To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.
-Bertrand Russell,
Everybody knew that Mimi Marquez was doomed, especially Mimi. Anybody who grew up in the place where she occupied was bound to live a doomed life. Mimi never knew her father, like most junky strippers. But it wasn't that, it was just written in her bloodstream. A-I-D-S. It wasn't really a shock to Mimi when she found out that she was positive, she just always kind of assumed something so tragic would happen. Mimi knowing of her impending doom was like when an actor knows that she is not going to get the part, she just felt it.
She'd been planning it for almost a year now because for sometime her health had been failing and Mimi Marquez was not the type of girl to slowly rot, she wanted to go out with a boom. Everything was laid out and even though she was just an exhausted shell of a creature she mustered up all her energy to make sure this night went as planned. After Roger came home Mimi started up the routine yelling and screaming. The last couple of months, fighting had not been an unusual affair. Tonight for some reason, Roger didn't feel like fighting, he was too tired, too weak from taking care of her that he didn't even stop to yell back, he just went right back out the door up to the loft which he sort of inhabited. This sort of hurt Mimi, she was looking forward to seeing his face one last time and the way that he left, she didn't even get to see his apathetic look. She let one tear fall from her face and that was it. Tonight she had to do it and there was never going to be anybody to stop her.
The syringe, lighter and spoon were neatly laid out on the floor and Mimi pulled the rubber band with mouth, using almost all the strength she had left. Slowly she slipped the needle into her vein and before she had any time to second guess the liquid flowed through her veins.
Maureen would find her lifeless body four hours later.
Roger could barely get the words out his mouth, which felt so dry, his head felt so compressed. "I thought I felt your shape." Roger said, managing to hold down whatever had been trying to come free. "But I was wrong. Really, all I felt was falsely strong."
Mark stared in disbelief at his friend. He couldn't believe that it was actually going to happen, for a long while, Mark was convinced that Roger would never accept it. Tears were falling from the filmmaker's eyes.
Roger continued. "I held on tight and closed my eyes. It was dumb I had no sense of your size." Two drops formed in each one of Rogers tear ducts, an image of Mimi's small, corpse-like stature played like movie in his most vivid psyche. His large hands were shaking now and something shook with them, almost like another hand.
"It was dumb to hold on so tight. But last night, on the birthday in the kitchen, my grip was loose and my eyes were open."
Joanne felt Maureen's grip tighten so hard, and it hurt but she felt like it was the only thing keeping her from melting away. But it was too late. Joanne felt her own body mesh with Maureen's and at that moment, it was two minds fighting over one blob of a body. But she was glad. Glad that she had Maureen to hold onto tighter than anything in the world.
"I felt your shape and heard you breathing." Roger stopped for a moment and put a hand over his eyes. He couldn't help but let out a loud whimper. Regardless he continued. "I felt the rise and fall of your chest." He could imagine all of her body just crumbling away, bits and pieces of her body scattered all over the city sidewalks.
"Your winter snows" her cold soft skin.
"Your gusty blow" her useless shouting.
"Your lava flow" her warm, exciting touch.
"I felt it all, your starry night" her hair in the moonlight.
"Your lack of light" her pale body.
"With limp arms I can feel most of you." His arms limped almost at the sound of his own voice repeating these lines.
By now Collins was bawling with absolute torturous pain but complete joy that Roger had finally accepted her death. His own tears were in complete sympathy. It was a cliché for him to think this and he knew it but he thought that if Angel had been there, she would have been so proud. Somehow he believed that she was.
"I hung around your neck independently and my loss was overwhelmed. By this new depth I don't think I've ever felt." Roger was crying now. He couldn't control the way his body forced out the tears and painful memories.
"But I don't know, the nights are cold, and I remember the warmth." He read the last words in his head, turned back to the pick of her sitting next to her urn and kneeled. Whispering. "I could have sworn I wasn't alone." For a moment everybody sat in complete silence. Nobody dared to move a muscle because this was Roger's moment and even the sobs were silenced when a big scream of pain came from Roger's lungs. This wasn't just hitting him hard; this was hitting him hard in each sensitive area that Roger ever felt any pain.
Everybody felt like they should go up there to stop him from destroying himself but it was Mrs. Marquez who stood up first and walked over to Roger, sensitively lifting Roger from his kneeling position and placed a small kiss on his forehead. She then looked over at the picture of her daughter, picked it up and placed a small kiss on the photograph.
She simply said, "Adiós, Mimi."
"This is Mimi, you know what to do." Said the all too familiar voice on the other end of the phone. A quiet beep followed. Roger cleared his throat and spoke. "I know it's silly, but I wanted to let you know I always hated this answering machine message. I never wanted to remember you this way but now I wish I could hear it over and over and over again. I called just to hear your voice again; it's dumb, I know. I know you'll never hear this but I just wanted to say something." Like Mrs. Marquez's voice, Roger's voice was so incredibly morose. "I love you Mimi, I love you more than you'll ever know, more than you ever did. So Goodbye, Mimi. No, Goodnight." Click.
Fin