The Car Key

Disclaimer: I don’t own emotion. Or RENT. (Sorry, had to say it.)

Summary:Roger wants to save April, even if it means being thrown into a world he doesn’t understand. Mark could help him. Too bad Mark hates him.

Note on the Timeline: This story begins three-plus years after the conclusion of RENT and five years after the death of April.

I recognize that the movie version of RENT took place in 1990. Nonetheless, the lyrics contain a reference to the Oklahoma City Bombing (“yellow rental truck packed with fertilizer and fuel oil”), which occurred on April 19, 1995. So, for this fic’s purposes, RENT took place in 1996 (incidentally, the year the play opened on Broadway). This is not especially relevant, but I thought I’d tell you should you happen to care.

Warning: Supernatural/science fiction slant. Enough sexual content for a legitimate T.

Part 1: April in June

There was no spring that year. May was still winter, with cold rains and dark nights spent shivering in the loft. June was summer, with gritty sweat gathering at the back of his neck every time he moved, or sometimes when he didn’t.

June wasn’t Roger’s favorite month of the year to begin with, so he appreciated the miserable weather. He liked the weather to suit his mood.

He made a face as he stared at the calendar that had somehow appeared on the wall. Oddly enough, the calendar was turned to the right month and year; but Roger really hadn’t needed anything to tell him what day it was. This was the fifth year in a row he had dreaded this day. Even during that one amazing June he had had Mimi, this day had been about someone else.

The calendar was really starting to piss him off.

“Why the hell is there a calendar on the wall?” he demanded in case Mark was awake to hear him. Over the years, he and Mark had gotten more into the habit of buying food regularly and even cleaning on occasion. That didn’t mean they went in for niceties like hanging up calendars.

“I’m counting the days until my impending demise. You wanna make something of it?” Mark returned.

For one not-so-blessed moment, Roger had forgotten that Mark had lately usurped his position as the moody, brooding roommate. Roger had always thought that Mark was too much of an original to do something as mundane as panic over turning thirty. Roger had thought wrong. “Nope, don’t wanna make anything of it,” Roger answered as he went to stand in Mark’s bedroom door.

“Good.” Mark continued sorting through a box of uncut film. He was disproportionately getting rid of reels that featured his most recent ex-girlfriend, Andrea. The breakup had been mutual; two years in, Andrea had wanted to move to Chicago and had had progressively less patience for Mark’s devotion to his art.

Roger knew Mark wouldn’t make it through the morning without giving up the Andrea-extrication process to dwell on his rapidly approaching birthday. He was not remotely reassured by the fact that Roger, Joanne, and Collins had all successfully celebrated their third decade on the planet within the past several years.

Collins should be here, Roger thought to himself. Collins would know how to restore the natural order of things, in which Roger got to mope and Mark was the steady one who weathered everything with the occasional sarcastic comment. But Collins was teaching a summer course out in California. It wasn’t that he had forgotten Roger and Mark, of course; two days before, Federal Express had unexpectedly dumped a box labeled “china” in front of their door. The “china” had turned out to be a case of wine.

That Mark had refused to partake of the unexpected alcoholic windfall showed how truly set on sulking he was. Roger had been forced to pin Mark’s wrists to the ground and pour the wine down his throat. At least Mark had managed a laugh.

The thought of getting a buzz cheered Roger just a bit.

“Want to open another bottle of wine?”

“It’s nine o’clock in the morning.”

Roger flung himself to the floor beside Mark. “Since when do you look at the clock to decide if you want a drink?”

“Us senior citizens pay more attention to things like that.”

“I’m older than you are, and I’m going to start drinking right now.”

“Go ahead.”

“So you being a senior citizen can’t be what’s stopping you.” Roger’s voice slipped into a teasing sing-song. “If it doesn’t stop me.”

“It doesn’t count if you have the mental capacity of a fifteen-year-old girl.”

Roger’s eyes and smile widened. “Fifteen? Really? You usually say twelve.” He gave Mark as much of celebratory hug as he could manage without disturbing the film.

