Jamie

Posted: May 17th, 2009 | Author: miconian | Filed under: Miconian At Large | Tags: alchemist, roommates | Comments

Jamie looked a lot like Britney Spears. She rented the room next to mine in a shared apartment on the upper west side. The first time we met, she came into my room and loudly declared how happy she was to be in New York, how she had so many aspects of life to explore.

“The intellectual, the spiritual, the physical!” she said.

From this, I knew immediately that she was batshit crazy, and that I must never touch her.

Jamie was an almost cartoonish contradiction.  To look at her, you would think that she didn’t lack for friends or company, and that she took male attention in stride. None of these things turned out to be true.

Jamie was obsessed with making friends. She would enter the other rooms of the apartment uninvited, and stand there, saying non-substantive things like “Awesome!” until she was asked to leave. She told me one day that she had just been ejected from the local New York Sports Club after taking three aerobics classes in a row. And the phone that I shared with her, usually quiet despite the constant rotation of tenants, started to ring day and night from men she had given her phone number to on the street.

She asked to borrow my copy of The Alchemist. I hadn’t read it (and still haven’t); it had been a gift from a friend in L.A. Weeks later, she knocked on my door.

Jamie wanted to know if I wanted the book back. Yes, I said. She asked if she could keep it, and buy me another copy. I said No, it has sentimental value, I’d prefer to keep this copy. Okay, she said.

Eventually, John, the guy who held the main lease on the apartment, asked me what I thought of Jamie. He spent most of his time at the other end of the long narrow hallway, and hadn’t gotten to know her very well. I gave him a few examples of her awkward behavior, and mentioned my borrowed book.

“I’ll talk to her tomorrow,” said John.

Worth mentioning: John is a garrulous person. Also, he’s pretty generous with his apartment. He’s part of an international hospitality club, and a lot of random people stay there.

When I came back from work the next day, I passed Jamie’s room and saw that it was completely empty. I found John in his office.

“Did Jamie move out?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said.

I stood there, waiting for the exciting story about how she had to be dragged out by the police, or had cried and begged to stay, or whatever it was. John said nothing.

“Was it hard to get her to leave?” I asked, trying to give him a starting point.

“Yes,” he said. “By the way, here’s your book.”

He handed me the book.

It was the shortest conversation we ever had.

The images in this post are scans of a selection of pages in my copy of The Alchemist, as it looked after I got it back from Jamie.

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