Lynn
I made a pot of coffee for Brendon and I, maybe Steven too if he ever showed up. Brendon didn't find him last night, so we were just going to wait and see if he turned up or not.
I sat down with two mugs of coffee, the second mug for Brendon, and started reading the newspaper. Then our phone started to ring.
"Hey, we have power."
"Huh, Merry Christmas."
We let the phone ring until our answering machine said our voicemail message, "speak." It was Brendon and I saying it in unison.
"Brendo-o-on. Are you there? Are you screening your calls? It's Mom. Just wanted to call and say we love you. We miss you today. Cindy and the kids are here and they send their love. Oh, I hope you like the hot plate, just don't leave it on when you leave the house."
There was a voice in the background, a man's, he kept asking Brendon's mom for the phone.
"Gimme, let me have the phone! Hey, Brendon, listen, I'm sorry to hear that Sarah dumped you. I say, c'est la vie, let her be a lesbian! She doesn't know what she's missing. Happy Holidays."
The message ended, I started to break out laughing. Brendon sat down across from me and looked at our table and sighed heavily.
"You know, there are times when we're dirt-broke, hungry, and freezing. And I ask myself, 'why the hell am I still living here?' And then they call. And I remember."
I smiled at him, and he grabbed his cup of coffee and sat back down in the living room in his beaten down leather recliner.
I looked over to our window, and it was frosted over. Except there was writing on the window. It read, "Xmas brunch just us?" And a little arrow pointing down and the name, "Alexa."
"What's that?"
"The girl downstairs. Alexa."
"Oh, the dancer from the Cat Scratch club?"
"Yeah."
"Well, you're going right?"
"No."
"Oh, come on, Lynn-"
"Merry Christmas, bitches!" yelled a voice we knew. It was Steven, he finally turned up.
"Steven! You're only fourteen hours late, what the hell happened to you?"
Steven tossed the key to Brendon, and gave Steven a hug.
"Ow, ow, ow."
"Are you alright, Steven?"
"Never been better. Here."
He handed Brendon a white stained bucket, it's contents unknown to me. Steven hung up his coat on a hanger.
"Oh, hi."
"'Hi?' After seven months I only get a hi? Come here, Lynn."
"Sorry."
"You know what you need? This girl, needs some Stoli!"
He pulled out the bottle of vodka with some plastic red cups out of his bucket. There was also food inside that Brendon set on the table.
"Wow, this is a complete Christmas feast, thank you!"
"You struck gold at MIT."
Steven is a anarchist professor with AIDS. He taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT for short. He used to live with Me, Brendon, and Sarah when she was dating Brendon. Now it's just Brendon and me.
"No. They expelled me for my theory of actual reality."
Okay, so was an anarchist professor at MIT. He started to pour the vodka into our cups.
"One for you... One for you...-"
"Hey, cool it, I don't wanna get drunk this early in the morning."
"And one for me. So, I came back home."
"Cheers."
"Welcome home."
We all took a big sip of our drinks.
"Mm. I got a teaching gig at NYU."
"Oh, so that's how you're affording to splurge on us."
"Uh, no. Sit down."
Brendon and I sat down, curious how he could afford all of this. He was broke like the rest of us.
"You see, last night, I got my ass kicked my some group of dudes, and I was just sitting in an alley, bloody and cold. Then, then, then..."
As he said "then" various times, he started walking to the door, and opened to reveal someone in drag. They had a bobcut-like hairstyle wig, black, and a female Santa outfit with their own alterations on the costume.
"I met this charming person, Maxine! Max for short. They helped me out, and I was back on my feet within an hour. They saved my life."
What I also couldn't help to notice was that she had a thing of cash in both her hands.
"You earned that on the street?"
"What can I say, I save up. I play drums on a bucket. And I am just that good."
The phone started ringing again and the sound of Brendon's and I voices echoed in the room.
"Speeaaaak."
