The Car Key

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

Epilogue

After a month of oppressive heat—New York City seemed to have hotter heat and humider humidity than anywhere else, because New York City was like that—there was rain. He felt desperately ill, but he could still appreciate the rain that seeped through his headache and connected him to the world.

“He’s coming around,” someone said.

Without thinking, Roger opened his eyes. The sunlight attacked him viciously; it wasn’t raining after all. His face just happened to be wet. Was it tears? He didn’t usually cry, but the last month had been almost unreasonably painful.

A drop of water startled his tongue as he unconsciously licked his dry lips. The water was cold, and not at all salty. Someone had thrown a glass of water in his face to revive him. He was the one who was coming around.

“Roger!” The high-pitched shriek prompted him to close his eyes again. The light was far too bright, and the noises too loud.

“You know him?” said the first voice.

“We’re friends.” A gentle finger ran down his face, and a soft curl of hair fell against him and made him shiver. The sweet smell of perfume wafted into his nostrils. It was a welcome change from the stink of the homeless in the squatters’ village.

“We didn’t call an ambulance. Thought he might have just passed out from the heat. He’s not the first if he did.”

“Roger?” the source of the perfume asked. “Do you need to go to the clinic?”

He opened his eyes again to evaluate the situation. The last thing he remembered was being in the tent city with Mark, but Mark wouldn’t have gone to all the trouble of tracking him down only to leave him spread-eagled on a sidewalk hot enough to fry an egg. He must have had some kind of blackout, or, worse, some kind of inter-dimensional transport.

Dark eyes were staring at him and waiting for him to answer the question.

He knew those eyes and that hair and even that perfume.

“Maureen?”

“Yeah.” She rocked back on her heels with palpable relief. “How are you feeling?”

He felt awful, but that was the normal state of things. There were more important topics to discuss. “What are you doing here?”

“I was coming to see you and Mark. I was going to stop and buy food for you.”

“Mimi said you hadn’t seen Mark for years.”

Maureen’s fingers laced through Roger’s. Her hand was soft, like her hair. It had been a long time since he had touched anything soft, and while he enjoyed it he was struck by the horrific thought that he would ruin something so delicate. He pulled away, but she squeezed his hand harder. “Sweetie,” she said. “Mimi is… Mimi… I saw Mark two days ago. We went to watch Joanne in court.”

“Mimi is what? What about Mimi?” Now that Mark liked Roger again, Roger was going to get to see Mimi. It was practically the only good thing about Roger’s whole situation. Was Maureen trying to tell him that that had changed?

Maureen glanced at one of the strangers who surrounded him. “He’s not with it,” she declared bluntly. Tact wasn’t one of Maureen’s strong points. “He should probably go to the clinic.”

“Mimi’s not dead, is she?” Roger felt his chest starting to cave in. Maureen didn’t answer, but Roger read the answer in Maureen’s face. Maureen wasn’t a very good poker player, either. She didn’t have to be; she always managed to get away with whatever she liked. There was no need to bluff when you could get everyone else to hand you their chips just because you asked nicely. “What about Collins?”

“Collins is in California.”

California. His Collins was in California, and his Mimi was dead, and his Mark had never lost touch with his Maureen. Roger did his best to convince himself that he was asleep or still unconscious. Failing that, he tried to convince himself that he was in yet some new place he didn’t understand. He couldn’t allow himself to hope that his fondest wish had been granted. If he allowed himself to believe that he had somehow come home, and it turned out not to be true, the disappointment would crush him before it killed him.

“Where do I live?” Roger demanded of Maureen.

“You’re definitely getting checked out,” Maureen decided. It was well and good for her that she had decided something, but Roger needed an answer.

“Where do I live?” he asked, not above sounding whiny and desperate if it got Maureen to respond.

“Same place you have for six years,” she told him quietly. “Eleventh and B.”

Roger divested his hand of Maureen’s before he realized what he’d done. His mind caught up to his body only after he’d darted across the street and started running. Once he knew where he was going, he only urged himself on faster. Even in the ridiculous heat of the day, his legs felt wonderful as they stretched to their limits. It had been a long time since he’d really run. Living as a singer-songwriter in a metropolis didn’t require many headlong sprints.

Sweat dripped from his face and sunk into his already-drenched shirt as he pounded up the stairs to the loft. One of his legs cramped terribly, but he didn’t care. He only cared about opening the door and seeing his guitar in the corner, his gig schedule attached to the calendar on the wall, and Mark lounging languidly on the couch as if Roger hadn’t just spent an entire month in hell.

