A/N: 06-09-02—::contented sigh:: I love you guys! The feedback is so very
appreciated—please keep it coming, because I have no idea what the hell I'm
doing with these last few chapters. LOL. Although I do have an ending in
sight for this now, somewhere down the line, so I can continue writing with
peace of mind. WOOT. And yes, I realize the clinic is probably not open on
Sunday. I don't care. :P As for the end of last chapter... it will be
explained next time, when I get back to Roger's POV.
I'm getting tired of not owning any of these characters. ::sigh:: You'd think after all I put them through, I'd at least have *some* sort of claim on them...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
12. [M]
Leave it to Roger to distract me from everything that really mattered.
Depression, despair, a nice miserable walk in Central Park. All forgotten at the sight of him and that... that person... that faceless angel of death in a dark trench coat with bulging pockets. He couldn't even leave me to wallow in my grief—no, he had no interfere with that, too.
It was so easy to blame him this way. And it wasn't as though he didn't deserve it. How quickly everything spun a hundred and eighty degrees. For an entire week—any spare, disorienting moments that weren't spent missing her were spent in guilt. Guilt comes easily when you start screwing around with your best friend's girlfriend—not just for a night or a weekend, but for a good half a year.
But everyone knows anger comes even easier than guilt. Anger comes easier than anything.
But now... how relieved I was that everything was different... that the sight of him passing over a wad of bills for a bag of powder generated virtually no feelings of pity. None of fear, nor of worry, or even concern. Just anger. Anger at myself, of course, for wasting all this time with guilt—but mostly anger at him. I'd been in love—happy, really for the first time in my life—and he'd marched in the door and taken it all away.
Everything sounded so much better that way.
I didn't go home right away. I thought I'd intended to, but apparently my subconscious had plans of its own, and by the time I looked up, I was standing in front of the cemetery.
I had little recollection of the funeral. I was lucky in that respect; repressing was one of my more valuable—and, I might add, polished—talents. Benny had made most of the arrangements, and for this reason (and others I'm sure we're all well aware of), Roger was markedly absent. At least once every day since then, I remembered so little of the whole event that I actually questioned my own presence there. Perhaps I had dreamed the whole thing up. Maybe I had even dreamed up her death...
No... that would have been too cruel a trick to play on myself. I was all for self-destruction, but even I had my limits.
The tombstone, however... now *that* I remembered. I plopped down on the freshly cut grass—allowing several seconds of silence to pass, in a vague hope that maybe I could make the entire gray block melt away if my eyes radiated just the right amount of pain. With one trembling hand, I reached out and traced a finger along the letters.
Miriam Isabella Marquez
1981-2002
It was easier to look at than I thought it would be; it didn't take much to pretend it was a complete stranger. None of us had ever called her by her full name. I don't think half of us had even known it. But I had—of course I had. I knew what she'd wanted to name her daughter someday, and what she got for her fifth birthday, and what song she danced to in her first ballet recital. She once told me I knew her better than anyone else ever had.
Even Roger?
I didn't dare ask.
I think just about everyone knew our relationship was the best thing that ever happened to us—but they didn't see everything. It wasn't perfect. She was always afraid of letting me get too close to her, for fear of breaking my heart once she was gone. And I was always terrified that Roger would come home, and the dream would be over.
Obviously, neither of our fears had been unjustified.
"I'm sorry."
It was a moment before I realized I'd said this out loud... and that it didn't feel half as strange as I thought it would.
"I'm so sorry..." I echoed, my vision instantly blurred by an onslaught of tears. "If I'd never written those letters, we never would have ended up on the couch, and I wouldn't have kissed you, and you wouldn't be gone now, and..."
And I never would have known what it felt like to be so madly in love. Had it been worth the price?
"...And..." And would anyone ever hear a word of this? "God, I'm so scared. I can't do this alone. We talked about it... remember? The night we roasted marshmallows over the stove and you burned a dish towel... You told me if anything ever happened, you would come with me to the clinic and you'd hold my hand and never leave me alone for one second, and we'd get through it together."
How little it took to bring back that night... I'd been hunched over my camera and the VCR and a pile of tapes all day long, working against a deadline. She knew this, but she also knew I couldn't resist her... and that was obviously more interesting to play around with. By eight o'clock, she marched into the room with a giant bag of marshmallows, almost wearing that tiny white tank top I loved so much, and announced that if I spent one more minute in front of that camera, I'd be sleeping alone for a month.
