Summary: Four moments in Benny's life…if he had never married Alison Grey of the Westport Greys. Pre-RENT and during RENT AU. Benny/Alison, Benny/Mimi, implied Roger/Mimi.
Warnings: drug references, language
Disclaimer: I do not own RENT, any of its characters, including and especially Benny, Allison, Roger, Mark, or Mimi, or any of its settings
x
I. March 1988
They have a simple relationship. Once a week, sometimes twice, they fuck against the grainy sheets he pulls tight over his mattress, or surrounded by the feather pillows of her bed. If they are at his place, she takes a taxi home just before dawn; he always offers to pay and she always declines. If they are at her place, he doesn't wait for the sky to turn its first subtle shade of light blue. He leaves in the darkest part of the night, and walks back to the loft, knowing that she is lying awake worrying about him.
He is her rebellion. She doesn't know it, wouldn't like it if he told her, but she is his, too.
One day, the sky already streaked with pink, the streetlight at the corner of Avenue A still on and the tiny sparks of its light glowing in her hair, she proposes. It is the last thing he expects.
He will realize later, looking back on the moment from the safety of a suitable mental and physical distance, that he wanted to say yes. In that moment, his hands gripping her waist and her eyes bright and pleading, looking into his, the thing he wanted most was to say yes.
But instead he bites his lip and closes his eyes and shakes his head. He can't even say the word, but it doesn't matter. When he opens his eyes he is gripping nothing but air, and a taxi is already rolling down the street away from him.
x
II. February 1989
More than anything else, Benny hates his job. He hates wearing a bowtie. He hates waiting on snotty rich people. He hates putting up with their attitude, as if they were so much better, as if they didn't know that his feet ache from standing, that his jaw hurts from smiling his fake smile, that he does all of this for minimum wage. He hates that they don't know these things. They look at him as if he stood there listening to their orders—of food so expensive he would have to save for weeks for one meal alone—just for fun.
The loft is empty when he gets back. He gets rid of the tie first, and the shoes second, and then he walks to the bathroom to take a piss, stops himself at the door. There is still blood on the wall above the tub. He wonders: what did she do—rub her slit wrists against the grainy gray cement as they bled out? He's surprised she didn't write her suicide note in blood.
He is still standing, staring into the room, when the door to the loft slides open. He turns around. Roger is dragging his feet, his eyes downcast, his skin unnaturally pale and his hair a scraggly, half-bleached mess, falling over his eyes. Mark is standing one step behind him, one hand to Roger's back. Benny doesn't even have to read Roger to know. He can look at Mark's face, his steady, aching gaze that Roger will not return, and know all that is to be known.
He manages to ask only, "Are you—?"
Mark nods slowly. Roger doesn't say anything, doesn't make any movement but to throw a folded piece of paper down on the table. Benny glances at it, but doesn't pick it up, unfold it, look at it. Seeing the words will make it real, and right now, he's not ready for it to be real.
He sees now, in a concrete and tangible way, what he should have seen before—what he should have seen when Collins mentioned, casual as anything, over breakfast, "By the way, I'm going to die of AIDS"—what he should have seen when he got home early and found Roger passed out on the floor with an empty needle at his side—what he should have seen when they pooled all of their money and saw that it was barely enough to cover the rent, the AZT, the groceries, that there was nothing left for film, for guitar strings, for paint or a new set of brushes.
He sees that he is surrounded by death. He will have to watch his best friends waste away and die, will have to go to their funerals, will have to mourn for them and miss them for the rest of his life. He sees that he is poor. He sees that there is no glamour in this. He finds no comfort in the thought of the Bohemian life he once longed for, because the reality is that it is dirty and ugly and riddled with disappointment and loss.
He wants to walk right up to Roger and hug him, hold him, comfort him somehow. But he can't. Even if he could move, he couldn't do a thing to make this right. The most that they can do, that any of them can do, is this: Mark can hold his hand to Roger's back, and lead him slowly to the couch. Benny can make him a cup of tea. They can sit and wait for Collins and Maureen to come home, and they can share the news, and then they can wait some more.
x
III. December 1989
Occasionally, he still thinks of her. He's not one to concentrate on the past. He is fully of the belief that what is gone should be let go, and what one cannot change, one should forget. But sometimes, he does what he is doing now. He sits in the Life Café with a sharp black pencil and his old dull colored notebook, and if there is no one interesting to sketch among the customers, he sketches her.
