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It's practically midnight. It's eleven o'clock. I should sleep. I can't sleep.

Mark watched Roger sleep. He hadn't moved in the past five minutes save the normal breathing and twitches of a sound sleep. Unless Roger was playing opossum, which Mark doubted, this was the ideal moment to slip the pills into his beer. Mark looked at the bottle in his hand. What if it did him no good? Taking AZT without the accompanying antibiotics could be dangerous. The virus might become resistant.

"Take your AZT," he whispered. If only saying those words was not so dangerous when Roger was awake. If only Roger listened!

What's the difference? Mark wondered. I kill Roger or he kills himself. Where's the difference? Only the guilt. Mark didn't want to be the thirteen-year-old sobbing over the test because though he'd aced it, he accidentally caught sight of another student's answer.

"It says in Exodus," Mark, barely past his Bar Mitzvah, had told his rabbi, "'forgive my sin only this once'. So does that mean everyone only once gets forgiven for a sin? Because I really didn't mean it, really."

"I don't think you need to compare yourself to the Pharaoh of Egypt, Marcus. Besides, I'm sure you study hard and this test can't mean too much--best not worry about it too much."

Mark shivered. No one had called him Marcus in years--Roger didn't even know that his full name was Marcus. He preferred Mark. It was short and simple, an explanation to which Roger would giggle and say that short was certainly an apt descriptor for Mark. The old Roger would, anyway, Mark thought. The old Roger who cared about his life, who enjoyed it.

Mark looked again at Roger. As always, the ex-junkie slept as though someone had thrown him onto the bed like a discarded pair of pants, face-down and not completely on the bed, one ankle and one arm hanging over the edge of the mattress for a precarious balance.

Again Mark looked at the bottle. I could trick him into taking his AZT. I could. Why bother stashing pills in Roger's beer? More likely than not, Roger would be woken rather nastily as he fell off the bed and smashed the beer bottle to pieces. Mark's mood darkened nearly to full pitch. It was all too likely a scenario. Mark could already see himself in the hospital, explaining, "Well, doctor, we poured more beer over it because Roger didn't want to waste the stoli. Oh, by the way, he has HIV."

But what were the chances of that? No, it would be Roger: "Come on, Mark. We'll just pour a few beers over it to sterilize--not like Maureen's coming back for them--and I'll pick these pieces out myself. It's no big deal. Ah-aaow…"

Mark shook his head. He pocketed the AZT and picked up the beer. He left the room, then set the AZT and beer bottles beside one another on their ridiculously messy, post-modernist excuse for a table. Then he retrieve a blanket from his own bed and carried it into Roger's space. "Honestly, most children take better care of themselves," he grumbled, draping the blanket over Roger.

Half an hour later, Mark was using a spoon to catapult pieces of popcorn from the bowl near him to the one at the opposite end of the table when Roger wandered into the room. "Hey," he said.

Mark turned. "Oh, you're awake." To his surprise, he saw that Roger had wrapped the blanket around himself instead of putting on a shirt. In all likelihood this was an act of laziness, and so most people would interpret it, but Mark chose to see this as Roger's pathetic way of ducking his pride and saying his thanks.

Roger shrugged. "Could be a dream," he said. "Could all be one bad dream."

"Oh, is that why you don't take your AZT?" Mark asked before he had a chance to think. Roger was stunned into silence by the frankness; taking advantage of that, Mark continued hurriedly, before he lost his courage, "If you were wondering, Roger, this isn't just one bad dream."

Again Roger shrugged. He looked at the blanket, then wandered over into the kitchen-space over their industrial apartment and drank a gulp of milk directly from the carton. "You know," he said, "it's the world's most phallic snack: milk and a banana-nut muffin."

Mark tried to laugh, although he truly wanted to say, Why not chase the AZT with the last of the milk? He tried to play along, because Roger was trying to play his old self. "How about bananas and nuts?"

"Who eats bananas and nuts?" Roger asked, trying to sound amused. It was all trial and failure.

"I mean those chocolate-coated bananas, the ones with nuts on them."

