Hospital Beds (Adrienne)(Casual)

[ROGER DAVIS]

"The other woman, huh?" I asked, and then shook my head, though hardly disapproving. "I've been the other guy before. I mean, granted, I didn't care much because I...I mean, it's not that I didn't love her, because I did, but..." I paused, narrowing my eyes in thought. "I was just a bastard back then." I finally settled, with a nod. "Not that you are, baby. Far from it. Sounds like you really liked this guy." I felt myself sigh and lace our fingers together for a moment, pulling her close. "Here's my thought on that. I used to think that verity was the spice of life. Every night, different people, as I'm sure you well know. Then I found sometime that filled that missing...piece for me. Whatever I wasn't finding with the girls that I slept with, I found it in her. Don't count your losses, baby, because sooner or later, you're gonna find one person that'll just knock it outta the park." I dug into my jacket for my cigarettes, pulled one out, lit it and sucked in a drag before blowing it out. "Then, you'll wonder where the fuck they've been all your life and why they weren't rocking your world in the bedroom every night." I pointed out at the end with an almost sage-like nod.

Something good that's happened in my life? I looked over at her, rolling the cigarette between my fingers in thought before speaking again. "Something good that's happened to me?" I repeated, and then shrugged. "I got my counts back two days ago. They're going up, which is good." I added, if she didn't know. "My two year sober mark is coming up in about two weeks. You know...little stuff."

[rocky]

"I am a bastard," Adrienne agreed. "You can say it."

She was sort of rueful about it, in the way that one got when one reflected properly on one's flaws, but then otherwise failed to resolve to make a change. She had no intention of fighting temptation. She was almost amused to find him so willing to discuss his feelings. It was refreshing. It was... almost brand fucking new. She tried to imagine Reed Armstrong or Victor Griffiths being so direct and couldn't picture it.

"Little things are good. If you forget about them suddenly it's all meaningless."

She watched him light up and was amused at the memory of Catherine de Bourgh. It was only a moment later that the rest of what he said really sank in.

"Are you telling me you have a girlfriend, Roger?" she asked, and nudged him with her elbow teasingly. "Who is she?"

[ROGER DAVIS]

"We're all fucked up. We all fuck up." I agreed with a slight shrug at her mention that she was a bastard. When she mentioned life being meaningless, I nodded, knowing that truer words had never been spoken.

"Took me a long while, but I finally learned that."

However, when her elbow nudged me, asking about a girlfriend, I felt the smile spread on my lips that I always seemed to get when anyone talked about Mimi. I looked down colour coming up to my cheeks. "Her name's Mimi." I said after a moment, looking up from my feet to Adrienne. "She uh...she's a dancer. Y'know the Cat Scratch? The strip club down on Avenue B? She's the star dancer."

The smile seemed to be a permanant part of my face whenever I thought of Mimi. Whenever I saw her or thought about her or talked about her to anyone.

"I think...someone's finally managed to catch me. I think someone's finally learned how to slow me down."

Of course, I wasn't going to say that the fact that I had slowed down was because April had died, though it probably was obveious.

"I love her, baby." I told her honestly, glancing over at her with a slight nod before I looked back down at my feet. "I do. Scares the shit out of me most of the time, but...I do love her." For a breif second, my smile dropped only slightly before I sighed out hard, leaning my head against her shoulder almost dramatically. There was a pause that settled through the park as we walked.

"She's got AIDS, too."

[rocky]

You didn't infect her, did you?

Adrienne felt awful the moment the thought occurred to her. She didn't even believe it, and she knew that, but it was the sort of thought that popped up unbidden in situations like this one. The sort of unexpected prejudice one didn't want nor even honestly believe -- the type of privileged ignorance you never had to confront until it was damn near too late.

"That's great," she said encouragingly, then cringed and gestured vaguely ahead of them, "not that she has AIDs. That you're in love. You should be in love."

Am I jealous of an ex-junkie with AIDs? Adrienne knew she was a fickle person. She knew ultimately that she was far more shallow than she would normally ever admit to. She didn't like to confront so many demons in one day, though. She squirmed a little, inwardly. Still, she perhaps naively thought that she might shorten her lifespan significantly for a little contentment.

It was the sort of hypothetical daydreaming that only somebody who had never truly had to look at their life and face the end of it could do.

"She got a name?"

[ROGER DAVIS]

The pause spread, the brief pause after he had stated that Mimi had AIDS that he knew what everyone thought. "I didn't give it to her. She had it when I met her." Roger murmured, and then shook his head slightly aas she corrected herself. "I know what you meant. And I am in love. At least for now. Sometimes we fight. But I think I do love her." Roger agreed with a slight nod, before scoffing slightly. "I should be in love because I deserve it or because I'm dying?" Roger asked, and then felt a smirk cross his lips. "I'm joking."

When she asked if the woman he loved had a name, Roger nodded. "Mimi Marquez." He paused, and then scoffed slightly. "Honestly, baby, if you woulda asked me like, three years ago if I'd be attracted to a Latina as much as I am Mimi, I probably would have laughed in your face. But...she's nice. She gets me. Plus, I mean, she's a stripper. So, oh my god. Fantastic in bed."

[rocky]

Adrienne laughed. She wasn't aware that being fantastic in bed was a major part of being a stripper, but she had always found Roger's way of speaking and his candour amusing. He didn't hold back once he was going, and she appreciated more than anything that he wore his heart on his sleeve.

"Well -- that's great, Roger. I'm glad. I -- I've missed having you around. I didn't even realise."

