A/N: 05-03-02 — Much thanks to everyone, the reviews are inspiring. As for
this chapter—having never been to rehab, I have no idea how they work, so I
have done my best. Feel free to yell at me if I am completely off in my
portrayal. :P
Kelby — Awww, you poor thing! I know the feeling of having nothing to look forward to but Rentfic. Want a good pastime? Go rent the OBC's movies—I particularly recommend Adventures in Babysitting (Anthony at age 15—NOT TO BE MISSED) and SLC Punk, which I hated, but Adam has a scene in which he's positively irresistible. Email me for a complete list. ;)
Firedancer — I'll write more if you update "1:37pm". :) I just about died laughing at part one.
Disclaimer: The characters are not mine. If they were, can you even imagine how much more evil I would be to them? ;) (...As the entire OBC shrinks into a corner, eyeing me frightfully...)
NOTE: This is an unskimmable chapter—most is flashback, so read carefully.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
4. [Mark's perspective.]
I think I must have been glued to that spot in the living room for an entire minute before collapsing on the couch—that's how long it took me to realize what had actually happened. Not in the last five minutes, or even today... but in the past six months.
In the space of only a few seconds, I kept trying to make sense out of it all, in vain. To somehow make it seem right. That maybe, just maybe, I was feeling guiltier than I should.
No. Not a chance in hell.
The couch was soft and squishy, as it always was. It seemed to get proportionally softer and squishier with age. But it was a bad place to be right now. It was the couch on which I had spent hours, days and probably weeks or months if you totaled it up, sitting there with Roger as we ate our Ramen noodles or blocks of cheese, or listened to him play his guitar, or watched a film I was working on, or just complained about how freezing or stifling it was.
It was the couch where Maureen and I had our first kiss, so long ago. Before Joanne. Before April. Before... this. It was also the couch where she sat me down and told me she was leaving me for another woman.
It was the couch I'd been sitting on when we received the phone call from Collins that Angel was gone.
It was the couch Mimi and I fell asleep on, that day she came home from rehab. She'd just sat there by herself, so forlornly, as I busied myself in the kitchen, attempting to make her a sandwich. I finally abandoned it, sat down beside her, and held her for the rest of the afternoon as we drifted off into respectively troubled slumber. When I awoke later that night, she had fixed sandwiches for us both and covered me with a blanket.
That's when I began to fall.
I forget how to begin...
When Roger left six months ago, none of us spoke for a week. Even Maureen, who quite possibly had the biggest mouth of anyone I'd ever met. We'd occasionally pop up at each other's door, though, just needing a hug or someone to share a cup of coffee with. Everyone had always implied that I was glue that kept our family together... but obviously they were wrong. The glue was our friendship—we were just the pieces of wood it held together.
And when he left, we lost a piece.
Mimi wouldn't answer her door or phone all week, even though I knew she was home. I could occasionally hear her radio, or the shower running, if she left her window open. After a week of this, I called Benny and asked if he would take us to the rehab clinic, since a) I didn't have a car, and b) even if I did have a car, I had no idea how to get there.
And that, I suppose, is how things with Benny started to get back to normal. There were far too many more important things to worry about than the rent, and to my surprise, he accepted this without comment. I didn't know what had happened between him and Mimi, and I didn't want to know. Seeing that he obviously cared for her now was enough, at this point.
Even for the hour-long ride, she wouldn't speak to me. I knew, in reality, she was angry with Roger, not me—at least I tried to convince myself of it. But I also feared that she partly blamed me for letting him go. I was the best friend. I was the one who was supposed to talk some sense into him. To keep him from leaving her, and me, and all of us.
In my heart, I knew Mimi didn't blame me at all. I blamed myself.
I caught her eye in the car mirror. *I tried,* I wanted so badly to tell her. *You know I tried.*
Our week-long separation, far more emotional than physical, ended when we reached the clinic. We all climbed out of the car in silence, and she started crying. I expected Benny to jump to her rescue, which he started to do, but she simply walked over to me and collapsed, listless and frightened, in my arms. We sat down beside the car on the cold pavement, and I held her, and I promised I wouldn't leave her here if she didn't want me to.
But she did want me to. And I left her. And it was a very long, empty ride back to New York City.
I was allowed to visit her twice a week. I tried to drag the rest of our gang along, but the staff wouldn't let me. They wouldn't even let *me* come until I thought to tell them I was her husband—family only, after all. They bought it. Mimi and I shared a sly, wicked laugh when I told her the plan. It was the first time I'd seen her smile since Roger left.
It was quite possibly the most unfair arrangement they could have bestowed on me. Alone in the loft for five days, until Sunday and Thursday, when I would grab the earliest bus I could find and spend the ride filming various passengers I found to be particularly interesting studies... much to their chagrin.
It was on my fourth visit that I began to hate myself for leaving her there.
I attempted to shrug off the herd of nurses who were accompanying me, but there were too many of them and only one of me.
One caught me by the arm. "Are you Roger?"
I watched her carefully. "Roger's out of town," I answered quietly, swallowing the lump in my throat. Out of town, and out of our lives, and not even bothering to call or write. No—this was neither the time nor place to vent my anger.
"Can you bring him here?" she asked, her eyes desperately pleading.
"I'll try," I lied, hoping that would at least force her to leave me alone, and it did... but the feeling of triumph diminished into guilt as she squeezed my hand and thanked me profusely.
When I reached her room, Mimi was curled up on her bed as she usually was. They told me she was doing well, although I had begun to wonder what they were going by. 'Well' to me would be the girl who used to wake us up at two in the morning to go clubbing with her, or who used all her tips one week to have an elaborate birthday cake made for Roger in the shape of a guitar.
She'd been so full of life. Would she ever be again?
I crawled over to the other side of the bed and sat down next to her, relieved to see that she had at least looked up at me. "Hi," I smiled.