“Twelve, then.”

“You can’t take it back!”

“I didn’t mean to say it. I’m going senile.”

“But on the bright side, no one will notice. No one expects you to pay attention to anything but your camera anyway.”

Mark’s face darkened further, and he abruptly pushed the box of film back into his closet. Roger was too surprised to comment. An insult to Mark’s camera was supposed to be followed by an insult to Roger’s guitar. They had lived together for half a dozen years. They both knew the pattern.

Now that he thought of it, he hadn’t seen Mark film for several days. Maybe the camera was broken, and that was why Mark was so irascible? It made more sense than freaking out over a number. Roger was always more than a little off-balance if his guitar needed a new string, or even if it wouldn’t tune.

“Is your camera okay?” Roger asked.

Mark muttered something that sounded like “the camera’s not the problem.”

“What?”

He braced one hand on Roger’s shoulder to shove himself upright; once standing, he offered his hand to Roger to pull him up, too. “It’s too hot to do anything.”

Roger was glad for the safe topic of conversation. “If this is what it’s like in June, how bad is it gonna be in August?”

“Don’t even think about it.”

“We seriously need an air conditioner, or more fans. We’ve got the money.”

“You have.”

Soon after Mimi’s death several Christmases before, Roger had reformed his band. Since Mimi had broken both his writer’s block and his heart, he found it easier than ever to focus on his music. The Well Hungarians were currently resident band for a club ten blocks away. The money, while it wasn’t much by anyone’s standards but Roger’s, was still more than Mark was making with his camera.

Mark had never bothered to draw a line between their finances when he had been working steadily and Roger had been too depressed to leave the loft. That Mark didn’t seem to expect Roger to do the same now that their roles were reversed was more than a little insulting.

“Fine,” said Roger. “I’ll get an air conditioner, and you can’t touch the air it conditions.”

“Okay.”

“I mean it.”

“Maybe when it’s hot in June, it’s cooler in August.”

“Did that happen last time there was a really hot June?”

Mark considered. “It hasn’t been this hot this early since . . . I don’t know.”

Now Mark was the one who couldn’t stop glancing at the damned calendar. Halloween was Angel’s day, Christmas was Mimi’s, and today….

What Mark was too sensitive to say, even in his grumpiness, was that early summer hadn’t seemed quite so broiling since that day.

Five years earlier

The loft was crowded with heavy air and warm bodies. The sickly-sweet smell of marijuana and sex didn’t quite balance out the overwhelming stench of sweat. Everyone was too hot to care.

Mark dragged himself out of bed. He was still tired, but Maureen was currently nothing more to him than a 98.6-degree hot water bottle from which he needed to escape.

The main room of the loft was empty except for Collins, who was contemplating a glass of ice water as if he had never seen such a thing before. “Going to drink that or pour it over your head?” Mark asked conversationally.

“Can’t decide.”

“Are you going to work today?” Collins was the only one of them who worked steadily. The others had taken Benny’s recent promise of a rent-free life to heart and devoted all of their time to artistic pursuits. Mark and Maureen’s food money came from temporary jobs and the occasional gift. The exact origins of Roger and April’s drug money Mark did not care to contemplate.

“Yeah. Last week of school. You don’t get paid at all if you call in this week, and since I already did the rest of the term…” he shrugged.

“Do they give you an air conditioner as a prize for surviving the year?” What Mark really wanted to know was if Collins would be willing to “liberate” an air conditioner for them. Something in his upper-middle class upbringing kept him from making the request right out. He didn’t think his morals would extend to not using a stolen air conditioner should one appear, however.

“Don’t need to.” Collins flashed Mark the only smile he’d seen since the beginning of the heat wave. “I have plans tonight with a very upstanding young man who lawfully owns one.”

“Lucky you.”

“One of the benefits of not limiting yourself to one person.” He jerked his head toward Mark’s bedroom, where Maureen still slept. “Or at least not moving someone in.”