My voice had fallen to a whisper sometime during the reflection of that memory, and I was surprised to find I could barely hear it myself.
"You told me... not long ago... you were so scared of losing both of us. But it's me—I'm the one who's lost both of you."
I couldn't imagine verbalizing this—somehow it was even harder to do when I knew no one was listening. When no one was listening, it was easier to hear it myself. And right now, all I wanted was to forget it.
"I saw Roger today. He's..."
Any words beyond that would have been miserably in vain. If by some miracle my words would even reach her, then surely, by the same miracle, she would already know exactly what Roger was up to. Then again, that theory could very easily be my latest escape mechanism, hard at work to keep me in denial. It wasn't that I didn't need to say it; it was that I couldn't. I just wasn't ready to believe that my best friend, after two years of being perfectly clean, had begun writing his own death sentence—slowly, and painfully—yet again.
I jumped to my feet—even the thought was too much.
My eyes darted over the ground, fumbling, in tragic futility, to break through the layers of earth below that separated us. She was really so close... so close...
My feet pulled me further away until I felt I could breathe again, and I eyed the distant gray stone once more.
"How could you leave me alone with this?"
My strength was gone. I turned on my heel and left the cemetery.
I hadn't been home for five minutes before I found myself hunched over the kitchen counter, punching '4' on my speed dial. I had gotten used to ignoring the big '8' on the message display screen. All of her girlfriends from the club had been calling incessantly in the last week, wondering where in God's name she was, and why she hadn't shown up for work, and was she okay? I hadn't had the heart to erase the messages... or to call back and tell them the truth.
Collins' answering machine picked up, and I stammered a few words about seeing Roger, before my usual conclusion—"Call me"—and hung up.
One hour later, a knock at the door broke into my little world.
Perhaps it was Roger, I mused, crossing the room. Maybe he's come to apologize. Maybe he's come to let *me* apologize. I didn't even know which one would have been more inappropriate. At this point I was just willing to hope for *anything* but Maureen. I couldn't take another one of her lectures. And they weren't her usual lectures, in the traditional sense, full of obnoxious demands and relentless nagging. They were pleas, so desperate and cautious, from a side of her I hadn't seen since we broke up. A side that had been absent for so long, I'd assumed it had flown out the window right along with her heterosexuality. But as usual... I had been wrong.
I pulled the door open. I was in luck—according to my theory. It wasn't Maureen.
I promised myself I wouldn't do it, but I found myself searching his eyes the way I used to, years ago, when he would come home late at night, or early in the morning, and I would study his face to determine whether he'd been clean that night. More often than not, I was disappointed. But never wrong. I could always tell, whether I wanted to or not. Call it a talent, if you must. I called it a curse.
And although anxiety was the obvious factor behind those eyes that had turned so cold on me in recent weeks... that's all there was. Just fear, like everyone else. Not a shred of evidence that he'd been shooting up, even once.
Or maybe I was just losing the talent.
He looked down before speaking. "Can I come in?"
Without a word I stepped aside, trying furiously to decide which one of us had less right to be here. Neither, it seemed; it was almost as if we didn't live here anymore. He strode confidently through the door, but stopped when he reached the middle of the room, and shoved his hands in his pockets.
"I, uh, just came to get some of my stuff."
I nodded instinctively, then rethought this claim. "Roger... you don't have 'stuff'."
His eyes met mine again, narrowed—the fear having been very easily replaced by bitterness. I couldn't blame him for that. "Fuck off, Mark," he muttered before stomping towards his room.
It was true, though. 'Stuff' would have been his guitar. And that was somewhat... gone. Unless he planned to uproot his bed or dresser, I couldn't imagine what else he had that required relocating. Unless, of course... he was actually moving out.
I waited by the kitchen, leaning against the counter, until he reappeared in the doorway of his room, a pair of jeans in one hand, and a lyrics notebook in the other. "By the way," he announced, "I'm not going to put up with Maureen barging in on me and complaining about you anymore. So just do what she says."
A sickening feeling stirred in my stomach. Maureen had talked to him. She'd seen him and complained to him and didn't tell me, and... God, this was wrong on so many levels. She—Maureen, with whom Roger had been diametrically at odds from the day they met—had managed to charm him into tolerating one of her speeches... and I couldn't even get him to look at me.