Mark slowly turned to look at Roger. “Are you all right?” he asked in a would-be casual tone.

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

Mark was slow to answer, as if choosing his words carefully. Behind his glasses, his eyes strayed to the calendar on the wall. The calendar was turned to June, Roger noticed. But it wasn’t June any longer. It had been June the day he’d found Mimi alive and Collins dead. Weeks and weeks had passed. “You look like you were running.”

Roger’s sweat was splattering on the loft’s dusty floor and his breathing was labored. Mark’s assumption that Roger had been running wasn’t any great testament to his deductive powers, so Roger settled for nodding his head up and down. Yes, he had been running.

“Why?”

A million answers tumbled over each other and kept Roger from giving voice to any of them. Because April killed herself. Because she didn’t. Because it was my fault, and at the same time it wasn’t. Because you’re here, but you almost weren’t. Because Mimi is dead. Because she isn’t. Because Collins is dead. Because he isn’t. Because I want to run away. Because I want to come home. Because I want to change the past, and I feel guilty. Because I don’t, and I feel guilty. Because I do and I don’t and I resent it. Because I’m scared. Because I’m not. Because I understand and I don’t.

What Roger ended up doing was staggering across the room and dropping his head into Mark’s lap.

X

Mark cringed just slightly at the feeling of Roger’s skin against his own. Their cold sweat mixed together between their warm bodies and created a sickening ticklish sensation.

It wasn’t that he had anything against mixing his sweat with someone else’s per se. It was just that he believed that this exchange should be a result of something fun, like or having sex or getting drunk and dancing.

He scolded himself for worrying about sweat and sex when he should have been worrying about Roger’s state of mind. Of course, focusing on the sweat was much less overwhelming than focusing on the fifth anniversary of the day Roger’s girlfriend slit her wrists.

“Want to talk about it?” Mark asked, trying to go through the motions of taking care of Roger while allowing himself to think about more mundane things. He couldn’t afford to lose it himself.

“No,” said Roger predictably.

Mark shifted against Roger and settled in to wait. Roger always said “no,” but a solid three-quarters of the time he meant “yes.”

Sure enough, not five minutes later, Roger sat up with his back against the couch and his legs stretched out in front of him. Mark couldn’t get a clear look at Roger’s face; whether or not this was by Roger’s design, he couldn’t say.

“Did you hate April?”

Trust Roger not to start off with something easy. The truth of the matter was that Mark had sometimes hated April, on the rare occasion that he paid her enough attention to have feelings about her at all. He blamed her for Roger’s addiction and Roger’s disease. That wasn’t fair; Roger had been going down that path before he ever met April. Quite probably Roger was the one who had passed HIV to April, since Roger had had countless opportunities to share needles with complete strangers while living his rock star life. But Mark loved Roger, and it was too hard to blame Roger for his own failings. Better to blame April, who wasn’t around to care.

Mark wasn’t about to share those thoughts with Roger. He could find other thoughts, equally true, that were better suited to this time and place.

“I never thought about April that much,” he started. “I—well, one of my first thoughts after she died was that I should have been nicer to her. But I loved being in New York and being an artist, and I was all wrapped up in being with Maureen. You or Collins or Benny was always up to something. April was at the back of my mind, if she was on my mind at all.”

“You didn’t think it was irritating that she’d be go from too depressed to move to so excited she’d bounce all over anyone in two seconds?”

Actually, Mark had found that very irritating at the time. In retrospect, he wondered if April might have been bipolar. He surely wasn’t going to share that theory with Roger. Roger felt guilty enough for April’s death without contemplating what might have prevented it. “Maybe I was… irritated is a good word. Sometimes. But sometimes I liked her. I knew why you liked her.”

“Do you—”

Whatever else Roger was going to say was lost in a roaring shout of Mark’s name. Unfortunate as the timing was, Mark couldn’t help but feel a prick of happiness. April’s death had been the beginning of the end for his romantic relationship with Maureen, but he still craved her presence on the tragedy’s anniversary. And, without fail, she came to see him on this particular day. For five years now, she had come. This awful anniversary meant that he would always own a tiny piece of Maureen, no matter that Joanne was the one she loved. Just as clearly, Maureen would own a tiny piece of Mark, no matter what the future brought.

Mark hopped onto the fire escape and threw his key at Maureen. She caught it easily, having had years of practice.

He just barely registered Roger muttering that he needed to get cleaned up before Roger shut himself in the bathroom and turned on the water. That was a surprise; Mark hadn’t thought Roger would have been eager to go in there today. A gallon of bleach and five years had only physically washed away April’s blood.