I waited for the usual inquiry—had Roger called? Every time she would ask, and every time I would have to say no, and every time we would spend most of our time in silence, unless I was feeling particularly witty and thought of something that would generate even the tiniest smile.
But this time, she said nothing. She simply sat up, leaned against me, and put her arms around my waist. We stayed like that for nearly two hours.
I'm not sure how the thought even entered my mind. Maybe it was my own obsessive instinct to take care of my friends, or maybe I just missed that smile of hers too much. Or maybe I was simply terrified that Roger would never return, and she would stay curled up on that bed forever, and I would lose yet another one of my best friends.
Whatever my reason, it didn't excuse what I was about to do. But when I came home that Sunday afternoon, in a matter of minutes I found myself sitting at the old desk in my room with a piece of paper, a pencil, and the handwritten lyrics to one of Roger's songs propped up against a lamp.
His handwriting was remarkably difficult to forge. It was full of unpredictable loops and jagged edges, and he never wrote an 'e' the same way twice. Damn him. But anyone who knew me at all knew I had a knack for details—I was a filmmaker, after all, and with page after page of writing the same lines and letters over and over, my writing began to eerily resemble that of the songwriter's.
Six hours and eighteen practice pages later, my hands trembling with guilt, I held up the finished product to the light and admired my work.
'To my love,' it began.
'You can't imagine what I have been reduced to without you. Only a shadow of my former self. My only hope is to see you again... and I will. I promise. Not today, or tomorrow, but soon. I'll come home to you. And I'm sorry.
I love you.
Roger.'
The awful, nauseous feeling in my stomach only grew worse as I signed his name with such ease, such precision, with nearly the perfection of someone who had made forgery his life work. I felt only worse for being so proud of myself—the text was uncanny. He may as well have written it himself.
But he hadn't.
I stuffed it in an envelope, for no reason other than to get it out of my sight, scribbled her address on the back, and collapsed on my bed.
On my next visit, I was beside myself—both with guilt and with anticipation. I bounded past the nurses, clutching a white envelope in one hand and my camera in the other—although, as always, they caught up with me and confiscated the latter until the end of my visit. I hated this damn place. No one but family, no more than twice a week, no cameras...
My irritability vanished when I entered her room and found her actually sitting up. She smiled as I sat down beside her. "You look happy about something," I remarked, greeting her with a hug and slipping the envelope into my pocket. Maybe I wouldn't need it after all.
"Maureen tried to come see me," she explained, still grinning at the memory. "She told everyone she was my sister."
Staring down at my shoes, I smiled at an image of Maureen being dragged away by nurses as she gave some protest speech about the unfair rules of rehab clinics. "Are you doing okay?"
Her gaze followed mine, but I looked up to see her reaction. "What do you think?" she whispered to a spot on the floor.
Still wildly uncertain if I should go through with this at all, I pulled the letter out of my pocket and handed it to her, half-hoping she wouldn't reach out and take it, and I could back out of this entirely. "This, uh..." Where had my voice gone? I cleared my throat. "This came for you."
Her eyes were suddenly aglow, studying every inch of the envelope... almost too carefully for my comfort. At long last she ripped it open and pulled out the all too familiar piece of paper inside, reading silently.
Her eyes filled with tears until they began to drop, one by one, onto the sheet of paper. She folded it neatly and placed it back in the envelope, throwing her arms around me. "He's alive," she breathed in disbelief.
The rest of my time there that day couldn't have gone better. It was as though the fog of depression had magically lifted. She was no longer the 'shadow of her former self' that had inspired the phrase in my letter. She was Mimi again.
That night, I sat at my desk and scribbled another letter, my skill and satisfaction washing away most of the guilt. The next week, I wrote another. And another. The joy they brought to her face was more addicting than any drug, and the closeness that developed between us in the next couple of weeks was something, I began to realize, I never wanted to give up.
When they announced she would be ready to go home at the end of the week, there was no doubt in my mind that I had done the right thing.
She stayed with me in the loft when she came home, and we were practically inseparable. When we sat on the couch late at night, making fun of the people in magazines, or playing Scrabble, or just talking... it was hard to believe that only weeks ago, she was barely able to speak a word to me, barely able to pull herself out of bed.
And now, here she was, laughing at my dorky jokes, and talking about starting work again, and falling asleep on the couch with me, and throwing Cheerios at me during breakfast, or belting out Broadway showtunes to wake me up. Collins, Maureen, Joanne, and even Benny stopped by a couple times that first week, and little by little, I felt our family coming back together again.
It was easy to believe, in moments like these, that nothing terrible had ever happened to us.
And then, one night, our world was flipped upside down.
I had just spent my evening at an interview with a friend of Collins'—a professor at NYU who needed someone to help her students with some film projects they were working on. She offered me the job on the spot when I showed her some of my work, and although I was tempted to call Mimi from a pay phone to tell her the good news, I kept my enthusiasm in check until I reached the door of our loft, and bounded cheerfully into the living room.
Greeted by silence, I set my camera down on the table, giving it one last, appreciative look. "Mimi?" I called—well, considering the size of our apartment, one doesn't exactly 'call'.
She emerged from my room, and my face quickly spread into a smile. But that smile faded as fast as it had come. Clad in one of my old t-shirts, not an uncommon sight, and her favorite pair of jeans, she stood frozen in the doorway. Her cheeks were streaked with tears, some dried and some still damp, and although my instinct was to go put my arms around her, the look in her eyes convinced me otherwise.
She held up a piece of paper in her hand, but lacking energy, promptly dropped it back to her side. Her voice, though barely audible, carried more fury than I could have imagined.
"What the fuck is this?"
My eyes forced themselves to the paper in her hands. I recognized it instantly, far too instantly, as one of my practice sheets. Written on the same stationery as the letters. And with closer inspection, I realized what was in her hand was not one piece of paper, but rather a handful of them. Every single practice letter I'd ever scribbled.
"Mimi..." I paused, long enough for her to start yelling at me if she so desired. But her silence was worse. That unwavering pain in her eyes. I couldn't take it. "Let me explain—"
"No, I don't think I should."
