Jackie

Jackie showed up two hours late to her own going-away party.  She displayed no concern for the fact that her guests had been waiting for two hours, first at the popular Bar 21 where she had failed to make a reservation and where her guests had been turned away into the street, and then at the pizza café down the block, where her guests sat drinking beer, sharing mozzarellas, and wondering where Jackie was.  Jackie entered the pizza café with her new German boyfriend in tow behind her, threw back her head, shook her blonde hair and smiled from ear to ear, giggling and greeting.  She was high as a kite.  Her German boyfriend was surprisingly non-German looking, with brown hair and dark eyes.  He wore thick-framed Buddy Holly glasses and disappeared into the assembled crowd as soon as he arrived.  Jackie went from guest to guest, beaming onto each one.  She leaned over and hugged me tightly.  Her dangly bohemian earrings scratched my neck as she pressed her cheek against mine.  “It’s been so nice with you,” she oozed sweetly to me in her Swiss accent, her light blue eyes shining brightly as she held me close.

A month or so earlier, Jackie sat across from me on the patio of a beachside restaurant chain-smoking cigarettes.  She looked surprisingly good for someone who chain-smoked cigarettes.  The afternoon daylight revealed a few wrinkles around her eyes that bore witness to her 33 years, wrinkles I hadn’t noticed when we were out in the nightclubs.  I also hadn’t realized that Jackie was a lawyer at the Swiss embassy.  It hadn’t come up when we were playing drinking games with the U.S. Marines.  Jackie gave me a Swiss chocolate bar and told me about her new German boyfriend.  “It always happens like this.  Just when I start to like someone, I’m moving to another country.”  She tossed a cigarette butt over the glass partition onto the curb, took out another one, and lit it. 

Several months earlier, Jackie and I were dancing at a house party.  Jackie wore a grey sleeveless top with detailed embroidery around the neckline and chic white jeans.  She had a beer in hand and constant smile on her face.  We drank liberally and danced freely.  Jackie started to take off the shirt of the guy she was dancing with.  He swung the shirt over his head and threw it into the crowd.  Jackie’s eyes met mine.  We smiled broadly and giggled drunkenly at each other.  She told me that she had just hooked up with a 22 year-old in the bathroom.  We laughed loudly, tossing our heads back and falling into each other.

A few weeks later, Jackie met me for a drink at our local bar.  I told her that I was sad about my Uruguayan lover.  She held her head high and locked her eyes to mine.  “Forget him,” she said without pause.  The sharpness of her words cut through my train of thought, as if her command alone could wipe my memory clean.  The authority of her words was unknown, but their weight hit me and shattered something imagined.  “Forget him,” she said again, looking away and taking a drag on her cigarette.  Jackie’s hair fell softly over her shoulders in gentle curls.  Her nails were long and filed to perfect ovals.  She dangled the cigarette between her perfectly shaped nails and blew hot smoke into the cool night.