Adrienne frowned. She had missed him. She didn't have many people who were just friends, and even though their history together was spotted with brief clinches and the occasional one night stand, he had never been more or less than a friend to her, regardless. She like that about him. A lot.

"Let's keep in touch this time, okay?"

[ROGER DAVIS]

Well--that's great, Roger. I'm glad. I--I've missed having you around. I didn't even realise.

"It's funny how people don't realise how much they need someone until they're gone." The words escaped my mouth before I even realised it, and I realised how true they were. Everyone takes everyone for granted, and it was funny that when you're dead, people started listening. Remembering. I knew that better than anyone. I felt a pause travel through the park we were walking through, the only sound, it seemed, was the heavy panting of the huge dog standing next to Adrienne.

I stopped, turning to her, my hand still in hers, and I watched her face. Actually watched it and I realised that she had meant what she had said. She had missed me. Even though we had only spent a handfull of nights together, mostly fucked up and without any sort of lasting memories. But there had been the moments, the sober, sane moments where I remembered coffee. Waking up in the morning and actually just laying there instead of just up and leaving like I already did. Looking at her and feeling...different. Maybe in a different time, different place, we could have been together. Hell, maybe in another lifetime, we could have been lovers.

Maybe in a different time, different place, I would have been a different person and the strange thing was that sometimes I would have given anything to be a different person. But I would have never met April. Never met Mimi or Mark or Collins or Maureen or even Benny. I brought a hand up, brushing a strand of cherry-red hair from her cheek, and before I knew it, my lips were pressed against her warm cheek. She was sweet. Sweeter than she probably should have been to a guy like me, but for everything, I can't remember once ever being unkind to her.

"You're really sweet." I found myself whispering against her cheek before pulling back slightly, our eyes meeting. I realised then that, well, things were different and people were nervous about people like me. Sick people. I'm pretty sure that if I had a tattoo on my forehead that said that I had AIDS, people would walk across the street to get away from me, let alone touch me or get as close as I was to her now. I pulled away, looking down for a moment before stuffing my hands into my pockets to look for something to do with them.

I knew the stigma. I knew the way people looked at me with disgust, like I was contagious, and yeah, I was. Not to the degree that people thought, but I was. And what people didn't understand is I knew that and it embarressed the shit outta me. "I want drinks. I want lots of drinks."

[rocky]

Adrienne surprised herself. He pressed his mouth against her skin and for all her ignorance and all her private, cowardly thoughts on his condition, she didn't flinch. She didn't hold her breath. She had no urge to wipe her cheek after the warmth of his mouth was gone. For a moment she was exactly the person she was supposed to be -- and for Adrienne, that was rare. It was a rare moment in any part of her life that she wasn't completely self-centred and self-serving.

She gave his hand a squeeze.

"Sweet! That's a word I don't think anybody has ever used to describe me, Roger Davis." She grinned. She honestly couldn't think of anybody else who had -- nor anybody else or any other moment that she might have taken it as complimentary, not condescending.

As he expressed his desire to get drinks, Adrienne moved to tap her free hand against her thigh and recall George. "All right, but I should drop him back at my place, first."

[ROGER DAVIS]

"You are sweet." I told her honestly, feeling her hand squeeze mine. She was sweeter than alot of people would have been, after dumping all that shit onto her like I had, about April and being sick and...everything, and more because I hadn't seen her in forever. She hadn't needed to be so nice, but she was. It continued to change my mind about people in New York. It was rare to find nice people in this shitty ass city, but when you found them...well, it was wonderful. "Because...you didn't wig out when I told you everything. You didn't treat me with disgust or tell me it was my fault or anything. You were just...sweet."

When she agreed on drinks and then called the large dog, I nodded slightly, watching as the huge mutt trotted up to her side. As she spoke of her place, I looked over at her, eyebrow cocked. "Inviting me over to your place? We're not even drunk. I just think this is some sort of plan to try to get me naked. It is, isn't it? You're sneaky."

It was easier now to laugh at such things; of course, it would never happen. I'd never be naked in her bed or she in mine and we'd never do that again. I suppose it didn't matter in the end; I loved Mimi. There was no one in this world (not even April, surprisingly) that could compare to Mimi. Adrienne had been her own special brand of sexy and we had danced so many times it had made my head spin...but with Mimi...I couldn't even describe it. Words left me.

I found myself shaking my head with a laugh, looking down at the ground as we started to walk to her apartment. I sort of remembered where it was, but not exactly. "But you are, you know. Sweet. Everyone that I knew from...that life," It was easier to speak of my drug-filled party days as some sort of past life--sometimes, it felt like exactly that. A past life, one that I remember only in faded memories and blurred dreams that, once or twice, would come out clear. "everyone I knew from that life...they aren't around anymore. They're either dead or not wanting anything to do with me because I'm clean now." I lifted my shoulders in a shrug.

"Not to mention, out of all the girls I've slept with, you're the only one that I've ran into that hasn't wanted to punch me in the face. So there's that, too." God, if that wasn't the truth. I ran into a girl in the Park who I didn't remember, but she remembered me and the fact that I fucked her once in the bathroom of Lava Gina and didn't call like I promised. I called her Cindy and she slapped me, saying that her name was Nancy and that I was a jerk. Even after all this time, I was just a jerk.

I realised something strange as I was thinking about all of this, and I looked at Adrienne with slightly narrowed brows. "I actually slept with alot of crazy chicks, now that I think about it. You're probably one of the three non-crazy people. Congraduations." I told her seriously, nodding.