"Please, you've got to let me—"
"No."
How was I supposed to react to this? My heart was already running a mile a minute, and I couldn't think of one single explanation for what I did that didn't sound absolutely insane, pathetic, or dishonest. I tried one last time: "Mimi, I swear to God, I—"
"WHY, Mark??!" she demanded, slamming the letters down on the table. "Were you just never going to tell me? You were going to sit back and let me believe that he was all right, and he wasn't dead, or hurt, and he was coming home?"
"I only did it because I—"
"You thought I wouldn't find out?"
"No, I just—"
She burst into tears, and it was so rare that she actually cried in front of me that I had no idea what to do. Usually she would wait until I left, or hide in her room, and the only evidence I would have would be the red eyes and the occasional slight sniffle.
She collapsed on the couch, hugging a lifeless throw pillow to her chest. "I can't believe you did this," she whispered. "I can't fucking believe you did this, Mark."
Fully aware that I was taking a liberty just by reducing the distance between us, I sat down on the couch and tentatively pulled her into my embrace. She didn't fight it, and for that, I allowed myself to start breathing again. I let her cry against my chest, just as she had done the day we took her to the clinic. I'd been so reluctant to let her go then, and even more reluctant to let her go now. I couldn't lose her. She was all I had left.
"I can't believe you did this," she repeated, her voice gentle and somehow dazed.
I sighed, wishing there were something I could do to punish myself for this. "Mimi..." I choked, "I am so, so sorry... I only thought they would—"
She pulled away from me, just enough to look into my eyes, and gently pressed a finger to my lips, shaking her head slowly. "I meant... I can't believe someone would care about me that much."
I would never understand women as long as I lived.
Her words broke my heart, and for a moment I feared that I would start crying too. She forgave me. She knew why I'd done it. She knew I only did it because I hated seeing her so miserable. Because I missed Roger just as much as she did. Because I wanted to see that smile again. Because I loved her.
I loved her...
Oh, God.
Did she know?
I didn't even know until four seconds ago.
There was no first move... no moments at all, really, that I remember, prior to that kiss. One minute we were staring at each other, and the next, her lips were on mine and the rest of life was pushed aside.
Maybe ten seconds passed... maybe a minute. Maybe two. When there was finally enough space between us to look into each other's eyes, I became slowly aware of my surroundings. In reality, we may have been in the same room and on the same couch we'd been on two minutes ago, and every night for the past week, but now everything was permanently altered. The feeling of her warm hand on the back of my neck... that old t-shirt of mine, which now smelled like wildflowers and ocean spray and chamomile...
I reached towards the other end of the couch, turned off the lamp, pulled a blanket over us, and curled up against her. I can't remember ever falling asleep that night. We didn't talk much—there was no need to. Talking could be done tomorrow. We just lay there, squashed together on the sunken couch, finding each other in the darkness for an occasional kiss. And long after I suspected she'd fallen asleep, I heard her whisper, "I love you."
It wasn't a night of mistakes, you know, where you kiss one of your best friends and then agree never to mention it again. No... instead it was the start of something I'd never experienced before, or imagined I even could. We went on, growing closer as we had been for the past month... except now there were a few small changes. She smiled more. There was a certain twinkle in her eyes when she looked at me from across a room. A feeling of completeness overtook me as we fell asleep together, on her bed, or mine, or the couch, or the floor among a pile of old photographs or Scrabble pieces or warm, clean laundry. And the sensation I got when she would walk up behind me, silently, and slide her arms around my waist...
Despite how slowly we took every step, we found it impossible to evade Maureen. (And that's just a general life rule, by the way. She's inescapable.) One morning she decided to pay us a visit just as we were coming back from breakfast at a waffle place down the street. Mimi had whispered some sinfully naughty comment to me on our way back, about waffles and sausages and syrup. My face had turned crimson and my jaw just about dropped to the floor, which she found so uproariously amusing that she had to stop me on the stairs, pin me against the wall, and kiss me.
The distinct sound of someone deliberately clearing their throat caught our attention, and we broke away to see Maureen sitting on the welcome mat, leaning leisurely against the door with a wide, amused, I-just-saw- something-I-wasn't-supposed-to-see grin.
Naturally, by the end of the day, Joanne, Collins, and Benny were well aware of everything that was going on between Mimi and me... which, to Maureen's disappointment, wasn't a whole lot at this point. Although understandably surprised at first, they seemed to accept it rather willingly, and before we knew it, the six of us were spending more time together than I had ever expected... and it felt wonderful to be part of that family again—this time, in a slightly new light.
It wasn't long before Mimi and Maureen unexpectedly seemed to emerge as best friends. Maureen would drag her to auditions (oftentimes begging her to pose as a prestigious talent agent), and Mimi would convince her to come to work with her. I remember they even talked me into going to the club once, and I watched in disbelief as those two wildcats raked in over five hundred dollars that night in tips, using little more than Maureen's shamelessness and Mimi's hands-on (no pun intended) experience.
Just watching them together, goofing off like ten-year-olds, made me see how lucky I'd been, in just one lifetime, to have fallen in love with both of them.
We all planned a surprise party for Mimi's twenty-first birthday. It still shocked me, when I stopped to think about it, that she was underage. Granted, I had been too, only five years ago. But I suppose it was just hard to believe that, with everything that had happened in her life, she was barely out of her teens.
She was stronger, I think, than any of us realized.
I filmed the entire party, of course—it proved to be a truly memorable evening. Maureen, against everyone's wishes, had brought a Twister mat, and somehow roped Joanne and me into playing with her. But what I remember most about our time (aside from a traumatizing brawl over a box of matches) was around the time when everyone was leaving. Collins stopped when he reached the door and led me over to a corner of the room that wasn't full of chattering people.
"Mark," he told me, "Thank you."
"For what?"
"For taking care of our little girl."