Mark was drinking his own glass of water, having decided that, for once, he did not feel like eating. “Haven’t you ever been in love?” He knew the answer but had trouble believing it. He’d been in love with every one of his girlfriends from high school on, and he’d never been without a girlfriend for long.

“Nope.” Collins theatrically wiped the sweat from his brow, flicking a droplet in Mark’s general direction. “But I may propose marriage to Gavin’s air conditioner.”

“How’re you gonna consummate that?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know.” He dropped his glass into the sink. “See you in a few days.”

“Whatever.”

Collins slammed the door on his way out. Mark stood irritably before the window and tried to will a breeze to come inside. He had had no success when Roger emerged sluggishly from his bedroom, apparently roused by the slamming door. A voice that was neither Roger’s nor Maureen’s murmured incoherently.

April’s here. April doesn’t even live here. Roger should take April back to wherever she lives, and fewer people will make the loft cooler.

Roger and April’s departure would also make the loft less of a smack den. Mark liked Roger quite a lot, and April was so pathetic in her constant mood swings that he couldn’t help but pity her. Nonetheless, he would not have chosen to live with a pair of junkies if he hadn’t fallen into it.

As many times as he had called Benny a sellout, a dilettante, and a yuppie, Mark missed his former roommate. Benny had been around since they had started college together, and his absence was strange. The last time he had spoken to Benny, though, Benny had been bragging about his new wife’s summer home in East Hampton. As much as Mark wasn’t willing to sell his soul, East Hampton sounded nice right about now.

Belatedly, he saw April’s purse sitting near him on the window seat. It had been thrown there carelessly so that the contents spilled out: a hairbrush, a needle, a car key.

A car key!

Mark had forgotten that April had a car. It was a piece of junk, naturally, but it could probably make the Hamptons. If not, he was willing to have it die trying.

Suddenly, April’s presence was not half so irritating.

“Roger!”

“Yeah?” Roger was in the bathroom, but he had left the door open, so Mark followed him inside. He found his roommate staring at his bleached hair in the mirror.

“Do you have anywhere you have to be today?” The answer was most likely no, but although his band was falling apart at the seams—not least due to its lead singer’s intense devotion to a certain white powder—it still played clubs sometimes.

“No.”

“Want to go to the Hamptons?”

“Won’t that take forever?” Roger ran a wet comb through hair that was really too short to need it.

“Doesn’t April have a car?” Mark asked as casually as he could manage.

Roger’s blue-green eyes lit with excitement. “You’re right! This’ll be great! APRIL!” He fairly bounced back into his bedroom.

More incoherent mumbling. Either April wasn’t a morning person or she desperately needed a hit. Roger pulled her upright, shaking her shoulders. “April, let’s go to the beach today. You and me and Mark and Maureen and—is Collins here?” he called over his shoulder to Mark.

“No,” said Mark, pretending that he wasn’t lurking a step behind Roger, ready to strangle April if she ruined his only hope of avoiding heatstroke as he drowned in his own sweat.

“So, you and me and Mark and Maureen. A double date.”

April shook her head. “No.”

Beside the entrance to the bedroom, Mark clenched his fists.

“Why?” whined Roger, dragging the single word to at least seven syllables.

“I have an appointment.”

“Cancel it.”

“No.”

“Why?”

“I need birth control pills. You do want to keep having sex without a big piece of rubber getting in the way, right?”

This gave Roger pause. “Didn’t you do that last week?”

“They needed to test me first. They called and said I had to come down in person.”

“Tomorrow?”

“Today. I don’t want to go. I don’t feel like it.” She was whining, now, too. “Leave me alone.”

“Can I borrow your car? You could be alone if the rest of us were at the beach.”

“Fine.” She flopped sullenly back against the damp pillows, and Roger closed the door behind him.

