Chapter Three – Bittersweet Symphony

January 3, 1997

"Room service," Roger called in a horribly put-on French accent, pushing the door to his bedroom open as he juggled a bowl of chicken soup and a cup of tea. Both he and Mimi had

Mimi looked up from one of Mark's photo albums and smiled weakly when she saw Roger. "Hey baby."

He smiled back and sat down at the foot of the bed, placing both objects on the ground at his feet. "Morning. How you feeling?

"Like shit," she replied meekly, turning one of the pages in the photo album. She examined the pictures carefully, smiling at the memories of happier times. Mimi traced her finger over a photo of Collins, Benny, Mark and Roger from what must have been almost two years ago. They looked younger, more hopeful. Even though it had only been a couple years, they had all matured and definitely experienced more. Roger, though, looked sicker, paler, thinner. Like she did right now.

"Did you take your AZT?" he asked, rubbing her lower leg which was buried under a large pile of blankets.

Mimi nodded slowly and swallowed hard, recognizing herself all too well in that photograph.

"You sure? Don't lie to me because I'll find out," Roger laughed. "Trust me. I have connections."

She nodded again and looked up at him, studying the way he looked now. Unfortunately, though, she knew that she'd never look any better. Roger could bounce back, but Mimi wasn't strong enough.

"I swear," she managed to reply.

"Good. I brought you some soup. Yum yum yum," he grinned.

"You're so weird," she giggled quietly.

He shrugged and shook his head. "I just want you to feel better. I brought you some tea, too." He lifted the soup off the ground and held it out in front of her. He picked the spoon up out of it and scooped up some broth, holding it up in front of Mimi's face. She grimaced and turned her head away.

"I can feed myself."

"I know, I was just…"

She sighed loudly and shut her eyes. "Just what, Rog?"

"I just want you to get better," he told her quietly as his eyes drifted down into the soup bowl, which he moved away from Mimi.

She frowned and shook her head. "You know I won't."

"But maybe if we—"

"Roger," she said sternly. "You know it's not gonna work that way."

He shrugged and his eyes continued to drift elsewhere. He didn't understand how nonchalant Mimi was about this. It was like she didn't care she was going to die. She was so comfortable with the news. Why was it she could deal with it, but Roger couldn't?

"I don't want to die," she continued quietly. "I love you and I don't want to leave you. But can't we just… spend this time together instead of having you treat me like a four year old? Please, Roger…"

He nodded slowly.

"Don't be my mom. Be my boyfriend."

Roger sat meekly on the edge of the bed, feeling about six inches tall. Mimi had called him a lot of things during their relationship, but this was the first time she had ever called him her mother. He just wanted Mimi to be well.

He slid back onto the bed and sat beside Mimi, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. "What are you looking at?"

"Mark's photos. You should get so close to me. You can't get sick."

"I won't," he reassured her. "Mom."

Mimi laughed and snuggled in closer to him, covering her mouth with her hand. "They're old pictures. I barely recognize you."

"Yeah, they are," he commented, examining the pictures. He turned the page slowly and frowned at the depressing memories. They were all taken at a dark time in his life.

"That's cute," Mimi laughed, pointing to a picture of Mark and Maureen on the Staten Island Ferry. Maureen had somehow acquired a foam Statue of Liberty foam hat and was trying to feed Mark some popcorn from across the deck. Collins watched on, wearing a matching Statue of Liberty hat and a scowl.

Suddenly, Mimi explosively sneezed, whirling away from Roger. He quickly tucked the blankets tighter around her and kissed the side of her head.

"Are you cold?" he asked, frazzled. Mimi batted him away and frowned.

"No, mother," she teased him. "I'm fine."

"Honeybear," Joanne tried, sitting down on the edge of the bed beside Maureen. "Please, you have to stop."

Maureen sobbed into her eider down pillow, unable to answer. She buried her face further into it and moaned loudly.

Joanne tucked Maureen's now damp hair behind her ear and kissed the back of her head. "Please, baby. I'm sad about Mimi too, but you can't stop the world because of it."

