Chapter Four

It's All About Questions

"What if I hadn't gotten mugged that night?" Collins asked. He and Angel were lying on the couch together. They hadn't planned on talking, but, then again, when does anything ever go as planned?

"Well," she said after a moment, "if you hadn't gotten mugged, we wouldn't be having this conversation, because we wouldn't have met."

"That would've been hell."

"Well, technically, if we hadn't met then you would never have known what it was like to be with be so being without me wouldn't be hell," Angel pointed out.

"Stop trying to sound all smart. You don't have to impress me, you know," Collins stated, cupping Angel's cheek with his hand.

"I know, I just like watching to blush."

"You are cruel."

"But you love me anyway."

"Yeah... I do."

Collins no longer thought of their meetings as dreams, they were too real; now he just thought Angel was visiting him, and they rarely talked about things being different now that she was gone. Being depressed was something only Roger could pull off. But they did talk about Sophia, Collins told Angel her story, and Angel told Collins to go back to the bar and see if she was there so he could tell her chapter two of their story, but he kept stalling, thinking about what to say; should he tell the whole story, or just the parts about him and Angel? But then some of it wouldn't make sense. He was confused and Angel wouldn't help him, all she said to do was go tell the story, she didn't say what part of the story to tell.

"Just tell her the whole story, we led interesting lives that year." Angel said, taking Collins' hand from her cheek and tracing her fingers along the back of it.

"You can read my mind too, now that's just not fair."

"I don't have to read your mind to know what you're thinking. You don't like to think about a lot of things at once, and the main thing going on right now is that you still don't know what to tell Sophia, so I decided to help you out if it means that you'll finally go talk to her." Angel explained.

"You want me to go now?" Collins asked

"Yes. Go, I'll see you tonight."

Collins sighed but reluctantly got up from the couch. He could feel himself waking up, but held onto the dream long enough to give Angel one... sweet... kiss. When he pulled away his surroundings changed, the population of the apartment went back to normal, and Collins was alone again, a feeling that he was not interested in getting used to.

Once he was fully awake, he got up, dressed quickly, grabbed his coat and left the apartment. Collins decided to start by retracing his steps and going to the bar first, it was his best bet since he didn't know where she lived. As he walked, he thought, he thought about what to say and how to say it. But every time he went through it in his head it sounded stupid, like a writer trying to write a scene, but not liking what was on the page so it was crumpled up and thrown across the room, to join a large pile of other rejected ideas.

When Collins reached the bar he took a deep breath before going inside, then once he was in he scanned the place for any sign of Sophia, seeing none, he sighed and turned to leave, only to be stopped by a voice. "Tom Collins?" He whipped around to see that the voice did indeed belong to Sophia, she was just wearing glasses and had been hunched over a piece of paper she appeared to be writing on.

"Sophia... um... Hi." He was surprised to say the least, and because of that he was stuttering like a flustered child. He needed a drink.

"Tom Collins. Have you come to tell me chapter two?" she asked, crossing her arms over her chest.

"Yeah, actually, I have. But, before I do I need to tell you about my friends, because this story will make no sense if I don't." Sophia nodded and gestured to her table.

"OK. Well, last time you mentioned your roommates, why don't you start with them." she suggested.

Collins nodded awkwardly, walked over to the table and sat down. He wouldn't make eye contact, he just stared at the wooden surface of the table... Or not, as it turned out, the paper that Sophia had been writing on was a sketch book, and on the open page there was a perfect sketch of the shop across the street, it already had most of its detail, right down to the reflections of the people walking past. "Oh my god. Sophia? Did you draw this?"

"Yeah, I did. I told you I was an artist last time we talked."

"Oh, right, you said to tell you if you started to explain things too much." He was still staring at the picture; no one he knew could draw that well, yes there had been art shows at NYU, but he only knew about them from posters in the hallways. He was a philosophy teacher, art wasn't exactly his thing.

"Yep, this sketch book is the only place where my obsession with detail is useful and... well, not annoying," Sophia stated, flipping through the pages.

"Hey, everyone has their obsessions; it's not a bad thing."

"You have a point. Okay, now tell me about your friends," Sophia insisted, closing the book and putting it in her bag.