I nodded, slowly coming to an understanding. Mimi didn't need anyone to take care of her, but I knew everyone else needed to know that someone was anyway. She was the baby of our family... and it was my responsibility, as the dutiful boyfriend—although that title still sounded foreign to me—to look after her. For all of us.
Maybe no one else knew it... but I needed her to take care of me, too.
I waited until everyone left before giving her my present. I handed her a small box I had wrapped hastily at the last minute, having been far more preoccupied with the content than the package it came in. It was a video tape, unlabeled. She looked up at me and smiled, asking what it was.
"It's just... stuff," I replied lamely. "You can watch it on your new TV."
"Well, come watch it with me!" She began dragging me by the arm to the living room.
I took a few steps back towards the bedroom. "Nah, it's embarrassing," I whined, afraid I was already blushing. "You should watch it alone."
She put on a pout, but consented, and for the next half-hour, I waited in our room, sprawled out on the bed with my arms folded behind my head. I'd worked for two weeks on the video, which was really nothing more than clips and memorable highlights from the past month, and some priceless moments I'd caught when she didn't realize the camera was on. And a brief, completely corny little speech I made about how special she was. To me, and to everyone. But especially to me.
My thoughts had drifted completely by the time she opened the bedroom door, and stepped inside, almost shyly. I snapped out of my daydream immediately to look at her. Her eyes were filled with tears as she made her way over to the bed, lying down beside me and propping herself up on her elbow. I gave her a small smile, and for several moments we just watched each other, until she finally leaned over and kissed me.
Completely breathless when we broke apart, I put my arms around her. "I guess you liked it then," I commented, grinning.
"Thank you, Mark," she whispered, and that was all I needed to hear.
I kissed her softly. "Happy birthday."
Before I realized it, she had succeeded in unbuttoning my shirt and tossing it across the room, and we were making out like teenagers—not surprising, really—she was only two years away from being one. But all at once, without warning, I felt her pulling away, and as I opened my eyes, she was staring at me, tears threatening to fall.
"I can't, baby," she whispered. "I can't let you..."
I opened my mouth to ask what, what was it she couldn't she let me do... when it hit me.
She was HIV positive. I was not.
I knew that. That should not be a surprise. So why was it?
Now I understood. She couldn't let me risk that. Even with the best precautions, there was a chance. There was always a chance.
The same chance that eventually caused April's death, and sent Roger into a seclusion when he came home from withdrawal. The seclusion that lasted until he met...
My whole body tensed up, but I held her tightly, taking a deep breath. "I don't care," I told her. "I love you."
She sighed. "Mark..."
If for no other reason than to keep her quiet, I lightly brushed my lips against hers, leaning just slightly forward to whisper in her ear, "I live this moment as my last."
She watched me for a moment, then pulled me close to her. No more words were said that night.
And four months later, I was here. Nowhere. Alone.
Here, on the couch where she first told me she loved me. Where Roger had once said to me, in a rare moment of vulnerability, how he trusted me more than he had ever trusted anyone else in his life.
I'd seduced my best friend's girlfriend. I betrayed him. I betrayed our friendship. And he had absolutely no idea.
There was a knock at the door. No... no, I decided. This was not a good time for aforementioned best friend and girlfriend to come waltzing through the front door. In fact, I couldn't think of a worse time.
But Mimi never knocked, and I didn't think Roger would either, so, feeling slightly more safe, I crossed the room and pulled the door open cautiously. "Joanne..."
She smiled weakly. "Hey."
"What are you doing here?" I stepped aside to let her in. She glanced around the apartment as though it were a foreign country. I'd never seen her in such a distracted state. Come to think of it, I rarely saw her in any state but perfectly put-together.
"I called Benny," she told me. "She's not there. I believe him. Maureen's out with Roger, looking for her. She wouldn't stop crying, she wouldn't talk to me... she's worried sick..." Her voice trailed off, and I knew her last words, had she been strong enough to say them, would have been, 'and so am I'.
My mouth went dry. "You didn't—I mean, she didn't—tell him... did she?"
She shook her head, still in her own world and avoiding my look. "I told her that what happened with you and Mimi was none of her business, and that you'd tell Roger when you were ready."
"Right," I answered feebly. In truth, my selfish side had no intention of ever telling Roger anything.
Obviously sensing that I hadn't meant what I said one bit, Joanne turned to me, her face flooded with warning and sudden doubt of her faith in me. "Mark... you are going to tell him, aren't you?"
I threw my arms up in exasperation, and dropped them. Whose side was she on, anyway? "What am I supposed to say?" I demanded. "'Oh, by the by, Roger, I've been sleeping with your girlfriend for four months.'?"
"Honey, he's your best friend."
"He left her!" I reminded her, more loudly than was necessary. "And he left me. We're not accountable to him anymore."
Joanne walked over to me and dragged me to the couch. "Look, Mark, I didn't come over here to argue with you. I just wanted to see how you're coping."
"Oh, hmm," I began, prepared to take full advantage of this. "Let's see, how am I coping? Well, how would you feel if the person you loved more than anything in the world suddenly disappeared without telling you where she was going?"
Joanne gave a bitter chuckle. "She does, at least once a week."
I clenched my teeth. "That... is *different*."
"I know," she assured me quietly. I'm not sure why I expected more, but for quite a time, there was only a halfhearted calm between us. Until the inevitable: "You have to tell him."
"Why??" I exploded, as though this was my first time even daring to consider it. "Why do I have to tell him?"
"Because you do."
I'm not sure why that statement, so devoid of any profound argument, carried a conviction strong enough to convince me.
"Yeah, I know."
