Chapter Text
When Laura Hollis moved to New York fresh she saw it as the biggest adventure of her life. She was ready for the hustle and bustle of the big city, late nights, rushed coffees and the clack of her type writer. Her father couldn’t quite believe how lucky she was to get a job straight out of college but she as far as she was concerned there was no luck involved, just a lot of hard work.
Harvey was the first person to make her smile when she walked into the office. She had felt entirely out of her depth, standing there with a box of her belongings and a desk that was hers. She didn’t quite know what to do with herself. But then this, gangly, brown eyed boy, strode over and shook her hand.
“Hi! You must be Laura, great to have you on the team!”
He was the photographer for most of their front page headlines and therefore horrendously busy, but he always had time, for anyone who needed him. He took Laura out her first week and showed her the sights where over one too many shots of tequila they both shared a secret. They were both gay. Well..it wasn’t a secret for Harvey.
“I’m as camp as a Macy’s parade darling!”
He was the first person she told. The only person she had told.
And now here she was, on a crisp, cold day, the sky so blue it hurt her eyes to look at it, burying him.
She still hasn’t really taken it in. One week he was there...the next she had a phone call from his sister, sobbing down the phone that he had died in hospital. He hadn’t even told work why he was off sick.
It was AIDs.
Laura had seen him get gradually thinner, the dark circles under his eyes, the sadness in his laugh. She had teased him and asked who he was so lovesick after. How could she have been so blind? So many stories, so many whispers, the headlines, the death toll. Soon everyone knew someone who had it or was dying or dead from it.
Now Laura was one of them. She watched the roses fall from trembling fingers, Harvey’s mother's face streaked with tears, his father’s hands clenched,until the knuckles were white.
She doesn’t cry. Not until she’s gone to the bar where they went every Friday.She sits in their booth, orders his favourite drink. Then she allows herself to mourn.
She comes to work the next day, eyes puffy, and hair a mess but determined. She would tell his story. She would make sure that people wouldn’t make his mistake. Why hadn’t he gone to the doctor? Was it the shame? The stigma? The fear? He might have still been here, the AZT holding back the infection, she would be walking into walk to his smile and the mocha he always got her.
Laura hasn’t spoken to the editor since she was interviewed. Wiping her clammy hands on her dress she knocks on the door.
“Come in!”
She enters closing the door behind her, setting her shoulders back, ready for the fight.
“Lisa isn’t it?” Approaching his desk she leans on the chair.
“Laura actually...I wanted to ask you something.”
He sighs and pushes away the papers in front of him. “Well make it quick, I’m a busy man.”
She struggles with the words for a moment because saying them will make it real. “After..after Harvey died-”
“Ah. Yes, nasty business. What about it?”
Laura clenches her jaw biting back the flash of anger wanting to spill out of her mouth.“I want to write an article. About the AIDs epidemic.”
He looks at her for a minute apparently weighing his words. “There are an awful lot of articles about AIDs Lisa.”
She decides to ignore him getting her name wrong. Again.
“But not about the people who are suffering. It’s just this big scary nebulous thing. I want to show how the people in the middle of it are coping, what they are going through...”
He stands and turns to look out the window. “That won’t be a popular article.”
Laura feels the anger that has been bubbling for the last week flair up the words feeling like bitter medicine on her tongue.
“My best friend, one of your employees died and all you care about is popularity? People need to know-”She has to fight hard not to start raging at him, her emotions raw and hot, angry tears threatening to spill down her face.
He whips round, astonishment on his face. “You don’t understand, how could you? You are just a child-” There it was that word she hates. Child.
“I buried him. Yesterday. You weren’t there, you didn’t see- he was only a year older than me. I may be a child but it could be me next. It could be anyone.”
He sits down and shuffles the papers on his desk. “Fine. Write it. I won’t promise I’ll publish it though.”
She walks out of that office feeling like she just won a battle.
She heads down to the East Village. Harvey spent a lot of his time down there so she figured it was the best place to start. It’s another bitterly cold day, she wraps up well but even with two jumpers and a scarf she is freezing her ass off in half an hour. Pretty soon she realises she’s lost. She’s stumping up the same street for the fifth time when she spots a young woman perched on some fire escape steps, sketchpad and charcoal in hand.
“Hopefully she knows the area...” Laura mutters to herself rubbing her hands together her fingers burning with the cold.
“Um..hi.”
The woman doesn’t even look up. She is wearing a leather jacket over a red jumper, black jeans and a rather battered pair of boots, the face seems turned inward, lost to the world as if all that existed was the page in front of her and the beggar woman across the street, huddled in rags and plastic bags. Her eyes are a deep brown, just a few shades lighter than her hair. She looks thin...a little too thin in all honesty. Laura coughs quietly.
“I heard you the first time.”
Laura isn’t quite sure what to say. “Oh...well, I was just wondering if you could point me towards a bus stop.”
The woman makes a few more rough sketch marks then with a sigh puts the almost blunt piece of charcoal down. “Walk straight down this block then take a left. One on the corner.”
“Thank you.” She’s walking away when something inexplicably pulls her back.
“I thought you wanted to go to the bus stop.” The annoyance in her voice was palpable now.
“I was wondering if you could help me…” She watches the sharp edge of her jaw clench a little.
“I’m pretty sure I just did-”
“Look, I’m a journalist and I’m trying to get some information for an article I’m writing…”
“And I am an artist trying to draw so can you go away?” Laura pauses for a second. She wasn’t exactly sure how to broach this delicately.
“Do you know anyone who is living with AIDs or HIV?”
There is a long uncomfortable silence. The woman turns and looks at her, eyes as hard as steel. “Go. Away.”