"Fine. You said to start with my roommates, right?" She nodded. "Okay, I'll start with Mark, he's less complicated. Let's see... Well, Mark is a filmmaker. He never puts his camera down, a bunch of us thought he was going to marry the thing, it's insane. He used to date this girl, Maureen, but she dumped him for a woman named Joanne, and a year ago, she and Mark actually became friends, Maureen didn't like it though, it was funny. I'll tell you more about Maureen and Joanne later, now I'm going to tell you about Roger--"

"Wait, slow down, just let me take this in for a minute. Mark is your roommate and never puts down his camera, his girlfriend left him for another girl who then became friends with Mark. Did I get that right?" Sophia asked.

"Yeah, wow."

"I have a good memory. Okay, now keep going."

"Alright, now. Roger is a whole lot more complicated... and annoying, for that matter. About a year before my story he had this girlfriend, her name was April, he was crazy about her, over the moon insane, and she was crazy about smack, which unfortunately meant that he was too. Despite the drugs, everything was going great, he had a band, she was a groupie, it was cute. Then one day we came home, me, him and Mark, and a folded piece of paper was taped to the front door. He read it and freaked, ran inside and threw the paper down in the process. Mark picked it up, read it then handed it to me. April always had messy handwriting but this time she decided to write neatly, that was the first thing I noticed, then I read the words, 'We've got AIDS.' That's all it said. I think I remember crumpling it up, I'm not sure... 'cause the next second we heard Roger scream from inside the loft. We rushed in, found him in the bathroom, standing next to the bath tub, April was inside it, she'd slit her wrists. It was one of the worst things I've ever had to see." Collins grimaced at the memory, he had the most vivid picture of it in his mind... all that blood.

"Oh god... You've seen something worse than that?" Sophia asked incredulously.

"That's another part of the story."

"Wow, you lead a very dramatic life." she remarked.

"Sweetie, I'm not even done telling you about Roger, I have four more friends after him." Collins informed her.

"Holy shit... Okay, keep going."

"Well... um... After that he understandably shut himself off to the world. He wouldn't leave his room, he wouldn't let us in, he kept the door locked, we occasionally heard him play his guitar, but even that was rare. Then, one day I heard something coming from inside that room, I went over and knocked on the door. All I got was an angry 'Go away!' in response. About a week later, when Mark and I finally managed to pick the lock on his door, we found him huddled on the floor, shaking like crazy, turns out the sound I heard was him looking for more drugs. He'd run out and was desperate for a fix, but for some reason was even more desperate to not leave the room, so he's been going through withdrawal for a week, and we didn't even know about it. Unfortunately, after that incident he lost his fear of the outdoors and continued to make regular visits to The Man." He sighed, it was almost as if The Man was a whole other character in the story, and not just the local dealer, he'd caused enough shit in their lives, that's for sure.

"Who's The Man?"

"Roger's dealer." Mimi's too, but that came later.

"Are all of your friends like Roger?" Sophia asked.

"No, just Roger, thank god."

"I hear that."

"After a while I was offered a job at MIT, and jumped on the chance to make some money, Roger was still a wreck when I left. But then, about two months later I get a call from Mark telling me that he's finally stopping. For the next month or so I continued to get updates from Mark, apparently he tried rehab for a while but dropped out to go through it alone, so when I stopped getting the calls I figured he was either clean or using again. If he was clean, great, if not there was nothing I could do, so I just didn't bother. About six months after Mark stopped giving me updates I got fired, so I called to say that I was coming home. I then found out that Roger had been clean for half a year, but hadn't left the house in weeks, and didn't leave the house until that overly eventful Christmas Eve." Collins sighed again, talking about Roger was a very draining thing to do.

"So Roger's a depressed musician?"

"Pretty much, but unless you understand why, it's hard to understand him. Don't worry, Roger has the longest background, the others don't have as much drama in their life, before this story takes place anyway."

Sophia waited for Collins to continue, but he just stared out the window. After about two minutes of just watching him stare, Sophia took action and snapped her fingers in front of his face, luckily it worked but Collins still seemed disoriented went he looked back at her.

"Sorry I keep doing that. Strong memories."

"I understand."

"Thanks. Now, I also have a good memory, and I remember you saying that every time I told you something you would tell me something. What's next in your story?" Collins asked.

"Well..."