Author's Notes:
I can't seem to decide whether I'm proud of this story, or if I'm fighting a losing battle with this one. I'll give it a couple more chapters. Maybe you guys can help me decide. Comments?
Also, I've fudged the timeline a bit in this story. I know Roger and April got AIDS seven months before Christmas, but in my version, it happens about a little over a year before instead. Okay? Okay.
*************
By the following Tuesday, I was feeling strong enough to get dressed and go to work. I was still coughing, my throat felt raw and sore, and it hurt to talk. But I could stand up without feeling dizzy, and I didn't have enough money to cover my rent for the next month. Not to mention that the longer you missed work, the more impossible Robbie became to deal with. Better to get back sooner than later.
Tina was putting on her makeup when I came in the back entrance. I hung up my coat and tried to slip past before she noticed me, but as luck had it, she caught sight of my reflection in the mirror and whirled around before I had a chance to escape.
"Mimi, hi!" she greeted me, jumping up from her chair and putting an arm around my shoulders. "How are you feeling?"
I backed away slightly. "Still sick," I tried to explain. "I don't want you to get sick too."
"Of course," she agreed. "Listen, Mimi, I called the clinic, and your appointment is set up for tomorrow afternoon."
"Tomorrow afternoon?" I repeated. "That's so...soon."
"I thought you'd rather get this over with as soon as possible," she explained.
She was right about that. I'd done nothing but fret over whether I actually could have AIDS for the last week, when I wasn't preoccupied with sleeping or throwing up. "You're right," I agreed. "Although I have a feeling you also didn't want to give me time to back out."
"Okay, I was a little worried about that," Tina confessed. "But it'll be over before you know it. I'll be right there with you the whole time. Honestly, there's nothing to it."
How could she say that so calmly? It might be over for her, yes. She'd have done her duty, brought her friend in for medical help, saved the community of Alphabet City from yet another undiagnosed AIDS patient wandering around spreading disease. Tina would be safe. My future boyfriends would be safe.
But I wouldn't.
I would never feel safe again.
***************
True to her word, Tina came by the next afternoon to collect me for my appointment. We took the subway uptown to the clinic, which Tina promised me was completely anonymous, and wouldn't care if I was under eighteen. We sat together in the waiting room, flipping through magazines of beaming supermodels modeling the latest fashions. The receptionist called my name, and I followed the nurse into a tiny examining room, where she pricked my arm and took a blood sample. She said to come back in two weeks for the results. I nodded dully, barely able to hear her over the roaring in my ears.
Tina took me home. I crawled back into bed and yanked the covers over my head. My arm still hurt from where the blood was drawn.
I returned to the clinic two weeks later, by myself this time. If the test was negative, I'd have plenty of time to tell Tina. And if it was positive...it couldn't be. It just couldn't. I repeated this over and over in my mind, holding on to a desperate hope that if I said it enough, it would come true.
The waiting room was the same as I remembered it. The magazines were the same as well. I grabbed one at random, although I knew I wasn't in any shape to read at this point in time. I could look at pictures, though, and I found that if I stared at them enough, I could briefly block out where I was, and what I was waiting for.
A bald man sported a milk mustache. A little girl with a blonde ponytail hugged a golden retriever puppy. A man and woman smiled at each other across a table, clinking their champagne glasses together.
Would I ever have all that? Would I get married, and have a husband who adored me? Who gave me butterflies in my stomach every time he smiled at me, even after twenty years of marriage? Would I have children who called me Mama and presented me with crayon drawings on Mother's Day? Maybe I'd get out of the city. Maybe my husband and I would find a little farm in the country, and raise children and chickens at the same time.
Or maybe I would die of AIDS, with a lifetime yet to live.
I heard a sniffle and bit sharply on my lip. I wasn't going to cry, I instructed myself. Not now. Not here. Not until I was safe at home, with the door bolted behind me, and no one to see my tears.
Another sniffle followed, and I realized that they weren't coming from me, but from the girl sitting across from me. Her arms were wrapped tightly around herself, and her face was desperately fighting against an onslaught of tears. She was young too, maybe nineteen or twenty, and the more I looked at her, the more familiar she seemed. She could be a waitress at the Cat Scratch Club, possibly, or maybe she lived in my apartment building. I'd never been good with details like that.
I felt sorry for her, though. Here she was, just as much of a kid as me, and instead of hanging out with her friends, or figuring out what she was going to do with the rest of her life, she was sitting around this drab little clinic, waiting to find out exactly how much she had left of her life.
"Hey." She jumped slightly at the sound of my voice. Her brown eyes, still startled, met mine. "Are you okay?"
She swiped furiously at a tear that was about to drip off the end of her nose. "I'm fine."
"Okay." I shrugged and went back to my magazine.
Several minutes ticked by, and then I heard another sniffle. I glanced up and her eyes met mine again.
"Oh, God, who am I kidding?" she whimpered, her voice dangerously close to breaking. "I'm dying. I know I am."
What was I supposed to say to her? How could I help her when I didn't even know how to deal with it myself?
"Maybe the test will be negative," I offered weakly, aware of how stupid and naive I sounded.
She shook her head. "It's positive. I know it is. God, how am I going to tell Roger?"
"Roger?" I echoed.