[Whew. Long chapter. I warned you all at the beginning that I love angst, now didn't I? Hehehe. I know, Kanoi, I've gone off the deep end—I'm sorry, I just couldn't resist the angst potential. ;) How am I doing with Mark? I was shocked to discover he's harder to write than Roger. I dunno why. Suggestions welcome—fan letters or flames, I don't care, go review. :P And now I'm going to be late for class—ack! The troubles of being a Renthead... ;)]
Kelby — Awww, you poor thing! I know the feeling of having nothing to look forward to but Rentfic. Want a good pastime? Go rent the OBC's movies—I particularly recommend Adventures in Babysitting (Anthony at age 15—NOT TO BE MISSED) and SLC Punk, which I hated, but Adam has a scene in which he's positively irresistible. Email me for a complete list. ;)
Firedancer — I'll write more if you update "1:37pm". :) I just about died laughing at part one.
Disclaimer: The characters are not mine. If they were, can you even imagine how much more evil I would be to them? ;) (...As the entire OBC shrinks into a corner, eyeing me frightfully...)
NOTE: This is an unskimmable chapter—most is flashback, so read carefully.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
4. [Mark's perspective.]
I think I must have been glued to that spot in the living room for an entire minute before collapsing on the couch—that's how long it took me to realize what had actually happened. Not in the last five minutes, or even today... but in the past six months.
In the space of only a few seconds, I kept trying to make sense out of it all, in vain. To somehow make it seem right. That maybe, just maybe, I was feeling guiltier than I should.
No. Not a chance in hell.
The couch was soft and squishy, as it always was. It seemed to get proportionally softer and squishier with age. But it was a bad place to be right now. It was the couch on which I had spent hours, days and probably weeks or months if you totaled it up, sitting there with Roger as we ate our Ramen noodles or blocks of cheese, or listened to him play his guitar, or watched a film I was working on, or just complained about how freezing or stifling it was.
It was the couch where Maureen and I had our first kiss, so long ago. Before Joanne. Before April. Before... this. It was also the couch where she sat me down and told me she was leaving me for another woman.
It was the couch I'd been sitting on when we received the phone call from Collins that Angel was gone.
It was the couch Mimi and I fell asleep on, that day she came home from rehab. She'd just sat there by herself, so forlornly, as I busied myself in the kitchen, attempting to make her a sandwich. I finally abandoned it, sat down beside her, and held her for the rest of the afternoon as we drifted off into respectively troubled slumber. When I awoke later that night, she had fixed sandwiches for us both and covered me with a blanket.
That's when I began to fall.
I forget how to begin...
When Roger left six months ago, none of us spoke for a week. Even Maureen, who quite possibly had the biggest mouth of anyone I'd ever met. We'd occasionally pop up at each other's door, though, just needing a hug or someone to share a cup of coffee with. Everyone had always implied that I was glue that kept our family together... but obviously they were wrong. The glue was our friendship—we were just the pieces of wood it held together.
And when he left, we lost a piece.
Mimi wouldn't answer her door or phone all week, even though I knew she was home. I could occasionally hear her radio, or the shower running, if she left her window open. After a week of this, I called Benny and asked if he would take us to the rehab clinic, since a) I didn't have a car, and b) even if I did have a car, I had no idea how to get there.
And that, I suppose, is how things with Benny started to get back to normal. There were far too many more important things to worry about than the rent, and to my surprise, he accepted this without comment. I didn't know what had happened between him and Mimi, and I didn't want to know. Seeing that he obviously cared for her now was enough, at this point.
Even for the hour-long ride, she wouldn't speak to me. I knew, in reality, she was angry with Roger, not me—at least I tried to convince myself of it. But I also feared that she partly blamed me for letting him go. I was the best friend. I was the one who was supposed to talk some sense into him. To keep him from leaving her, and me, and all of us.
In my heart, I knew Mimi didn't blame me at all. I blamed myself.
I caught her eye in the car mirror. *I tried,* I wanted so badly to tell her. *You know I tried.*
Our week-long separation, far more emotional than physical, ended when we reached the clinic. We all climbed out of the car in silence, and she started crying. I expected Benny to jump to her rescue, which he started to do, but she simply walked over to me and collapsed, listless and frightened, in my arms. We sat down beside the car on the cold pavement, and I held her, and I promised I wouldn't leave her here if she didn't want me to.
But she did want me to. And I left her. And it was a very long, empty ride back to New York City.
I was allowed to visit her twice a week. I tried to drag the rest of our gang along, but the staff wouldn't let me. They wouldn't even let *me* come until I thought to tell them I was her husband—family only, after all. They bought it. Mimi and I shared a sly, wicked laugh when I told her the plan. It was the first time I'd seen her smile since Roger left.
It was quite possibly the most unfair arrangement they could have bestowed on me. Alone in the loft for five days, until Sunday and Thursday, when I would grab the earliest bus I could find and spend the ride filming various passengers I found to be particularly interesting studies... much to their chagrin.
It was on my fourth visit that I began to hate myself for leaving her there.
I attempted to shrug off the herd of nurses who were accompanying me, but there were too many of them and only one of me.
One caught me by the arm. "Are you Roger?"
I watched her carefully. "Roger's out of town," I answered quietly, swallowing the lump in my throat. Out of town, and out of our lives, and not even bothering to call or write. No—this was neither the time nor place to vent my anger.
"Can you bring him here?" she asked, her eyes desperately pleading.
"I'll try," I lied, hoping that would at least force her to leave me alone, and it did... but the feeling of triumph diminished into guilt as she squeezed my hand and thanked me profusely.
When I reached her room, Mimi was curled up on her bed as she usually was. They told me she was doing well, although I had begun to wonder what they were going by. 'Well' to me would be the girl who used to wake us up at two in the morning to go clubbing with her, or who used all her tips one week to have an elaborate birthday cake made for Roger in the shape of a guitar.
She'd been so full of life. Would she ever be again?
I crawled over to the other side of the bed and sat down next to her, relieved to see that she had at least looked up at me. "Hi," I smiled.
I waited for the usual inquiry—had Roger called? Every time she would ask, and every time I would have to say no, and every time we would spend most of our time in silence, unless I was feeling particularly witty and thought of something that would generate even the tiniest smile.