Mark couldn’t believe his luck. If Maureen had ever said “leave me alone” in that tone of voice, he would have refrained from doing any such thing on pain of death. Roger’s management of his so-called relationship with April was quite different, and thankfully so. Not only was Mark going to get out of the city, he was going to get out of the city without April. That would be one less junkie shooting up and a complete escape from the whining, sulking, and histrionics that accompanied April when she was in one of her low periods.

He went to place the key in his pocket and found that he was wearing only boxers. Regrettably, shorts and shirt would probably be needed for the trip. He found both on the floor of his room, along with a skimpy dress of Maureen’s that he particularly liked.

“What’re you looking for?” muttered Maureen sleepily from where she lay naked on their bed. Mark felt his penis give a twitch of interest as he looked at her. Just the knowledge that cool ocean breezes would be his within a few hours was returning his desires for things other than an end to the heat.

“Clothes.” He threw the dress at her. “Get up. We’re going to the shore.”

“Really?” She jumped spontaneously from the bed and threw her arms around Mark, sealing the celebration with a thorough kiss. “Ten minutes.” Maureen bolted for the bathroom with the dress in her hand.

Mark smiled. Roger had more money than he did. He had more success with his art, and the chance to live out every child’s rock star fantasies.

But Mark had a much better girlfriend.

X

There was a brief argument over who would drive. Roger was of the opinion that it was his girlfriend’s car, and he should drive if he wanted to. Mark and Maureen were of the opinion that they didn’t want to die in a crash resulting from the driver’s heroin-addled brain. The latter two prevailed, and Roger stretched out as much as he could in the small back seat with no further complaint.

To everyone’s surprise, the engine revved noisily as soon as Mark turned the key in the ignition. Every inch of the car rattled when Mark edged it onto the highway and pushed it past 60 miles per hour, but, amazingly, no vital pieces of rusted metal ripped off in the wind.

The roaring noise of the protesting car was somehow less isolating than the unmoving heat of the loft had been. Off to the left of the highway, an industrial sprinkler was watering crops on one of the few farms in a densely populated area. Maureen giggled, brushing her hand along Mark’s thigh to make sure he noticed.

Mark cut his eyes away from the road. “What?”

“The sprinkler.”

“What about it?”

“Didn’t you notice?” she asked coyly.

“No.”

Maureen let out a blissful sigh. “I was just noticing how it shoots out jets of white water. It sort of pulses out the squirts, and they arc up in the air. Looks hot, don’t you think?”

Mark glanced in the rearview mirror to see if Roger had managed to hear Maureen’s remark from the back seat. It looked as if he had not; his eyes were closed and he bore an expression of extreme content.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Mark managed around his smirk.

“Me either. It just reminded me of something. I don’t know what.” Maureen’s fingers slipped beneath the line of his shorts, and then progressively higher. “Is it distracting when I do this while you’re trying to drive?”

“No,” Mark lied, because otherwise Maureen might have stopped.

Thirty miles of Maureen’s hand moving up and down later, Mark was genuinely concerned that his very favorite part of his anatomy was going to fall off absent the sort of resolution it was best not to have while piloting a rickety one-ton vehicle at high speeds.

“Has it ever fallen off before?” Maureen asked. Mark allowed that it had not. “Then how do you know?”

“It feels—well, you know!”

Maureen continued her exploration of how it did, in fact, feel. Mark swung the car roughly into the parking lot of a visitor’s center.

In the back seat, Roger opened his eyes at the unexpected movement. He looked around, blinking rapidly. “What’s going on?”

“I have to stop driving,” Mark told him. Mark’s posture was a little strange, and Maureen was fairly glowing with impishness. “I have to stop driving like I’ve never had to stop driving before.”

Roger started to repeat his question, wondering what he had missed while he was busy daydreaming. What were Mark and Maureen thinking, stopping this close to their destination? If April had been with him, they wouldn’t have been pondering visitor’s centers— and getting flushed at the prospect, to boot. He and April basically enjoyed two activities. Neither Mark nor Maureen ever shot up, and the other activity. . . oh.

