The door slams.
"Roger?"
"Yeah?"
Mark chooses his words carefully. "Have you ever… have you ever witnessed a lesbian break-up before?"
"No," says Roger bluntly.
"Now you have."
"Yes, Mark," agrees Roger dryly. "Now we have." He turns to Mimi. "I'm out of, you know, condoms. You got any in your apartment?"
Mark rolls his eyes. "I'll be in my room," he mutters, and gathers his camera into his arms before hastily departing.
"Well," says Mimi primly, heading for the door. "I'll go get the condoms, then."
"See you in five."
---
"Hey, Roger?" calls Mark from his room to his roommate's.
"Mark, now's a really, really bad time," Roger yells back. In fact, he is not even yelling, considering the fact that East Village apartments' walls tend to be made of some material with the approximate thickness of paper.
Mark does not appear to care. "It's kind of important," he persists.
"What?" Roger calls. Mimi, beneath him, rolls her eyes. Control your roommate, Roger, please. I have needs.
With a blush that Roger can practically see, Mark asks loudly, "Do you think she'll go back to men now?"
"No, Mark," says Roger honestly. "I don't, and I really couldn't care less. Now, Mimi and I are having sex. Please leave a message after the speak. SPEAK."
Struck by bizarre inspiration, Mark declares loudly, in a terrible falsetto, "Roger, this is your mother, and I heard from your charming roommate that – "
"BEEP," Roger calls back.
Mark lapses into silence.
The quiet is broken only by the hum of the probably-broken refrigerator and the moans and grunts of Roger and Mimi in the adjacent room.
Given the choice, Mark would choose the former.
Probably.
---
Three in the morning.
There is a knock at the door.
Mark, the only person in the loft not preoccupied with coital activities, hoists himself out of bed and shuffles to the door. "If you are someone I do not wish to see," he says extremely loudly, "you have five seconds to scram before I open the door and kill you."
"Shut the fuck up!" screeches Mimi from Roger's room, and Mark winces.
He opens the door, not knowing who to expect. Collins, maybe – carrying Angel, stumbling under his girlfriend's weight, panicking in desperate need of a place to lie his diseased lover. Or perhaps Joanne, wanting to know what the next step is in the tango – will she and Maureen get back together?
The second guess is closer.
As Mark pulls the door open, he meets pinkish-red eyes and disastrously messy caramel-colored curls that had tumbled down Maureen's back perfectly just earlier today. Now, she is a mess – Mark almost wonders if she took the time to apply make-up and design a costume just for this. Dramatic though she is, however, Mark pushes his witticism aside to demand, "What?"
Maureen sniffles. Mark does not regret his frustration, but calms down anyway. "Look, Maureen," he says patiently. "If you are here for food, alcohol, or cigarettes, you may exit now. If you are here in need of some essential item to life, you're still in the wrong place, because I – "
"Mark," says Maureen in a tiny voice he has never heard her use before, "Shut up."
Taken aback, Mark closes his mouth obediently.
"Look," she says quietly. "Joanne and I… I think we're over."
"No shit," mutters Mark.
Maureen glares at him, and Mark quiets down.
"I… I can't live there anymore," she confesses, her voice still barely audible.
Mark sighs deeply. "I'll sleep on the couch, then," he says resignedly. "Whatever, Maureen, I just don't care. I'm exhausted. If you need a place to sleep, shut up and lie down and don't fucking expect a bedtime story."
Maureen looks hurt.
"I'm not going to apologize," Mark warns her.
Maureen shrugs.
"Neither am I," she says. In a single smooth motion, she leans forward, pulls Mark's shoulders closer to her, and kisses him.
---
"Maureen!" Mark exclaims in horror. "What the fuck?"
She raises her eyebrows. "You mean you didn't want that?"
"Of course I did," Mark hisses. "But I don't want a pity-kiss, or a pity-fuck, or whatever this is leading to."
"I don't pity you," Maureen says, and Mark thinks he can detect audacious amusement in her tone. Before he can chastise her about it, however, Maureen is speaking again. "How could I? You're the luckiest of any of us. You don't have – have – have romance problems where condoms break, or – "
"Maureen," Mark points out, "you're a lesbian."
