Full Circle
By Doggiegal
We will be dead by this time next year. Neither of us spoke it, but it lay in the silence, unbidden. We will not see another Christmas. We have too little time.
Angel was the one who thought we needed boyfriends, someone whose lives we'd change and who we'd leave behind to miss us and remember us. Angel was a matchmaker, instantly knowing who would be best with whom, She'd never been wrong so far. In fact, every couple she'd put together had been married or at least engaged by now.
I agreed to her suggestion, partially because I wanted a boyfriend, partially because I didn't (who wants to date a strip club dancer/junkie anyway?), and partially because I wanted to go out with a bang. She had said that she had been observing some of the boys who lived nearby, and while she had yet to find the one, she had found my perfect boyfriend. He wasn't exactly Prince Charming, she'd explained, but really, who was?
Roger Davis. Twenty-three. Guitarist. Lived a floor above me, and hadn't left his apartment for months. His last girlfriend, April, had committed suicide. He was an ex-junkie and HIV-positive, How Angel knew all this, I'll never know, but I couldn't help but agree after seeing all the hard work she'd done for me.
When we were tossing out our eviction notices, Angel nodded to me from his position up on a car, drumsticks signaling me out. This was my chance to get to know Roger. I looked up at him, studying this man whom Angel seems to think is perfect for me. Suddenly, he looks down and notices me, acknowledges me. I grin up at him and go inside, grabbing a lit candle and entering the hallway. Sure enough, he shows up in the hallway before entering his room. I blow out the candle and, well…
I'm sure you know the rest. I don't really feel like repeating it. When I saw Angel the next day—Christmas Day—we made out early New Year's Resolutions then, because she thought they were too important to wait. She had met Collins, a gay professor with AIDS, and was in love. We resolved to make the best out of our last year, to fall in love, and to find a family for us to be part of. I would woo Roger, and Angel would charm Collins.
Now, a year later, I can't help but feel guilty when it comes to Angel. I was her only matchmaking failure, seeing as how Roger and I broke up. Not to mention, of course, that he went to Santa Fe and all. All hope of reconciliation is gone; I know I'm going to die here on this park bench (long story short, I couldn't afford my apartment anymore because I went back on smack, so this has been my new home). Watching Angel die, as painful as it was, has given me a preview of sorts as to how it's going to happen. I didn't feel like I could handle living, not when death seemed so easy, and my family would force me to. So, I had to stop contacting them. Dying alone…well, I had prepared myself for it.
"Mimi! Oh, God, Pookie. Is she…?" …Maureen? Joanne? Why are they here? I feel someone—Joanna, I think, although I can't be sure—pick me up, trying to decide where to go.
"…The loft…" I rasp out, and then we are moving, moving. Seeing Mark and Collins again would be better than going to a hospital to die.
Maureen calls for the boys at the top of her lungs, and I hear them running toward us. Joanne hands me off, and we go upstairs. I open my eyes—one last glimpse of the loft would be nice—and Roger fills my vision. Roger, Roger, Roger. Even though he'd been jealous and hadn't wanted to see my death and all, he was still here, and that meant everything to me. I focus on him, wanting to memorize his facial features in an effort to take him with me in death. He was crying freely at this point, a sad, loving look in his eye.
My last thought? Truly, I had come full circle.