Disclaimer: Don't own RENT. Nothing to do with it.
Summary: You look familiar, your smile reminded me of… I always remind people of…
Not quite the cat Scratch Club. How Mimi and Roger really first met.
Melpomene
Chapter Eight
Mimi knocked on the door, shivering slightly from the chill that had followed her into the hallway.
"What'd you forget…" Came a bored voice from the man who opened the door. He stared at her.
She's dead, Mark!
"Got a light?"
His eyes were dull, his expression weighed down with age and melancholy. His actions were all one obnoxiously slow movement, as though each one required much effort or thought. Because living like we do isn't living at all. Sobriety took all the fun out of life. It also stole the last remnants of a life from a former user.
"She died. Her name was April…" He muttered, looking away.
April wrote the letter to Mark. April had AIDS. April was dead. The rest of the present situation seemed awkward from her distant viewing point.
"They used to tie you up…" He said, nodding now that he could admit where he knew her from. But that didn't seem quite right. He was vaguely familiar. She never remembered a man from the club.
"Why don't you forget that stuff? You look like you're sixteen…"
She took offense, retorting that she was nineteen and old for her age. Heroin put the fun into life and the living into years. Stripping hardened her. Living on her own aged her. AIDS made life real andliving essential.
"I once was born to be bad." He admitted.
She had a brief flash of irrational pity for the man who seemed to have detached himself from a more rational lifestyle.
His eyes were very lovely. Light green. Sad eyes, empty, but recovering. There was something in them now that hadn't quite been there when she'd first come in the room.
"I'm Roger."
Roger had loved April. They'd done drugs and April wanted Mark to help Roger stop. Roger had talked to Mimi in the park so long ago when he'd smoked and shared his bitter philosophy. Not quite the Cat Scratch Club.
"They call me Mimi."
But it was close enough to the truth.
Notes: Cheers, kids. Thanks for reading and reviewing. I'm trying to work a new chapter thing but I'm coming up short. I'll try to post when I get inspired soon though. Love and stuff.