Jamie was also my landlord that year in London.
I first met Jamie when I moved into the house on Richmond Street. 1500 Richmond Street, or thereabouts. You can’t miss it: red brick ground floor, with attached garage, broad white siding wrapped around the 2nd floor. My room was at the end of the hall on the 2nd, in the back, windows to the south and west; Matt Hait had the front bedroom, both his windows facing front, to the east; Jak Yassar Ninio (Turkish and Jewish, if you’re interested), at the top of the stairs and over the garage. Jamie had the basement to himself. Waterbed, black lights, hanging wicker chair, altogether unkempt and tacky. A stereo that rivalled my own. Far bigger speakers. Jamie was a distracted sort, most definitely A.D.D. He spoke quickly. He cut everyone off. Nothing he ever said showed much forethought or wisdom.
I’d discover over time (from his
mother) that Jamie has always been an excitable person, always running, never
able to concentrate, always up to his elbows in trouble. He’d had a stint in
juvenile, only to get in trouble again the moment he was released. The judge
took pity on him and didn’t send him to prison, sending him to a mental health
hospital for evaluation and a rest instead. I think that might have saved Jamie.
He learned the basics of cooking while there, found a liking for it, and upon
release asked his mother if she’d pay to send him to cooking school. She was
grateful of his taking any interest, so she agreed. He graduated. His mother
also thought it would be good for him to be out on his own, co-signing the loan
on the house we were living in. I see no ulterior motive here (supressing
sarcasm, and failing). He’d never have been able to afford it by himself, not
on his salary, so he needed boarders, which was where Matt, Jak, and I came in.
Jamie gave me the tour. He showed me
the woodpile alongside the house, saying that we were all free to use the
fireplace in the living room, but we were all responsible for splitting the
wood and making kindling.
I found he spoke without thinking.
He leapt from subject to subject mid-sentence. He was agreeable to everything,
promising all, vague about specifics. I soon found out that he lied, that he
stole, that he was consistently unreliable. How he managed to commit to work,
I’ll never know. He must have loved it, because he committed to nothing else,
not even his friends. He was shallow, self-centered, and selfish. Life was a
party. All else was irrelevant.
When I mentioned that ROCK and HYDE
were playing on the campus, he said he wanted to go, that he’d “show” me around
campus (as if he’d know his way around, having never gone), he even went as far
as to extract a promise from me to wait for him to get off work. He’d be back
in plenty of time, he said. I waited, crashed out on the couch with a book.
Time grew short. He did not show. I found my way there myself. No big thing, by
itself; but I’d discover that Jamie was never one for follow-through.
A chef, he promised to teach me how
to cook when I expressed interest. I was only a functional cook back then. He
never once showed interest.
One day I noticed an inexplicable
long-distance charge on my phone bill. My parents had always instructed me to
call them collect, so it certainly wasn’t mine. I may have made three the whole
year through. I was the only one with a phone, and everyone was free to use it.
All long-distance was logged by the user, that way we could sort out the bill,
but here was one call not written in our log. I asked around, mistakes are
made, after all, but no one owned up to it. I already knew who’d made it; it
wasn’t too hard to figure out. All of Jak’s calls were to his girlfriend in
Toronto, or to Turkey; all of Matt’s were to family in Toronto; and after a few
months I could recognize the numbers, they never wavered. That left Jamie. I
bought a phone lock. You may have never seen one before, but they existed. It
was a keyed lock that you fit in the “1” finger-hole. Once it was in there, no
one could dial out. I explained why I was locking the phone to Matt and Jak,
and told them that any time they wanted to use the phone, all they had to do
was ask. They understood and agreed. Problem solved. I only supervised Jamie’s
calls.
One night Jamie tried to break into
my room. I know it was him, because I heard him muttering to himself. He must
have known I was in there. The chain lock was in place. He inched the door open
and tried to release the chain. Have you ever tried to release a chain lock
from the outside? Not possible. But he tried, repeatedly. I got up, and sat at
my desk, where I was better able to see through the hall-lit gap, so I’d be
able to watch him grow more frustrated by the moment. I could have answered
him. I could have opened the door for him, and asked him what he wanted, but
he’d already borrowed small amounts of money from each of us, never paying any
of us back. I was disinclined to. He cursed me under his breath and closed the
door lightly again.
Exam time, I was trying to study. I
was trying to sleep. Jamie would come in at all hours and crank his stereo. He
was fond of electronic dance music and used to practice his dance moves at
deafening volumes. It would shake the foundation, it would fill the house with
throbbing bass. I’d descend to the ground floor and ask him to turn it down
from the top of the basement stairs. Sometimes he did. Sometimes he didn’t.
When he didn’t, I’d yell down. He yelled back once that it was his house and
he’d do a he pleased. So, I told him that if he didn’t turn the stereo down I
would call his mother. The volume dropped to almost nothing moments later.
I heard him say, “Bitch!” He must
have thought he was saying it under his breath, but Jamie had no clue how to be
quiet.
I yelled back down again. “What did
you call me?”
He said nothing at all.
Jamie was a child. If it wasn’t fun,
he very likely didn’t want to do it.
Oddly, I became the adult in the
house. Me, of all people. I had no idea how that happened. That said, my sphere
of control was limited.
Jamie forgot to pay his bills. One
day we arrived back from school to a frigid house. We tried the thermostat.
Nothing. We checked the furnace. The blower worked, but there was no heat, no
matter the setting. We checked the gas valve outside, and found it locked. We
phoned the gas company, found out that the gas had not been paid for months,
and that they would not turn the gas back on until it was paid; so, we called
Jamie’s mother.
She paid the bill, but informed us
that as she co-signed on the purchase in the hope that Jamie would grow up and
accept responsibly—and since he hadn’t, much to her chagrin—she’d be selling
the house when we vacated, and that we needed to find a new place to live the
following year.
