The party was a mechanism; a means to an end. The idea for gathering is always an excuse, a surface illusion, to allow for the great game of social evolution. There was the usual posing, posturing, self-marketing—all in the interest of validation or procreation or any number of excuses for donning that carefully crafted character of self and finding an audience.
This was before the road, the surf, the fires, the endings.
They—fifty or so odd people—were in a spacious studio apartment above a karaoke bar in Waverly Heights, on the south side of Portland. Jaime had come at the behest of a friend who had promptly been distracted by one of the ‘shiny people’ and disappeared. At this the aversion to others had kicked in and he promptly found a clear space of wall to occupy, close to the drinks.
He was tall and lean, with thick brown hair that fell just over his eye line. The other partygoers let him be, which gave Jaime ample time to consider the problematic logic that always led him to this spot. He felt disillusioned towards the interactions others cherished, but secretly he yearned to experience them. In actuality he felt something much more akin to inverse disillusionment, where he was fully aware that everyone else functioned correctly and he was the exception, unable to join their world.
Regardless, Jaime was simply playing the role of Jaime. Standing alone, judging, was where he usually found himself in social situations, and his friends had come to expect it of him. Jaime wasn’t avoiding others, he was surviving. He was The Survivor. This wasn't a nickname—though it was a nickname—so much as it was an unspoken label that anyone who knew enough of his background kept in their head, ready to defer to anytime some of his strange or anti-social behavior started up.
Tonight, however, Jaime inexplicably decided that he wanted to switch roles. This was a test; if everyone is simply running their part, what was stopping anyone from re-auditioning on the fly? He gave it a shot—straightening his posture, letting the hint of a smile rest on his mouth… A brief, soft buzz filled his head, then passed, and he felt something change internally, as if his expectations for the night had been reconstructed.
Twenty minutes later Jaime was no longer stuck to the wall but was, instead, on the floor, focused on one of the shiny people—a tall girl with long, straight black hair, wide, engaging eyes and a terrific poker face, refusing to belie any emotional response. Her name was Sarah.
Things were going well. Sarah was 21, she had been born in Twin Falls, Idaho but moved with her parents to Portland when she was three; she was close to her mother, not to her father... it was the usual sort of introductory conversation that Jaime was familiar with. He avoided his own back story prompts as long as he could, but finally had to give in to the inevitable and stepped into another role that he was familiar with—that of storyteller.
The truth about Jaime was that he had survived a series of bizarre tragedies throughout his childhood. Everyone around him seemed ready, eager to die, even if they were unaware of it. A fire had killed his parents when he was a toddler, but he miraculously and inexplicably had survived. The house collapsed around his room, which had been saved by a well-placed support beam. The firefighters couldn’t begin to explain how he had escaped death from smoke inhalation. Since then, he had endured the following, which comprised some but not all of his misfortune:
1. Car Accident (minor), Age 5.
One death reported, driver in other vehicle, heart attack, deemed responsible for collision.
2. Drowning, Age 7.
Life guard used CPR for three and a half minutes before breathing resumed.
3. Escaped Bear, Age 11.
Two maulings reported. Faulty zoo cage lock deemed responsible.
4. Car Accident (major), Age 13.
Three deaths reported, including Jaime's Aunt. Jaime sustained a broken collar bone.
5. Collapsed Airport Terminal, Age 17.
Seventeen deaths reported. Jaime's plane docked fifteen minutes before the accident.
6. Heartbreak, Age 19.
Jaime had attached a rope to his ceiling fan, which proved too weak and gave out underneath his weight.
7. Drowning, Age 23.
Whitewater Rafting in Colorado, his kayak had overturned and pinned Jaime underwater. He struck a rock and was knocked clear, allowing him to make it to safety before losing consciousness.
Jaime, now 26, morbidly liked this mental list. It gave him a map, a system to work from, and off of this he had decided that he should be safe from tragedy for another five years.
Sarah found his story fascinating. This wasn't unusual, it had happened on more than a few occasions since adolescence. People were usually struck by the uniqueness of his background.
"How much of it do you remember," she asked him, "Like, really remember?" Downstairs someone was singing an off-key rendition of Take on Me.
"Well, there are blurry parts," he admitted, "I was pretty young for most of them." The truth was Jaime remembered very little of any of them. He had developed a knack for willfully expunging unpleasant memories from his mind.
"When I was six I was lost in a department store," Sarah shared. Jaime's pulse quickened. This was new. "My mother had stopped to look at something and I just kept walking. She found me, eventually, but not before another man had. He asked if I needed help and then told me my mother was waiting for me at the car. He sounded sincere. I followed him."
Jaime was captivated. The rest of the room seemed to melt away.
Sarah continued, "When my mother caught up with us she was frantic. We were just heading out the door of the department store, and the man had started to pick up his pace. When my mother saw us, she started screaming at him, hysterical. This caught a lot of attention. The man panicked, pulled a gun out from underneath his coat, and shot my mother. He then dropped the gun and ran, leaving me behind." Sarah paused, methodically, as if she liked to gauge her audience's response here. Jaime, unlike most people, didn’t look uncomfortable. "It seems that he had recently lost his own daughter and had snapped. My mother was in the hospital for three weeks, and her right arm, where the bullet hit, was always kind of useless after that. When the man was finally caught he had someone else’s little girl…I was very lucky.”
Her true story—not her surface story—told, Sarah seemed to glow. Jaime became aware that his heart was pounding.
Sarah moved in closer. "Can I tell you something else?"
Jaime nods.
"Last I had heard, the man responsible was up for parole. He's been in jail for fourteen years, but even back then there was some sympathy that he was out of his mind in grief. I always wanted to forget the whole thing, personally. My mother likes to keep a watchful eye on her misery, however, and feels the need to keep me informed."
She moved even closer now, whispering, her lips brushed right up against his ear. He found himself lost in her perfume, fighting to pay full attention to her own catalog of despair. Her sorrow washed over him, drawing him in deeper with every word.
"I don't actually know anyone at this party," Sarah confided. She sounded concerned, Jaime noticed, over something so trivial. He met her eyes, making contact, seeking to reassure her. Instead, he found a hint of tightly controlled panic. Of desperation.
"Do you see that man by the door?"
Jaime, aware of the room once more, searched and found him: A man in his forties, slightly disheveled, stood right in front of the entrance. His eyes were locked in their direction.
With Sarah pressed up against him, intimately, Jaime finally realized just how fast her heart was actually beating.
"He started following me four blocks ago, at the park."
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