A: Her Little Black Heart

On a torn piece of notebook paper, in black lipstick of all things,
Jamie wrote April is the cruelest month before driving her car directly
into the path of an oncoming truck. Dramatic, yes, but effective and -
I will admit - stupidly brave. The truck, already carrying the remains
of other nasty accidents, kept its driver safe. He spoke clearly to the
reporter, a tall blond with a standard poodle haircut and upturned
nose. Jamie, who fared much worse, did no interviews.

Blunt trauma says the death certificate, left by the landlord on
Jamie's filthy coffee table. I'm in Jamie's apartment with the landlord
because Jamie is dead, and because the landlord - after knocking on my
door - explained that he wants everything to be what he calls kosher.
The death certificate is lying next to a plaster fetus skull that Jamie
picked up in New Orleans. "Five-finger discount at the voodoo store,"
she'd told me once when she caught me staring. I didn't ask how they'd
made the mold.

The landlord didn't see Jamie's lipstick note, or the letter sitting
underneath it. Both are crumpled up in my purse. I'm pretty sure what
Jamie meant by April is the cruelest month; I remember reading the poem
in school, and of course it's not even April. The note and the other
letter both have to do with Jamie's boyfriend - a boyfriend of sorts,
anyway - who proved, much to my surprise, that even the blackest of
hearts can feel love.

Jamie's heart appeared to be a dark little thing, pumping away and
doing its job in only the strictest biological sense. She had the eyes
of a teenage artist's self-portrait: dark and lifeless except for the
scribbled sparks beneath the flatness. Her gaze was withering, like
staring into the face of some psychotic who has seconds to go before
exploding in a flurry of arms, legs, and expletives.

Once, half drunk on some syrupy licorice drink Jamie kept tucked away
in her kitchen, I asked her, "Why Jamie? The name doesn't fit
you."

"Camouflage," she said instantly, like she'd been waiting for the
question all along. I could see what she meant, even if this bit of
self -awareness caused me, briefly, to roll my eyes. Perhaps Jamie
fancied herself as one of those leopards on nature programs dropping on
its prey from a tree, or a snake that waits quietly until some field
mouse comes within striking distance. Once, from the safety of my seat
at the coffee shop, I watched her walking down the street. I didn't
wave or call hello; instead, I hid behind my sunglasses and newspaper
as Jamie plowed over the concrete. The women she passed avoided her
eyes completely, while the men smiled at her but kept walking, their
smiles replaced by confusion. I wondered what their faces would look
like if they knew Jamie kept a running tally of the birds who died
after flying into her plate glass window, the death toll kept in neat
stroke marks on her dusty window sill.

Jamie seemed to me the real thing. Entering her apartment was like
jumping into an icy lake, even when the sun was shining outside and the
teenage thugs walked shirtless down the sidewalks. The coldness may
have been because Jamie's windows faced north, or because the only heat
in her apartment came from a match or a lit cigarette, but I think it
was Jamie herself. When I crossed the hall to visit her, sometimes
waving a bottle of wine so she'd let me in, I'd sit in the scratchy
wicker chair by her front door. She never indicated I should sit
anywhere else. Jamie was always dressed the same: a long black skirt, a
black T-shirt, pointy black boots, and her hair slicked back so hard it
was impossible to tell how long it was. She resembled not so much a
witch as an outline of one, right down to the pale powder she put on
her face and neck. Sometimes we'd talk, or drink my wine or her
horrible liquor, but usually I'd watch Jamie pace around the apartment,
picking up a picture or one of her morbid knick knacks and staring at
it like she'd never seen it before. When Jamie did talk, she used the
word fuck to punctuate every other sentence. Once I even found Jamie
with a black eye, and almost felt worried until I saw her equally
impressive bloody knuckles. Somebody paid for that bruise, or vice
versa, but Jamie's wide shoulders and ropy arms and the way she stomped
through the room left little doubt as to who had come out on top.

My visits lasted for an hour or two, and then I'd go back to my
apartment and do my own version of pacing. A fly on the wall, however,
would not see me imitating Jamie's bullish walk. No, I preferred a more
contemplative approach, staring out my window for several minutes
before moving onto the one chair at my table, chin in hand.
Such moments are also good for painting one's toenails, or rearranging
one's collection of hardback novels.

The landlord finishes whatever he's doing in Jamie's bedroom - a room
I've never seen, come to think of it - and meets me in the kitchen,
where I'm reading a poem taped to the refrigerator. The poem is titled
Dead Things Float, its author an expert in banal analogies. Good title,
though.

"All done here. Right," the landlord says quietly as he enters the
kitchen. He seems surprised to see me, then says, "You two close? I saw
you coming in here sometimes."

"Oh, no, no," I say, though I am less surprised by his question as I
am by him watching me come and go. What else has he seen me do? I could
say Jamie and I were friends, but decide against it. I don't mention
that I've also seen the landlord coming and going from Jamie's
apartment, at times when I was certain she was home.

