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JAMIE LOVE

A SHORT STORY

by Roger Real Drouin

"Your name is Jamie Love?"

She just looked down at her nametag and smiled. When she leaned over to put the plastic container of $6.99-per-pound tuna casserole in a bag, her yellow t-shirt lifted and I could see the smooth, tanned flank of her stomach and very top of her thigh just above her blue jeans.

That smile and that tiny exposure of flesh so smooth it felt like you were touching it with your eyes. Thank you for those jeans. Her blond hair in a ponytail. Even the small zit on her nose. I know I may be sounding creepy here. But I'm not an old sleaze. I'm 25, and I just got back from a place where I was shot at, hit with shrapnel, and saw a lot of ugly shit. So back here, at Whole Foods gourmet supermarket, it was nice to think about something pure and beautiful. 

"Your middle name is Real?" she asked after I swiped my card in the card reader and hit No I did not want Cash Back. "Yeah. It's French. It's reale, the way my grandmother says it."

OK. So we both have unique names. I just wanted to sit down and talk to her forever. I would not be lying if I said that at the time my heart was beating fast and I could feel the veins in my arms, as I envisioned us sitting outside the white light of the supermarket. I just wanted her company. But I had to make a move. A year ago, I would have done nothing. Just walked out. But one thing they taught us in Iraq was Act Fast and Don't Think Twice. If someone orders you to do something - do it. If an Iraqi farmer-looking guy walks up to post and makes like his car broke down, make him beat it. If he doesn't beat it - shot to kill. It's that simple.

So I can do that in civilian life. Don't Think Twice. Should be easy enough.

"I'm going to eat this outside at one of those tables. Can you come out during a break or something? I would like to sit with you."

"Go outside?"

"Yeah."

"I just took a break."

"Oh." I tried to smile, and I picked up my bag, muttered Thanks and headed for the door. At Least I Tried, I thought to myself.

Five minutes later, she did not walk outside. After I finished eating, I turned around and looked inside the window. She was still at her counter, isle four, with a long line of customers waiting. It was a little after noon, and the lunch crowd had filed into the store. It happened quickly, almost like someone opened a gate outside where all these people on Lunch Break were waiting.

I sat there for a few minutes, sipping my iced tea, and then I got up to leave. I nearly walked into her.

"Hey."

"Hey."

"I had Cathy cover my register. I needed some fresh air."

I just smiled, because I couldn't think of anything witty or even just appropriate for the situation.

"Are you leaving?"

"Um...well, I was. But I don't have anywhere to be right now."

That seemed to settle it, and we both sat down at the table I had just left, one of the few tables that the Lunch Break crowd hadn't invaded. To both sides, there were the men dressed in khaki pants and dark blue and green button-down shirts and the women dressed in color-coordinated slacks and light sweaters.

"I liked how you asked me to come outside," she said. "It took balls."

"I knew if I didn't ask you, I would just keep coming back here and buying groceries I didn't need just to stand in line and exchange two or three sentences and go on my way. And come back the next day and do the same thing all over. Until you called me out on it, or I found out you have a boyfriend or something like that."

"How do you know I don't have a boyfriend?"

"I guess I don't care."

"I better go back inside. I wasn't supposed to take another break. I get off in two hours. You want to give me a ride home."

"I don't have a car.

"Cars just make more complex." She smiled, and I could see her nipples showing through her t-shirt. "You can walk me home."

"OK."

Then she was gone, walking back inside the white lights. I watched her for two seconds and then turned around so I didn't get caught.

When I got there at four to walk her home, she was standing outside. "My chauffeur is here," she called out to her friend she was standing with, a woman twenty two or twenty three with short red hair and a tattoo of a naked woman on the inside of her forearm.

The following day I went back to Whole Foods to buy some groceries and stand in her line. When I didn't see her, I walked past the row of cashiers. I went down an isle and picked up a bottle of mango juice and I went down another isle and picked up a tin of good espresso coffee, which I needed anyway. Then I walked back and still she wasn't there.

Outside I asked a guy pushing a stack of shopping carts. "Is Jamie Love working today?"

The guy just looked at me. The woman with the short red hair and a tattoo of a naked woman on her forearm, who was sitting with another woman on one of those seats in front of the store, came over and told me, "Jamie died." A tear came from her red eyes. "A car hit her this morning when she was walking to work. The guy didn't see her. It happened only two blocks away."

"The paramedics tried to save her. They tried. The whole street was filled with cop cars and ambulances and fire trucks." 

The other woman came over and hugged her, and another guy came walking up. I could tell he was her boyfriend.

All three of them were talking, and I was standing there. My legs felt like Jel-o. It was like that three months ago, when the missile came out of the silent sky and hit Downey, who was on post. I didn't cry when they told us. I just looked at the ground and stood on my wobbly legs, and I could hear my breathing and feel the burning sun on my neck. I looked at the ground like it held some kind of answer.

Bio: Roger is a journalist, and he is working on his first novel. He lives in Sarasota, Florida with his dog Sandy. His web site is Rogerdrouin.com.