Disclaimer: I still don't own RENT.
Authoress Note: Thanks for the reviews! I hope the haunted house was realistic enough, I've only been through one, but I had help from a lot of friends and family who shared their experiences. A special thanks goes out to them.
Okay, and this chapter is mostly about introducing my OC's family. They'll be a lot more of our favorite Bohemians in the next chapter, I promise!
Spring break has arrived, and I'll be writing a lot more now: )
A Season of Love,
-VivaLaVieBohemeA
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Alexia flipped open her new copy of Vogue, and Mimi sat next to her, reading it as well. "Well," she said, pointing to a particularly distasteful layout showing a low cut, high skirted red dress, "That's slutty."
Alexia nodded. "Tell me about it. Sometimes I wonder if these editors got into Collins' stash." She sipped her tea and then added, "You know what Tuesday is, don't you?"
Mimi raised an eyebrow and looked at Alexia quizzically. "No, should I?"
Alexia looked away. "Lincoln Center."
Mimi didn't know what she was talking about at first, but then she remembered. "Oh my god! Don't you have rehearsal or something? Don't you have to get outta here?" She said quickly and very loudly.
Alexia shushed her friend. "Shh, yeah, but I don't want to wake Mark up. His ankle is still really bothering him." A few guitar chords in the distance told the girls that Roger was awake in he and Mimi's bedroom. Alexia smiled. "I don't know if I've told you guys this, I know Mark knows, but you two might not," She began slowly, "I really love living here. You guys really are like family, you, Roger, Angel, Collins, Mo, Jo, all of you."
Mimi hugged her friend, who, over the past few months had become like a sister. "Well, we love that you live here. And, we, Roger and I, and the rest of us, love how happy you and Mark are together. Really, you two are so perfect for each other."
Alexia blushed. "Thanks Meems." The alarm clock from Mimi's room sounded, and Alexia looked at the clock that read twelve o'clock noon, which meant that it was really nine. Alexia stood, passed Mimi her magazine, and grabbed her coat. "And now, I have to go, can you tell Mark where I went? I have to go to the airport before I go down the theater."
Mimi closed the magazine. "Why?"
Alexia shook her head forlornly. "My sister's coming into town."
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When Stefanie Tuck-Jones-Smith-McMullen-Hemmingway saw her sister coming, she had to take off her white rimmed Louis Vuitton sunglasses to make sure that it was her. Alexia had a sly smile on her lips, her calf-length, hot pink coat moved gracefully whenever she did, and her brown hair was pulled half back with a clip in a flourish that had a nice wave to it.
Her sister's appearance hadn't changed, but her demeanor had. Either her sister had just been nominated for some kind of award, or she was in love. It was the same thing that Stefanie had noticed herself when she saw her first design in Nordstrom's, and when she met her first husband. The other's hadn't been much to write home about, except for a fun weekend in Florida that went a little further than it should have. (It hadn't lasted long, either. Clocking in at seven hours, it was the shortest marriage that Stefanie had ever found herself in. Barely.)
Alexia dashed toward her sister and flung her arms around the older girl's neck. "Stefy!" She shouted and then looked around. "Where's Pat?"
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ALEXIA'S POV
We found out last September that my sister has a thing for Irish guys. Her fifth husband, Patrick McMullen was a blond with green eyes who actually kind of resembled Roger. He spoke with a brogue, and yes, yes, he was the Pat that had cheated on Stef in high school, but, he spent a few years in Ireland, picked up the accent, and she fell for him all over again when she ran into him right after she'd moved to Detroit. We'd all assumed it was fate.
But, now he wasn't here for my Lincoln Center show, and I assumed that Stefanie had just done what she did with every other husband of hers (there've been four more, really. She's quite the man eater. Like Audrey II...grrrr! A talking plant with a lust for blood! That character must have been written with my sister in mind! Just ask her first four husbands). She'd probably divorced him.
The way my sister's eyes darted around, I already knew that I was right. She'd divorced Pat. "Stef! Not again!"
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Mark threw back the covers and stepped out of bed before he remembered that he'd severely sprained his ankle the night before. He winced in pain before laying back down. "Uh, someone?"
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ALEXIA'S POV
I would have crossed my arms if I hadn't been driving. "Stef, what is this, husband number twenty-two?"
"Oh get serious." Stefanie retorted, staring intently at a group of workmen about her age working in a hotel driveway. Ah, my sister the wandering eye. "Pat was only the fifth!"
"Only the fifth?" I cried, "Only the fifth! Stefanie, I've never even had a serious boyfriend before now!"
Stef played with her cell phone, and blew a bubble with her obnoxiously blue gum and popped it, making me swerve a little. "So that's what it is." She smirked. "I thought so."
"What what is?" I asked, thoroughly confused, as I usually am in my sister's presence. "What did you think?"
"Well, you've changed."
"I've what?"
"Do you remember how I was when I first met Greg?" She said, turning toward me. Oh god, Greg, her first husband.
"Yes?" I replied, half answering, half questioning, paused, and then added, frightened. "Should I be afraid?"
She beamed. "No silly!" I rolled my eyes. Oh my god. I should be afraid.
Very afraid.
