The Fire's Out Anyway
(A Rent Fic)
Mark wears a suit now. The suit is gray and matches with a blue tie; Alexi says the tie brings out his eyes. His hair is no longer spiked; Alexi says it's bad for business.
Mark has money now. He lives in an apartment on 84th street, so far away from Alphabet City he might as well be on another planet. His rent is always paid and his power's always on. The last time he generated heat by burning art in a trashcan he had been young, and hopeful, and so alive, it sickens him now to think about it.
It's Christmas Eve, 1999. If he doesn't leave his yuppie pad soon he'll be late for dinner. His mother is making something special, she always is, and Cindy's helping – so is Mark. He promised to bring dessert. The carrot cake sits in a pink box on the kitchen table. Mark hates carrot cake, but his father's obsessed with it.
Mark doesn't have his camera anymore. There's nothing left to film.
Give or take a week another year will have passed. The year 2000's coming, bring on the anarchy. Y2K's not going to change anything anyway.
Mark is alone now. His relatives don't count. They don't know anything about him. Mark went through a rebellious phase back in his youth. He dropped out of Brown with delusions of being a filmmaker. He lived like a beggar for a couple of years, made friends of the most disreputable sort, none of which still play a large role in his life. Oh, and his girlfriend Maureen left him for an Ivy League lawyer named Joanne.
His parents still joke about it sometimes, his former Bohemian lifestyle. They don't get it. Mark hadn't invited them to the funerals.
Mark remembers being young once. He remembers dreams long gone, the naïve joy, and the astounding freedom wrapped in a shroud of poverty that came with living La Vie Boheme.
The fantasy ended when April slit her wrists. There was blood everywhere, Mark recalls. It was Roger who found the body. She left this world in an ancient bathtub filled to the brim. He still vividly recollects the crimson mixing with the clear, the scarlet permanently staining the once filthy white. Everything was red – in the fading light the poisoned blood was almost black.
It was Mark who found Roger cradling her. His voice, alternating between endearments and curses, sometimes screaming, always crying, will stay with Mark forever.
It was Mark who dragged Roger from April's body. Roger was shaking; April's blood was drenching him. It drenched Mark when Roger clung to him.
It was only after the body had been taken away did the boys find April's suicide note to Roger:
WE'VE GOT AIDS.
It was then Mark knew his life would contain only death.
Withdrawal had been hard. Roger wanted to die. He told Mark that nearly every time they spoke. April was gone, heroin was gone, what did Roger have left?
"Me," Mark had whispered. "You have me."
Roger, enraged but too weak to use his fists, had tossed a spoon at him and for a time that had been enough.
A year passed before Roger was clean. He never did smack again, but he was never the same as before – the incident.
April's death broke him. The death sentence of HIV shattered him. Roger was too young to die. They all were.
Angel and Mimi – barely in their twenties.
Collins wasn't yet thirty.
And Roger, Roger was, Mark struggles to remember the date, Roger was twenty-six when Mark put him in the ground.
Twenty-six years old, just three months shy of twenty-seven.
He died in March. It had been raining. Loud, cascading droplets had pounded the ground outside the hospital window. Roger had complained about the sound. It had been loud, too loud; he couldn't hear the music.
Mark had held his hand, as he died. Roger's last words still echoed in his mind, "I'm sorry I wasn't strong enough."
After all these years, Mark still doesn't understand why Roger had felt the need to apologize for dying.
"Live," Roger had commanded, his voice raspy and urgent, "Marky, don't be afraid."
Mark had tried to soothe him. Roger needed to rest. When he recovered they could go home. No one was going to die.
"You're so full of shit."
Truer words were never spoken.
"Rog…"
"It's okay, I'm not scared anymore."
Mark was terrified. Roger's grip was getting weaker.
When Roger faded it took three orderlies to force Mark from his side.
The knowledge that Mark can no longer cry disturbs him, but less so than it did in the past. His heart is frozen, his passion died with them: with April's smile, and Angel's compassion, with Mimi's spirit, and Collins's humor, but most of all with Roger's glory.
Mark is the Witness. His friends live through his memories. All they were is in him.
Mark often wonders if that sole fact will make him go insane.
Each minute is agony. Sharp remnants of yesterday cutting into him every time he breathes. The oxygen chokes him, and life is equivalent to suffocation.
Mark can blame no one but himself for this starvation. Nine years ago he knew there was only one way the fierce bonds he formed could end. He denied it at first. He hid behind his camera, his work, and his precious bits of film. Fiction was his only reality. Fabricated immortality captured forever on screen. The truth was the enemy. The truth was disease and destruction. The truth was loneliness, bitter and everlasting. Stories half-remembered and dreams unfulfilled, the memories of friendship, of hope, of happiness; all daggers that wound, all wounds that never heal.
It's as if they've never lived at all. They are characters on a filmstrip. They laugh, and dance; they exist, if only for a moment. They are real and not real. Echoes more than matter, creations more than people. Ghosts from a lifetime Mark will spend the rest of his days running from.
He is so tired of running, but if he stops, he thinks, he'll crack and they'll be no one left to be – just to be.
Mark had been energetic once. He had to be. When he stopped moving reason overtook him and he remembered that the world he created came with an expiration date.
Today was all they had. All he had.
Mark is the only one of his friends to have a future. He carries their past around like fucking chains.
Every goddamn minute of every goddamn day he remembers and he cannot wake from their nightmares.
Roger wanted him to live, but he can't, not without them.
Mark doesn't remember how to live, how to dream. All he remembers is death. Perhaps he is as gone as the rest of them. His soul left with Roger's. All Mark is, is skin and bones and a brain without a heart. He can't remember how to feel.
In the silence Mark imagines he can hear the tick-tock of a clock. Father Time's pissing in his Cap'n Crunch. No, that can't be right. Whatever timers he has are digital.
Mark's going to be late. They'll start eating without him. Doesn't matter. They don't matter. They'll never understand.
It's Christmas Eve. Ten years ago tonight Mark met Angel, swooned over Mimi, and tangoed with Joanne. Ten years ago tonight the tables were pushed together in the Life Café and he led the restaurant in a glorious celebration of a life without limits, of a life defined by the freedom of choice, of a life that was beautiful, and precious, and so full of passion Mark wonders how it could have died at all.
It's Christmas Eve, 1999 and everyone Mark loves is dead.