“I was just-” The woman doesn’t turn away and Laura feels like there should be a hole in her face from the way those dark eyes are boring into her.
“I know exactly what you were just doing. You have about as much tact as that trash can. Give up and go home. No-one wants to talk about that kind of shit.”
Laura turns and walks away but instead of catching the bus home like someone sensible she slips round the corner because there is just something about that woman...something hiding in those hard eyes Laura couldn’t quite put her finger on. And so she waits.
And waits.
And waits and now it’s nearly dark and maybe she should just go home, try again tomorrow- “Hello there, cutie.”
Laura whips round and tall man in a dark woollen hat is leering over her. “You know...this is a dangerous place to be this time of night.” He’s so close he’s practically pinning her to the wall she was leaning around. She can smell the alcohol on his breath, see that his eyes are slightly unfocused.
“I’m...fine. Honestly, but ,uh, thanks for the concern.” She tries to smile politely and keep her voice light and pleasant but if she’s honest with herself she has never been more terrified.
“I could walk you home…” He’s far too close now and Laura brings up her hands, anything to keep him away. “No, no I’m fine honestly-” And his hand is closing around her upper arm like a vice. She’s just about to open her mouth to scream-
THUNK.
The grip on her arm slackens and she tears it from his grasp and squirms away as far as she can get.
“What the fu-” He’s got one hand clamped on the back of his head, when he takes it away it’s covered in blood. Laura squints into the darkness of the alley. It was that woman from earlier. She doesn’t know what she hit him with but it was definitely hard.
“Hey! Dickhead! Go home. She’s not interested.”
He lurches towards her but in his drunken stupor she simply steps to one side and he ends up flat on his face, nose buried in the slush of half melted snow and mud. Without saying a word she walks towards Laura and grabs her wrist.
“This is why I told you to go home. It’s not safe, you’re don’t know what you’re getting yourself into-” Laura rips out of her grasp.
“Give me some credit. I know what I’m doing-” Laura pauses, chest heaving. “And thanks. For getting rid of him.”
She shrugs her shoulders. “You get used to it.”
She sounds nonchalant but all the same...Laura owes her one. “Have you eaten today?”
The loud gurgle Laura hears from the vicinity of the girl's stomach answers her question.
“Come on...I’ll buy you dinner. It’s the least I can do.”
Carmilla Karnstein (as Laura has discovered on the walk over) is a “starving artist” (her own words) and lives in a shabby apartment on the street where she draws most of her work. She’s asked to go to her usual haunt, The ABC Cafe, somewhere Harvey had mentioned to Laura a couple of times. It’s slightly haphazard inside but it’s warm and cheerful and that’s what mattered right now. For a while they don’t speak, Carmilla practically inhaling a soy burger and a plate of fries while Laura opts for the miso soup.
“So...about my article.”
Carmilla wipes some ketchup off her chin with her hand. “What about it?”
Laura puts down her spoon, determined to make a better job of asking this time. “It’s not what you think. I don’t want to write some sensationalist headline,” Laura swallows down the lump that comes to her throat when Harvey’s grinning face flashes behind her eyes. “I just lost a very dear friend. It was AIDs and...and I didn’t even know until after he was gone.”
Carmilla is silent, that pale face impassive, neutral.
“I want to write about what it’s like for the people living with it. I want people to see past the hysteria and see that there are real people behind those scary headlines, people with friends and lovers and family-”
“And you really think you’re doing anything to help? That you alone are going to stop my friends, my community dropping like flies?” It’s said with a snarl that makes Laura’s blood run cold.
“At least I’m trying to do something.” She watches Carmilla laugh mirthlessly, it’s a bitter and heartbroken sound. “Oh, are you trying your very best? Because I’m sure if you stay pure of heart and really believe that that’ll make a difference.”
Now Laura was angry.
“Well, it’s better than sitting around all day pretending to be all cool and disaffected when really you’re just miserable and alone.”
She knows she’s gone too far this time when Carmilla stands, both hands on the table and hisses- “And you really think you’re doing a lick of actual good? Do you know anything about what it’s like to live with that fear breathing down your neck? You’re a child, and you understand nothing. Not about life, not about this city, and certainly not about what it takes to survive in a world that– you know what? The sooner you stop playing Lois Lane, the better off you’ll be.”
She turns to leave and now Laura is on her feet shaking with rage.
“No.”
The incredulity in Carmillas face when she turns back to face Laura is almost funny.
“What?”
Laura is aware the whole place is staring at them. But she can’t bring herself to care. “No, I’m not just gonna give up. Maybe you’re right. Maybe I am a child. A twenty three year old who had never left her home state before she got here. Who thought that New York was gonna be some big adventure full of articles to write, people to meet and parties to dance at. Who never thought anything bad could actually happen.” She has to fight the tears and the thickness in her throat because there is Harvey, dancing like an idiot to Madonna, spilling his drink down his shirt and they’re laughing and laughing and- “Well, it turns out the world doesn’t work exactly how I thought it was going to. One of my best friends died and hardly anyone seems to care. So, maybe that’s just the way it is, but that does not mean that I have to accept it.”
Her shoulders are shaking with the effort of keeping it together, hands clenched in fists and chest heaving as she stares right into Carmilla’s astonished face. She waits for a retort and gets nothing. Whipping her pen out of her bag she scribbles her work number on the napkin.
“Call me if you want to help.”
And then she’s walking out into the cold night air, her breath freezing in her chest and sobs threatening to spill out of numb lips.
When she gets into work the next day she sees the usual red light flashing on her answering machine. She presses play and expects the usual barrage of requests from supervisors and co-workers. Instead she hears a shockingly familiar, low voice murmur;
“I changed my mind. Meet me at the ABC Cafe tomorrow at 2pm.”