Maybe Roger just wanted to avoid Maureen.

She entered presently, struggling with several bags of groceries. She abandoned the bags on the floor to greet Mark with an uncharacteristically quiet hug and kiss on the cheek.

“Is Roger here?” Maureen asked into the eerie silence.

Mark jerked his head in the direction of the bathroom. “Yeah. He just came back. I don’t know where he was.”

“I was coming over here and I saw him unconscious in front of the Food Emporium,” she revealed without preamble.

“Unconscious?”

In a rare role reversal, Maureen made shushing noises at Mark and grabbed at his wrist before he was able to storm across the loft, rip Roger out of the shower, and ask why he hadn’t seen fit to mention that he’d passed out.

“When he woke up, he wasn’t all that together,” she continued. “He knew who I was, but he was mumbling about Mimi, like she was still alive. He asked me where he lived, and when I told him he took off running. Left that behind him.” She pointed at the groceries. “He bought them.”

Mark pawed through the groceries. Candy, cookies, potato chips, soda, and a couple of sandwiches. At least now he knew that Roger hadn’t been planning to follow Collins’ lead and follow a healthy diet or anything crazy like that.

“How was he this morning?” Maureen was asking.

“I don’t think he remembered at first,” Mark told her honestly, and with a bit of guilt. “I didn’t, at first.”

Maureen flashed a smile of wan understanding. “I stared at Joanne’s newspaper for ten minutes this morning, trying to remember what that date meant.”

“I was whining about turning thirty. Roger was bouncing around, wanting to start drinking. He didn’t seem sick.” He eyed the closed bathroom door warily.

“If he could run here from the Food Emporium, he probably isn’t sick.”

“People don’t just pass out for no reason.”

“Going in and out of air conditioning when it’s a hundred degrees out is a reason. Really, other than being… confused for a minute, I think he’s all right.”

Mark tried to take Maureen at her word. She’d watched their friends get sick and die and fall apart and put themselves back together— not quite the way he had, but closely enough. She was a good judge of these things when she wasn’t feeling self-absorbed. Mark trusted her, and did not need further reassurance the Roger hadn’t done something melodramatic like take his razor and—

“ROGER?” Mark yelled.

Roger replied with a mild obscenity. Maureen giggled and pulled Mark back toward his previous location near the fan. They had sat in silence for a few minutes, enjoying the minimal breeze for what it was, when the door to the loft unexpectedly slid open.

“Greetings from the City of Angels, my wicked ones!” A flying package of cigarettes nearly hit Mark in the head.

Collins liked to make an entrance.

Before Maureen and Mark could properly greet Collins, and inquire as to what he had done to get himself fired so early in the summer term, Roger emerged from his hiding place and flung himself into Collins’ arms.

Collins glanced at Mark and Maureen, both slightly taken aback, over Roger’s lowered head. “This is how you’re supposed to say hello to someone,” he informed them.

Obediently, Mark forced himself toward the others; Maureen, several steps ahead as usual, happily bounced atop Collins and Roger.

“How’d you get expelled this time?” Mark asked, more because it seemed the thing to do than because he wanted an answer right this second. His mind was swimming with April’s blood and Roger’s state of mind and, still, the ever-present reminder that the things he loved and the people he loved weren’t going to last forever.

He and Maureen and even Roger had almost forgotten what today was. One year, he and Maureen weren’t going to be drawn to each other by the memory of blood and bleach and sex by the beach. One year, that part of each other they owned was going to be gone. Next year, he would be in his thirties and too old to be living La Vie Boheme.

Roger was shaking, just a little bit, as he pulled away from Collins. His eyes, too, were just slightly too bright. Mark glanced from one to the other. Collins didn’t seem to notice the wonder and worship Roger sent in his direction. Maureen was distracting Collins with some story, and Roger was content to drink in the sight of Collins whether the attention was returned or not. Mark felt a twinge of jealousy. Collins hadn’t been there on that day. Mark had.

When Maureen paused in her recitation to draw breath, Collins seemed to notice that Roger was still far into his personal space. He glanced a question at Roger, then asked it out loud. “What?”

“Thank you,” Roger told him, barely above a whisper.

“No more cigarettes. I gave them to Mark.”

“You threw them at Mark,” Mark corrected, and he picked up the Marlboros from the floor and handed them to Roger as if this was what had sent Roger into some kind of trance.

“Thank you,” Roger repeated, and Mark knew that he wasn’t being thanked for the cigarettes, either.