She rolls her eyes. "Well, whatever, I'm sure Roger and Mimi have to worry about it. Condoms breaking, or – or an anal bitch who is not helping me rehearse, or disease, or anything. I couldn't pity you."
Mark's eyebrows disappear into his hairline. "I'd say," he points out mildly, "that I have to deal with these things more than anyone else does."
"Mark," says Maureen in a low, husky voice. "Shut up. Just shut up."
With his eyebrows still utterly out of sight, Mark inquires, "Maureen, are you trying to proposition me?"
"Yes," she says cheerfully. "Is it working?"
"I don't think so, actually," Mark admits. "Which is weird, because I've been pining over you so much in the last month that you'd think I'd've made the first move. And yet here you are trying to get me into bed with you, and I'm saying no. This is extraordinarily pathetic, Maureen. Your flirting skills have deteriorated."
"I don't have to flirt with you," she points out. "I just have to take off my shirt."
Mark exhales. "If you're going to do that, I have a bedroom," he informs her. "It's three-something now, right? Roger's gonna take his middle-of-the-night piss sometime in the next hour, and if he sees you without a shirt, you'll end up in bed with him."
"Mark," Maureen says slowly, "how much did you have to drink at the party?"
"A lot," says Mark, shrugging. "I don't know. Champagne and wine, that's it."
"I know," she moans. "That's all they had."
"So," says Mark, "are you going to try again?"
Maureen looks puzzled. "Try what again?"
"Propositioning me," Mark reminds her patiently. At Maureen's mildly amusing look of recollection, Mark snickers. "It's okay," he tells her sarcastically. "We all forget these things."
"Shut up," Maureen says, pushing him. Mark winces, but says nothing. For someone so small and skinny, even the lightest of shoves is noteworthy, but he does not want to bother Maureen with what he considers to be petty.
With a coy smile spreading across her face, Maureen springs to her feet. "I'm gonna go to the door, okay?" she asks hurriedly. "And, and you're gonna answer it and pretend I wasn't here before. Okay?"
Mark shrugs. "I'm tired, Maureen. Make this fast. I do not wish to indulge your drama games."
"Tough," she teases, and sticks her tongue out at Mark.
Because it is a reflex, Mark automatically replies, "Don't do that unless you're prepared to use it."
"I am, though," Maureen whines. "You're the one who won't let me."
Mark takes in a sharp breath.
"Did that work?" Maureen asks hopefully.
Exhaling deeply, Mark nods. "Yeah," he assures her. "It… it, uh, it definitely did."
"Good," says Maureen cheerfully.
It says something about the power roles of both Maureen and Mark that, in Mark's own apartment, Maureen leads her partner to the bedroom.
---
In the morning, Mark rolls onto his side. "Morning," he yawns.
But nobody is beside him.
The filmmaker gets to his feet. She must be in the bathroom, he assures himself, and walks out of his room, closing the door behind him. "Maureen?" he calls softly, not wanting to wake up Roger and Mimi.
What he sees astounds him. Roger and Mimi are already fully awake, seated at the kitchen table, taking long sips of coffee from their chipped mugs. "Hi," says Mark softly. "Um… is Maureen here? Or, uh, did she leave?"
Roger gives him a blank look.
"Maureen," Mark enunciates. "Maureen Johnson, also known as the drama queen of Avenue A. Seen her?"
"I hate to break it to you, buddy," says Roger in a voice that reminds Mark vividly of his alleged sexual partner from the previous night, "but Maureen wasn't here."
"How do you know?" Mark wails, on the verge of a breakdown.
Roger shrugs. "She spent the night at Joanne's."
"What?" Mark demands.
"Oh, she called me this morning," Roger says brightly. "They're back together now."
Mark snatches up Mimi's coffee and returns to his room, slamming the door behind him.
On his bedsheets he finds not a trail of bread crumbs, but a crust of an entirely different kind.
"ROGER!" he yells to his astounded roommate in the next room. "IT'S LAUNDRY DAY!"