But this time, she said nothing. She simply sat up, leaned against me, and put her arms around my waist. We stayed like that for nearly two hours.
I'm not sure how the thought even entered my mind. Maybe it was my own obsessive instinct to take care of my friends, or maybe I just missed that smile of hers too much. Or maybe I was simply terrified that Roger would never return, and she would stay curled up on that bed forever, and I would lose yet another one of my best friends.
Whatever my reason, it didn't excuse what I was about to do. But when I came home that Sunday afternoon, in a matter of minutes I found myself sitting at the old desk in my room with a piece of paper, a pencil, and the handwritten lyrics to one of Roger's songs propped up against a lamp.
His handwriting was remarkably difficult to forge. It was full of unpredictable loops and jagged edges, and he never wrote an 'e' the same way twice. Damn him. But anyone who knew me at all knew I had a knack for details—I was a filmmaker, after all, and with page after page of writing the same lines and letters over and over, my writing began to eerily resemble that of the songwriter's.
Six hours and eighteen practice pages later, my hands trembling with guilt, I held up the finished product to the light and admired my work.
'To my love,' it began.
'You can't imagine what I have been reduced to without you. Only a shadow of my former self. My only hope is to see you again... and I will. I promise. Not today, or tomorrow, but soon. I'll come home to you. And I'm sorry.
I love you.
Roger.'
The awful, nauseous feeling in my stomach only grew worse as I signed his name with such ease, such precision, with nearly the perfection of someone who had made forgery his life work. I felt only worse for being so proud of myself—the text was uncanny. He may as well have written it himself.
But he hadn't.
I stuffed it in an envelope, for no reason other than to get it out of my sight, scribbled her address on the back, and collapsed on my bed.
On my next visit, I was beside myself—both with guilt and with anticipation. I bounded past the nurses, clutching a white envelope in one hand and my camera in the other—although, as always, they caught up with me and confiscated the latter until the end of my visit. I hated this damn place. No one but family, no more than twice a week, no cameras...
My irritability vanished when I entered her room and found her actually sitting up. She smiled as I sat down beside her. "You look happy about something," I remarked, greeting her with a hug and slipping the envelope into my pocket. Maybe I wouldn't need it after all.
"Maureen tried to come see me," she explained, still grinning at the memory. "She told everyone she was my sister."
Staring down at my shoes, I smiled at an image of Maureen being dragged away by nurses as she gave some protest speech about the unfair rules of rehab clinics. "Are you doing okay?"
Her gaze followed mine, but I looked up to see her reaction. "What do you think?" she whispered to a spot on the floor.
Still wildly uncertain if I should go through with this at all, I pulled the letter out of my pocket and handed it to her, half-hoping she wouldn't reach out and take it, and I could back out of this entirely. "This, uh..." Where had my voice gone? I cleared my throat. "This came for you."
Her eyes were suddenly aglow, studying every inch of the envelope... almost too carefully for my comfort. At long last she ripped it open and pulled out the all too familiar piece of paper inside, reading silently.
Her eyes filled with tears until they began to drop, one by one, onto the sheet of paper. She folded it neatly and placed it back in the envelope, throwing her arms around me. "He's alive," she breathed in disbelief.
The rest of my time there that day couldn't have gone better. It was as though the fog of depression had magically lifted. She was no longer the 'shadow of her former self' that had inspired the phrase in my letter. She was Mimi again.
That night, I sat at my desk and scribbled another letter, my skill and satisfaction washing away most of the guilt. The next week, I wrote another. And another. The joy they brought to her face was more addicting than any drug, and the closeness that developed between us in the next couple of weeks was something, I began to realize, I never wanted to give up.
When they announced she would be ready to go home at the end of the week, there was no doubt in my mind that I had done the right thing.
She stayed with me in the loft when she came home, and we were practically inseparable. When we sat on the couch late at night, making fun of the people in magazines, or playing Scrabble, or just talking... it was hard to believe that only weeks ago, she was barely able to speak a word to me, barely able to pull herself out of bed.
And now, here she was, laughing at my dorky jokes, and talking about starting work again, and falling asleep on the couch with me, and throwing Cheerios at me during breakfast, or belting out Broadway showtunes to wake me up. Collins, Maureen, Joanne, and even Benny stopped by a couple times that first week, and little by little, I felt our family coming back together again.
It was easy to believe, in moments like these, that nothing terrible had ever happened to us.
And then, one night, our world was flipped upside down.
I had just spent my evening at an interview with a friend of Collins'—a professor at NYU who needed someone to help her students with some film projects they were working on. She offered me the job on the spot when I showed her some of my work, and although I was tempted to call Mimi from a pay phone to tell her the good news, I kept my enthusiasm in check until I reached the door of our loft, and bounded cheerfully into the living room.
Greeted by silence, I set my camera down on the table, giving it one last, appreciative look. "Mimi?" I called—well, considering the size of our apartment, one doesn't exactly 'call'.
She emerged from my room, and my face quickly spread into a smile. But that smile faded as fast as it had come. Clad in one of my old t-shirts, not an uncommon sight, and her favorite pair of jeans, she stood frozen in the doorway. Her cheeks were streaked with tears, some dried and some still damp, and although my instinct was to go put my arms around her, the look in her eyes convinced me otherwise.
She held up a piece of paper in her hand, but lacking energy, promptly dropped it back to her side. Her voice, though barely audible, carried more fury than I could have imagined.
"What the fuck is this?"
My eyes forced themselves to the paper in her hands. I recognized it instantly, far too instantly, as one of my practice sheets. Written on the same stationery as the letters. And with closer inspection, I realized what was in her hand was not one piece of paper, but rather a handful of them. Every single practice letter I'd ever scribbled.
"Mimi..." I paused, long enough for her to start yelling at me if she so desired. But her silence was worse. That unwavering pain in her eyes. I couldn't take it. "Let me explain—"
"No, I don't think I should."