"My boyfriend," she explained, wiping away another tear. "We've been together over a year."
I envied her, not for having a boyfriend, but for being able to love like that. Relationships had always been about self-preservation for me. I'd invite men into my bed, but never into myself. They wanted sex, I wanted a good time, maybe a couple drinks at the bar when we went out. It was a safe pattern, and bad things happened when I strayed from it.
Hadn't the whole mess with Eddie proved that?
"April Dennis." The girl turned her head to the doorway, where the nurse from last time was holding a clipboard. "The doctor will see you now."
The girl gave me a shaky smile and followed the nurse out of the waiting room. I turned back to my magazine.
A cruise ship sailing through crystal blue waters. Palm trees bordering a beach of pure white sand. California, Mexico, the Bahamas, all places I'd never been to, and never live to see.
*************
Two months later
I stared up at the ceiling, counting the tiny little bumps for the thousandth time that week. The room was a wreck, the casserole Tina had brought over was sprouting mold in my refrigerator, and I really needed a shower. I needed a fix.
I'd played around with drugs ever since I started dancing at the club. Growing up, I'd always been warned that if I tried that shit, my brothers would beat me until I got some sense into my head. But my brothers were in New Jersey, and had no idea where I was, or what I was doing. And everyone did it, to some extent.
When I met Eddie, I got into the hard-time drugs. Cocaine, which I could never afford before, not on a dancer's salary. LSD. And a whole slew of other ones that I never knew by name, only as tiny little capsules that I swallowed before the rest of the night disappeared in a burst of color and light.
Heroin had always been my drug of choice, though. It was affordable, if not cheap, I liked the way it made my worries drop away, and there was a dealer who sold a few blocks from my apartment. I'd quit after I was diagnosed with HIV, but the cravings had been coming back. After all, it didn't matter what I did now, did it? Who cared if I destroyed my body, when chances were I'd be dead before Christmas?
The water was cold. I stood shivering under the water, lathering up my hair as quickly as I could. Freezing water poured down my back as I tilted my head back, letting the soap suds run down my legs and into the bathtub. When I was through I shut the water off and reached for a towel, quickly drying myself off before wrapping it around myself and going to find something to wear.
I spent the next fifteen minutes deciding on an outfit, wondering the entire time why I was wasting my time on something that was obviously so unimportant. I hadn't cared about anything in the last two months. Not about my eighteenth birthday, which had passed a mere six days after my diagnosis. I'd waited my entire life to be eighteen, and now that I finally was, it didn't matter anymore. I didn't care about how I looked, or how messy my apartment got.
Hardly anything matters when you're dying.
I finally settled on an old, faded pair of jeans and an oversized sweatshirt an old boyfriend--I couldn't remember who--had left in my apartment ages ago. I didn't have much money, but if I played my cards right, I could find some poor sucker to flirt with, who would loan me twenty bucks for a stash. I'd scrape up the cash somehow.
Stepping outside, it surprised me how little had changed in the last few months. My entire world had been destroyed, my life cut short, and yet the vendor still sold hot dogs on the corner of Avenue A, and the same bag lady was outside the Food Emporium, shaking her tin can at whoever passed by.
Kenny was at his usual corner, with his usual crowd of customers. Some I recognized, and nodded brief hellos to before turning away so they couldn't ask how I was, or where I'd been. I stood back until the group thinned out, then approached my old dealer.
"Mimi!" he exclaimed. "Where've you been keeping yourself, gorgeous?"
I shrugged. "Just around. Can I have a stash?"
His eyes narrowed. "You got any money?"
I reached into my jeans pocket, and pulled out my last five dollars. "I know you charge ten, but can you cut me a break this time? I haven't worked in awhile."
"Oh, Mimi," he sighed. "If I did it for you, I'd have to do it for everyone, wouldn't I?"
"Please, Kenny," I begged. "I really need this."
"That badly?" A small smile played on his lips. "What's it worth to you?"
I knew the routine. I'd hang around until he was free for a moment, we'd disappear to a nearby alley, and I'd give him some form of sexual gratification. Then he'd give me the stash, and I'd proceed to go and erase the humiliation with the sweet oblivion that smack provided.
Whatever you want, I started to say. I opened my mouth to say it out loud, and then I realized it. I couldn't. I was HIV positive.
"Sorry," I mumbled. "Not today, Kenny."
He shrugged. "No skin off my back. I've got plenty of buyers."
I turned and stalked off, feeling my cheeks flush. Damn it, why did this have to happen? I raged silently. Why was I wasting my time, living half a life until I finally died years before I was supposed to?
It wasn't fair. And it didn't make any sense. The world had fucked me over, so why did I owe it anything? What did I have to look forward to?
Nothing, I realized. Nothing at all.
An eerie calm fell over me. I was dying already. What difference did it make whether I died or three months from now?
I went back to Kenny. I swallowed my guilt, and gave him a blow job. While he was sufficiently distracted, I helped myself to several bags of heroin from his back pocket, more than I'd ever taken at one time.
More than enough to end my life.
I held my head high as I stuffed the bags into my front pocket and headed down the street. I had fucked up my life, disgraced my family, and shattered my dreams. My world had come crashing down around my ears. Now it was over. In death, I could achieve the dignity that had escaped me in life.
I rolled up my sleeve and took out the first bag.