Author's Note: These
guys belong to Jonathan Larson. Please
don't sue.
I started off with all intentions of writing a happy Mark
story, but this is what I got. I don't
know how I feel about it, so if you would please be so kind to review when you
are done reading, let me know the good, the bad, the ugly and if I should
continue or not.
"New York Noise"
Mark
barreled down the stairs almost colliding with Roger, who was returning from
band practice. He stopped short, out of
breath, muttered an apology and tried to step around.
"Hold up,
Mark, what's wrong?" Roger hadn't seen
that much energy come from Mark in months, it worried him.
"What? Nothing… I just need to go, I'll explain
later." He pushed passed Roger and
walked out the door onto the street.
Roger shook his head at his friend and continued his way back up to the
loft. When he got inside he plopped his
guitar case on the table and took out his cherished possession and began
strumming the strings. On the walk home
a tune had gotten into his head, and he wanted to see if he could figure it out
and perhaps get a song out of it. He was pleased with the way the new
band was going, they were getting gigs around the city, mostly downtown, but a
few in Brooklyn and midtown. They had
regulars following them around to shows and one of the club owners mentioned a
friend who was starting a new record label.
He worked
on the new song uninterrupted only for a short while, because his girlfriend
Mimi stopped in, dressed for work at the Kat Scratch Club. The guitar was
forgotten about for the duration of her visit.
He joked with her that she wasn't allowed to come see him when she was
dressed for work, because it always made her late. She laughed, teased and cooed at him, and just when he was about
to pick her up and bring her into the bedroom, she announced she had to leave
at that instant. He pouted, but let her
leave and he picked up his guitar and continued.
As he
worked, Roger had a consistent smile on his face. Was it only a few months ago that everything in his life looked
so dismal? Now, he had figured out and
had everything he wanted. Mimi had
mostly recovered from the sickness that almost took her away. She still had violent coughing spells, but
they were few and far between. The band
was going well, and Mark… well Mark was the one thing that wasn't right.
Roger didn't know why, but Mark
seemed to distancing himself from him.
He had been much quieter, never really leaving the loft, but when they
were there together, Mark would hide out in his room, scribbling in his
notebook or working on his film. It was
Mark that had always been the one to infiltrate the conversations between the
two. With him not saying a lot, the silences grew. Roger chocked it up to Mark working hard and didn't really think
about all that often. He had been
spending most of the nights downstairs at Mimi's anyway, so perhaps everything
with Mark was fine and he was just feeling guilty.
About an hour after Mimi left, Mark
came back to the loft. He looked
defeated and worn. Roger noticed
immediately his friend's demeanor, but chose to ignore it at first. He knew that if Mark wanted to share what
had happened, he would. At least, the
old Mark would have. He went straight
into his room and shut the door and barely muttered a 'hey' to Roger. Roger sat and struggled with the song for a
few more minutes, almost forgetting that Mark was home, but the closed door,
usually left open, gained his attention.
He put the
guitar down and went and knocked on the door, he didn't hear an answer, so he
began to speak through the door.
"Mark? You ok?"
"Yup, just
fine." His voice was harsh, and quick,
not like anything he had ever heard from Mark before. Roger opened the door slightly, only to have it shut from the other
side.
"Mark, what
the hell is going on?" He tried the
door again, but this time something was blocking it. "Mark, this is ridiculous, why won't you let me in?"
His friend
didn't answer but on the other side of the door he heard banging and paper
ripping. Roger pushed the door with all
his might and got it to budge slightly and before it could be closed, he
grasped his hand around the doorframe.
"Just leave me alone, Roger."
"Not a
chance," He pushed the door harder and was able to open it enough to step
inside the small windowless room that was once a closet. There was barely enough room for the
mattress on the floor, but Mark had managed to find room for a pile of boxes
that held his old reels of film, notes, magazines and other assets. The boxes
were what were blocking the door.
Except the two of the boxes were missing and Roger noticed their
contents, mostly old scripts and pictures shredded all over the small
space. The posters that hung on his
wall had been ripped down, some torn in half, some crumpled, others destroyed
completely. "Mark, what is going
on?"
"Get out of
my room!" Mark stepped towards Roger,
balancing himself on the mattress, grabbed his arm and pushed him towards the
door. Roger lost his balance for a
second, but quickly regained composure and began to get mad.
"Not until
you tell me what is going on." This was
the third time Roger had asked the same question, there wasn't going to be
fourth, and he made sure his tone of voice let Mark know that. Still, Mark remained silent, picking up a
picture of the two of them that was lying face up on the mattress and ripping
it in half, splitting it evenly down the middle and dividing the two friends
images apart.. This act of defiance was
almost too much for Roger, and he grabbed the filmmaker's wrists and forced him
to look in his eyes. He watched Mark
begin to cower in fear and pushed him away so that he fell onto the
mattress. "I'm waiting."
"Nothing,
everything is just hunky dory."
Normally, Roger would have
laughed at his friend's use of the term hunky dory, but this wasn't the
time. "What happened?"
Mark just
shook his head, got up off the mattress and walked out of the room. He left the loft before Roger could process
what was happening and he soon followed him onto the street. Unfortunately, Mark had a head start and
when Roger got to the street, he didn't see him in either direction. Roger took a guess and began searching for
his friend, not knowing exactly where to start looking.
Mark
couldn't understand exactly what was happening. His head was screaming with pain and rage, and he had lost
control.. Something that afternoon
snapped inside him and felt as if he were a madman. Perhaps he was? He knew Roger was just trying to help, but
the bitterness was there. It took him
acting like a raving lunatic to gain attention from his so-called best friend
to finally notice what Mark felt like was obvious. Mark wasn't happy, in fact, that wasn't even the right term.
Happy seemed like so foreign and long ago, Mark was downright miserable. He didn't have an explanation or a reason,
just the emptiness he felt in his stomach when he woke up and the headache he
went to sleep with. He didn't want to
talk to anyone, could hardly generate enough energy to start a conversation. He hadn't even been filming lately, though
the others thought he was hard at work.
Of course, if any of them took a moment to notice the filmmaker's change
of attitude, even his change of appearance they may have realized. Mark had stopped really caring about the way
he looked; he wore the same clothes day after day, hadn't had a haircut since
Angel's funeral, and barely shaved. But
none of his friends stopped to detect, or question Mark, all of them assuming
he was fine. But he wasn't, and he hadn't been in a very long time.