"I can't believe he actually padlocked the door."
"I can. Bolted, plywood, and padlocked."
Mark rattled the door handle as if to confirm that it was really locked. Pulling his coat tighter around his body, he turned to Roger and Mimi. He had found them here a few minutes ago contemplating the locked door, indifferent and almost oblivious to the chaos that was going on around them.
The police had finally managed to wrestle the crowd out of the lot, but the result was that the group just began an angry riot that spread from Avenue B up to Avenue E in a matter of minutes. Mark had been filming the rage and destruction, fascinated by the group mentality of the rioters, when the tape in his camera ran out. He was walking back to the loft when he spotted Mimi and Roger from down the street. He had paused, hesitant to disturb them. They were both leaning against the dark gray building talking quietly, as if they couldn't hear the yelling and shattering sounds carrying from the riot down the street. Roger was staring down at the small hands he held in his own, and Mark had seen something in his friend's face that had been missing for months. He had smiled and turned to sneak away when Roger looked up and saw him.
"Mark! Come here, you're not going to believe this," Roger had called, unaware that Joanne had already explained the situation.
"Well... what are we going to do?" Mark asked now.
Roger had a tentatively possessive arm around Mimi's thin, shivering shoulders. She rubbed her hands together, looking around at the snow that was steadily falling from the sky and turning gray on the sidewalk.
"What a fuck-up," she said. "I actually paid my rent this month."
Mark smiled as he took off his glasses to wipe the snow from the lenses. "Sorry about that."
"It's cool. I have some friends who can take care of us until we get our damn door open again."
Mark implicitly knew, watching the way that Mimi's arm wound around Roger, that 'us' did not include him. He sighed, trying to reconcile himself to the only course of action he had left.
"I guess I'll go to Maureen's," he said. "I happen to know from experience that her couch is pretty comfortable."
Roger smiled and punched his friend in the arm. "Have fun."
"Better than sleeping on the street."
"Keep telling yourself that, man."
*
Maureen was wiping tears from her eyes when she answered the door.
"Hi," was her pathetic greeting. She gestured into her apartment. "I figured you'd be coming; I made the couch up for you."
Mark stood in the doorway, taken aback. This is hardly what he had expected. Maureen was capable of producing the necessary amount of any given emotion when needed, but sincere tears from her were a true rarity. He had come prepared to impose on a cool, indifferent woman but instead found a considerate, tearful mess.
"Maureen?" he said as she turned to walk into her apartment, his voice sounding pitifully pained even in his own ears.
She turned back to face his wide eyes. Her lower lip trembled.
"Joanne broke up with me," she said, dissolving into tears.
She walked toward Mark, burying her face in her hands. He held his arms out in disbelief as Maureen crumbled against him, sobbing softly. Slowly, he let his arms close around her, trying to comfort her as best as he could without noticing how warm she was or how her hair smelled exactly the way he remembered. He shifted awkwardly to close the front door of her apartment and carefully led her to the couch where she cried against his chest. Mark stayed completely still and silent, still half-stunned and afraid that any movement would drive her away. Maureen was a physical person, but only on her own terms and rarely in an affectionate way. He couldn't remember the last time he had held her while she cried; she so hated to admit any weakness or vulnerability in herself.
"Shh, Maureen," Mark finally said when she had seemed to calm a little. "Tell me what happened."
That immediately broke the spell, and Maureen pulled away from him hastily. She stood and angrily swiped the tears from her eyes, leaving Mark on the couch with arms that felt suddenly empty, but relieved.
"It was so stupid!" she growled, pacing across the room. "Melissa kissed me at dinner, and apparently Joanne saw it. It was totally innocent Mark, but she went off about how I was unfaithful and how she couldn't trust me or..."
A tear squeezed out of Maureen's eyes. "Damnit!" She dropped abruptly into a chair, holding her head in her hands. "What the hell is wrong with me?"
Mark leaned forward, meaning to push a stray lock of hair away from her face, but instead placed a hand on her knee. He had been on the other side of this game more times than he cared to remember, and at that moment all of his empathy was with Joanne. Maureen could be so cruel without even realizing it; part of him had never forgiven her for the offenses she had committed against him. He wondered if she even realized what she had done to Joanne. He wondered - and doubted - if she had ever been this upset over one of their numerous break-ups.
