Title: Metronome (Chapter 9/?)
Rating: R for language and adult content (for entire story)
Summary: From hence emerge the prior stories of our heroes. Pre-RENT.
Disclaimer: You know they're not mine; I know they're not mine. I promise to clean them after I use them. I make no money from this. I apologize if I have stolen or caused any sort of bodily harm to anyone through the production of this written material.
OCTOBER 21ST, 1996, 9:43 PM, EST. Joanne Jefferson.
This wasn't the club Maureen had initially intended to grace with her presence. She had, in fact, been halfway to this cheap place she knew on Sullivan Street. But something had changed her mind. She wasn't ready to admit what it was—barely to herself, never to anyone else. It was just a mental picture of what the club would like that had struck her as she walked. Dark and crowded and smoky. Bodies crammed up next to each other. And she remembered the past few months, remembered Roger slamming doors and fists and glasses in pain and anger, remembered Mark pushing her into the bedroom and somehow managing to lock her inside, fearful of Roger's anger, of his own inability to protect her on those days when it got really bad, so bad that Mark would come into the room later that night with the lights already out, hiding a bruise or his tears. And suddenly...the thought of rubbing up against strange men wasn't so appealing. Maybe, she thought, it's just survival instinct. I want to make sure that I'm up against someone who I have half a chance of beating if it came to blows. What a fucking romantic I am.
This is how she had come to Henrietta Hudson's, and although it wasn't her first time there, it was the first time she didn't think about it consciously, the first time she wasn't an actress there playing a part. She was just Maureen tonight. That would have to be enough. And for most of these women, it was. Maureen certainly wasn't a stranger to women's bodies—she had been a fucking theater major, for Christ sake—and all she planned on doing here was gettin' down and makin' out. If somebody was attractive enough to excite her, sex was certainly an option. The eternal option, she thought, almost grinning. It was a relief, really, to finally be the one in control. Her career depended on the whims and whimsies of hundreds of irrelevant and unimportant people—the clerk who issued her a protest permit, the cop who chose not to arrest her, the people who did, but more often didn't, stick around to actually watch and listen. Her home life—well, that was certainly something she couldn't control. Living with a barely-recovering junkie and a boyfriend who had somehow lost himself inside his own skin. She missed Collins, who had left almost five months ago. He had always been able to make her feel that life wasn't just cruise control. Tonight she would settle for choosing her lover.
There isn't much dancing at a place as crowded as Henrietta's, but there is always some small corner where women mould themselves into each other's bodies. The music was nothing to speak of, but it would do. Maureen pried herself away from the fabulous redhead who was not-too-subtly grinding her thigh in between Maureen's in time to the music. "Be back in a flash, honey. I need a drink." And with that, Maureen batted her eyelashes and sauntered to the bar. Her money was damp with sweat, and she caught more than one appraising glance as she pulled it out of her bra—the one problem with those leather pants was the lack of pockets. The bartender—full of piercings, lewd comments and quick smiles for her customers, winked at Maureen. She looks so young, Maureen thought. She watched the young woman pass by again. She's probably just my age. And turning quickly to escape that thought, she pushed off the bar and right into the solid frame of another woman.
"Whoa, excuse me," said the owner of that rather firm arm. And that is how Maureen met Joanne, who had accepted her light apology and even offered Maureen a seat at her table. "So you don't have to deal with running into someone tougher than me," she said to Maureen, who grinned. "Besides, I'm damn sick of celebrating alone. Is forty-five minutes sufficient time to consider yourself stood up?"
"More than. What are we celebrating?" asked Maureen innocently, although it wasn't the first question that came to mind. And so Joanne explained that she was a litigator who had had a fairly decisive win earlier in the day. When Maureen commented off-handedly that the only thing she understood about the law was that it wasn't particularly amenable to performing artists, Joanne had leaned back and laughed—a hearty, natural sound. Maureen, who had meant the comment seriously, found herself giggling. What was going on here?
"Were you really waiting for someone, or is that just a line you feed all the girls?" asked Maureen, leaning forward and looking up through her eyelashes coquettishly.
"I don't feed lines," said Joanne, and that had been the end of that. Maureen had never gotten a response so sure and so final. Joanne's words had been as firm as they were swift to respond, and Maureen didn't doubt they were true.
Henrietta Hudson's is a great place to hang out, a great place to drink, a great place to oogle beautiful women. It is not a great place to speak quietly, to observe nuance, to get to know someone new. Joanne checked her watch.
"They're not gonna show. Would you like to get some coffee?" And Maureen, who had been asked to go a lot of places after meeting people in bars, realized that she had never once gone out afterwards for coffee. She accepted immediately.
"This is why I couldn't live anywhere else," laughed Maureen. "Who knows when you'll need a mocha—or two—at two am?"
"You're shitting me. It's not that late."
"No," admitted Maureen, "not quite. But one forty-five is pretty close." She giggled as Joanne's eyebrows shot up and her expression changed from shock to mock-despair.
"Well, shit. There go my hopes of scoring two incredibly productive days in one week. But, oh well, right?"
"Right!" agreed Maureen, hoping she could successfully pull off the switch from little-girl voice to seductive tone. It was a necessary part of the hunt. "Celebrating is as important as winning a victory in the first place." She batted her eyes. Joanne didn't look particularly woo-ed. This was fucking harder than she'd bargained for.
"So," said Joanne, adjusting herself in her chair. "You're a performance artist, whatever that means. You're from Long Island, about which I am sworn to absolute secrecy. You like mochas—a lot. You live downtown. What else, Maureen? Tell me something interesting." Maureen felt, for one moment, like she was on the witness stand, and she bristled, tossing her hair, making sure her little sniff was audible. But the next moment, she looked at Joanne hard, leaned back a little—bad fucking habit to pick up from a filmmaker boyfriend—and saw how kindly Joanne was smiling at her, how seriously she could take herself. This was so different from what Maureen had been looking for tonight. This wasn't a one-night fuck; she didn't know if Joanne even knew how to do that, how to let it all go that way. Maureen needed to be able to let it all go. And yet...she just looked so solid. So unshakable. So stable. Maybe this was what she'd come out tonight looking for, after all.