Chapter Seven
"To Endure"
Roger
"Mark, is this yours?" Joanne emerged from the other room holding a ratty, black bolero. "I found it under the couch."
Mark turned around, but before he could even see what it was she was holding, Collins had swept down upon Joanne and grabbed the hat. "I've been looking for this for years!" He propped it on his head and nodded coyly in Mark's direction before heading back out to the front room. Mark snorted.
"Oh, look!!" cooed Maureen as she pulled something out from under the bed. It was a radioactively pink teddy bear that Mark would've sworn he'd thrown away. "Oh, honey! I can't believe you kept this!!" She threw herself on him in a very passionate hug, which earned her a scornful look from Joanne.
The teddy bear had been purchased for him for his birthday, which also happened to be his first date with Maureen. So she'd bought it off a street vendor; well, bought wasn't the right word, more like she'd talked him into giving it to her. Mark should've known then that Maureen would be trouble.
"Knock! Knock!"
Someone new was standing in the doorway.
Maureen disentangled herself from Mark and crouched, catlike, staring nastily up at the newcomer. "Well, look who it is."
"Play nice!" Joanne snapped at her lover, flashing a sorrowful smile in Benny's direction.
"What're you doing here?" Mimi leapt up from her seat beside Roger on the bed, appearing even more like hissing cat than Maureen did. "Collins," she called toward the other room. "I thought we told you to keep the door shut, any riffraff can just wander in if you don't!"
"Hey! Truce, okay!" Benny said, holding up his hands. "I've just got something for Mark. I know I'm not welcome here."
Someone should've argued with the statement for courtesy's sake, but some feelings couldn't be hidden just for the sake of Mark's going away.
Apparently, Benny could feel the tension that filled the silence. "Okay, okay, point taken. Here." He rummaged through his coat pocket. When his hand came up empty, he took the coat off and searched more thoroughly, finally producing an envelope that he tossed into Mark's lap. "It's not much, but I figured you'd need it. Good luck and Merry Christmas."
Nobody relaxed again until their former landlord was gone. Even then, Joanne continued to aim a chastising glare at Maureen.
Collins slid in from the front room. "He's not all bad."
"Just because you feel obligated to like him because he paid for Angel's funeral doesn't mean that the rest have to." Mimi snapped. She flounced back down next to Roger, who seemed to have not noticed the entire ordeal.
Mark slipped his finger under the lip of the envelope. Inside was a hundred dollars in twenties. It was more money than he'd seen in one place for months. He tucked the envelope into the pocket of his own jacket.
"So I guess we've gotta divide up all the CD's and stuff, right, Rog?" Mark said, trying to lighten the mood.
"Hmm?" Roger hadn't been paying much attention. "Oh, yeah. Guess so. Now that we're getting divorced and everything." The levity in his voice sounded forced, even to him.
Apparently Mark noticed it too, because he dropped the joke immediately.
Roger bit his lip, hating the silence that followed. When the noise of the others filled his ears, he didn't need his own thoughts to occupy his mind; but now that it was absent, he had no other alternative.
He wasn't sure how much longer he could sit here with a false smile plastered on his face. He didn't want to have to play along with anymore of Mark's jokes, or grin at anymore of Maureen's girlish giggling fits over something she discovered. He couldn't watch anymore of Mark's belongings slip into the suitcase.
"Isn't that my shirt?!" Maureen squeaked, pulling something out of Mark's suitcase, and scattering several other shirts that he had just folded.
"If you remember, it was mine before you stole it from me!" Mark said, taking it back from her.
"That's not true!" Maureen laughed.
Mark smacked her with the pink teddy bear and soon the entire group was involved in a very childish pillow fight. Everyone, that is, except Roger.
He slipped out the front door, closing the others out of his mind with it.
"It's ice blue. The sky, I mean. You would've liked it. It's much more Santa Fe than New York. In fact, it doesn't even feel like New York at all today. Reality's taken a holiday.
"Why did you have that dream? Santa Fe? I tried it, you know. I hated it. Mark was so right; I was just running out on everything. It was stupid. I'd never felt so alone in my entire life…until now…
"I mean, Mark's right. He's got a life to live. I don't. You're proof of that. None of us have real futures, really any planning to do: Mimi, Collins, me, we're all fucked in the end. It kills us all; kills us all, whether we're alone or not. It doesn't matter. You'd tell me not to begrudge him that. I shouldn't be jealous that he's the one of us to survive.
"Why would I be jealous? He's going to lose us all! He'll be all alone! Mark couldn't take that if he were here. It's better that he gets to walk out now, maybe we'll lose touch. He'll be busy, maybe enough to forget. I'll…fade away…It's better, isn't it?"
A thousand gravestones stretched out across the hill, rising like specters from the dry grass. The cemetery was empty. Christmas was a time for life, not death.
Roger curled his knees to his chest. He hated the sound of his own voice in the emptiness, but hated the sound of the silence even more.
"Here. These are for you." He propped the flowers against the headstone. "Merry Christmas. Collins'll probably drop by with better ones later. He misses you a lot."
Roger had only one more thing left to say. And even though the silent grave of his friend had given him no answers yet, he wasn't sure he wanted to give voice to the words, just in case Angel changed her mind. He picked at the grass, slowly disentangling a mass of knotted threads. One by one the blades slipped away and were tugged from his hand by the breeze, until nothing but the bare earth remained.
Roger could see now, the threads of his life untangling and pulling away. Angel. Mark. Who was next? Mimi? Until all that was left was himself, bare and empty and cold.
"There has to be another answer. I'm sick of all the meaninglessness. We live, we get screwed over, we lose our best friends, and then we die. Is that all there is? I'm sick of trying to love, Angel. I don't think I even know how to anymore."
His fingers were frozen, but he hardly noticed—until his rough hands brushed over one another. But he didn't move. Maybe if he could stay here long enough, he would become numb, numb all the way down to his very heart.
"I thought I'd find you here."
Her breath was warm in his ear as her gloved hands snaked around his neck and down his chest. She was warm from the brisk walk, and her hair smelled of winter as it spilled into his face.
"Oh, Mimi." He whispered as he inhaled softly. "How'd you know?"
"You think you're the only one who comes and rants to Angel when times get tough?" Her soft laugh made him smile.
"I should've known."
"Everyone got worried when we realized you had just vanished." She sank down next to him and leaned her head in against his shoulder.
"Everyone?"
"Mostly Mark."
Roger didn't answer for sometime. Finally he whispered, "He worries too much."
Mimi took his face in her hand and turned his eyes to face her. Too often he found that he could simply get lost in her dark brown eyes. Now, more than ever, he wanted to. To vanish into their mirror-like depths and not have to endure anything more.
"You won't be alone." Her lips were inches from his, barely moving as she spoke. "I love you too, Roger. Don't forget that. "
He cupped her warm face in his hands. "How could I ever?" He kissed her softly. "Thank you, Angel." He whispered into her hair.
Losing Mark didn't mean not loving him. Losing Mark didn't mean giving up on life. Losing Mark simply meant he had to learn how to live, how to love, on his own, and not through another.
He had to learn to endure.