“You’re right,” Mark responded, latching onto a non-sequitur because he couldn’t get into what Roger was really talking about without becoming as shaky as Roger seemed to be. “We need to buy an air conditioner. Like, today.”

Roger managed a smile that didn’t hit his eyes but was no less genuine for that. “Yes.” Mark watched him gather himself like he sometimes did right before he went on stage without really being in the mood. “Collins! Maureen!” he snapped loudly, the shake forcibly removed from his voice. “We’re going out.”

“Where?”

“Air conditioner shopping!”

“Finally!” Maureen exclaimed, as if Mark and Roger’s failure to procure an expensive, energy-consuming appliance over the years had been part of a scheme to torment her and nothing else. She grabbed Collins and pulled him down the stairs.

Amused, Mark turned to follow, but Roger held him back. “I mean it,” Roger told him. “Thank you.”

The last thing Mark wanted to say was “for what?” but he said it anyway, since Roger was going to force the issue.

“I know you’ve been obsessing over your old age. So, before you get completely senile, I want to tell you something. These last six years, hanging out with you, I wouldn’t trade them for anything. Not for anything.”

Because it was the day that it was, Mark was more aware than usual that anything encompassed a very lot. “I wouldn’t, either,” he answered automatically. It almost went without saying. He wasn’t the one with the fatal disease and two dead girlfriends, after all.

“Even if you knew for a fact that if you’d bailed on me when things got bad, you’d be making money with your art and married to the most amazing woman who ever lived?”

Mark laughed hollowly to stop what felt suspiciously like tears building in his throat. “When is anyone ever going to give me that choice?”

“If someone did.” Again, Roger was channeling his on-stage persona, all intensity devoid of his usual underlying current of goofiness.

“Never,” Mark assured.

Roger sighed. “Good. You always were the smart one.”

“Are you all right? Wanna stay here and lock them out?” He jerked his head toward the sound of Collins’ and Maureen’s retreating footsteps.

“Yes. And no.” A second time, Mark moved to follow Collins and Maureen; a second time, Roger stopped him. Roger’s hand snaked into his pocket and emerged with something clenched in its fist. “If I needed you to believe that a fortune-teller met me outside the Food Emporium and gave me a magical car key, and that I spent at least a month living the life I would have had if April hadn’t died that day, you’d believe me, wouldn’t you?”

Mark opened his mouth to say something about heat-induced daydreams and nightmares, but thought better of it. “Sure.”

Roger gestured with his closed fist. Mark held out his hand, somewhat warily, and was rewarded when a hot, sweaty piece of metal dropped into his open palm.

A car key.

The key to that car.

Mark was sure that there had only ever been one key and that he had passed it along to the new owner when he’d sold it for food and AZT, back when Roger was withdrawing from heroin and Maureen was withdrawing from him. Maybe there had been a spare, and Roger hadn’t happened to find it until now, and when he had found it he’d subjected himself to a flight of fancy so vivid it seemed real to him? Mark’s mother had always said that heat did strange things to people; perhaps that had played a role?

But Roger hadn’t asked for the logical explanation. Roger had asked for the leap of faith.

“I’d believe you,” he told Roger.

Below them, Collins and Maureen were screaming all manner of threats relating to their slowness. Roger, relief obvious on his face, shouted back and barreled down the stairs toward them, not pausing even at the floor that had once been Mimi’s home.

Mark followed more slowly, staring at the key that was somehow burning his hand.

The End!

Note: Some of Roger’s commentary on New York City politics in the late 1990s and heroin use in general were influenced by Blue Blood by Edward Conlon. That’s why the cop Roger speaks to in an early chapter is named Ed.

The footage Mark was editing in the middle of the story was based on (and by “based on” I mean “exactly the same as”) the HBO documentary “Naked States.” “Naked States” is one of three HBO documentaries about Spencer Tunick, a photographer known mostly for taking artistic photographs of large numbers of naked people (including one at a Phish concert) and occasionally getting arrested in the process.

Thank you to volitaire for recognizing the documentary I was ripping off. I couldn’t remember the name as I was writing. Also thank you for all of your thoughtful reviews.

Thank you to mindreader208 and SilverStarling for pointing out a few places that needed clarification. Suggestions taken.

Thank you to everyone who voted for having Roger return to his original universe in the end. That was always the ending I intended, but partway through I started to think it would be cheating to rip Roger out of the alterverse. Because, you know, it wasn’t cheating to have a psychic and a car key that allows trans-dimensional travel.

Thank you to everyone else for reading, and especially for reviewing!

Can I ask for reviews one more time?