I blinked. "What?"
"Go," he instructed. "Go to the clinic and get tested. I don't need any more of her goddamn lectures."
It all began to fall awkwardly into place now... Maureen told me I had to get tested, I refused, so she complained to my best friend. My ex-best friend. Asked him to talk some sense into me. Who'd have thought he'd actually do it? Wasn't he supposed to be deliberately indifferent to me right now?
"That's why you're here, to convince me to go?" I asked, hardly expecting a 'yes,' but at least hoping it would provoke some sort of reaction...
"No! I don't give a shit about that!"
...Yeah, like that.
He tossed his jeans and notebook into a very diminutive pile. "Just do it so she'll stop bugging me. This isn't my problem, and I don't want to be involved. So... go. Stop being a baby, make the fucking appointment, and just do it."
My eyes narrowed, studying him more closely. What might happen if I actually retorted with honesty?
"No," I announced.
His eyes shot upwards, flashing. I'd never defied him like that. "What?"
"You can't just march in and start telling me what to do; that's as bad as Maureen."
God, was I ever asking for it.
He ventured one step towards me, then retracted it. "Look—you got yourself into this, all right? God, Mark, I... what the fuck were you thinking, taking that chance?! I mean, I might have expected this from her, but *you*..."
I felt my voice leaving me. "Expected what?"
"This, everything! Manipulating you into this because she was lonely—I can't believe how selfish she was! Not giving a shit that she'd most likely end up killing you… kind of ironic that it turned out the other way around, huh?"
And that's when my voice left completely.
Why did this always happen to me? Every time I knew I should say something, something important and something unkind and heartless and, nonetheless, true—every time, I would just shut down. I knew everything I wanted to say, I just... couldn't... say it...
"Don't ever talk about her like that again."
Then again, I never failed to shock the hell out of myself. It had been barely breathed—after all, my voice really was quite gone—but it was there, nevertheless; a truth. Exactly what I'd wanted to say. And he heard it, and stared at me.
"April's gone because of me, Mark."
Where had this come from? The tone of his voice had so altered that I felt like I'd been transported back to another time in our lives... a time, not even so long ago, when we'd been allowed to speak to each other in soft voices, or scared voices, or kind voices... when we hadn't been reduced to resenting each other, each with our own respective reasons, for losing the woman we loved.
I pulled my gaze away from his. "Don't do this. April wasn't your fault, you know that. I know you're just—"
"No, you don't fucking know anything!" his voice roared, having jumped back to the present. "She didn't get AIDS from the drugs. Did you know that? She was so careful, she used her own needles every single time."
"Roger, accidents happen—"
"No. Not for her. She was completely safe. She got it from *me*."
His eyes, so full of fire, nearly burned right through mine when I turned back to look at him. "What?"
"She got it from ME, Mark. I was so sure I was fine; that it could never happen to me—because I was too chickenshit to go get tested. By the time I did, it was too late."
I half-expected a grand, final orchestral note to punctuate this, but I suppose in the end, silence is always louder.
He'd never told me that.
He shrugged, shaking his head in defeat, and tossed another notebook of lyrics onto his pile of stuff, doing his best to reclaim that air of utter indifference. I saw right through it, of course. Roger had never been good at expressing true emotions, but he was even worse at hiding them. He was worried about me... why was that so hard to believe? This was his traditional way of showing it, after all. This was always his way. He'd yell and blow up at me because he hated having to be so vulnerable, but that was my clue that he still cared.
I steadied my voice and turned away. "I think you should leave."
"Oh, fine, you know what? Fuck what you think. This is ridiculous." He marched over the counter and seized the phone, furiously punching in numbers.
"What are you doing?"
He turned until his back was facing me, and spoke into the receiver. "Hi, yeah, I'd like to make an appointment—the name is Mark Cohen—"
Ohhh, he was a devious one, wasn't he?
I lunged over the counter and managed to grab the phone from him, slamming it back down on its hook. I never would have managed such a feat if he'd been even half-expecting it, but I don't know if it had been worth it after all—the shock only infuriated him further.
"God damn it, Mark!"
"You're not my mother, I don't need you to take care of me!"
