Notes from Mama Lobster: song is Under the Gun by The Killers.
Under the Gun
The spotlight's glare is too bright for him and, as he does at the beginning of every event, he feels a pang of longing for his shades. His audience sits across from him, with Jake in front throwing out a thumbs up and a toothy grin. He manages a slight nod back, ignoring the brightness of the room and the wrongness of his exposed face.
He knows he needs to do this, that publicity is vital, and yet Dirk can't shake the feeling that there's somewhere more important for him to be.
She knew after the first missed visit that there was going to be trouble. He had promised, but an hour's visit a day was hardly enough to keep him out of his own head. So she quells the sting of betrayal and signs the hospital release papers with yet another fake name. It's all she can do to keep composed.
He's worn down and scrawny when he comes out, weakened from days of vomiting up an overdose. He won't meet her eyes, so she guides him to the car in silence.
Silence.
It's not really uncomfortable, but nowhere near that warmth that they knew during his visits. He asks her to drop him off at home, and she agrees. She doesn't dare turn on the radio for fear of what music might put between them, or what unwanted train of thought it might start.
They pull up in the driveway of the Strider-English house, empty once again due to some political rally hundreds of miles away. He sighs, leaving the car with heavy shoulders, and finds himself only slightly surprised when she follows.
"You aren't going home?"
She shakes her head, following him to the door. "No. I rented a couple of movies to watch, and your TV has to be nicer than mine."
His mouth twitches at the corners, and he opens the door to let her in.
She proves to be a bit more of a handful as a roommate than he anticipated; sleeping on the couch, frequently drunk, and utterly unpredictable. He's never sure when she'll be home from work, what her mood will be like, when he'll be able to get his work done. Their new apartment has much less space than his house, and he keeps tripping over her junk. It's completely infuriating. There's not a doubt in his mind that this will affect his grades.
Granted, he's just started school and is already months ahead on his coursework, but there is always a chance that he will fall behind. He needs to focus.
It doesn't take long for her to call him on this. The endless repetition of number crunching isn't making him happy; the number of theater productions that have come and gone without his attendance is far higher than it should be. And that's to say nothing of his sleepless nights and racing heartbeat. He won't listen, but she doesn't stop trying. She waits up and she blasts her music, and she slowly, slowly drives him to complete insanity. When he breaks, drunkenly singing and laughing by her side and while she musses his hair, he wonders why he fought it so hard earlier.
After all the misguided confidence she shows the world, he finds her short breaks of composure terrifying.
She's dead silent in front of the mirror, her mascara clumped under her eyes. There is no music playing, no television, no noise to be found at all. When he sinks to her side, she sighs and chooses a different shade of lipstick.
Her after work moods have been low lately, in a way they never were when he was younger. Fewer and fewer directors are willing to work with someone so "unstable," and she can no longer afford to be choosy with her jobs. She's growing weary of the notoriety and the physical toll it takes, but finding employment in anything else is such a challenge.
"What," She muses to a color labeled Show Orchid. "Am I going to put on a resume?"
He doesn't know, not really, but her facade is cracking and a forceful shatter of it would destroy her.
Jake's tried calling the house three times on the way home, so Dirk isn't sure why he's surprised to find it empty. Sure, someone probably should have mentioned that Adam would be moving out, but he doesn't know if he'd have taken the call anyway. Jake checks around, finding a little bit of information from Adam's new roommate, and they pick up sushi on the way to his new apartment.
Adam picks at his food as they talk, only glancing at them when he has to. Jake rambles for hours about nothing and everything, running tangents off every story he begins but never ends. The campaign has been going very well, apparently in no small part due to Adam's handling of things on the home front, and Jake is able to hand over a stack of reply letters that he kept forgetting to mail. He seems far too thrilled to congratulate Adam in person on his excellent work.
Dirk watches across the table in stony silence. He isn't all that hungry either.
They leave with enthusiastic hugs goodbye, Dirk lingering a bit longer with an affectionate hair ruffle for his son. Adam leans into his hand with a smile, and he wonders how long the kid has been waiting for this.
Simone sighs lightly as the door clicks shut. "Are you ever going to tell them, sweetie?"
There's silence behind the door. After five minutes of waiting, Dirk leaves.
"So, Miss… Galway? That's what the doctor called you, right?"
She nods, sliding down into the sofa with her feet up on the coffee table. Monday night is documentary night, and it's very rare for him to interrupt the narration for any reason. She wonders just how long this question has been bothering him for.
"Yeah, that's my given name. Fran Galway, seductress extraordinaire. Not giving anyone any boners, is it?"
He shrugs. "It's a name. Why hide it for so long?"
"I wasn't really hiding it," she lies, even though there doesn't seem much point to it anymore. "It's just not a name I like. Dad gave it to me before he left, and keeping the name of someone I barely know just seemed… silly. So I found one I liked better."
He doesn't react, and she grows a little bit suspicious. "You're not going to start calling me that, are you?"
"Of course not." He pauses, listening to an important revelation about the migration of the tinkerbulls. "You've always been Miss Rogers."
She smiles, nudging his foot with her own. He's been hogging the popcorn, and as nice as it is to see him eating she's pretty hungry too.
The whole house reeks of cigarettes, and she can't deal with it anymore.
"If you want to keep trying to destroy your lungs can you at least do it outside? The living room smells like a biker bar…"
There's a cloud drifting out from his study, and she follows it to find an ashtray packed to the brim. He's busy lighting what looks like his twentieth cigarette today while he finishes his research paper.
"Just one more. As soon as I'm finished with this I'll be done. Promise."
