Chapter Nine

"Some Lives That We've Chosen"

Roger

"This was his apartment. I think he only gave me the keys because I gave him mine. He was a nice guy." The girl pushed her horn-rimmed glasses back up on her nose. "What did you say happened to him?"

"That's just it, ma'am." Roger replied, glancing cautiously about the small apartment. "We don't know. It's part of an ongoing investigation. Thank you for your assistance." He gave her a curt nod and she muttered something about the fact that it was no problem before ducking out of the apartment.

Roger waited until the door closed behind her before letting his back slump from its ram-rod straight position. It was amazing what an expensive blazer would do. Sara had lent it to him along with a pair of dress pants and a shirt that she said her ex-boyfriend had left behind when he'd moved out three years ago. Luckily she'd never found the time to give them to the Salvation Army.

Of course the girl who had lived next door was only a college-student and was naïve enough to trust that a man who didn't show a badge was working for the police. She'd said it was strange that no one had come before to look at the apartment.

No one cared that Mark was gone. The police hadn't even bothered to come into this apartment. Mark was alone in D.C. and no one gave it a second thought except for Sara… and Roger…

And Mark had chosen to move here all alone? Some life.

The apartment was untouched. It was exactly how Mark had left it. A jacket was draped over the back of the one armchair. An empty coffee cup sat on the table. Mark had clearly been doing better for himself than they had been doing in New York. They could've hardly afforded a coffee cup let alone a coffee maker—like the one that sat proudly on the countertop next to a state-of-the-art microwave. I guess having a regular nine-to-five-job had its perks.

There wasn't much in the apartment. There were a couple strange photographs framed in 10 cent frames that hung on the walls. They had been Mark's sad attempt to make the place look homey. They were photographs of things that looked strangely familiar to Roger. They were all black and white shots of landscapes: a crooked shot of a street lined with perfectly straight buildings, a street clogged with taxi cabs, a park empty and covered in snow. There was only one shot that seemed to contain a person. It was a silhouette and Roger could barely see the shadow of the form against the building. It wasn't until he saw that the man in the photograph was holding a guitar that he realized the man was him.

Roger reached up and plucked the photograph from the wall. He'd never realized that Mark had taken the picture. Even though the outline of him was vague, he could tell that he had been facing away from the camera, looking out across the city. He placed the photo on the floor, facing the wall.

On the small, rickety coffee table were two books, a copy of "Great Expectations" which hadn't been opened. It was a gift from someone who didn't know Mark well enough to realize that he didn't have time for reading, let alone for reading something that required as much concentration as Dickens. Roger brushed the dust off the cover of Dickens and set it aside. The other book was also covered in dust. But Roger could see that this book was well worn.

He picked it up and ran his hands over the leather. It was the photo album that he had given Mark before he had left. Roger smiled glad to know that Mark hadn't forgotten him and gently placed it back down onto the table.

The door to Mark's bedroom was shut. Roger felt strange as he pushed it open. He was almost invading Mark's privacy. The feeling was alien to him. When they had lived together Roger had felt no shame rooting through Mark's private possession, but now he wasn't sure if he should be doing this. Mark's life wasn't something he was apart of anymore.

But for all his reservations, he slid in to the room anyway. It was frozen in time. Mark could have just stepped out for a moment. If Roger hadn't just come from the front room, he would've sworn that Mark was seated out there and would come in at any moment. The bed was unmade and the pillow rumpled where Mark's head had lain. The desk was cluttered. Mark could never keep his papers in order. Roger could never find anything among Mark's things, but to be fair, Mark could never have found anything among Roger's possessions either. Coiled on the desk, like a snake among the weeds, was Mark's scarf. Roger reached out and picked it up.

It slithered between his hands, a dangerous memory ready to wrap around his throat and drag him down into darkness. That scarf was like a rope that tied him to Mark. And part of Roger didn't want to be tied to Mark, but all the same, Roger looped the scarf around his neck and with it the invisible chain that was woven into its fabric.

It was there. Almost tucked beneath the pillow. Roger didn't realize what it was at first. It didn't seem deliberate it's placing there. It must have been thrown on the bed and then had the pillow tossed on top of it.

Roger crawled onto the bed and slowly withdrew the small, spiral-bound notebook from its hiding place.

For a moment, he thought that perhaps Mark had been keeping a diary.