"Hi, Brendon, it's me, Sarah. Look, uh, I have a bit of a problem, I really need your help. I hired Hayley as my production manager, and I don't think she knows what the hell she's doing. If you could just come down to the performance space-"
Before we could hear the end of her sentence, Brendon answered the phone. We could her say perkily, "Hi, Brenny!" through the phone. That was her nickname for him.
"Can you believe her? First, she just dumps me-"
"Woah, Sarah dumped you?"
"You missed a little while you were gone, Steven. She dumped me for a lawyer named Hayley. And now she wants me to go and fix her sound equipment."
Sarah was having a protest against one of our old friends, Jenna, and her plans to evict the homeless from a lot where she is hoping to build a cyber arts studio. Jenna used to also live with us. Now she's our landlord. And a very jerky one. Jenna also tried to get Brendon and I to stop the protest. She told us that if we did cancel the protest, then we can officially remain rent-free tenants. And we denied the offer.
"Brendon, you could've said no!"
Brendon remained silent.
"Aweh, that's cute. You still love her."
"Pft, yeah, right."
"You do!"
"Oh, Steven, we gotta go."
"Oh, right, there's this gatherin' we're going to, you guys wanna come?"
"What is it?"
"Life support."
"On Christmas?"
"Some people don't have anywhere else to go to today. And Brendon, you can come along too, it's not just for people with AIDS."
So Max has AIDS. Steven has AIDS too. I think it's cute that they're going together.
"Okay, yeah, I'll come by. First I have to save a protest."
"Lynn?"
"Knock yourselves out."
"Don't stay in the house all day."
Brendon
On my way to the production space, I saw homeless people, all around. Some around fires with fingerless gloves, some in tents. I couldn't believe Jenna wanted to evict all these poor people. Just for a stupid studio.
I walked inside the space, and there were people all around preparing for tonight. Someone on stage stood out. She had bright orange hair, and was wearing a suit with a trenchcoat.
"Hi. Sarah called me to come and fix the equipment."
"You're Brendon?"
"...Hayley?"
She sighed.
"Sarah said she'd be here."
"Don't hold your breath."
"This is so typical."
"I told her not to call you."
"Oh, well, can I help anyway?"
"I've hired an engineer."
"Oh. Great. I'll just be on my way then. It was nice to have met you."
Before I walked out, she called my name.
"Wait, Brendon! He's, uh, the engineer, he's three hours late."
I walked back in and started to continue the work I didn't start.
"The samples won't delay, but the cable-"
"There's another way. Say something into the mic."
"Test, one, two, three."
"...Anything but that."
"This is weird."
"Very weird. Probably the only thing we can agree on."
"I'm so mad, I don't know what to do. Fighting with microphones, practically freezing down to my bones, and to top it all off I'm with you."
"Feel like going insane? Got a fire in your brain and thinking of drinking gasoline?"
"As a matter of fact-"
"Oh, dear."
"What?"
"I know what's going on. It's this little act Sarah does, or as I like to call it, the 'Tango: Sarah.'"
"'The Tango: Sarah?' Hah, funny. But no, she's not doing that with me, it's different."
"Has she ever pouted her lips and called you 'Pookie?'"
"Never."
"Have you ever doubted a kiss or two?"
Hayley didn't say anything. She turned to me and had a scared look in her eyes, like I was telling her about her own past and she hasn't told me anything about it.
"Did you swoon when she walked through the door?"
"Every time. So be... cautious."
"Did she moon over other boys?"
"More than moon."
"Oh my god... This is making me sick. Can we just stop talking about it and finish fixing the sound equipment?"
"Fine with me."
When Sarah did her little dance with me, she was cheating on me. Presumably with Hayley, seeing as we broke up recently and this is her new girlfriend. I wanna assume that Sarah is cheating on her right now, or cheated on her already. If she has, it was probably more than once. It could probably be the reason she isn't here right now. Is it bad that made me feel a little bit better about our breakup?