be a reasonable justification if it had truly been the caller who cajoled Alice into her latest on-air debacle.

            It was now about 9 months after Dana had passed and things were finally starting to normalize after the Canadian fiasco.  Shane had wandered back to L.A. after doing a lot of drugs, Carmen was no where to be seen, Bette had visitation rights with Angelica and Tina had split up with Henry.  Not that things were exactly normal, but more accurately, there was stasis.  No new craziness but just the persistence of an altered universe that now spun without Dana to keep Alice sane. 

Al found herself spending more and more time with Helena.  Since the brit had been cut off by mummy-dearest, Alice invited her to sublet one of her spare rooms.  Although everyone thought Alice was being rather generous to Helena, in reality Alice really needed someone around to prevent her from self-destructing.  Lara did her best, but she had a low threshold for how Alice dealt with grief.  Although both women were mourning the loss of the love of their lives, Alice was somehow convinced that Lara would never understand how she felt and pushed her farther and farther away.  Lara couldn’t take it any longer and retreated to Paris. 

The two women handled the exact same situation in vastly different ways.  Alice numbed her pain by pushing everyone away and Lara required ultimate intimacy.  Alice just wanted to extract highs from drugs and orgasms and Lara wanted to process every emotion in exhausting soul searching dialogue.  The connection was just too tenuous to maintain.  Each one hurt the other by refusing to provide what was needed to cope.

After Lara left, Alice welcomed Helena into her apartment.  Helena had tried to keep her beach home, but just could not afford the lifestyle any longer.  She was working long hours at the studio and for the first time in her life, she felt the urgency of employment.  She no longer held the position of a privileged philanthropist and felt herself changing from her newfound obligations to make a living.  She found herself making more sound decisions in all arenas of her life, not just financial.  Helena had certainly not lost her passion, but she was beginning to just be a bit more thoughtful.  Helena was mutually eager to stay with Alice given that she still found herself ruminating about Dylan.