This prompted her to cry harder and she covered the sides of her face with her hands, completely unable to answer her girlfriend.

Joanne sighed sadly and stood up from the bed, checking herself in the full length mirror beside the bed before picking up her black pumps from the ground. The evening before, Mark had called Joanne at work. He told her all about Mimi, continuing on with telling her that Maureen had what seemed like a nervous breakdown when she heard the news. She had refused to talk to anybody about Mimi and had stayed balled up on the couch crying for the entire afternoon. Having made a brief attempt to visit Mimi in her bedroom, Maureen found she couldn't stay for too long before breaking down and crying again. Mimi was taking the news better than she was.

When Mark had called her, Joanne rushed over to the loft and picked Maureen up. She unsuccessfully tried to take her out to dinner and offered to take her shopping, but finally gave in and took her back to their apartment on Fifth Avenue. Joanne continued to order Maureen's favourite takeout meals and let her watch whatever she wanted on television for the entire night, but Maureen refused it all, retiring to bed early and crying herself to sleep. She woke up the next morning, and picked up where she left off and waking Joanne up with her sobs. She refused to answer Joanne when she asked her about Mimi and had barely said anything for the entire evening, save for 'it's all my fault'. Joanne was starting to get worried.

"I'm going to go into work now, Honeybear," she told Maureen as she slipped her shoes onto her feet. "I have to go in, but I'll try and come home at lunch time, okay?"

Maureen sobbed.

She tried with all her might to ignore her cries for a moment until she could get out of the room. She didn't want to leave Maureen, but she knew she had to. There was some very important work to get through at work, but once she was finished with it Joanne would dedicate her time to finding out what was wrong with Maureen.

"I love you, Honeybear. Try and have something to eat today."

She gave her girlfriend a final sympathetic smile and turned around, leaving the room and closing the door behind her. Maureen waited until she heard the front door shut before sitting up. She grabbed her pillow and clutched it tightly in her lap, as if she was transferring all her energy to it. Suddenly and without warning, she threw it harshly at the shut door, screaming as it flew across the room. She collapsed into a heap at the foot of the bed, sobbing into the blankets.

This was entirely her fault.

Last week on Christmas Eve at about nine o'clock in the evening, she and Joanne were sitting in the living room. Joanne had made them hot chocolate and they were settling in to watch A Christmas Story on television. They got into a stupid, random argument about nothing in particular (as per usual). Maureen grabbed her coat and boots and stormed out of the apartment, Joanne trailing soon after her. She hailed a cab and was planning on making her way over to the loft, but Joanne got into the taxi with her. After a very long and boisterous argument and reassurement from the cabbie that they would be banned from the New York City taxi service from now on, the two women got out at Tompkins Square Park. They wandered through the nearly empty and very cold park slowly, talking things through and trying to figure out whether their relationship could withstand what it had been going through. Joanne claimed that she needed some sort of 'sign' to convince her, and then, almost as if on cue, they found Mimi curled up on a park bench with little more than the clothes on her back.

They struggled to bring the delirious Mimi back to the loft and felt like they had been torn to shreds as Roger sang the song he had been waiting for for his entire life. That night, Roger looked at Maureen differently; she noticed it. It was the look that was always in his eyes when he talked about April. Not necessarily love, but a kind of devotion that he hadn't expressed towards her for a long time.

There had been a kind of animosity between the two of them for the past year, ever since April died and Maureen left Mark. They had been really good friends before any of that happened. In fact, he was the one who introduced her to Mark in the first place. They had been inseparable for a very long time, neither actually falling for each other, just staying good friends. When she started to date Mark and he started to date April, their friendship began to wane. She hated April and never hesitated to let everybody know it. Maureen knew that Roger could do so much better than her and didn't know why he let her stick around. That is, until she found out about their addiction.

