Chapter Five: Will I Still Know You?

"Do you want to come in and have a cup of tea or something?"

This couldn't be real. Mark wanted to hate this woman just for being to Roger what he had been for so long, but it was difficult with her smiling at him and inviting him in for tea. And at the same time, he wanted to thank her for taking care of Roger, keeping him alive, for he had no doubt she had. All he could manage, after a moment of simply staring at her, was a stammered, "Um… I… I guess… Yes, thank you."

Lisa nodded and opened the door, leading the way up the stairs to her apartment. Her and Roger's apartment. The thought made Mark wince for some reason. "I expect you wanted to talk to Roger, right? I don't think he'll be home for a couple hours, at least, but you're more than welcome to stay." As they stepped inside the apartment, she gestured to the couch. "Sit down and I'll get the tea started."

Mark watched her in silence as she walked to the kitchen and put on a pot of tea. Finally, he asked tentatively, "How'd you know my name? Did Roger—"

Lisa gave him a faint, oddly sad smile across the kitchen counter. "Roger doesn't talk about you. There are things he doesn't talk about, and I don't ask."

"Then how…" Mark began, and trailed off. He wasn't sure this was a story he wanted to hear. He was fairly certain now that he didn't want to be here in the first place.

The woman nodded to a door behind Mark. "There's a projector in that closet. Old films. I watched some of it once or twice, when Roger wasn't around. You shot it?"

"Yes," Mark said quietly, turning to glance at the closet, then down at his hands. "I didn't think he'd still…" He looked over his shoulder again, at the closet door, unable to disguise the longing in his eyes. He wanted that film, that projector… He missed it, a part of him he'd left behind but never quite forgotten. Like Roger himself. "it's nice to know that he…" Mark wasn't even sure how to complete the sentence.

Lisa took the tea off the stove and quickly poured it into two mugs before she walked back into the living room and sat on the couch beside Mark, handing him one of the mugs. For a second she didn't say anything, staring into the tea she cradled in both hands for some time before she looked up at Mark and said suddenly, "I love him."

Mark blinked, startled, and opened his mouth to say something, then closed it again, biting his lower lip before he managed to actually speak. "I—I knew that. I did. It'd be hard not to love him, and I swear I didn't think—"

"I love him," she went on, silencing Mark's awkward stammering, "but I'm not in love with him. And I won't even pretend to think he's in love with me." When Mark stared at her blankly, she smiled wryly. "It's a matter of convenience and mutual need. We're both… both living in the past, holding on to something we lost. Easier to hold on to each other." Lisa frowned at him for a second. "I always assumed you were dead, though. That something had happened, and that was why he didn't want to talk about you…"

Mark grimaced and looked down into his tea, taking a sip before he said anything, just to give him time to collect his thoughts. "I guess I might as well have been dead. Might be easier if I were."

"Well that's a silly thing to say," she said with a faint smile."

Mark hesitated. "Why's that?"

"You're sitting here now, aren't you? You know where Roger is. You can sit here until he comes home, and then you can talk…"

"Oh, I—I couldn't," Mark stammered. "I can't wait until he… I mean, I really shouldn't…" Somehow what he meant to say wouldn't come out. If he'd actually known what he meant to say, it might have helped.

"If you don't want to wait, I can tell you where he is. You could go find him, talk to him now. You need to. He needs to see you again, talk to you."

Mark frowned at Lisa. "You know, you're a very odd woman."

Lisa shrugged noncommittally with that still faintly sad smile he had seen earlier. "Since I met Roger, I was the second most important thing to him. Maybe the third, if the second was his music. But the most important thing was a ghost. I never blamed him, because it's the same for me. But now… it's nice that you're something solid, something other than a ghost." She paused. "So, are you going to go see him or not?"

He sat there for a moment, actually considering the question. Did he really want to go, to face whatever anger and resentment Roger had to throw at him. But then again… "Yeah. I think so."