"You have to know by now that these things aren't actually helping you relax." She empties the ashtray into the wastebasket near his feet. "If anything they keep you up at night. And you're already up most of the night without their help."
His brows knot, but otherwise he gives no sign that he's heard anything.
"Ignoring your roommate isn't very gentlemanly, sweetie. You're still months ahead on your schoolwork, and I'm going to break out Jack, Jim, and Jose if you don't cut this out. You're going to give yourself cancer."
"Maybe I wouldn't mind cancer."
Her first impulse is to slap him, but her self-control is strong and her understanding is stronger. Instead she pulls up the chair next to him, and she waits. She'll spend the night there if she has to, because she wouldn't really know what to do without him.
True to his word, he finishes the last cigarette and presses play on their stereo. The rest of their night is carefree.
Calling John was a mistake, Dirk realizes. That family has got a one-way ticket to hell and it was a pretty big lapse of judgement to think they'd help him on the way down.
All he wanted was a little bit of information. A hint as to what big giant secret his son was keeping from him, something that wouldn't have made it into one of his thousand letters. What he got was very close to a nervous breakdown.
"She won't talk to me!" John shouted, hardly allowing him a minute to think. "She comes home and just sits with me, she gets this look on her face if I have to go, but she won't tell me what's going on!"
Yeah, well that makes two of them.
He's been gone for a few days, and he misses her more than he thought. Seeing his parents was good this time; Ninja Dad was so much nicer than usual. He didn't insist on a sparring match with Brobot, going so far as to stop Adventure Dad before he could get it battle ready. Still, he missed his own bed and his roommate, and was ready for another Monday on the sofa.
As soon as he opens the door, he regrets ever leaving.
"Miss Rogers?!"
The house is a mess, with vomit on the carpet and blood on the sofa. There's a smashed bottle of tequila in the kitchen, and he can follow the drops of blood to their stopping point in the bathroom.
She's in worse condition than he thinks he's ever seen, drunk out of her mind with the broken bottle embedded deep into her forearm. She smiles at him, blinking through her stupor.
"Honey, you're home…"
He's at her side in seconds, though he doesn't know whether it would be best to lift her or let her be. The cuts aren't deep (he breathes a sigh of relief) but there's still the matter of her shaking.
"I missed you…" She smiles. "Did you have to play an encore?"
He's shaking nearly as hard as she is; this is wrong, he's just a kid, how on earth is he going to pull her through this? Somehow, through all his shaking and tears, he's together long enough to brush the sweat-plastered hair from her eyes.
"Miss Rogers," he wheezes; he doesn't have the air to speak. After a breath on his inhaler, he tries again.
"Miss Rogers, you're hurt, I need to see your arm."
Her blinking has gotten slower, and he wants to panic again. Slowly, carefully, she raises her arm to his hand.
"It doesn't hurt, honey. Nothing hurts if you don't let it."
She shakes once more, and he pulls her into his arms. The ambulance arrives fifteen minutes later than he would have liked, and both his Dad's numbers dial straight to voicemail.
The next day is not easy, not for anyone. She managed to pass off the excuse that she had drank too much to her producers; keeping up a wild party-girl image is much easier than the media shitstorm of the truth. He shivered and cried and smoked half a cigarette before crushing it under his foot. Jake called back full of heartfelt apologies, excuses that they were discussing a new tax policy and phones weren't allowed, and Adam tried very hard to be understanding. He wasn't allowed to take her home for hours. Looking at her face, he wonders if they still let her out too soon.
She sits on the other end of the couch, hands folded in her lap. When he speaks, there is firmness to his voice that she's never heard.
"We can't keep going like this, can we?"
She sighs, shifting her wounded arm out of view. "Probably not."
His stare is unnerving to her, almost judging (though she knows he would never do such a thing). They've missed their Monday, so turning on the TV now would be weird, but maybe she could break out the radio and they could dance again.
"Miss Rogers, I…" He pauses to swallow. "I don't really know how to go about saying this without sounding like the world's biggest hypocrite. Perhaps I shouldn't try."
"Go ahead. I think you've earned the right to be a—"
"You can't die." He interjects, stopping suddenly as if trying to retract his words.
"…I'm sorry?"
"Forgive my melodrama, but it's true. You can't. I don't know what to do on my own. I feel like…" He trails off, unable to finish his train of thought. How do you explain that you love someone without romance? Friend gets tossed around all the time, a person who you go to the movies with on weekends. Simone isn't someone he goes to see movies with on weekends.
She hesitates, watching the tears form in his eyes. It only takes a moment for her to wipe them away.
"I won't. I really wasn't trying to, at least."
"Do you mean that?"
"Absolutely."
He stares her down, checking her face for any sign she might be lying. Once satisfied, he pulls out a notebook from his bag. She laughs and rolls her eyes, but he is serious, and soon enough the two of them have scribbled the night away.
ROOMMATE AGREEMENT:
To be notarized and considered a legally binding contract.
RULES:
1. Suicide is never an option.
2. Suicide is never an option.
3. As long as this contract stands, Adam A. H. Strider English will be either making a serious attempt or succeeding at quitting smoking.
4. As long as this contract stands, Simone Fran Galway Rogers will never touch alcohol without supervision.
5. Monday night is TV night.
6. Keep the office clean.
7. Adam A. H. Strider English will get at least five hours of sleep every night.
8. And is not allowed to be more than three months ahead of his coursework.
9. Simone Fran Galway Rogers will only accept the jobs that she wants to, and any trouble paying bills will be covered with Strider-English funding.
10. Love your roommate. They are your lifeline.
Hereby agreed to by the undersigned:
Simone Fran Galway Rogers
Adam A. H. Strider English