Chapter 2
"What do you mean, she's missing?" Roger's voice was void of all emotion.
Mark sighed and ran his fingers through his short hair. Roger was not going to like this.
"After you left," he began, "Benny paid for Mimi to go into rehab. She stopped turning up about two weeks ago."
Roger breathed in deeply, clutching at the phone so tightly that his fingers turned white with the force.
"She quite her job at the Catscratch Club as well." Mark continued.
"She loved that job," Roger whispered softly.
"None of us has heard from her in a while."
Roger felt panic grip him as all the different possibly scenarios jumped through his head. What if she'd gone back to the drugs? What if she'd overdosed?
Oh god.
"What about her apartment?" Roger asked quietly.
"Emptied." Came Mark's sad reply. "We couldn't find a note, or anything else for that matter. We think that she's …" He sucked in a breath. "We think that she's been living on the street."
Roger let out an anguished cry. It was cold here in Santa Fe in the nights, let alone in New York.
"I was on my way out," Mark admitted when he was met with Roger's silence. "I'm late meeting the others - we were on our way out to search the park."
"Yeah, sure." Roger urged. "Go."
'Find her,' He added silently. 'Please.'
"Yeah," Mark knew what Roger was thinking. "I'll try. Hey, what was your news anyway?"
His news? Roger shut his eyes. Oh yeah. The Record Deal. The deal he'd been so excited about five minutes ago. Suddenly it didn't seem so important.
"Oh, that." He replied shaking his head. "It doesn't matter. Just … keep me updated, yeah? I don't care about the time difference or whatever. Just, call."
"Course I will," came Mark's understanding voice. "Any time. If I hear something, I'll call."
"Thanks."
"Well, I should go. Bye, Roger."
"Bye." Roger whispered to the dial tone that rang hauntingly in his ear.
He hung up the phone and sighed, laying his head down on the pillows behind him. His arm came up to cover his eyes. Blocking out the horrible thoughts that seemed insistent on plaguing him.
This, to him, was one thousand times worse than finding April in the bathtub. Sure with April, it hurt. Badly. But after the grief, that was that. He knew that April was never coming back. With Mimi, there was the feeling of not knowing. The feeling of being powerless to protect her the way he could of if he had stayed in New York. With April it had been definite. With Mimi, no one knew if she was alive or dead.
An image came to him, unbidden, of Mimi's beautiful face, pale with the cold. Her pretty brown eyes shut in death as powdery white snow gathered in her brown, curly hair like an ethereal halo.
"Oh god." Roger moaned. "Please don't be dead. Please, God, Don't let her be dead."
The last time Roger had cried was still too recent in his memory. It had been at Angel's funeral.
Despite this, Roger cried again that night. He fell asleep that night with visions of Mimi dancing through his head and tear tracks staining his cheeks.
---
The next morning, Roger had a minute in which to enjoy the blissful ignorance of having just woken up. The time in the morning where the events of the day before were still mixed up with last night's dreams.
But then everything came back to him in a rush.
An excited phone call to Mark - for a reason he couldn't remember, or didn't seem as important - which ended with the horrible news of Mimi's disappearance.
He was still entertaining the thought that the whole ordeal had been some kind of terrible nightmare an hour later as he ordered a coffee from a nearby diner. He knew it wasn't of course. But right now he was willing to hope it was. Anything to make him feel less guilty for being thousands of miles away from his friend's - one in particular - during their time of need.
'What if Mimi is living, cold and hungry, on the streets of New York while you're living easy in Santa Fe?
He didn't even want to think about that. If she died and he had stayed in Santa Fe not having done a single thing to even try and prevent it … He didn't want to think about it.
"I've got to go back home." Roger said to himself, throwing down enough money for the untouched, cold coffee he had ordered. "Back to New York."
The journey back to his room was almost non-existent in his memory, he ran so fast.
'I'm coming Mimi.' Played like a mantra in Roger's head as he packed his belongings in an old battered suitcase.
His belongings weren't much. Just a few changes of clothes as well as his guitar and bottle of AZT - which never left his person.
He kneeled down next to his guitar, picking up the coat that lay next to it. A small business card lay on the floor, revealed when the coat hiding it was moved.
Curious, Roger studied it. His heart sank as he remembered.
The Record Deal he had been so excited about last night. The Record Deal which he had forgotten about in light of the news about Mimi.
Roger sat on his bed, slowly, his face sinking into his hands.
What was he going to do?
What was more important : His 'One Blaze of Glory', or Mimi?
The answer should have been obvious. One or the other and that was that. Just two choices.
Sighing, Roger reached for the phone and dialled the number that he had been studying so intently on the business card.
"Mike Turner." Came the short reply on the other end of the phone.
"Hey, uh, Mike," Roger said, unsure on how formally he should address the other man. "It's Roger Davis. From last night."
Roger took out his battered notebook and stared down at the lyrics that littered the page as Mike rambled on about how this could be an amazing opportunity for him.
Didn't he know it.
"Yeah," was all roger said though. "I was wondering if we could talk? I have a few questions I'd like to ask you."
After arranging to meet in an hour at a café in a much more up-scale part of town than Roger's motel was in, he hung up the phone and shrugged on his jacket before leaving the room and starting the walk towards his destination.
He didn't even try to ignore how almost everything he saw on the way reminded him of Mimi.