How many times I'd heard those very words from *his* lips... ironic, wasn't it?
"You have to deal with this. It's not a fucking death sentence, it's just something you have to go through! I did it, April did it, Mimi did it—we survived."
I knew I would regret saying this, but... "We?"
He shoved the phone aside and approached me. "Look, either you have it or you don't. Getting tested isn't going to change that."
Was this supposed to make me feel better?
I felt tears welling up behind my eyes, ready to leap out at any time. It wasn't supposed to be like this. Not even in my wildest nightmares was it ever supposed to be like this. I'd never imagined a day without her smile, a night without her kiss, a walk in Central Park without her hand clasped in mine... no, I was never meant to go through this alone. I wasn't strong enough. Everyone knew I wasn't. Even her. *Especially* her...
I let the tears fall, silently, as I leaned against the wall and allowed myself to slump to the floor. A few seconds later, I heard the phone being lifted off its hook. The silence was so great that I could even hear each of the numbers emit their slightly varying beeps as he punched them in.
"Yes, hello. I'd like to make an appointment for Mark Cohen, please."
More words filled the air as he politely and quietly answered their questions. What was the nature of the appointment? Had I been tested before? I closed my eyes, too weary to fight back. This wasn't happening.
"Tuesday? Sure. Three o'clock will be fine. Thank you."
The phone was returned to its resting place, much more gently this time, and I opened my eyes to find him back across the room, gathering his things into a more portable pile.
"It's on West 29th, by the..."
He stopped as our eyes met, and we both knew we were thinking the exact same thing. I knew where it was. He knew I knew where it was. I was the one who dragged him there in the first place, years ago, never imagining I would be in those shoes. I'd been the one to go there every week to pick up his AZT when he was too depressed to do it himself.
"Never mind."
I pulled myself to my feet as he opened the door with one arm, the other laden down with clothes and notebooks. "Roger—wait." I was almost surprised that he turned around; now I wasn't even sure what to say. "Would you..."
He adjusted some of the items in his arms and waited for me to continue, but I never did. "Would I what?" he finally demanded.
"Would you come with me?"
Something flashed across his face... sympathy? No, that would have been too much to ask for. "You're not a baby," he announced. "You can do this yourself."
No... no, I can't, I can't do this myself, and I need you there because I'm absolutely terrified.
But by the time I found the nerve to put those thoughts into words, he was already halfway down the third flight of stairs.
I'm getting tired of not owning any of these characters. ::sigh:: You'd think after all I put them through, I'd at least have *some* sort of claim on them...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
12. [M]
Leave it to Roger to distract me from everything that really mattered.
Depression, despair, a nice miserable walk in Central Park. All forgotten at the sight of him and that... that person... that faceless angel of death in a dark trench coat with bulging pockets. He couldn't even leave me to wallow in my grief—no, he had no interfere with that, too.
It was so easy to blame him this way. And it wasn't as though he didn't deserve it. How quickly everything spun a hundred and eighty degrees. For an entire week—any spare, disorienting moments that weren't spent missing her were spent in guilt. Guilt comes easily when you start screwing around with your best friend's girlfriend—not just for a night or a weekend, but for a good half a year.
But everyone knows anger comes even easier than guilt. Anger comes easier than anything.
But now... how relieved I was that everything was different... that the sight of him passing over a wad of bills for a bag of powder generated virtually no feelings of pity. None of fear, nor of worry, or even concern. Just anger. Anger at myself, of course, for wasting all this time with guilt—but mostly anger at him. I'd been in love—happy, really for the first time in my life—and he'd marched in the door and taken it all away.
Everything sounded so much better that way.
I didn't go home right away. I thought I'd intended to, but apparently my subconscious had plans of its own, and by the time I looked up, I was standing in front of the cemetery.
I had little recollection of the funeral. I was lucky in that respect; repressing was one of my more valuable—and, I might add, polished—talents. Benny had made most of the arrangements, and for this reason (and others I'm sure we're all well aware of), Roger was markedly absent. At least once every day since then, I remembered so little of the whole event that I actually questioned my own presence there. Perhaps I had dreamed the whole thing up. Maybe I had even dreamed up her death...
No... that would have been too cruel a trick to play on myself. I was all for self-destruction, but even I had my limits.
