A/N: Written in 2006 in response to a challenge on the lj community speed_rent.
x
Hallway
As soon as he thinks it, he feels guilty.
The front hallway is long and wide and the floor is tiled with black and white squares. There's a mirror on the side wall framed in gold. The wood of the main staircase is dark and shining, and there is a small chandelier above him that illuminates every speck of city dirt on their clothes, contrasts their poverty with the spotless surfaces all around them.
He sees all of this and thinks, Why does Benny get the rich girlfriend and I get the one addicted to smack?
Then he shakes his head and closes his eyes and stands there, silently hating himself, for several seconds. It is a terrible thought. April is holding his hand and leaning her head against his arm, and she doesn't seem to notice that anything is wrong. No one does.
"Are you sure Allison doesn't mind all of us invading her house like this?" Mark asks. His voice sounds faraway, Roger thinks, listening to it, as if it were swallowed up in awe.
"Of course she doesn't mind," Benny answers, which is code for she doesn't know, and after he says it Collins throws off his coat and says that if they're going to spend a night in a mansion they're going to damn well enjoy it, and what are they waiting for?
Roger's glad that it is a rhetorical question. He couldn't even begin to answer.
The group disperses and it is only him, and April, still curling her fingers up with his. "Is something wrong?" she asks him. She is smiling a small smile just wide enough to show the whites of her teeth. In the sharp lights of Allison Grey's house, they seem dull.
He looks at her for several moments without speaking, looks at her as if he was the one expecting an answer, and then finally manages, "Yeah, I'm fine. Let's go get drunk."
She takes her hand out of her pocket and drops her gaze down to stare her palm. "Better," she says. Roger hesitates for a moment, then takes the baggie from her hand and closes his fist around it.
x
Dining Room
She's not above lying to others, but she will never, never lie to herself, and the truth is, she loves Mark.
Benny helps them find the decent music hidden carefully in the corners of the Grey family's collection. They turn up the volume on the stereo as high as it will go, until they can hear it in every room, and the first thing Maureen does is run into the dining room and jump up on the table. Mark is right behind her. Benny makes a few contorted faces, and moves the centerpiece down onto the floor, but he doesn't say a word against them. Collins asks him to dance and he says yes.
Mark is standing behind her with his arms around her waist, and she's reaching back to run her hand lightly down his face. She's thinking pretty carefully now, and pretty clearly, despite the music, the bass that is rattling the china in the glass case in the corner. She's thinking that Mark is a guy who knows how to express himself. It's not just about making movies—he's got that, but it's not just that.
It's the way he touches her. It's a hand to her arm or an arm around her shoulder or his rough palm on her cheek. He is protective of her, proud of her.
It's the way he looks at her. It's the color of his eyes and the bend of his smile and the questions and the declarations and the wishes that he never says aloud.
Benny is gone now, and Collins has wandered off too, and Roger and April—she hasn't seen them since they all walked through the door. It takes her a long time to notice. Mark is there, Mark is next to her; Mark kisses her as they stand with their muddy sneakers on the polished brown wood and the bass pounding, deep and low, out of the two massive speakers in the next room.
He's honest, too, but not like she is. He'll lie to himself, and he does, every day, but he never lies to anyone else. Later, when she looks at him and asks him if he hates her now, she knows that he will tell her the truth.
x
Kitchen
The water in the loft is sludge compared to this.
It's not that he minds the water in the loft. So there are some days when it's slow coming out of the faucet, some days when it doesn't come out at all, some days when it has a slight brown tint. It's fine. It won't kill him.
But it's nothing like this water. This water comes out full force, so clear it's almost sparkling, splashing up the sides of the empty sink. Collins finds a glass in one of the cupboards (tall, clean, and not a single chip) and fills it halfway with water, then shuts off the tap. He sets the glass down on the countertop, and thinks that it is stuff like this that makes him hate people like Benny's girlfriend. People like that, who live in places like this, just don't understand people like him.
He takes his pills out of the pocket of his shirt and downs one, washes it down with the water. There's a noise behind him and he jumps, startled for a moment, and closes the bottle clumsily and stuffs it back in his pocket and turns around.
"Roger," he says. "Hey."
"Thomas," Roger answers, and nods once. He has his hands in the pockets of his jeans, and he's scanning the shelves of the room as if he's looking for something. He's rocking a little bit, back and forth on his heels.
"Are you on something?" Collins asks.
"Nope," Roger answers, and sits down at the island that runs the length of the room. Collins takes his water and sits down next to Roger, and for maybe five minutes, they don't say a thing.
"You want to know something funny?" Roger asks finally. He gives Collins a reasonably long window to answer, but he doesn't, and finally Roger just says, "April's a junkie."
Collins takes a drink of his water. He considers several possible answers to this statement, but just when he has decided on some reasonably comforting lie, he answers instead, "I know."
Roger doesn't look surprised, nor does he look offended. He looks blank. He nods his head a few times, then takes Collins's glass out of his hands and downs the rest of the water.
"Where is she now?" Collins asks. He looks behind him, over his shoulder, as if expecting to see her in the doorway, her eyes morning-bleary and her hair out of place and that smile of hers set carefully on her face.
"Passed out upstairs," Roger answers. He sounds neutral but Collins knows he's really scared, and that the tone is forced.
"And what about you?"
He laughs. Also forced. "I'm not passed out upstairs."
"I mean are you a junkie?"
"No."
The answer is quick. Too quick. Collins waits and eventually, Roger turns to look at him, and meets his eyes, and shrugs.
