Another short one sigh
Alas, I am busy these days.
R&R, and I promise you that something will actually happen in the next Chapter!
Collins was lying, on his stomach, on the floor. He was deep in reading some battered philosophy text book. He hadn't been anywhere near a book for three months now, because Angel was always entertaining him, giving him something to do. Now he was back to reading, to keep his mind busy. To stop himself from thinking that she wasn't there. Collins shook his head. He disagreed with nearly everything that the book was telling him. The phone began to ring. Mark wasn't there to answer it, he had gone out for something or other, Collins hadn't been listening.
"SPPEEEAAAKKKK!!!" Droned the answering machine. A voice with a musty accent spoke.
"Erm...hello...ahem. This is the head of the Philosophy department at New York University. I need to speak with Professor Collins, this is listed as his phone number. If he could...um...call the university as soon...as...err...possible. That would be good. Yes. Good."
Collins jumped up from his position on the floor and reached for the phone. It had been months since someone had called him 'professor' and that was enough to make his curiosity get the better of him.
"Tom Collins speaking...," he said quickly, wondering what NYU wanted with him now.
"Ah! Hello!" The musty voice barked, as if it had never spoken to someone on a phone before, and was truly surprised to hear someone speaking back. Collins suspected that many of the Philosophy teachers at NYU had yet to have electricity in their apartments, and wrote on scrolls with quills, by candlelight.
"Hi...can I help you?" Collins asked. There was the sound of papers being shuffled on the other end of the line. Then a throat being cleared before speaking again.
"I hope so...you see, Mr Collins, we're having a little bit of a crisis here at the university!" Collins wondered what said crisis could be. It had to be bad, if they were willing to speak to him again. "Yes...you see...several teachers are absent for one reason or another. Bad planning on our part, and we really need a substitute to cover some classes...just for a few weeks. It seems you are the only teacher available...can you do it?" The voice sounded as if it was on the verge of tears, it was so desperate to get a teacher. Collins considered it for a moment. He had nothing better to be doing, and he sure as hell needed the money. There were also those rare moments when he enjoyed teaching, that needed to be brought into consideration.
"Oh...okay then...when would you like me to start?" He submitted, feeling a nervousness already setting into his stomach.
"Tomorrow! Seven thirty! You'll be there? Brilliant! Thank you Mr Collins!" The voice exclaimed, before a click and a beep told him that the caller had hung up. Collins sank back into lying on the floor again, wondering what he had let himself in for. He had no idea what kind of kids he would be teaching. It had been too long since he had last taught and he had nearly forgotten everything he had learnt about philosophy in the first place. Collins was quick to return to his battered paperback, in hope that it would teach him something useful.
Late that night. Mimi is on her way back from work. She's been not so great lately. Angel is missing still, and that leaves her without a friend. A close friend, anyway. She's still clean. Roger is proud of her, although he isn't very good at showing it. After a long night at work, Mimi is tired. Her body aches and her head does too.
Mimi pulled a lock of her thick hair out of her face where it had stuck with sweat. She walked quickly, hurrying to get home and ignoring some of the people who were calling out to her. None of them wanted anything that she was willing to give. Someone came up beside her suddenly, and grabbed her arm. She quickly pulled away, spinning round to see who it was. She came face to face with her old drug dealer, who was just called the man. He wasn't stupid enough to give out his real name.
"Long time no see..." he said, in a low voice, pulling Mimi aside into a low doorway, where they wouldn't be seen.
"Long time no need," Mimi insisted, trying to move away. The man just grabbed her arm and made her face him again. He pulled out a bag of white powder from his pocket, and held it in front of Mimi's face.
"You sure about that?" he asked with a sneer on his face. He wouldn't take Mimi's head shaking as an answer. He pressed in into her palm. "Come on, I'll make you a special offer, as an old business partner. Twenty dollars."
Mimi's mouth hung open. That was cheap. Really cheap. A couple of months ago, she would have killed to get it that cheap. She had more than that in her coat pocket, for once. Her mind failed to come up with a real reason why she shouldn't do it. After all, it was nothing more than a really good painkiller. No worse than something you could buy from the drugstore. She told herself over and over, pushing thoughts of Roger out of her mind. It wasn't like he owned her or anything. Twenty dollars. Twenty dollars and there would be no more shaking. No more pain. She could sleep properly that night.
"Deal," Mimi said quickly, before she could change her mind. She handed the man twenty dollars in crumpled notes, and slipped the stash into her pocket, hoping nobody she knew had seen her make the exchange. "Don't you come chasing after me again...creep..." she muttered, but with a grin on her face. The man just made a rude gesture at her before turning and walking down the street. He turned around and gave a false cheery wave.
"Take care...you know where I am if you need some more..." he shouted out to Mimi from down the street. Mimi just shrugged and continued on her way home. She really hoped that Roger was asleep. She couldn't face him.
Lucky for Mimi, Roger was asleep. She put the stash inside an old pair of socks, and then wrapped them up in some old sweater. Went to sleep like nothing had happened. A floor above, Tom Collins's alarm clock goes off.
Collins let out a groan. Being woken up by an alarm was just the worst way to start the day. Set him off in a bad mood right away. He pulled himself up from the couch, hitting the alarm clock with his first, in the hope of turning it off. Luckily for the alarm clock, he hit it right. He pulled on something that he assumed would be suitable for teaching, he hadn't bothered to check if there was some dumb strict dress code or anything. He threw a few of his old philosophy books in his bag. He had spent the night before searching for them, and then flicking through them for a couple of hours. Bringing back a mix of memories from when he would be teaching everyday. He couldn't remember if he had been happy then or not.
He sat down on the couch, a cup of coffee in his hand. He remembered what he had said to Angel, when he was trying to convince her to go into the hospital. It had been along the lines of, if she wasn't there, he would be back in a dead end job. It was true. He had been without Angel for three weeks, and already he was slipping back into the old pattern off his life. Get up. Work. Come home. Sleep. He wished Angel was there to interrupt him. Tell him that there was no point in him going to boring NYU to teach a boring subject to boring kids, when he could be walking around the city with her. But he couldn't go around with her, because she wasn't there. So Collins had no choice but to go and work. Maybe it would stop him from missing her. Maybe it would make it a whole lot worse.