Wouldn't that have been nice? Roger chastised himself once he realized that what he held was a date book and not a diary. What did you expect? A map as to where to find him? Did you really think it would be that easy?

He flipped through the date book. It was filled with places Mark had to be to record things. Strange little notes accompanied the times and places: wide angle shots, fade ins, 67 frames before cut. It was all technical jargon that Roger didn't understand. When Mark had tried to explain such nonsense to him, Roger would instead compose tuneless melodies in his head, rather than listen.

The date book had filming sessions set up for as late as this month. So Mark hadn't just run off. He hadn't just left. He had every intention of coming back to this room, and going on with his rather pleasant life here in D.C. But for one reason or another, Mark had never made it back to this room.

As Roger went to close the book again something slid out.

It was an envelope addressed to him. Roger's fingers tingled as he opened the unsealed envelope. Maybe Mark had just never gotten around to sending it. Or maybe he'd been stopped from sending it.

Two folded pieces of paper slid out of the envelope Roger unfolded the first piece of paper. It was a check made out to him for two hundred dollars. Roger smoothed out the creases on the check. It was dated from a week after their fight on the phone when Roger had told Mark to go to hell and then hung up on him.

Roger felt a lump growing in his throat. He set the check aside and as slowly as his shaking hands would permit, unfolded the second sheet of paper.

Roger,

Look I don't know exactly what to say to you. I know that you'd probably rather not hear from me right now. I know that you hate me for what you see as running away. But Roger, what I hope you understand is that I still care for you very much and that's why I have to send this to you. If you don't want it you can just rip it up and deny that you ever need my help. But what I've felt was always true about us was that we were not afraid to be week around each other. I've always been there to help you through your worst times and I knew that you would always do the same for me should I ever need you. I wish that I could come home. I hope that soon…

He'd never finished the letter.

Tears were pouring down Roger's face like small tracks of napalm. All he wanted to remember was the things he hated about Mark. He wanted to feel all the hurt and the abandonment, the pain and the anger surging up inside of him and biting the back of his throat.

But he couldn't.

All he could think of was how much he missed Mark and wanted to know that he was okay. He would do anything to take back those words he had spoken to Mark. Roger gently refolded the check and the letter, placed them in the date book and then returned the book to where he had found it.

He wasn't sure how long he sat on Mark's bed crying. Sobbing into his hands and trying to ignore the fact that now they smelled like his best friend.

It happened suddenly, the tightness in his chest making it difficult for him to breath, the way that his vision swam, and the ache in every one of his muscles. Roger tried to believe that it was because of his emotional pain that he felt this way, but he began to sense his consciousness slipping away and that made him sure that it wasn't just in his head. He didn't know what was going to happen first, if he was going to throw up or if he was going to pass out.

He needed help; he tried to stand up and to walk toward the door, but his legs were too week to carry him and he collapsed backward onto the bed. He didn't realize how violently he was shaking until he tried to reach for Mark's house phone, but it slipped from his fingers.

What was happening to him?

The tightness in his chest was growing worse. He could hear his heart pounding in his ears like an irregular drum beat. It was too fast, and then it would stop for a whole second before starting up again. Something was terribly wrong. Roger could feel darkness closing in all around him and he saw it in front of him: his own death.

Someone's hands were reaching out to him in the darkness and he stretched out his fingers to clasp theirs. The feeling of their hands was familiar.

"Mark." He rasped and he felt the other pair of hands tighten around his own in a gesture of confirmation.

The darkness was all around him now. Before him Mark was standing, pale and dressed in clothing that was torn to shreds.

"Neither of us belong here, Roger." Mark whispered.

"Where are we?"

"I don't know, but we can't stay here."

"Why not? Nothing hurts here." Roger replied.

"I know." Mark smiled feebly and as he did his lip split open and blood dripped from the cut.

"Mark, you're bleeding." Roger said, but even as the words were out of his mouth another cut opened at Mark's hairline.

"Go back!" Mark screamed. It was as if he was trying to protect Roger from seeing him like this.

"MARK!" But the darkness was fading to light and Mark's image was vanishing.

Two more cuts opened on Mark's forearms and the last thing he saw was Mark's eyes open in horror.

Roger sat up straight in Mark's bed. He'd fainted and been unconscious for nearly fifteen minutes. He was covered in cold sweat and his hands were trembling.

