"MARK!"
Mark rubs his eyes fiercely and tries to adjust to the bright room, somehow untouched by the building's shadow and the shadows of other buildings. Before he can fully adapt to consciousness, however, another ear-splitting roar from the bathroom rings through the loft. "MARK!" Roger howls. "MARK!"
"WHAT?!" Mark yells in response, sitting up abruptly and nearly smacking his head into the low ceiling just above his head. Rather than taking a moment to recuperate from the near-accident in question, Mark gets to his feet and storms out of his bedroom and into the bathroom. There, Roger is standing beside the sink, staring into the mirror in horror.
A questioning look from Mark startles Roger into an explanation. "My hairdryer," he rasps. "It's gone. It fell in the shower and… kind of blew up."
Mark rolls his eyes. He is in fact astonished that he never thought to take precautions against that particular crisis before, and not at all surprised that such an explosion actually happened. After all, if anyone could manage to murder a hairdryer and destroy a shower in the process, Roger could.
Roger then expands, "And I have a show tonight. And I need my hair to be, you know, great. Like it always is." A defiant look on the aspiring rock star's part is shot towards Mark, daring the filmmaker to contradict this last statement. "So you have to come with me to get a new one."
"Why?" Mark whines. "Just snag one from the Catscratch. Isn't that where you got that last one?"
"Yeah, but Mimi's sick," Roger explains. "Well – um, you know, more sick than…" He trails off, not wanting to ruin a perfectly good morning with references to disease. Of course, only Roger and his fellow bohemians would consider a perfectly good morning to be a morning on which a hairdryer and shower are both destroyed before most people are even awake. The alarm clock proudly declares that it is nine-fifty-two, and Mark moans in exhaustion.
Roger, in contrast to Mark's fatigue, appears to be wide awake and bouncing. His eyes are bright and he seems to have trouble staying in one spot. Mark wonders if perhaps radiation created in the explosion might have made its way to Roger's brain and poisoned him. What's done is done, however, Mark notes with a sigh, and allows Roger to drag him out of the bathroom.
"How much do blow-dryers cost?" Mark muses, shuffling through dollar bills. "Our budget won't let us exceed nine bucks. Wow, that's pathetic."
Roger shrugs. "You're the one who grew up under the laws of Scarsdale Judaism: Never swear, never eat Chinese food outside of cities and small Jewish suburbs, never buy retail." He pauses. "I guess we'll have to bargain. Too bad we don't have Angel Dumott Schunard, bargainer extraordinnaire."
In an attempt to eliminate the discussion of Angel from its very roots, Mark pulls on his scarf. "Get up, we should get a move on. What time's your show?"
"Starts at ten-thirty," Roger grunts. Mark finds it odd that in all the years that he has had on-and-off careers, he has never had any sort of work-related function end past eight, whereas in the land of bohemian rock, Roger rarely starts before eleven.
Mark extends his arms to Roger and pulls the musician to his feet. "C'mon, let's go." With that, they begin their descent of the steps leading to the street.
"So where exactly do you plan for us to go?" Mark asks as he and Roger reach the third floor, exactly halfway down. "I mean, is there anywhere in particular that you know sells hairdryers?"
"Nope," Roger replies cheerfully. "Well, we could try the West Village. There's a place on Tenth and Hudson we might want to try…"
Mark shrugs disinterestedly. "As long as we're done before, say, Christmas, I'm fine with anything." He glances around. "Looks like it might rain."
So it does.
Mark and Roger are left wandering around in the rain, and Roger vaguely muses that with his hair so completely drenched, a blowdryer would not go amiss. After just about an hour and a half of crosstown ambling, a flash of purple awning makes itself known to the bohemian boys, and they duck inside a store called Larson's Locks.
"Hi," Roger says brightly to the multipierced clerk. "I'm Roger, this is my friend Mark. We're here for a hairdryer."
The girl eyes Roger's drenched hair and mutters, "No shit." She then turns to indicate the many hairdryers on the shelf behind her. "M'kay, so we've got a bunch of different brands, I dunno, are you very selective, or anything?"
"Nah," Roger replies. " I need a cheap one, that's it. Oh, and I'd prefer one that doesn't explode if it falls into the shower, 'cause, see, mine did that this morning, and so that's why I need a new one."
The girl tilts her head (sending earrings and an eyebrow ring jingling as she does so) as though she has never seen anyone quite like Roger. "Uh-huh," she drawls. "Well, whatever. The cheapest one we've got is twelve-ninety-five. This one right here." She taps a maroon box with long blue fingernails. "You want it?"
"Um…"
Mark steps up and clasps his hands atop the counter. "Yeah, I don't know," he says, lazily brushing his thumb over the box in question. "I'm not sure it's worth twelve-ninety-five. I'll give you seven bucks for it."
Roger cocks his head. "But Mark, you said we could spend– " He is silenced by his friend's glare. The clerk looks on in amusement.
"Sorry," the girl says, not sounding sorry at all. "We don't accept bargains. Retail only."
The next thing she hears is the doorchime as Mark and Roger exit, and the next thing she sees is a flash of a particularly obscene hand gesture, courtesy of Roger.
"Where to next?" Mark asks breathlessly as rain once again begins slapping the top of his head. A hair salon three blocks east is, as it turns out, the next stop on the bohemians' trip, but it turns out to be just as fruitless as their intial destination. Three similarly useless stores after that, the rain has cleared up. It is because of the change in the weather that Mark's great discovery occurs.
"A vendor!" Mark exclaims, pointing down the street. He grabs Roger's elbow and bustles rather tourist-ish-ly across the street to reach a very wet street vendor with a table full of boxes.
"Great weather for selling today," Roger observes to the vendor, who nods.
"Yeah, it's really beautiful out," she says sarcastically. "You looking for anything in particular?"
Roger nods. "See, I need a hairdryer, 'cause I set mine on fire this morning."
"Good going," the vendor mocks. "Well, I don't know if I have any – ah. Here's one." She gestures to a box in which lies a hairdryer. "Fifteen bucks."
"Six," Mark refutes.
The woman shakes her head. "Fourteen."
Mark, following the pattern, gently budges, "Seven."
"Twelve," the vendor declares with the air of someone who is making a very great sacrifice for the benefit of another.
"Eight," Roger jumps in. He has never bargained before, but suspects that it is just as easy as it looks – not only an incorrect assumption, but also one that will most likely lead to future crises. Mark throws out his arm in frustration and accidentally hits his loftmate in the mouth. Upon realizing what he has done, however, Mark merely shrugs and looks back to the vendor.
"Eight," Mark says with a sigh.
"Eleven."
"Nine, then," the filmmaker offers exasperatedly, and prays that he will not be denied. "Final offer," he adds. He plunges a hand into his pocket.
"Nine," the vendor agrees, and she slams the box containing the hairdryer onto the top of the table. Roger grabs it and cradles it in his hands delightedly, his injury long-forgotten, and Mark wearily extends the nine dollars to the cause of what will most likely be future misery for Mark, as he tries to sleep later but is unable to due to the roar of the hairdryer.
"Thanks," Mark and the vendor chorus, and they shoot each other a final grateful glance before Mark and Roger head west towards bohemia, and more specifically, the loft. Problems with the shower will soon be resolved, but in the meantime, Roger cherishes his small victory – his purchase of the hairdryer – and doesn't mind waiting several months before the Greys get around to repairing the shower. After all, it's not as if they ever have hot water anyway.