The eye contact breaks quickly, and Roger stands up and walks to the counter and leans back next to the stove. He lights a cigarette. "Tell me about you instead," he says. "Tell me about what's-his-name."
Collins laughs, this time, laughs for so long it sounds ridiculous, and he can't stop without it sounding more ridiculous still. Eventually, he calms down, murmurs, "There is no what's-his-name. He went home, back to Vermont. Asked his family to forgive him for his transgressions, or whatever, just told me he wanted to be with them when he dies." He doesn't stop after he says it, just keeps on going. "But hey, I guess it had to happen to one of us sooner or later."
"What had to happen?"
Collins takes the pills out of his pocket, turns around, throws the bottle to Roger and hopes that the cap is on tight enough. It is. Roger catches the bottle and stares at the label, his eyes squinted as if there wasn't enough light to read by, even with the bright overhead light illuminating the appliances and the yellow painted walls.
"I have AIDS," Collins says.
x
Bedroom
He can always tell when Maureen has something she wants to tell him.
They don't turn off the music, or put the centerpiece back in its place, or wipe away the streaks of dirt from the tabletop. They find their way back through the maze of rooms to the main staircase, and run up the stairs until they are on the top floor. They breathe deep to catch their breath and peek through half-open doors into dark shadowy rooms.
Finally, he whispers, "I think this is it," and hits the light switch.
"I guess it is," Maureen answers. "The master suite."
He closes the door behind them, but then, he turns around and she is walking away from him. She is walking to the window, and looking out and her reflection, in the darkened glass, is looking back at her. And he knows, he knows because he knows Maureen, not to go after her.
He sits down on the bed with his back to her and unties his shoes. Slowly. Then drops them down on the floor and lines them up straight. The dancing and the running have made him warm, so he pushes the sleeves of his shirt up to his elbows.
Just as he says,
"Something wrong?"
she says,
"I think you might already know this."
"Know what?" Some instinct inside of him is telling him not to turn around and look at her right now.
He knows a lot of things. He knows that April and Roger are junkies. He knows that Collins is sick. He knows that Benny has the key to Allison's house, and that this is no longer just a random fling with a random girl, not anymore. He knows that Benny is in love. What he does not know, what is not sure of anymore, is if Maureen is.
"I cheated on you."
He smiles. He is thinking, can't help thinking, that he loves her. She never sugarcoats anything, never tries to soften any blow.
He tries, now, to hide every feeling that comes with this news, including that respect he felt for a moment at the abruptness of her words. He stands up and turns to look at her again. She's sitting on the edge of the windowsill and staring at him.
"I did know," he says, and he's surprised to see that this is true. "Why are you telling me this now? What's the point? Do you want me to be angry?"
"I'm only telling you because it's the truth, Mark."
"It's been the truth for a long time. In fact—I'm curious. How long, exactly? How long have you been fucking other people behind my back? Since the moment we started going out?"
"No! It's not like that, not at all."
"Bullshit."
He hears the words coming out of his mouth, hears them and knows how accusing they sound and knows this is not really how he feels. But he sees her, calm and meek and trying to explain, and not like herself at all, and he hates her for that, he hates her.
"It's always about you Maureen," he shouts out now. "It's never about me and it's never about us, it's always about you. You have to be center stage. You have to be the center of attention. And it's not just enough to be that for me. Because you are that for me. But you have to be that for everybody else, too."
"Mark—"
"I've had enough."
"Just wait!"
And he does. For her, every time.
"Just tell me. Do you hate me?"
He doesn't answer. He stares at her for a moment, then shakes his head in disgust and turns away. He walks out on her. He slams the door behind him, and that is the most satisfying thing.
It was all a lie. Every word, every syllable of his ridiculous argument. Everything isn't about her. They weren't fighting about her. They were fighting about him.
He hits the back of his head against the door and closes his eyes. He knows he will forgive her.
x
Pool
The first thing she showed him was the pool.
Benny takes off his shoes and socks and rolls up his pant legs. He lowers his feet into the water and kicks them back and forth. It's still warm out, the end of summer, but the water is freezing. The night is clear, and out here, outside of the city, he can look up and see the stars, about a million or more, shining above his head. He is looking at them, counting them, not thinking about Allison, or worse, about his friends, when Mark's voice behind him says, "Hey."
He turns, barely startled. "Hey."
"So this is where you ran off to."
Benny sighs. "Yeah. What are you doing out here?"
Mark sits down on one of the lawn chairs that the Greys keep by the pool. "No reason," he says, which is code for fight with Maureen, and then, "I thought you said you had something important to tell us."
He had given that as his reason, when he invited them. It seems ridiculous now. He doesn't have the guts. He kicks his foot harshly through the water and sprays water up over the side. Mark leans back on the chair with his arms behind his head and even though Benny isn't looking at him, he knows that Mark is staring at the stars, too.
Eventually, Benny says, "I just wanted to tell everyone that I asked Allison to marry me."
Mark sighs. It is a tired, fed up, resigned sort of sigh. "I figured," he answers. "And she said yes, of course."
Benny nods.
There are crickets chirping. You never hear crickets chirping in the city.
"So I guess this means you'll be moving out of the loft."
"I guess."
Mark laughs a little, just to show that his next words will not be serious. "Or Allison could move in with us."
"Yeah, that would be great," Benny answers, and kicks his feet through the water again. He's smiling, but the smile begins to feel fake and forced and stretched and aching. He's afraid to let it slide off of his face, and he must rearrange his features carefully, slowly, and even then, everything feels forced.
"I wish nothing ever had to change," he whispers. He's not sure if Mark can't hear him, or if he's asleep, or if he just doesn't want to answer, but in reply, there is only silence.