Disclaimer: RENT is Jonathan Larson's. I'm just playing with the characters. ("One one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand...")
Mark stayed in Collins' class after Roger left. He waited until the class was dismissed-- "Don't forget, your papers are due a week from Friday, you have reading due on Wednesday and any grumbling will lower your grade!" Once his students were gone, Collins turned to Mark and said, "Some of them believe that."
Mark chuckled.
"So how are you?" Collins asked.
"I was going to ask you the same."
Collins began sorting through the papers on his desk. The thought flitted through his head that perhaps some sort of organizational system might be advantageous, but it was banished as a couple of joints rolled free of a stack of papers. Collins grinned and pocketed them.
"Yeah, well," Collins told Mark, "you kind of ceded your upper ground there."
"How do you mean?" Mark asked.
"When you made your announcement last night, Mark."
"Oh, I didn't mean… nothing has to change because of that," Mark stammered. "I-- I just thought…" He stopped. What had he thought? He knew he had had reasons for telling them, but could not for the life of him recall those reasons now.
Collins told him, "Mark, what you said, it took guts to say it. But boy…" He shook his head. "What did you expect? That changes things."
Mark cast an apologetic look at his hands, feeling his shoulders curl gently inwards. "I'm not… there's nothing wrong with me," he murmured. "It's nothing like that…"
"Hey. I didn't say that."
The tone made Mark shiver. It was a soft tone generally reserved for people like Roger and Mimi, who…
Mark would never say that his friends were in any way lacking. They were just a little immature. They were addicts, after all, and the temptation was there whether they ignored it or not, and they needed, well, a gentler world. They needed support, they were simply those sorts of people.
But Mark wasn't like that. "No, I know you didn't," he told Collins. "I just… I mean… I wasn't asking for anything," he said, embarrassed that anyone should have thought so.
"Sure you were," Collins replied easily. "If nothing else, Mark, you were asking us to accept you. As though there were any question of that," he added, mostly to himself.
"Anyway what did you mean about me ceding my upper ground?" Mark asked, returning to an earlier point in their conversation. "Jesus Christ, should you be smoking here?"
Collins chuckled. "Relax. It's just tobacco."
"Those'll kill you, ya know."
"Have to fight the HIV." Collins paused. "Now there's an image I like," he said. "Cancer cells and HIV viruses killing each other off until, miracle of miracles, it is revealed that I have saved my own life… by smoking and having unprotected sex."
Mark snorted with laughter. "I thought it was a blood transfusion?"
"Yeah, sex sounds better. Come on." Collins pulled Mark up and led him out of the classroom with an arm around his shoulders.
Mark blushed hotly. "People are gonna think we're dating," he protested. "Not that that's a problem but my parents will kill me if I marry a black guy. Do you think Roger's ready to have a baby?"
Collins considered. "If Mimi's pregnant," he said, "and if she decides to keep the baby, I think he'll do the right thing."
"Yeah, but is he ready?" Mark repeated. He didn't think so. Roger still considered "suck my cock" an adequate comeback. He had the maturity of a very bright rutabaga.
"No such thing. There's planned and unplanned, but ready? Naah."
---
Mimi looked at the pill bottles and sighed. The facts struck her suddenly, things like, oh, neither she nor Roger had health insurance. How would they pay hospital bills? And G-d knew there would be bills, especially if…
Mimi looked at her belly and sighed. If, if, if. And it was not a baby, not a baby but a pair, two little people potentially growing diseases inside her.
Roger joined her on the couch with a cup of tea. He placed a hand on her back and winced that she looked away. "Love? What are we going to do?"
The pronoun irked her. She turned to face him. "It's my decision, Roger. My body, my choice."
He pressed his lips together for a moment, struggling with his temper, before nodding. "Okay. What are you thinking?"
Mimi shrugged. "I like the idea of a little daughter," she admitted. "My own little girl…" She did not notice that Roger began to chew the inside of his cheek. "But we're sick. The babies might be sick." She shrugged. "Maybe it's just easier," she said, picking up a pamphlet off the table. They had taken a handful from the clinic, dealing with matters from abortion to breastfeeding to preventing future babies. Mimi unfolded a pamphlet dealing with abortion. "Doesn't look too painful," she mused.
Roger did not notice Mimi's rapid blinking, or if he did he did not think anything of it. "Is that all our children are to you?" he asked. "Just… just, is it going to hurt you?"
"Well it's a concern, yes!" Mimi returned. Of course you don't understand. You're a man. This was exactly what Mimi had been afraid of. Instead of supporting her, he was making this immeasurably more difficult. "You'd be thinking the same."
"I'm not thinking--"
"Well it's not your body, Roger!" It's mine. My body would undergo the operation and my body would remain after, and yes, I do care if it hurts, and yeah I'm scared you could be more understanding!
"No, but they're my children!"
"No, Roger, they're not. There is no 'they', just cells--"
He scoffed. "Oh, don't give me that! Don't dehumanize them just because it makes this easier for you! You know, if that's all you can think, maybe we shouldn't have children. Maybe you shouldn't be a mother at all, Mimi, if all you can think of is yourself!" Roger slammed his mug down on the table and stormed into their bedroom.
A year ago, Mimi would have followed him. Now she just sighed, shook her head, and picked up another pamphlet. She had the money, thanks to Collins. And she didn't want to infect another person with HIV. Mimi had never shared needles, never had unprotected sex, even with Roger.
But condoms can break, and there are, Mimi found, fates worse than death. She knew in her heart that she wanted a child. A child, but not a sick child, not a baby who would wither and die probably before its second birthday. That was no life.
Roger stretched out on the bed, pulled the pillow over his head and let his fist fall again and again on the pillow. It didn't hurt, but he felt slightly better. He thought of how Mark would speak to him in the third person, trying to detach from emotion and judge the situation from a distance.
Mimi's running out of time. Roger's running out the door!
It had never done the trick, but then, Roger had never been very good at listening. He tried narrating his own life now:
Mimi has to decide. Roger wants babies. Roger wants a family. Roger's not ready to be a father but he doesn't have much time.
Roger's a chickenshit little bitch sobbing into the bedsheets.
Roger knows he's fucked up. Roger thinks he can do better, but he isn't doing better.
And there it was.
There was Mimi sitting on the couch, Roger kneeling down before her, taking the mug from her hands, and pouring out his heart. He wanted a family. He was sorry. But this was what he had always wanted.
"Roger, they could be sick--"
"But you heard the doctor," Roger said. "With an HIV-positive mother and the right treatment--"
"We didn't tell them about you."
He couldn't refute that, so he ignored it. "We'll never have this chance again, Mimi," he said. "Never again. We didn't mean to get pregnant and we never will but it happened and… maybe… we'll never have this again. Please don't take this away, Mimi. Please. It's our only chance."
Mimi sighed. "If we watch our children die…" If we watch our children die, I will die also. You won't be, cannot be enough.
Roger nodded. "I know," he said. "But… never even having that chance…"
Mimi pulled Roger up onto the couch. They talked for a long time. They drank the tea, brewed more. Roger gave three guitar lessons that day. He kept the money in a box in his room, not in any bank, and suddenly what had that morning seemed like more than enough for a life with luxuries like soap that didn't smell like an industrial warehouse, now seemed a pauper's pittance.
This was what he wanted to bring his children into? The cold of winter, the pain of hunger, the eternity of pills?
But it was more. It was him and her and their love.
They talked for a long time before kissing and wandering into the bedroom, unable to keep their hands off each other.
TO BE CONTINUED!
Reviews would be awesome! Very, very awesome. Please?
(No, Mel, I am not superhuman.)