When she and Mark had returned home from a busy day out and about the city, they were met with a particularly angry and depressed Roger. April was dead; she killed herself, and even though Roger kept telling the others that it was all his fault, Maureen knew very well it was hers. After all, she was the one who was constantly calling her names and telling her how worthless she was. After that, she managed to drive herself away from Mark, too, never really getting over the guilt she felt for April's death. Now Roger was going to go through the same thing again all because of Maureen.

She knew damn well that Mimi's death was going to be on her head. If she had been less than completely self-absorbed for once, this would never have happened. She was stuck in the exact same situation as she was almost two years ago. Maureen had never really gotten over April's death, and the news about Mimi sparked these guilty feelings again. She didn't know what to do, but she knew she needed to apologize to Roger and clear her mind.

Mark took a small, nervous sip of his water and glancing up across the table at Kate. Her normally pulled back blonde hair was curled and surrounded her face, falling down her back. She was wearing more makeup than usual, but still looked beautiful. She wore a short dark purple dress, but kept her black pea jacket on, because she never really became accustomed to the heating inside the restaurant. Her brown eyes glimmered in the candlelight and Mark studied her face closely as she spoke.

"…and high school kind of sucked because I wasn't really into it. But when you have two really smart siblings, you have to try to be. I was really into the cross-country running team and the drama club, though. Oh, and get this, I actually founded the film club!" she laughed, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.

"Really?" Mark asked. "I would have killed to have a film club at my high school! The closest I got was the A/V club."

She laughed again. "A/V? Me too!" she admitted. "Oh God, I can't believe I just told you that. Now I might have to kill you," she joked.

Mark made a face and laughed, "So, then what after high school?"

"I went to Carleton University, which is in Ottawa, too. I didn't really want to go, but when your mom works on Parliament Hill for the Canadian Government and your brother is the smartest man ever, it's kind of expected." She tapped the ashes off the end of her cigarette and into the ashtray below. "So… after four years of mostly partying and beer-chugging contests, I managed to graduate with a B.A. in Political Science. But I still didn't feel like I fit in. I dunno," she shrugged. "Maybe I'm just weird."

He shook his head. "No," he reassured her, "I'm the same way. I dropped out of Brown University halfway through my second year because I didn't know what I wanted to do, either. There was a lot of pressure to do it all from my family, but I finally gave in and moved out on my own."

"Yeah," she agreed, nodding. "I know what you mean. I was eventually just like, 'screw you, Ottawa!' and I moved to New York."

He laughed and picked up his fork, pushing the remains of his cheesecake around. "Why New York? Did you want to become a big actress?"

"Hah, yeah right," she shook her head. "I couldn't act my way out of a wet paper bag. The only reason I was in the drama club was for something to do so I could get out of piano lessons and stuff like that."

Mark nodded, laughing. "I got sucked into those as a kid. I know exactly how you feel."

She nodded too, understanding. "So anyway, New York… Um, I moved here with my then best friend, Lauren, and we got a shitty little apartment in Brooklyn. She eventually ditched me for some guy named Kevyn and his guitar, so that left me with a waitressing job at a Vietnamese restaurant and an apartment I couldn't afford. I eventually moved down into an even tinier apartment in Greenwich Village and got another job at the coffee house where I work now."

"So you're busy."

She sighed and smiled. "Yeah, but it's all good. I get it all done and I'm getting by alright, so…"

"Yeah."

She smiled and cocked her head at Mark, then darted her eyes over to the cheque on the table. She grabbed her purse off the ground and pulled out her wallet.

"Want to get going?"

He shrugged. "Uh, I guess. Please," he tried, placing his hand over the cheque. "Let me."

She shook her head and slipped it out from underneath his hand. "I mean, you could come to my place if you want. We could hang out there."

"Oh, uh, sure," Mark agreed nervously. Kate left just enough money for the dinner so they wouldn't have to wait for change, so they stood up and Mark put his coat and scarf on. They waded through the tables to the front of the restaurant, and feeling brave and empowered, Mark reached over and held Kate's hand. She glanced over at him quickly and smiled, shuffling closer to him as they walked away from the restaurant and to her apartment.

He hadn't even thought about Roger or Mimi for the entire night.

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