The tombstone, however... now *that* I remembered. I plopped down on the freshly cut grass—allowing several seconds of silence to pass, in a vague hope that maybe I could make the entire gray block melt away if my eyes radiated just the right amount of pain. With one trembling hand, I reached out and traced a finger along the letters.
Miriam Isabella Marquez
1981-2002
It was easier to look at than I thought it would be; it didn't take much to pretend it was a complete stranger. None of us had ever called her by her full name. I don't think half of us had even known it. But I had—of course I had. I knew what she'd wanted to name her daughter someday, and what she got for her fifth birthday, and what song she danced to in her first ballet recital. She once told me I knew her better than anyone else ever had.
Even Roger?
I didn't dare ask.
I think just about everyone knew our relationship was the best thing that ever happened to us—but they didn't see everything. It wasn't perfect. She was always afraid of letting me get too close to her, for fear of breaking my heart once she was gone. And I was always terrified that Roger would come home, and the dream would be over.
Obviously, neither of our fears had been unjustified.
"I'm sorry."
It was a moment before I realized I'd said this out loud... and that it didn't feel half as strange as I thought it would.
"I'm so sorry..." I echoed, my vision instantly blurred by an onslaught of tears. "If I'd never written those letters, we never would have ended up on the couch, and I wouldn't have kissed you, and you wouldn't be gone now, and..."
And I never would have known what it felt like to be so madly in love. Had it been worth the price?
"...And..." And would anyone ever hear a word of this? "God, I'm so scared. I can't do this alone. We talked about it... remember? The night we roasted marshmallows over the stove and you burned a dish towel... You told me if anything ever happened, you would come with me to the clinic and you'd hold my hand and never leave me alone for one second, and we'd get through it together."
How little it took to bring back that night... I'd been hunched over my camera and the VCR and a pile of tapes all day long, working against a deadline. She knew this, but she also knew I couldn't resist her... and that was obviously more interesting to play around with. By eight o'clock, she marched into the room with a giant bag of marshmallows, almost wearing that tiny white tank top I loved so much, and announced that if I spent one more minute in front of that camera, I'd be sleeping alone for a month.
My voice had fallen to a whisper sometime during the reflection of that memory, and I was surprised to find I could barely hear it myself.
"You told me... not long ago... you were so scared of losing both of us. But it's me—I'm the one who's lost both of you."
I couldn't imagine verbalizing this—somehow it was even harder to do when I knew no one was listening. When no one was listening, it was easier to hear it myself. And right now, all I wanted was to forget it.
"I saw Roger today. He's..."
Any words beyond that would have been miserably in vain. If by some miracle my words would even reach her, then surely, by the same miracle, she would already know exactly what Roger was up to. Then again, that theory could very easily be my latest escape mechanism, hard at work to keep me in denial. It wasn't that I didn't need to say it; it was that I couldn't. I just wasn't ready to believe that my best friend, after two years of being perfectly clean, had begun writing his own death sentence—slowly, and painfully—yet again.
I jumped to my feet—even the thought was too much.
My eyes darted over the ground, fumbling, in tragic futility, to break through the layers of earth below that separated us. She was really so close... so close...
My feet pulled me further away until I felt I could breathe again, and I eyed the distant gray stone once more.
"How could you leave me alone with this?"
My strength was gone. I turned on my heel and left the cemetery.
I hadn't been home for five minutes before I found myself hunched over the kitchen counter, punching '4' on my speed dial. I had gotten used to ignoring the big '8' on the message display screen. All of her girlfriends from the club had been calling incessantly in the last week, wondering where in God's name she was, and why she hadn't shown up for work, and was she okay? I hadn't had the heart to erase the messages... or to call back and tell them the truth.
Collins' answering machine picked up, and I stammered a few words about seeing Roger, before my usual conclusion—"Call me"—and hung up.
One hour later, a knock at the door broke into my little world.
Perhaps it was Roger, I mused, crossing the room. Maybe he's come to apologize. Maybe he's come to let *me* apologize. I didn't even know which one would have been more inappropriate. At this point I was just willing to hope for *anything* but Maureen. I couldn't take another one of her lectures. And they weren't her usual lectures, in the traditional sense, full of obnoxious demands and relentless nagging. They were pleas, so desperate and cautious, from a side of her I hadn't seen since we broke up. A side that had been absent for so long, I'd assumed it had flown out the window right along with her heterosexuality. But as usual... I had been wrong.