"Let's lock her up, then," the landlord says. Another surprise; I
don't think Jamie ever locked her door. I know, because once I went
into her apartment alone. I knew she was gone, had watched her walk
down the street from my own window, and suddenly I found myself opening
Jamie's door, not even looking to see if anyone saw me. Inside, without
Jamie, the apartment seemed larger, even with the hazy imprint of
cigarette smoke moving ghostlike across the room. I walked into the
kitchen, which is where I saw the package of bread on the counter. She
did eat after all, I thought, and she ate Texas toast, the bread fat
and white in its package. I knew Jamie was from Texas; when I'd asked
her about her hometown, she'd called it an oasis for thin-lipped,
Southern Baptist perverts. Excuse me, fucking perverts. Maybe that's
why I found that loaf of Texas toast so touching, the bag twirled
neatly and tucked under just so, breadcrumbs dotting the counter. I
left her apartment quickly then, without looking at anything else. The
loaf of bread had come dangerously close to changing my image of Jamie,
an image that didn't involve fat white bread kept fresh by a person
willing to twist a bag closed.

Despite what the landlord may think, I never did become Jamie's
friend. Being her friend would have crossed some line I didn't want to
cross, so mostly I filled the space on her wicker chair and observed.
She never asked my advice, never offered any real personal information
about herself; I'm not even sure she knew my name. But I picked up some
things about her. For instance, except for the boyfriend, she had no
friends who came around her apartment. Her family was represented by a
picture on the wall, their heads poorly cut out and messily glued on
hastily drawn stick figures (this may have been art, but I distinctly
remember Jamie thumping the portrait of the female with her index
finger and shouting, "Fuck you, Ma!"). She worked somewhere, perhaps as
a waitress, and sometimes stacks of dollar bills and quarters showed up
on a table by the door. She drank for hours and seemed unaffected by
the alcohol, but of course she didn't talk much. When she answered the
phone and grunted into it, she'd fail to utter one complete sentence to
the caller. I listened for as long as I could during those phone calls,
hoping to hear something interesting in her fragmentary responses, but
eventually I'd just give up and leave.

The boyfriend, a balding male version of Jamie, naturally only grunted
at me in the building hallway. He has tattoos on one arm and a row of
conspicuous red dots on the other. He also has a surprising lack of
pierced body parts, and the unlikely name of Henry. And although he's
somewhat of a brute, he nevertheless has better handwriting than Jamie.
I know, because I have Jamie's note - where else would that waxy black
lettering have come from if not the lipstick Jamie wore everyday? - and
I have Henry's letter. There is little doubt that Henry helped steer
Jamie's car into the path of that truck.

In slanted block letters, Henry tells Jamie she is the worst thing in
his life at the moment. In fact, Jamie is the worst thing that has ever
happened to him. He waxes poetic, comparing her voice to the tuneless
screech of an alley cat; then wanes considerably when he writes that
her smell reminds him of the time he worked as a janitor in a
retirement home. Being with Jamie makes him want to ruin his life more
than he already has; she will never get to talk to, sleep with, or kiss
him again. Why can't she quit calling? Can't she just kill herself and
let him get on with his life?

Henry's signature is that last question mark, the loop and dot ten
times bigger than the rest of his writing. He wrote that question mark
like he meant it, which I imagine he did. Jamie must have imagined the
same thing, only she was able to work out the details. Early in the
morning - perhaps after she'd been up all night drinking her licorice
drink - she got behind the wheel of her car, a tiny coupe of
indeterminate origin that had been spray-painted black, and drove just
ten blocks from the apartment building. Once there, she apparently
waited on the side of the street. When the fated truck made its
appearance (all this according to a rather plump witness who watched
from a bus stop), Jamie gunned her engine, ran a red light, and placed
the inadequate protection of her car between herself and the
truck.

Blunt trauma says the death certificate. An appropriate expression, I
think, to describe the end of Jamie. I would like to have been there,
to see it happen. Not too close, of course; I'd like to remember the
black and white Jamie, not something red and sparkling underneath
shattered glass. But of course my image of Jamie has already
changed.

As they say, however, it's all water under the bridge. And, really, I
must hurry; Henry will be here any minute, and tonight I'm making his
favorite dish, Hungarian Goulash, the recipe written in Henry's very
own slanted handwriting. He's diabetic, you see, and I want him to have
a full stomach and a good dose of insulin before I tell him about
Jamie. Perhaps he already knows, but surely he would have called me if
he did. Won't it be nice that Henry can visit me anytime, without the
awful sleuthing around? I think so.

Earlier, with my eyes closed, I tucked Henry's letter to Jamie into my
Shakespeare anthology. I haven't checked yet but I'm hoping the letter
ended up somewhere between the pages of Macbeth, or maybe King Lear. As
for Jamie's note, well, what else is there to do with such a thing?
I'll dispose of it when I can, perhaps tomorrow, on my way to work.
There are plenty of trashcans along the way.