"Oh, monkeys' tails?" Roger asked. "Well, yeah… for Collins, maybe, but… monkeys' tails are delicious. Don't perv up my snacks."

"Hey, you started this!" Mark said defensively, then sighed. He had blown his chance at playing normalcy with Roger.

But Roger, mustering up his courage, offered Mark a piece of his past as a trade for the blanket, the clinic, for everything. "Well… that's what she said. This girl I used to know. She used to get really down, and she made me play this game with her, World's Most Phallic as she called it. You'd try to think up the most phallic snack or animal or something."

It was awkward for Mark. He asked about Roger's past, Roger pushed him away. It was a pattern. That Roger had broken it broke Mark's responses, and he needed a set response. He didn't know how to respond without Maureen. Were things different? He had never known with her, but now she wouldn't be there to interrupt when he babbled on some tangent. "You… you sound like you miss her," he managed.

"Yeah, I do," Roger replied. For a moment his features softened into the pained look that took him in the midst of his vomiting spells, when he looked to Mark seeming to beg him to make everything a dream, make him wake up. It was then that Mark realized who Roger meant. Shit! And he had gone and fumbled. You sound like you miss her. Of course. The name from Roger's nightmares: April. "Guess I always figured I'd get back in touch. Not long now," Roger commented bitterly.

"You don't really think this is all a dream, do you?"

"No. All my dreams lately have been pain."

Mark took a deep breath. "Roger, I researched AZT. I know what it is now, and I was just wondering if… if you knew, too."

Roger squinted at Mark. "Yeah, I know," he said. He drained the milk. "Coffee?"

"How can you think about coffee?" Mark demanded. "Don't you understand that AZT could actually prevent you from developing AIDS? You could live for another ten or twenty years, Roger. Don't you want that? Take your AZT!" Roger's silence gave Mark a painful moment to consider and accept what he had been trying to deny. "No. You don't want it."

"No, I don't. I'm dying, Mark. I have AIDS and I am going to die soon; I've accepted that."

"Well… would you take it anyway?"

Roger scoffed. "Why?" he asked.

Mark raised his voice to be heard over the tap as he answered, "For me!"

A flame hissed into being under the copper pot. "You're got Maureen."

"Maureen left me."

Roger looked up from his coffee. "When?" he asked.

"While you were sleeping. I came in. She went out. She's living with a lawyer named Joanne."

"Oh. She is a lesbian, then."

Incredulous, Mark asked, "You knew?"

"Well… I thought she might be. Look, I'm really sorry, Mark. I should've warned you, I just couldn't believe anyone could possibly leave you or hurt you that much."

That was the straw that broke his back. Mark had taken enough. Roger's stubborn, nurtured depression he could accept; Maureen's leaving him, in time, would be dulled. With his body as his keep, Mark was safe. When Roger stepped on Mark's emotions, enough became too much. "Like you have any fucking clue how much this hurts!" Mark shouted.

"As a matter of fact, I do!" Roger shouted back. "And let me know when you find Maureen bleeding herself dry, Mark!"

Blundered again, Mark realized. Of course Roger knew the feeling. Instead of conceding the point, Mark shouted, "I don't fucking have to, Roger, because I've got you, you bastard!"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means the AZT could save your life!"

"Not much of a life, is it? It's not just the AZT, Mark! It's the AZT and the antiretrovirals and the vitamins and the fucking tricyclic!"

"That doesn't matter! You don't want to live, Roger! You could, you could, just take your AZT, but you're nothing but a coward! You haven't accepted your death, you're just too scared to give a shit about anyone, but I'm not April, Roger! I'm not going to abandon you, so why're you abandoning me?" Mark's throat hurt from the shouting, but a part of him had no desire to stop. Before he realized he had risen, he was standing immediately before Roger, staring him into answering.

"I'm not abandoning you, Mark," Roger said, and Mark almost believed he had won. He almost thought his outburst had moved Roger to concession to his perspective. Then Roger completed his sentence, "I'm not abandoning you, I'm doing you a favor by taking my miserable self out of your life."

Mark cursed Roger and punched him.