I pulled the door open. I was in luck—according to my theory. It wasn't Maureen.
I promised myself I wouldn't do it, but I found myself searching his eyes the way I used to, years ago, when he would come home late at night, or early in the morning, and I would study his face to determine whether he'd been clean that night. More often than not, I was disappointed. But never wrong. I could always tell, whether I wanted to or not. Call it a talent, if you must. I called it a curse.
And although anxiety was the obvious factor behind those eyes that had turned so cold on me in recent weeks... that's all there was. Just fear, like everyone else. Not a shred of evidence that he'd been shooting up, even once.
Or maybe I was just losing the talent.
He looked down before speaking. "Can I come in?"
Without a word I stepped aside, trying furiously to decide which one of us had less right to be here. Neither, it seemed; it was almost as if we didn't live here anymore. He strode confidently through the door, but stopped when he reached the middle of the room, and shoved his hands in his pockets.
"I, uh, just came to get some of my stuff."
I nodded instinctively, then rethought this claim. "Roger... you don't have 'stuff'."
His eyes met mine again, narrowed—the fear having been very easily replaced by bitterness. I couldn't blame him for that. "Fuck off, Mark," he muttered before stomping towards his room.
It was true, though. 'Stuff' would have been his guitar. And that was somewhat... gone. Unless he planned to uproot his bed or dresser, I couldn't imagine what else he had that required relocating. Unless, of course... he was actually moving out.
I waited by the kitchen, leaning against the counter, until he reappeared in the doorway of his room, a pair of jeans in one hand, and a lyrics notebook in the other. "By the way," he announced, "I'm not going to put up with Maureen barging in on me and complaining about you anymore. So just do what she says."
A sickening feeling stirred in my stomach. Maureen had talked to him. She'd seen him and complained to him and didn't tell me, and... God, this was wrong on so many levels. She—Maureen, with whom Roger had been diametrically at odds from the day they met—had managed to charm him into tolerating one of her speeches... and I couldn't even get him to look at me.
I blinked. "What?"
"Go," he instructed. "Go to the clinic and get tested. I don't need any more of her goddamn lectures."
It all began to fall awkwardly into place now... Maureen told me I had to get tested, I refused, so she complained to my best friend. My ex-best friend. Asked him to talk some sense into me. Who'd have thought he'd actually do it? Wasn't he supposed to be deliberately indifferent to me right now?
"That's why you're here, to convince me to go?" I asked, hardly expecting a 'yes,' but at least hoping it would provoke some sort of reaction...
"No! I don't give a shit about that!"
...Yeah, like that.
He tossed his jeans and notebook into a very diminutive pile. "Just do it so she'll stop bugging me. This isn't my problem, and I don't want to be involved. So... go. Stop being a baby, make the fucking appointment, and just do it."
My eyes narrowed, studying him more closely. What might happen if I actually retorted with honesty?
"No," I announced.
His eyes shot upwards, flashing. I'd never defied him like that. "What?"
"You can't just march in and start telling me what to do; that's as bad as Maureen."
God, was I ever asking for it.
He ventured one step towards me, then retracted it. "Look—you got yourself into this, all right? God, Mark, I... what the fuck were you thinking, taking that chance?! I mean, I might have expected this from her, but *you*..."
I felt my voice leaving me. "Expected what?"
"This, everything! Manipulating you into this because she was lonely—I can't believe how selfish she was! Not giving a shit that she'd most likely end up killing you… kind of ironic that it turned out the other way around, huh?"
And that's when my voice left completely.
Why did this always happen to me? Every time I knew I should say something, something important and something unkind and heartless and, nonetheless, true—every time, I would just shut down. I knew everything I wanted to say, I just... couldn't... say it...
"Don't ever talk about her like that again."
Then again, I never failed to shock the hell out of myself. It had been barely breathed—after all, my voice really was quite gone—but it was there, nevertheless; a truth. Exactly what I'd wanted to say. And he heard it, and stared at me.
"April's gone because of me, Mark."
Where had this come from? The tone of his voice had so altered that I felt like I'd been transported back to another time in our lives... a time, not even so long ago, when we'd been allowed to speak to each other in soft voices, or scared voices, or kind voices... when we hadn't been reduced to resenting each other, each with our own respective reasons, for losing the woman we loved.