“Meet you back here in twenty minutes,” Roger agreed as they opened the doors and stepped into the sun. Twenty minutes was probably an overly generous amount of time considering the way Mark was standing. Roger grabbed the key from Mark and locked the car. His munificence did not extend to allowing the car to be a backup location for the tryst should Maureen not be able to sneak into the men’s room.

Several shops catering to tourists with more money than brains clustered around the welcome center. The wares displayed in the windows were thoroughly uninteresting, but staring at them was better than sitting next to the hot car and waiting for his oversexed roommates.

As he strolled down the street, a woman caught his eye.

A woman catching Roger’s eye was nothing unusual. He was spending less and less time on stage lately—all right, so he was forgetting about shows and developing a bad reputation—but when he was singing and playing to a crowd, every woman in the throng wanted to throw herself at him. Most of those girls and women looked something like April: coated over with makeup, thin in the way peculiar to heroin users, tight skin barely covered by scraps of fabric.

While this woman had the makeup part down, her body was round with curves not quite hidden by the layers of clothing that didn’t fit the steamy, smoggy day. He had seen women of her kind before, too. They were to be found in any large city and New York was no exception. They walked the streets, offering to read palms or tarot cards in exchange for whatever cash the victim had on hand.

For whatever reason, Roger didn’t break eye contact. Before long, it became a battle of wills. No opportunist plying psychic services to impressionable tourists was going to make Roger Davis, front man to the Well Hungarians, look away.

“She’s not here,” the woman said, tapping her heart lightly with manicured fingernails. Unwillingly, Roger stepped off the sidewalk with her. “Maybe she used to be here. You’ll be sad when it ends. But the next will be better for you.”

“Then on to the next,” said Roger with a grin. No one was ever as happy as April was when she was happy, and so he was willing to ignore her equally powerful sad moments. He liked April’s enthusiasm and beauty. He liked that sex and drugs were always close at hand. He was willing to call April his girlfriend and commit to a mostly monogamous relationship. But Roger was not hung up on the idea of hearts and flowers and fairy tales. That was Mark, and even Collins down deep.

The woman shook her head. “It will be harder than you think.” She handed him a business card. “I’m Jacobia. Ten dollars and I’ll tell you what she’s doing. Twenty if you want to know the future.”

“I don’t care what she’s doing.”

“Ah, I think you do.”

“If April wants to screw around, that’s her business. I’ll screw around, too, if she does.”

“April is very unhappy. That’s why she relies on the drugs.”

For an instant, Roger was taken aback. Then his eye fell on his own arm, ridden with fresh track marks. Of course “Jacobia” had made the educated guess that if he used, so did his girlfriend. It was her job to guess, and guess well.

Roger looked at his watch. He still had more than fifteen minutes to wait for Mark and Maureen, and this was his best shot at entertainment.

“Ten for the future,” he tried.

Jacobia looked pained. “Because this is such a desperate case, I feel I must tell you.”

Roger gave her a crumpled ten dollar bill. The others could buy his lunch as a thank you for his patience. “Well?”

“If you want to save April, you must go to her now.”

Roger rolled his eyes. “I’ll see her tonight.”

“Now,” Jacobia hissed, her round eyes growing wider beneath their makeup.

“And if I don’t?”

A tarot card materialized from nowhere and Jacobia flashed it before Roger’s face. Against his will, he jumped backwards. “The death card doesn’t always mean a literal death,” Jacobia crooned. “Sometimes it just means a change. The end of a relationship, a friendship, a job, an addiction.” She traced the card down the marks on his arm. “For April, I fear it may be the end. If you want to save her—” Jacobia pressed a key into Roger’s hand.

Roger stared at the key. It was his own, or rather, April’s. He had taken it from Mark short moments before. “YOU PICKED MY POCKET!” A few heads turned to stare.

Jacobia was undisturbed. “The fates gave it to me to help you. You’ll regret it if you don’t save her.”

“I thought you said the next one would be better for me,” said Roger uneasily. How had he not seen Jacobia’s hand go into his pocket? “Maybe I’ll just save her.”

