Work Text:
On Tuesday, the city wakes up to rain.
Benny gets up early to sketch the faces of the people from the subway. He sits at the table and stares, expressionless, at the paper, as his hand slowly moves and the pictures take shape beneath the point of his pen. There is no light; the sun is not visible behind the heavy gray clouds. Large, round drops of June rain fall outside the window, splattering the pavement, making the street slick.
Everyone else in the loft is asleep.
Benny doesn’t think he’ll ever be an artist—does not think, first, that he is one now just because he can copy the shape of a person’s eyes or the quirk of her mouth—does not think this counts as art if only Mark and Roger and Collins ever see it. He feels like he’s slowly drowning in this city, and no one can see him.
It is an hour before anyone wakes up, and then it is Collins (wearing only one sock, and the plaid shirt that Roger wore last week), moving so quietly that Benny does not realize he is there, not until the light of a candle falls over the woman’s face.
Benny looks up. “Hey.”
“Morning,” Collins answers. “Or afternoon. Can’t tell.” He points to the candle and asks if it helps.
Benny considers a moment before answering. “It doesn’t hurt.”
Collins doesn’t say anything about the picture, neither to praise nor to criticize, only sits and nods his head and watches Benny’s hand move across the page.
“The woman, yesterday,” he says, all of a sudden. “On the subway. With the little dog.”
Benny nods. He knows that he should be happy, the surprise and awe in Collins’s voice so clear as he says, “I don’t know how you remember details like that, Coffin,” but Benny barely smiles, barely looks up.
“It’s nothing,” he says, and fights down the urge to crumple up the paper and throw it away, the even deeper urge not to start again after the page is in the trash.
*
That afternoon, they take a walk, and Roger does not say anything when Mark takes his umbrella with him. It is still raining. Roger lets Mark hold the umbrella over them both, but when they pass a woman carefully holding her jacket over her head, Roger takes Mark’s umbrella and gives it to her. This is before Mark can quite figure out what is going on. He does not protest. They do not need to walk so close to each other anymore, but neither one moves away.
They turn a corner. Mark asks where they are going, and Roger admits he does not know.
This is before Mark gets the letter. Four hours yet will pass before that time, and not one second of those 240 minutes will pass in which Mark is not aware of Roger next to him.
They talk about work: Mark’s script, Roger’s lyrics, the restaurant, the bar, the future. They talk about Benny, and the clouded look in his eyes, and about Collins, the days they do not hear from him. They do not talk about Maureen. They do not talk about themselves.
The weather is warm and they do not wear jackets. Roger has pushed his sleeves up to his elbows. The splash of the raindrops on the pavement and the plash of their feet in the puddles and the sharp taste of the air as they breathe in—these things remind Mark of early spring: melting snow, thunderstorms, first kisses.
Mark does not ask again where they are going; he knows there is no destination, only a growing distance between them and the loft. He is glad for this. He sees that place now as suffocating, small, and crowded; a mattress where two sleep, which is only big enough for one; a window that looks out onto a narrow road.
The rain gets worse, but they are too far away to turn back. Roger pulls him into a doorway, where they stand so close together they can hear each other’s breathing, constant and uneven, against the overwhelming roar of the downpour just beyond them.
This is three hours before Mark gets the letter.
“Do you think it’s possible to be in love with two people at once?” he asks.
He does not look Roger in the eye.
He does not look at Roger at all, only out into the street. Someone runs across the road. He is holding a newspaper above his head.
Roger’s hand is on Mark’s back. He says, “No.”
Mark knew that Roger would say this. He asked the question anyway, knowing the response before he heard it, only half-listening as it came. It does not matter. It does not change anything.
*
When they get back, they are soaked and dripping, and Roger goes to take a shower, leaves Mark standing by the door, unwilling to move. The loft looks deserted. He dries off, changes his clothes, and makes tea. When the door opens, he thinks it is Roger, but it is Collins coming home, just as the rain stops and the clouds break and a sharp ray of sun comes shining through.
“Did you know Maureen’s in Boston?” Collins asks.
“What?”
Mark’s head snaps his up, his eyes open wide for a second—then he slouches again and turns his eyes to his tea and shakes his head.
“News to me,” he says.
This is when Collins takes the envelope from his pocket and puts it on the table by Mark’s hand. He doesn’t say anything else. He steals the rest of Mark’s tea, and, when Mark doesn’t say anything more, leaves the room.
*
The letter starts with
Dear Mark, I’m sorry. I really am.
I should have told you where I was going.
I’ll be back.
None of this is what I am sorry for.
and ends with
and I miss you.
and I can’t wait to see you again, very soon.
Love, Maureen
but it is what is in the middle that makes all of the difference. Mark reads it twice, slowly, standing in front of the bathroom mirror, with Roger behind him, looking over his shoulder.
It is Roger who speaks first.
“I don’t understand,” he says. “With Maureen, I never know what she’s trying to say. Is it over with you or—”
“Yes,” Mark says. “I understand it. It is. It’s done. For now.”
It has been over before. But this time, it is not because of what she has done, but because of what he has done.
He looks at the reflection of their images in front of him, but for once, he has no words to describe it. He does not comprehend this picture.
Mark knows Roger is watching him as he crosses the room, but he bypasses the doorway, the phone, his camera and his script where they sit on the table. He doesn’t think before he throws the letter away.
He notices, the only detail that remains, that Benny has thrown one of his sketches in the trash. It is a woman, a sad looking woman with her hair falling around her face and her eyes looking off into the distance, and Mark sees her, and Mark remembers her somehow, and he knows, without thinking, why Benny threw her away.
Roger is standing on the other side of the room, by the door. He is still watching Mark, but he has hidden, for the first time in his life, the emotion in his eyes.
Benny thinks he is failing at his art, and Mark knows that he is mastering his. He only wishes, as he stands there and waits for the seconds to count themselves out, for one of them to move, that it were different.