"Maureen.." he said, still uncomfortable with the fragile, emotional side of this woman who had been so many different things to him. He was unsure of what he could say to her about something that he himself still resented.
"She'll never change her mind about this," Maureen whispered from beneath a curtain of hair. "She's so damn stubborn; she's not like-"
"Not like me," he interrupted, "who always came crawling back."
Maureen looked up at him with tortured eyes. That, at least, made him feel a little better. "God - Mark - I'm sorry. I didn't mean to..."
"It's okay," Mark replied with a slight smile. "I know it's the truth. I could never stay away from you, no matter how hard I tried."
That was too close to the truth. He looked away hastily, before her eyes could meet his again.
"Well, something tells me that Joanne won't have that problem," Maureen replied bitingly as she stood again, clamping down on her tears. "Do you, um, want some coffee? I can't believe that asshole locked up your building."
"No thanks, I'm fine."
Maureen started banging around her tiny kitchen, looking for coffee filters and trying to cover up the emotional outburst that she was beginning to feel ashamed about. She glanced over the counter that separated her living room from the kitchen to where Mark sat on the sofa, looking quietly around the room. It surprised her to realize just how worn and tired he looked.
"Where's Roger?" she asked. His expression was tired too, but she was relieved to find the familiar smile in his eyes when he turned to look at her. If things were so bad that Mark was visibly depressed, there was no hope for any of them.
"He and Mimi are staying with a friend of hers until... well, until I don't know what."
"Until Benny cuts the crap and let's you back into your apartment," she said brusquely, walking back into the living room. "Can I take your coat? My heat's actually working."
Mark smiled, but his hands fidgeted. The tension in the room, which had been holding Mark paralyzed, finally reached Maureen who rarely felt an uncomfortable emotion. She had a skin thick enough to ignore or even fail to notice anything unpleasant to her, but the weight of the air in her tiny apartment was suddenly unmistakable.
When Maureen had moved out of the loft and into her own place, Mark had practically followed her. He spent most nights there when they weren't fighting - holding her gently while she slept, as if he feared she would break - and slept many nights on the couch whenever they were. She found it strange that she would feel uncomfortable with him, of all people; he knew her better than anyone else had in a long time. And after all, she had seen Mark every week in the lot since their break-up when he was setting up for her shows. She had never felt a moment of discomfort then. Maybe it was because they were here, in her apartment, where they had shared so many things and where she had a decided advantage. He was out of his element, and he suddenly looked very small.
Was this how Mark always felt around her now? The thought had never occurred to her before. Their relationship had always been so uneven in so many ways. Mark was constant and committed, whereas Maureen's only constancy came in the fact that she consistently cheated. She could never say the word 'love', but his every look and action proved it. When she looked at him, she remembered the way that his warmth and quiet kind of intensity used to fascinate her. She remembered how he could always find a reason to smile even when he was at his most frustrated, the way it always made him feel guilty whenever she was bitchy to a bad waitress, or how they used to break out into song and dance on the street just to see what kind of looks they would get. But these memories didn't stir much more than warm emotions for the Mark that had been her friend and ally against the world, and because of that she had never considered that Mark might still be in love with her. She had never considered anything.
Maureen suddenly realized how much it must have taken for him to come here.
Mark stood, unaware of Maureen's thoughts, and walked toward a closet, unwinding his scarf from his neck slowly. With his back toward her, he said in a deliberate voice, "You know, I'd be willing to bet that Joanne can't stay away from you either. I know she's crazy about you."
My God! He was even trying to comfort her over the end of a relationship that had started out as one of her many affairs.
She was a bitch.
Mark hung his coat on a hanger and placed his camera on a high shelf in the closet, closing the door softly and turning to look at Maureen. His expression was the same as it had ever been: honest and a little hopeful despite anything. But the eyes had changed. She used to know exactly how much he loved her, just by the look in his eyes. He was always silently inviting her to trust him and to love him. Those were both things she had never been able to fully do, and he had - strangely - never reproached her for it. He had just waited patiently for the day when she would, always seeming to believe that it would come. But now there was a wall that held him back from her, and she knew that she had lost him and that love forever.
Maureen sighed heavily, suddenly exhausted by the weight of that night's activities.
"I'm going to bed," she said sadly. "It's been a long night. Is there anything I can get you?"
He smiled, walking toward her. "I know my way around." He leaned forward to kiss her forehead chastely. "Goodnight Maureen."