I pulled my gaze away from his. "Don't do this. April wasn't your fault, you know that. I know you're just—"
"No, you don't fucking know anything!" his voice roared, having jumped back to the present. "She didn't get AIDS from the drugs. Did you know that? She was so careful, she used her own needles every single time."
"Roger, accidents happen—"
"No. Not for her. She was completely safe. She got it from *me*."
His eyes, so full of fire, nearly burned right through mine when I turned back to look at him. "What?"
"She got it from ME, Mark. I was so sure I was fine; that it could never happen to me—because I was too chickenshit to go get tested. By the time I did, it was too late."
I half-expected a grand, final orchestral note to punctuate this, but I suppose in the end, silence is always louder.
He'd never told me that.
He shrugged, shaking his head in defeat, and tossed another notebook of lyrics onto his pile of stuff, doing his best to reclaim that air of utter indifference. I saw right through it, of course. Roger had never been good at expressing true emotions, but he was even worse at hiding them. He was worried about me... why was that so hard to believe? This was his traditional way of showing it, after all. This was always his way. He'd yell and blow up at me because he hated having to be so vulnerable, but that was my clue that he still cared.
I steadied my voice and turned away. "I think you should leave."
"Oh, fine, you know what? Fuck what you think. This is ridiculous." He marched over the counter and seized the phone, furiously punching in numbers.
"What are you doing?"
He turned until his back was facing me, and spoke into the receiver. "Hi, yeah, I'd like to make an appointment—the name is Mark Cohen—"
Ohhh, he was a devious one, wasn't he?
I lunged over the counter and managed to grab the phone from him, slamming it back down on its hook. I never would have managed such a feat if he'd been even half-expecting it, but I don't know if it had been worth it after all—the shock only infuriated him further.
"God damn it, Mark!"
"You're not my mother, I don't need you to take care of me!"
How many times I'd heard those very words from *his* lips... ironic, wasn't it?
"You have to deal with this. It's not a fucking death sentence, it's just something you have to go through! I did it, April did it, Mimi did it—we survived."
I knew I would regret saying this, but... "We?"
He shoved the phone aside and approached me. "Look, either you have it or you don't. Getting tested isn't going to change that."
Was this supposed to make me feel better?
I felt tears welling up behind my eyes, ready to leap out at any time. It wasn't supposed to be like this. Not even in my wildest nightmares was it ever supposed to be like this. I'd never imagined a day without her smile, a night without her kiss, a walk in Central Park without her hand clasped in mine... no, I was never meant to go through this alone. I wasn't strong enough. Everyone knew I wasn't. Even her. *Especially* her...
I let the tears fall, silently, as I leaned against the wall and allowed myself to slump to the floor. A few seconds later, I heard the phone being lifted off its hook. The silence was so great that I could even hear each of the numbers emit their slightly varying beeps as he punched them in.
"Yes, hello. I'd like to make an appointment for Mark Cohen, please."
More words filled the air as he politely and quietly answered their questions. What was the nature of the appointment? Had I been tested before? I closed my eyes, too weary to fight back. This wasn't happening.
"Tuesday? Sure. Three o'clock will be fine. Thank you."
The phone was returned to its resting place, much more gently this time, and I opened my eyes to find him back across the room, gathering his things into a more portable pile.
"It's on West 29th, by the..."
He stopped as our eyes met, and we both knew we were thinking the exact same thing. I knew where it was. He knew I knew where it was. I was the one who dragged him there in the first place, years ago, never imagining I would be in those shoes. I'd been the one to go there every week to pick up his AZT when he was too depressed to do it himself.
"Never mind."
I pulled myself to my feet as he opened the door with one arm, the other laden down with clothes and notebooks. "Roger—wait." I was almost surprised that he turned around; now I wasn't even sure what to say. "Would you..."
He adjusted some of the items in his arms and waited for me to continue, but I never did. "Would I what?" he finally demanded.
"Would you come with me?"
Something flashed across his face... sympathy? No, that would have been too much to ask for. "You're not a baby," he announced. "You can do this yourself."
No... no, I can't, I can't do this myself, and I need you there because I'm absolutely terrified.
But by the time I found the nerve to put those thoughts into words, he was already halfway down the third flight of stairs.