"Please, you've got to let me—"
"No."
How was I supposed to react to this? My heart was already running a mile a minute, and I couldn't think of one single explanation for what I did that didn't sound absolutely insane, pathetic, or dishonest. I tried one last time: "Mimi, I swear to God, I—"
"WHY, Mark??!" she demanded, slamming the letters down on the table. "Were you just never going to tell me? You were going to sit back and let me believe that he was all right, and he wasn't dead, or hurt, and he was coming home?"
"I only did it because I—"
"You thought I wouldn't find out?"
"No, I just—"
She burst into tears, and it was so rare that she actually cried in front of me that I had no idea what to do. Usually she would wait until I left, or hide in her room, and the only evidence I would have would be the red eyes and the occasional slight sniffle.
She collapsed on the couch, hugging a lifeless throw pillow to her chest. "I can't believe you did this," she whispered. "I can't fucking believe you did this, Mark."
Fully aware that I was taking a liberty just by reducing the distance between us, I sat down on the couch and tentatively pulled her into my embrace. She didn't fight it, and for that, I allowed myself to start breathing again. I let her cry against my chest, just as she had done the day we took her to the clinic. I'd been so reluctant to let her go then, and even more reluctant to let her go now. I couldn't lose her. She was all I had left.
"I can't believe you did this," she repeated, her voice gentle and somehow dazed.
I sighed, wishing there were something I could do to punish myself for this. "Mimi..." I choked, "I am so, so sorry... I only thought they would—"
She pulled away from me, just enough to look into my eyes, and gently pressed a finger to my lips, shaking her head slowly. "I meant... I can't believe someone would care about me that much."
I would never understand women as long as I lived.
Her words broke my heart, and for a moment I feared that I would start crying too. She forgave me. She knew why I'd done it. She knew I only did it because I hated seeing her so miserable. Because I missed Roger just as much as she did. Because I wanted to see that smile again. Because I loved her.
I loved her...
Oh, God.
Did she know?
I didn't even know until four seconds ago.
There was no first move... no moments at all, really, that I remember, prior to that kiss. One minute we were staring at each other, and the next, her lips were on mine and the rest of life was pushed aside.
Maybe ten seconds passed... maybe a minute. Maybe two. When there was finally enough space between us to look into each other's eyes, I became slowly aware of my surroundings. In reality, we may have been in the same room and on the same couch we'd been on two minutes ago, and every night for the past week, but now everything was permanently altered. The feeling of her warm hand on the back of my neck... that old t-shirt of mine, which now smelled like wildflowers and ocean spray and chamomile...
I reached towards the other end of the couch, turned off the lamp, pulled a blanket over us, and curled up against her. I can't remember ever falling asleep that night. We didn't talk much—there was no need to. Talking could be done tomorrow. We just lay there, squashed together on the sunken couch, finding each other in the darkness for an occasional kiss. And long after I suspected she'd fallen asleep, I heard her whisper, "I love you."
It wasn't a night of mistakes, you know, where you kiss one of your best friends and then agree never to mention it again. No... instead it was the start of something I'd never experienced before, or imagined I even could. We went on, growing closer as we had been for the past month... except now there were a few small changes. She smiled more. There was a certain twinkle in her eyes when she looked at me from across a room. A feeling of completeness overtook me as we fell asleep together, on her bed, or mine, or the couch, or the floor among a pile of old photographs or Scrabble pieces or warm, clean laundry. And the sensation I got when she would walk up behind me, silently, and slide her arms around my waist...
Despite how slowly we took every step, we found it impossible to evade Maureen. (And that's just a general life rule, by the way. She's inescapable.) One morning she decided to pay us a visit just as we were coming back from breakfast at a waffle place down the street. Mimi had whispered some sinfully naughty comment to me on our way back, about waffles and sausages and syrup. My face had turned crimson and my jaw just about dropped to the floor, which she found so uproariously amusing that she had to stop me on the stairs, pin me against the wall, and kiss me.
The distinct sound of someone deliberately clearing their throat caught our attention, and we broke away to see Maureen sitting on the welcome mat, leaning leisurely against the door with a wide, amused, I-just-saw- something-I-wasn't-supposed-to-see grin.
Naturally, by the end of the day, Joanne, Collins, and Benny were well aware of everything that was going on between Mimi and me... which, to Maureen's disappointment, wasn't a whole lot at this point. Although understandably surprised at first, they seemed to accept it rather willingly, and before we knew it, the six of us were spending more time together than I had ever expected... and it felt wonderful to be part of that family again—this time, in a slightly new light.
It wasn't long before Mimi and Maureen unexpectedly seemed to emerge as best friends. Maureen would drag her to auditions (oftentimes begging her to pose as a prestigious talent agent), and Mimi would convince her to come to work with her. I remember they even talked me into going to the club once, and I watched in disbelief as those two wildcats raked in over five hundred dollars that night in tips, using little more than Maureen's shamelessness and Mimi's hands-on (no pun intended) experience.
Just watching them together, goofing off like ten-year-olds, made me see how lucky I'd been, in just one lifetime, to have fallen in love with both of them.
We all planned a surprise party for Mimi's twenty-first birthday. It still shocked me, when I stopped to think about it, that she was underage. Granted, I had been too, only five years ago. But I suppose it was just hard to believe that, with everything that had happened in her life, she was barely out of her teens.
She was stronger, I think, than any of us realized.
I filmed the entire party, of course—it proved to be a truly memorable evening. Maureen, against everyone's wishes, had brought a Twister mat, and somehow roped Joanne and me into playing with her. But what I remember most about our time (aside from a traumatizing brawl over a box of matches) was around the time when everyone was leaving. Collins stopped when he reached the door and led me over to a corner of the room that wasn't full of chattering people.
"Mark," he told me, "Thank you."
"For what?"
"For taking care of our little girl."