Feeling sad and confused and completely out of control, Maureen tried to smile for him and walked down the small hallway to her bedroom. She glanced back at Mark, who was unfolding the blanket she had left at the end of the sofa, before closing her door and falling into a troubled sleep.
*
Mark lay awake long after the sliver of light beneath Maureen's door had disappeared. So what if he had never stopped loving her? It was hardly a secret, and it certainly didn't change anything. Joanne would forgive her, or Maureen would move on; he knew the scenario better than anyone. Besides, he wasn't an idiot; he knew their break-up was for the best, that it had always been inevitable, and that he would get over it. In most ways he already had, but knowing that she was on the other side of that wall sleeping in the bed where he used to lay beside her made him crazy.
Damn it!
Mark yanked the thick blue blanket off and sat up, the voices inside of his head making him suddenly restless.
"This isn't working!"
"Of course it isn't working! How could it with you doing your best to ruin anything we might have?"
Mark stood and walked to the kitchen, quietly pouring himself a glass of water. He leaned against the countertop, looking at the little flowers on Maureen's windowsill drowning in light from the street lamps outside. He remembered how excited she had been when she had finally saved enough money for her own apartment. It was the first time she could afford to live on her own since she moved to New York City from the small Pennsylvania farm town she had grown up in. When Mark had met her, she was with a much older cousin who talked too little and smoked too much. Their instant and unlikely attraction developed quickly, and Mark remembered with embarrassed hindsight how he had felt like a typical gallant knight, melodramatically saving her from the smoke-breathing dragon and whisking her off to his castle on the corner of Avenue B to live happily ever after. It was a good plan, but he had faltered in the execution.
No one was ever sure of exactly how many people were living in the loft, between Benny's numerous girlfriends and various friends that needed a temporary bed in bad times. There always seemed to be a little room for one more though. Makeshift walls and beds were constructed in the studio when the need arose, and a turbulent - but basically happy - kind of family developed for a short time. Everyone found something there that they needed. Mark was at his most creative and productive then, and the films he was able to produce excited him. He felt like he belonged somewhere for the first time in a long time.
But everything began to fall apart so quickly that none of them was able to prepare for it. Benny became more and more obsessed with money; he was consumed by the idea of escaping from 'bohemian hell' to make it big. It changed him, and by the time he married Allison, most of the people in the loft were glad to see him go. Mark and Maureen fought almost constantly. Their relationship became a dizzying roller-coaster ride of extreme highs and lows. His need to detach and her inability to trust pushed them farther and farther apart. She moved out, and Mark spent more time at her apartment than in the loft, trying to save a relationship that he wasn't always sure was worth saving. Roger's occasional drug use escalated into a full-blown addiction that affected every aspect of his life and the lives of everyone else. April was cheating. Collins, the happy, laid back peacemaker, couldn't take the turmoil and moved out.
"How could you do this?"
"How can you ask me that!"
After a few months Mark, Roger, and April were the only three left in the loft. Mark was at Maureen's whenever their off-again-on-again relationship was on again, and one of those times happened to be the night that April took a razor to her wrists. Mark wasn't there, and though he knew it probably wouldn't have changed anything, he had never forgiven himself for it. Marcy, a friend who lived in the loft below theirs, ran to Maureen's apartment and banged on the door until she woke them up. Mark could still remember what Marcy was wearing when he stumbled drowsily to the door. She was soaked from the rain that was pouring outside, and even in that moment of crisis the filmmaker in him could appreciate the divine dramatic gesture.
Mark and Maureen rushed breathlessly into the emergency room of the hospital only to find Roger slumped in a plastic waiting room chair in a state of numbed shock. The doctors had pronounced April dead-on-arrival only minutes before. Roger had never really spoken after that, not really, and Mark would have given anything to have been able to be there for him.
Mark refilled his glass of water and walked over to the windowsill. Maureen's little flowers were drooping and the edges of their red petals were beginning to turn brown. She had obviously neglected to water them for some time. He carefully poured water into their individual pots, watching the way the crumbling soil greedily sucked up the moisture.
"You don't know how hard this has been for me-"
"You're right, I don't know, because you never tell me!"
Mark sighed. He turned the empty cup upside down beside the sink and went back to lay down on the couch.
"I love you."
"I know.. but it's just not enough anymore."
Eventually, he fell asleep.