You see, the reason that I should be afraid is that my sister's first husband had been a dramatic critic. The second Stef saw him, she was head over way-too-expensive high heels. I, on the other hand, wasn't so impressed. A dramatic critic reviewing Arsenic and Old Lace, what, didn't he have some other off-off-Broadway play that he could ridicule? No, no, apparently he had nothing better to do with his time than poke fun at a classic which, coincidentally, is about a drama critic and his two kindly, old, and psychotic aunts who poison possible boarders with Elderberry wine and then bury them in their basement. (It's a comedy, I swear.)
But, Stef had fallen for him, and fallen hard. Even though he gave the play, and my performance as Elaine a lousy review ("Miss Hemmingway's performance is lackluster, her place is in musical theater, where songs can rescue a performance from her inability to show emotion in her role. She's supposed to be a saucy preacher's daughter, but I say that she's just the former, a preacher's daughter. No sauce to save this pasta." Whatever that meant. Well, at least that was the only lousy review we got. Everyone else seemed to think I was fine. But, no, my sister couldn't have married one of those critics.) Stef agreed to meet him for dinner the next evening.
And the next.
And the next.
And before we knew it, Stef and Greg were engaged, and married, and then even faster than that, the were divorced. But, there was no denying that they had been happy together in the beginning, and back then, my sister was giddy all the time, blushing at the mention of Greg's name.
I bit my lip. Just like me with Mark.
"Well," she continued, "Your all," she paused, trying to find the right words, "happy."
I pretty much knew where she was coming from, but I wasn't completely sure. "What?" I asked, becoming even more confused than before. "Am I usually not happy?"
She popped that stupid gum again, and I considered opening the car door and throwing her out, getting all cell-block-tango-girl from Chicago on her rear, but she is my big sister, and may have actually been paying me a compliment on top of the fact that I'm driving and would have to take my hands off the wheel, eyes off the road and lean clear across her to open her door, and then undo her seatbelt to shove her out, so I decided against it. "Well, no, that came out wrong, I guess. You're happy, but you used to be such a career woman."
I rolled my eyes as we pulled into crawling traffic back into the city. It would be quite a while before I could get out of such close proximity with my sister.
Somebody, please, save me. Mark!
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Back at the Loft, Mimi walked into Mark's doorway and smiled sympathetically. "Hey Mark." She said. "Alexia went to pick her sister up at the airport."
Mark sat up in bed. "Ah, she warned me about her."
Mimi leaned against the doorway. "What? Is she the overprotective big sister?"
Mark shook his head. "Apparently not. She's supposedly quite the man's lady."
"Mark, you're making no sense." His roommates girlfriend said.
Mark stopped for a second, trying to put his thoughts into a sentence. "Well, Alexia said that she's on her fifth husband."
Mimi laughed. "Did they give you pain medication for you ankle last night? Is that why you're so loopy this morning?"
Mark raised a blond eyebrow. He really couldn't remember himself. "I don't think so..." He said, trailing off. "Umm, well, anyway, Alexia said that she's been married four time before, and divorced four times and now she's married to husband number five."
Mimi had to laugh. If all that was true, Alexia and her sister were polar opposites.
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ALEXIA'S POV
"A career woman?" I asked, "Since when is there anything wrong with that?"
"There's nothing wrong with that!" Stef retorted, "It's just, you were always the one that, you know, was never interested in having someone."
I rolled my eyes again as we crawled further along in the traffic. "I was too busy!"
Stef shook her finger at me. "That's exactly what I meant." She said. "You're always at the theater! Not that there's anything wrong with that, but, you just never had a serious boyfriend. But, apparently you do now." She smirked. "So, spill."
I set my coffee back in my drink holder near the dashboard and my car phone. "Spill what, my coffee?"
Stefanie sighed and now it was her turn to roll her eyes. "Oh shut it. You know what I meant. Who is he?"
I glanced out the window, knowing that Stef would be sizing up Mark in her head, probably considering if he was good enough for her to date if things went south with he and I. Yeah right, no way. Sorry Stef.
We weren't moving, and short of jumping out of my car and running back to the loft, I had no choice but to give into my sister's demands.
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"He sounds perfect for you Alexia." Stef said, patting out the rhythm to the song from Oklahoma! that poured through my car stereo, twenty minutes later, after I had told her how perfect Mark was, how handsome, such a gentleman, such an artist.
Did my sister, the man-eater just say something positive about the opposite sex? I shook me head, certain that I'd heard wrong. It just wasn't possible.
But, by then traffic was finally moving, and Stef's cell phone rang so I didn't say anything snarky in response.
"Hello? Oh, I was wondering when you were going to call. No stupid, I'm not still at the airport, yeah, Alexia came and got me. Okay." She pushed her cranberry colored cell phone at me. "Someone wants to talk to you."
I sigh, only slightly annoyed and take her phone. "Hello, you're talking to Alexia."
"Sis!" To distinctly frightening male voices said over the line.
Oh my god, could today get any worse!
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Arthur Hemmingway was a very intimidating man. At six foot five, he not only could threaten possible thieves in his casino with the gun concealed in his shoulder holster, but he could just come near them, casting a shadow on the ground near their feet, and palm carders and two-bit cheaters would be running scared. But, Arthur Hemmingway was terrified by the fact that his baby sister had a serious boyfriend, a filmmaker, from the East Village.
But, his brother, Jon Hemmingway, a psychotherapist who stood at six foot two, and who had a nice, trusting demeanor, who would never hurt a fly, on the other hand, couldn't be happier. Alexia finally had someone.