“No.” Jacobia was firm. “She’ll save you.”

He looked again at his watch. It wasn’t quite time to head back, but his legs were twitching with the need to leave. Against all odds, Jacobia’s performance had been more convincing than entertaining. “I have to go,” he muttered. In two long strides, he was across the narrow street. The business card flickered to the bottom of a trash can. His mind wildly sought anything that was not April.

The future is what you make of it. There is no such thing as fortune telling. Psychics are frauds. No one believes in astrology except Nancy Reagan, and she also thinks that teenagers should just say no to drugs.

Roger hated to work so hard to convince himself of something that was obviously true.

He pushed his discomfort aside when he saw Mark and Maureen leaning against the trunk of a tree and holding hands. “Can we actually go to the beach now?” he asked as he approached.

Mark, almost unreasonably jovial, slapped him on the back. “Yeah.”

Despite the overwhelming heat that had settled over the eastern half of the country, the beach was remarkably free from crowds. The closest thing the day had to a low point was Maureen’s attempt to bury herself in sand as a protest against cruel methods of clam digging. (Burying her was fun; getting her out as the tide approached was slightly more problematic.)

Roger would have hated to go home had he not used the last of his stash in the aftermath of the clam incident. He was going to want more in the near future, and so he contentedly settled into the back seat with a bag of takeout from McDonald’s.

A smooth two-hour drive later, Mark eased the car close to the vacant lot beside their building.

X

The smell hit them as soon as they entered the loft. Hands flew instinctively to noses.

“Gross,” Maureen shrieked. She jumped back half a flight of stairs. “Fix that, and then call me.”

“God,” said Roger. He added a few choice obscenities. “What happened?”

“Collins?” called Mark, instantly regretting the deep breath he’d needed to draw to raise his voice. “April?”

Nothing looked amiss in the main room, but the smell got stronger as they stepped nearer the bedrooms. Something had managed to overwhelm the pot-sex-sweat stench of the morning.

Holding his breath, Mark shoved into his and Maureen’s room and looked around. Sure, they hadn’t done their laundry for a few weeks, but nothing seemed to warrant this.

He stepped outside again just as Roger exited his own room. Their eyes met, and they shook their heads in unison. In lockstep, they moved to the bathroom and pushed aside the half-closed door.

The blood was so much and so bright that it didn’t occur to Mark to scream, faint, or throw up the French fries he’d eaten on the way home. Instead, he stood mesmerized by the sight before him. April’s dead face was already contorted gruesomely. The tank top she wore (once yellow and soft, now dark red and stiff) exposed her arms; she had somehow managed to cut both wrists. She had done it the right way, too: lengthwise, not crosswise.

Mark might have stared for hours had he not been brought back to reality by Roger falling to his knees beside him. Compassion kicked in with a physical jolt—ohGodpoorRoger whatifithadbeenMaureen don’tthinkaboutthat should’vebeennicer poorAprilyoungerthanIam—and he sank down next to Roger.

Roger moved as if to crawl to April’s side, and Mark instinctively wrapped his arms tightly around Roger’s chest. “She’s gone,” he whispered. “Let’s get you out of here.”

Roger groaned inhumanly. At first, Mark thought that Roger was trying to pull away from him, but then he realized that the trembling was involuntary. Mark felt himself start to shake as well. He’d never seen a dead body before (not unless one of the homeless he often passed on the streets had happened to be dead) and had never expected the first to be a beautiful young girl who took her own life. He was also suddenly, completely aware that being a young man living in the city did not reprieve him of all pain and responsibility. He could ignore his mother’s calls and forget his education, but the recklessness was going to have to end. Carefree was an illusion; death was most definitely real.