Roger reached into his pocket and pulled out an orange prescription bottle. Azidothymidine he read. He knew that by the anemic feeling he had right now and by the period of unconsciousness that he was growing resistant to the HIV drugs. He tapped one of the white capsules into his hand and rolled it around in his palm. Slowly he placed his thumb and first finger on either side of the dark blue band that split the pill in two.

"Here's to my salvation and my destruction." He breathed and swallowed the pill. "Some life."

He needed to find Mark before they both ran out of time.

He needed a drink.

The bar was the first one he found. He wasn't picky about location. He wanted to get drunk and he wanted to get drunk fast. And any bar would do for that as long as they had plenty of alcohol.

"What's cheep?" Roger asked as he sat down at the bar.

The bartender smiled knowingly and pulled a bottle of vodka out. He poured the first shot for Roger and then left the bottle as he went to help another customer.

Roger swallowed three shots in the time it took the bartender to help the other man who had walked in behind Roger. There was something familiar about the man. The way he stood with his legs shoulder-width apart, the way that his hand was splayed on the bar, and the way that he gave a wolfish glower after he swallowed his shot, made Roger certain that he knew the man.

That couldn't be possible. Who did he know in D.C.?

The man looked up and they studied each other. Roger blinked and on the inside of his eyelids he could see the way the man had once looked. The lines on his face were the same as they had been then, but the curves of his cheeks had once been softer and his eyes not so deeply set. His smile had been less vicious and more coy. He still had the mark from where he had once had an eyebrow piercing that had now closed over. He was not as muscular as he had once been, but still had the appearance of a bulldog.

As the man turned his head to the side, Roger could see the pale line of the scar on the right side of his jaw, made more prominent by the scruff of his beard that wouldn't grow around the place.

Roger had given him that scar one night when he had been high.

The man noticed Mark's gaze on the side of his face and he reached up to finger the scar. "So it is you, Roger, you bastard." The man laughed, even his laugh wasn't the same as it had been all those years ago, now it was haunted by the years and not carefree with youth.

"Jordan." Roger smiled and picked up the vodka bottle and moved down to the end of the bar to sit next to his one-time band mate. When Jordan had thrown Roger out of the band he'd beaten him up so badly that Roger had fractured his skull, but the years had made Roger forget all that.

They finished the bottle of vodka between them, Roger doing the lion's share of the drinking. "Why are you here?" Jordan asked.

"I'm looking for my best friend, Mark." Roger replied, for all the drinking he'd been doing he was still surprisingly coherent.

"What happened to him?"

"I don't know." Roger replied. "I think that he's been kidnapped or something. The police aren't doing anything. I have to find out."

"You're not just trying to forget about it?"

"What?!"

"Why else would you be here in the middle of the day?" Jordan asked leaning toward Roger. "Come on. I remember what you were like. You're trying to just forget about this, you don't want to have to deal with it. You always were one to run away."

"I…"

"I've got something better for that. All the liquor in the world won't make that pain go away. But I've got something that will."

Roger knew exactly what Jordan was talking about. Roger had been the one who introduced the band to smack. Roger had been the big user in the group, but the others had joined in on occasion. Roger had come to terms with the fact that Jordan had thrown him out of the band based on a personal vendetta and not, as he had claimed, because Roger's drug use was destroying the band.

"No." Roger was glad that he was still sober enough to say that. "I've been clean for too long, Jordan."

"You, clean?" Jordan laughed. "What else has changed, Roger? Where did the boy who sang for The Four Horsemen go?"

"He died." Roger replied, sullenly. "He died years ago. And the man you see now is only alive because of the man I'm here looking for. His name's Mark Cohen. I can't run away anymore. Jordan, I need help."

"Well, shit. Roger Davis has come to D.C. and is now asking me for help?" Jordan grinned and there was something in his eyes that Roger couldn't quite identify. "You really have changed. You'd never be able to find him if you hadn't run into me. Luckily, you fucked me up badly enough that I still run in circles that might have information about the boy."

Roger looked up at Jordan and saw not a man, but an animal. Roger had gotten out because he'd had Mark, but now, looking at Jordan he saw where he could've been.

He was so blessed to have had Mark, to have had someone to choose a better life for him when he hadn't been capable of making that decision for himself.

Hope you enjoyed! Just a side note, we put up a one-shot called With Both Your Hands, which any fans of our work will love! Thanks for all your support guys!