Her name was Allison. Allison Grey, a Westport Grey. Collins used to joke with him about this, his insidious infiltration of the ruling class, when he caught Benny sneaking back into the loft at two or three in the morning, tired and unsure if he was happy or sad.
"Is the script burning still planned for tonight?" he asks, now, as Mark enters, frowning and carrying his camera in his hand.
Mark drops his bag down on the chair across from Benny and sits down. "Yeah," he says, but his voice is distracted, does not fill with any sort of emotion until he produces a stiff yellow paper and slips it on top of Benny's half-finished sketch. "And I think I found something to add to the pyre."
Benny looks at the paper. Then looks at Mark. Then frowns. "We're being evicted?" he asks. "Why?"
"Because we can't pay the rent," Mark answers, glowering and angry, his cheeks flushed from the biting air outside, his arms crossed stiffly in front of his chest.
Benny knows what he means. He means they can no longer scrape up enough, month after month, not with Collins at MIT and Maureen with her new girlfriend, not after Roger got fired from his third job in a row, and barely even leaves the loft.
"It gets better," Mark says. His voice has taken on a tone Benny knows well, a tone of righteous indignation and stabbing irony. "The new owner of the building? Our landlord and the wonderful man responsible for our new lives on the street?" He points at a name at the bottom of the page. "It's your almost father-in-law."
At first, Benny is shocked to think that Mark somehow found out about the proposal. He hadn't told him, hadn't told anyone. Then he realizes it was a comment meant not to be truthful, but to be biting, and what really hurts, then, is that it is Mr. Grey who owns the building. What really hurts, then, is that it is not Mr. Grey who is evicting them.
He crumbles up the eviction notice first. Then he rips the page out of the notebook, and tears it clean in two. "We're not going anywhere," he says.
"No," Mark says, and smiles, plotting and dangerous, "we're not."
x
IV. March 1990
The weather is unusually warm for the tail end of winter, the frost long gone from the windows, the birds beginning to sing in the trees in the park. Mimi wears an oversize man's shirt, the sleeves rolled up as far as they will go, her long legs bare and thin where they stretch out in front of her. She is hitting, slapping at the skin of her arm, trying to force her veins alive. He watches, half afraid to try to make her stop. She looks worse now, much worse, then when he first knew her.
"Oh, goddammit!" she cries, sudden and shrill, the shout clanging through the near emptiness of her apartment and ringing in his ears. "I can't stand this!"
He moves himself carefully from the floor, to sit next to her on the mattress. He even puts one hand on her shoulder. She doesn't react to his touch; she doesn't even look at him as she throws the needle across the room in her rage. She begins to mutter and shake and cry dry heaving sobs. He wraps his arms around her and lets her anger and her sorrow slowly die.
"You don't want this," he tells her, he whispers softly into her hair. "Don't let this kill you."
"How do you know what I want and what I don't?" she snaps. But she doesn't make any move to leave the reassuring grip of his hug, so he tries again.
"It's possible to quit. I've seen people quit. It's not easy, but—"
"You think I don't already know that?"
He counts her not quite twenty years, slowly, in his head, and when he is done he says, "But it's possible." Then, tentatively, not loosening his hold on her thin, frail body, "Roger quit."
He can feel her grow tense, her muscles tighten. "I know," she whispers. Slowly, gently, but with an unmistakable force, she pushes his arms away. She stands up and walks across the room. She turns to face him again. He can already see death creeping into her face, but it cannot completely mar her beauty, that light she has, somehow, that always manages to shine through. She stares at him; she says, again, "I know."
The thought is not sudden, nor is it life altering, but he sees now that she is wearing Roger's shirt.
He leaves within an hour, not to climb the stairs to the loft and stare out the window at the city, but to walk right through it, to clear his head with deep gulps of crisp new spring air. Five blocks out, and hours still before he makes it back home, he thinks he sees her, Allison again, driving by in a sleek black Range Rover, which is clean despite the pervasive dirt of the city. He thinks he sees her, but then again, he might not have, and more than likely the sight was only his imagination playing tricks.
x
end