Mark willed his own shaking to stop. This is not about you, he reminded himself. He made shushing sounds at Roger, whose breathing was fast and shallow. “One deep breath, Rog, one deep breath.” Roger didn’t respond, nor did he seem to know that Mark was clinging to him and rubbing his back. “Let’s go.” He stood and dragged Roger up with him. “Do you think you can sit with Maureen while I call the police and get this cleaned up?” No response. Roger slumped bonelessly against him.

As Mark started to pull Roger from the room, Roger suddenly found his own strength. He careened away from Mark and toward the bathtub where April lay. He put his hand on her heart, and then on her lips. “She’s dead,” Mark repeated. Her eyes stared at nothing. Her face seemed at once swollen and stiff. Blood no longer poured from the gashes on her arms because all the blood was gone.

Roger reached toward the mirror. At first Mark thought he was trying to touch his own bleeding reflection, but his hand came away with a small square of paper at which he stared uncomprehendingly.

For the first time, Roger spoke. “Mark, read that.”

Mark took the note. “We have AIDS.”

Present day

“I’m, um, going out,” Roger told Mark. “Back in a few.”

“Okay.” Mark was not terribly interested, and Roger swallowed a sigh. If Mark was going to persist in being depressed, Roger was going to have to do something to make it better. A spontaneous trip to somewhere that was not the city, with its memories of failed films and failed relationships, seemed like the best distraction.

He supposed he could call Maureen and ask to borrow Joanne’s car. He could slink into the Food Emporium, sparing a smile for Collins and Angel, and buy junk food for a picnic. He could drag Mark somewhere where there were stars and sea and whatever else you needed to rejuvenate when you felt too empty to care about much of anything.

He could do all of that if he could just stop thinking about April. April had had the right to take her own life. She hadn’t had the right to ruin the month of June for Roger for the rest of his life. She hadn’t had the right to keep Roger from following one of his rare selfless impulses and doing something nice for Mark, especially when Mark really needed a nice surprise.

Roger steeled himself and marched into the Food Emporium, where he was careful not to purchase anything too healthy. Distracted with the effort of balancing his bags in his arms, he slammed hard into a woman as he exited the building.

He alternated between swearing and apologizing as he stopped a few cans of soda from rolling down the sidewalk. Only when his groceries had been reclaimed did he look at the woman, who had stopped to help him gather them.

His head spun so quickly that he was glad he was already kneeling on the sidewalk. I’m going crazy, he thought to himself. It’s the heat. It’s making me hallucinate. It’s this day, the day she died, five years ago.

I do NOT see the crazy psychic! Especially not here.

She smiled in a way that was either mystical or condescending. “I am Jacobia. You remember me?”

“I remember,” he answered as if in a trance. I remember that it was a coincidence! A COINCIDENCE. Mark said so. Even Maureen said so.

“I told you how you could have saved her. But you were better not doing it.” She flashed a familiar-looking key in Roger’s face, and his insides twisted.

Roger didn’t even know what had happened to the car. He was pretty sure Mark had sold it and bought food and AZT with the proceeds, but everything that had happened those first few months after April’s death was permanently foggy in his head.

“How can you say that? That it was better for her to die?” The memory of April’s corpse, bleeding in the bathtub, assaulted his senses.

“Better for you for her to die. Aren’t you happy?”

“I’d be happier if she’d lived,” he responded instantly. Two dead girlfriends in less than two years was two too many. His throat started to swell shut. He’d barely cried at Mimi’s death bed, and he’d never cried at all for April. That wasn’t how he grieved. Still, today was such a bad day. “Now, unless you can change the past, I have to get going.” His voice might have shaken just slightly.

“You don’t want to change the past.” Statement, not question.

Roger’s temper starting rising, but somehow he still didn’t feel strong enough to stand up. “Of course I want to keep April from slitting her damn wrists!”

She shook her head in the manner usually saved for idiots and small children. “You don’t. If you insist that you do, you’ll take this key.”

Furiously, he grabbed at it and clenched it in his fist. The dizziness intensified. Suddenly, putting his head on the dirty sidewalk, just for a moment, seemed like an excellent idea.

Blackness enveloped him.

To be continued.

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