"Take care of her." Roger said, lying on his deathbed. Wires and cold, glaring machines were keeping him alive.
"What?" I say dumbly, not wanting to believe my best friend was about to die.
"Take care of Mimi. She's weak. She needs you." He said softly.
Then Mimi herself came bounding into the room, handing a cup of coffee to me, and sitting down in the chair next to Roger's bed. "How are you baby? Can I do anything?" She asks softly.
"Just sit with me." He says softly, his voice weak.
"I love you Roger." Mimi says, trying, yet failing to be strong.
"I know Mimi, I love you too." He responds.
Listening to his voice, I know it's all over. "Wait for us man, wait for us," I say, leaving the room, knowing that, that would be that last time I would see my best friend alive.
"Take your AZT." I say to Mimi, as she comes out of Roger's bedroom. Amazing, a year after his death, that I still think of it as his room, not hers. I'm sitting on the same lumpy, duck tape covered couch that we had when we moved in. The loft hadn't changed. His posters still covered the walls, his guitar left in a corner, sad and unplayed. The two of us had kept it polished, still beautiful. It was a monument to him.
"Why bother?" she asks. I was taking care of her, as Roger had requested, as he lie dying. I glance at the calendar behind her. September eighteenth. His twenty-ninth birthday. He'd spent the twenty-eighth in the hospital.
"Mimi. Why do you do this?" I say, feeling irritable. It hurt me too. Just as much as her.
"I'm going to die anyway."
"So you'll just quicken it along?" I ask. She been like this ever sense he died. It was eerily like Roger after April died. Moody, quiet, mourning, depressed. But he'd found a new love. Mimi told me she felt like she was betraying him, whenever she looked at another guy. I wish I could make this, this day easier for her. And for me.
"Why not? I'll be with him, Angel, and Collins." Her lover and her best friend had been the first two to die. Collins had lost his will to live after Angel had passed. No one is sure how he outlived Roger, but really he didn't. He had gone through the motions of life, as she was now, though he truly had died when Angel died. It was no secret that she would be next, unless some accident took me, Maureen or Joanne. That's all who were left. We had gone from seven to four in only a few years.
"He was supposed to let me go first." She said. Now she was crying. It killed me to watch the once, bright and beautiful girl in so much pain.
"Come here Mimi." I say patting the seat next to me. She sits down. I put my hand on her thin shoulder. "It's OK, Meems. He doesn't want you to be sad."
"I miss him so much." I hear the pain in her voice. She lays her head on my shoulder. She is still Roger's girl right? But he was dead. And she was alone, and beautiful. I pull her into my chest, and breathe in the scent of her hair. It's intoxicating.
"Mimi-" She cuts me off with a kiss. At first I don't know what to do, and start to pull back, but change my mind, and I deepen the kiss. She then lays her head on my chest. 'Take care of her. Take care of Mimi. She's weak. She needs you.' Roger's words echo in my head. Was this taking care of her? Or taking advantage of her. "Mimi, I-"
"Mark, stop. Don't think for once. For me. Just be with me." We kiss again, and I let myself fall back onto the couch, my hand on her back, holding her close to me. I'm confused, and I feel guilty, yet I can't bear the thought of stopping.
I think I love her. Can I love her? Roger, can I love her? Is this what you wanted? Is this what you meant? Oh, god please be what you meant. I'll do what you asked. I'll take care of Mimi. But will I betray you in the process? I love her. She loves me. She loves you.
Or at least she showed me that she loved me that night. The night when she was mine. The night she should have belonged to you.