I nodded, slowly coming to an understanding. Mimi didn't need anyone to take care of her, but I knew everyone else needed to know that someone was anyway. She was the baby of our family... and it was my responsibility, as the dutiful boyfriend—although that title still sounded foreign to me—to look after her. For all of us.
Maybe no one else knew it... but I needed her to take care of me, too.
I waited until everyone left before giving her my present. I handed her a small box I had wrapped hastily at the last minute, having been far more preoccupied with the content than the package it came in. It was a video tape, unlabeled. She looked up at me and smiled, asking what it was.
"It's just... stuff," I replied lamely. "You can watch it on your new TV."
"Well, come watch it with me!" She began dragging me by the arm to the living room.
I took a few steps back towards the bedroom. "Nah, it's embarrassing," I whined, afraid I was already blushing. "You should watch it alone."
She put on a pout, but consented, and for the next half-hour, I waited in our room, sprawled out on the bed with my arms folded behind my head. I'd worked for two weeks on the video, which was really nothing more than clips and memorable highlights from the past month, and some priceless moments I'd caught when she didn't realize the camera was on. And a brief, completely corny little speech I made about how special she was. To me, and to everyone. But especially to me.
My thoughts had drifted completely by the time she opened the bedroom door, and stepped inside, almost shyly. I snapped out of my daydream immediately to look at her. Her eyes were filled with tears as she made her way over to the bed, lying down beside me and propping herself up on her elbow. I gave her a small smile, and for several moments we just watched each other, until she finally leaned over and kissed me.
Completely breathless when we broke apart, I put my arms around her. "I guess you liked it then," I commented, grinning.
"Thank you, Mark," she whispered, and that was all I needed to hear.
I kissed her softly. "Happy birthday."
Before I realized it, she had succeeded in unbuttoning my shirt and tossing it across the room, and we were making out like teenagers—not surprising, really—she was only two years away from being one. But all at once, without warning, I felt her pulling away, and as I opened my eyes, she was staring at me, tears threatening to fall.
"I can't, baby," she whispered. "I can't let you..."
I opened my mouth to ask what, what was it she couldn't she let me do... when it hit me.
She was HIV positive. I was not.
I knew that. That should not be a surprise. So why was it?
Now I understood. She couldn't let me risk that. Even with the best precautions, there was a chance. There was always a chance.
The same chance that eventually caused April's death, and sent Roger into a seclusion when he came home from withdrawal. The seclusion that lasted until he met...
My whole body tensed up, but I held her tightly, taking a deep breath. "I don't care," I told her. "I love you."
She sighed. "Mark..."
If for no other reason than to keep her quiet, I lightly brushed my lips against hers, leaning just slightly forward to whisper in her ear, "I live this moment as my last."
She watched me for a moment, then pulled me close to her. No more words were said that night.
And four months later, I was here. Nowhere. Alone.
Here, on the couch where she first told me she loved me. Where Roger had once said to me, in a rare moment of vulnerability, how he trusted me more than he had ever trusted anyone else in his life.
I'd seduced my best friend's girlfriend. I betrayed him. I betrayed our friendship. And he had absolutely no idea.
There was a knock at the door. No... no, I decided. This was not a good time for aforementioned best friend and girlfriend to come waltzing through the front door. In fact, I couldn't think of a worse time.
But Mimi never knocked, and I didn't think Roger would either, so, feeling slightly more safe, I crossed the room and pulled the door open cautiously. "Joanne..."
She smiled weakly. "Hey."
"What are you doing here?" I stepped aside to let her in. She glanced around the apartment as though it were a foreign country. I'd never seen her in such a distracted state. Come to think of it, I rarely saw her in any state but perfectly put-together.
"I called Benny," she told me. "She's not there. I believe him. Maureen's out with Roger, looking for her. She wouldn't stop crying, she wouldn't talk to me... she's worried sick..." Her voice trailed off, and I knew her last words, had she been strong enough to say them, would have been, 'and so am I'.
My mouth went dry. "You didn't—I mean, she didn't—tell him... did she?"
She shook her head, still in her own world and avoiding my look. "I told her that what happened with you and Mimi was none of her business, and that you'd tell Roger when you were ready."
"Right," I answered feebly. In truth, my selfish side had no intention of ever telling Roger anything.
Obviously sensing that I hadn't meant what I said one bit, Joanne turned to me, her face flooded with warning and sudden doubt of her faith in me. "Mark... you are going to tell him, aren't you?"
I threw my arms up in exasperation, and dropped them. Whose side was she on, anyway? "What am I supposed to say?" I demanded. "'Oh, by the by, Roger, I've been sleeping with your girlfriend for four months.'?"
"Honey, he's your best friend."
"He left her!" I reminded her, more loudly than was necessary. "And he left me. We're not accountable to him anymore."
Joanne walked over to me and dragged me to the couch. "Look, Mark, I didn't come over here to argue with you. I just wanted to see how you're coping."
"Oh, hmm," I began, prepared to take full advantage of this. "Let's see, how am I coping? Well, how would you feel if the person you loved more than anything in the world suddenly disappeared without telling you where she was going?"
Joanne gave a bitter chuckle. "She does, at least once a week."
I clenched my teeth. "That... is *different*."
"I know," she assured me quietly. I'm not sure why I expected more, but for quite a time, there was only a halfhearted calm between us. Until the inevitable: "You have to tell him."
"Why??" I exploded, as though this was my first time even daring to consider it. "Why do I have to tell him?"
"Because you do."
I'm not sure why that statement, so devoid of any profound argument, carried a conviction strong enough to convince me.
"Yeah, I know."
[Whew. Long chapter. I warned you all at the beginning that I love angst, now didn't I? Hehehe. I know, Kanoi, I've gone off the deep end—I'm sorry, I just couldn't resist the angst potential. ;) How am I doing with Mark? I was shocked to discover he's harder to write than Roger. I dunno why. Suggestions welcome—fan letters or flames, I don't care, go review. :P And now I'm going to be late for class—ack! The troubles of being a Renthead... ;)]