Jamie in Fragments of Life

Jamie grew up in and around San Francisco. Her parents divorced when she was 8 and she has a half-sister, which her mother gave birth to, with her new boyfriend a few years after the divorce.

There isn’t much I can say about Jamie because Jamie is a very simple person. She’s a decent, easygoing person that’s easy to be around and to live with. She isn’t very bright but she knows enough. She’s a very mellow person and rarely argues or judges people. It takes a lot to get her going. I think it takes someone like her to be with Angela because of the way Angela can sometimes be moody and even a bit judgmental.

When I first moved in with Michelle and then Angela came to join us, I wasn’t all that excited deep down at the thought of meeting Jamie, to be honest. I felt so comfortable, safe and protected with Michelle and Angela that I wasn’t sure I wanted to share them with someone else, so to speak. But as I quickly found, as did the others, we all complement and balance each other out nicely. To lose one of us would create a void for the others and to add another would seem intrusive. We are a definite “square.” You can’t add additional lines to a square and expect to keep it square, nor can you take away any lines and still expect to keep it square.

Jamie completed our square but she never lived in the apartment with us. She was living in another apartment at the time with someone that she didn’t really get along with. They weren’t destructive or abusive in any way that was harmful to her but she didn’t feel comfortable with the person because of the way they would be so picky about things and have regular company over whether Jamie was up for company at the moment or not. She just felt that her roommate was very selfish and inconsiderate, and they didn’t even remain friends after Jamie moved out and into the house we all bought.

Jamie spent most of her life working as a cook in both fancy restaurants as well as diners like Denny’s.

Once we were settled in the new house, which I’ll describe in another entry, she and I were happy to drop to part-time so that we had more time to devote to cooking and cleaning at home and being there for our spouses who worked odd hours. We were kind of old-fashioned in the sense that Michelle and Angela were like traditional husbands while we were traditional wives. They made most of the money; we took care of most of a house. Michelle and Angela usually worked days, but when you’re a detective and a U.S. Marshal, your hours can vary. Angela eventually got tired of the international trips to hunt for fugitives on the run in other countries that she soon began working at the local FBI field office. Michelle would occasionally be on loan to the FBI as well.