Jamie's New Hire

When Jamie woke up, all he saw was blue. Bright, headache-inducing blue. Confused, he reached over for his glasses, but instead of his hand finding the night stand, it smashed into a cardboard box. He suddenly sat up, finally realizing that he wasn't in his own bed. Two of the walls and the ceiling of this cardboard box-filled room were Dodger blue, while the other two walls remained white. He sat up in the bed that wasn't his, hearing what sounded like arguing somewhere. This was all he needed. He was sleeping in his clothes in a strange place with people that didn't exactly sound happy.

As he crawled out of the low bed, he realized that his red tennis shoes were still on. Shaking his head lightly, he got to his feet and tried to look around. The view from the curtain-less window told him that wherever he was, it was still in San Francisco. He could see one of the city's suspension bridges in the distance, though without his glasses, telling which was impossible. The entire landscape was dizzyingly blurry. Sick of playing guessing games, Jamie turned to the door, and as he opened it, he realized that whatever conversation had been taking place had stopped.

He wandered out of the room into an entire house that was painted weird colours and filled with cardboard boxes. The room he stood in was a horrendously bright green, though all of the molding and door frames had been left white.

"How's your head?" a voice somewhere behind him called.

Jamie spun around to see what looked like Adam standing back in the kitchen, leaning against the centre island, though the tie-dye pajama bottoms he was wearing made it hard to tell. As far as Jamie had ever seen, Adam only owned black clothing. No one else appeared to be anywhere in the house, which made Jamie suspect that the voices he'd heard earlier were just his imagination.

"What the hell am I doing here?" Jamie asked.

"Well, you didn't really give me any options," Adam said. He took a bite of his soggy breakfast cereal before continuing. "You wouldn't tell me where you lived, so I brought you here. Sorry about the funky smell. I just finished painting on Thursday."

"Finished?" Jamie asked, having himself just woken up in a room that only looked half done. "I think you missed a few spots."

Adam chuckled at the remark."I'd have set you up in the guest room, but I didn't think I'd be able to get you up the stairs without both of us falling and breaking our necks," he said.

Jamie shook his head. "It's fine," he assured.

"I had to dig through your jacket last night to find your cell phone so I could call your wife," Adam confessed. "She knows you're fine, and I told her you'd be home sometime this morning."

Jamie felt a slight tinge of embarrassment at the fact that he hadn't even thought about calling her. He sat down at the kitchen table, where Adam had his beret and jacket piled up.

"What did happen last night?" Jamie asked. "I remember going out for drinks, and then I wake up in the bedroom from hell."

"Some college kid tried to start something," Adam explained, not entirely surprised that Jamie didn't remember. "You took quite the hit." He finished off his meek breakfast and put his bowl on the counter near the sink. "You hungry?"

Jamie shook his head. Adam started to say something else, but his cellphone began ringing from the counter. He looked down at the screen and frowned before hitting the cancel button. Whoever he had been avoiding clearly didn't get the point that they were being avoided. Adam quickly walked to the back of the house, returning a few moments later wearing an old grey T-shirt. Before returning to the kitchen, he detoured to the front door and flipped the latch on the heavy deadbolt lock. He stalked back into the kitchen and leaned against the cluttered counter. Somehow, their silence in Adam's kitchen was ten times as awkward as it had been in the bar the night before. Whoever Adam had been avoiding since the day before, he'd been avoiding for a reason.

A few minutes later, the front door opened, but Adam didn't move to go greet whoever had just come into the house. After some light scuffling around in the front room, Jamie was shocked to see two blond miniature versions of Adam run into the kitchen. One stopped at the entry way, startled to see someone else in the house, but the other ran straight to his father.

"Hey, Champ!" Adam said as he picked up his son. The little boy reached up and tried to grab Adam's glasses, but he pulled his head back at the last second. "No."

"Your weekend with the kids?" Jamie asked, a little surprised that Adam had reproduced.

Adam rolled his eyes. "It's supposed to be her weekend with the boys so that I could finally get something done around here," he said. He turned his attention to the kid in his arms. "You eat breakfast yet?"

The little boy thought for a second before nodding.

"What'd you have?"

"Uhmmmm McDonald's!"

Adam sighed and put his son back down on the floor and watched as the two boys ran off to the back of the house somewhere, where they promptly began throwing things around, judging by the sounds they were making. Adam inhaled deeply and rubbed his forehead with his fingers.

"When ever you're ready, let me know and I'll take you to go get your truck," he said. He looked over at Jamie, suddenly remembering that his glasses had been broken in the scuffle. "You gonna be okay to drive with..." he started as he motioned to his own glasses.

Jamie nodded. "Yeah," he said. "I keep a spare pair in the glove box just in case."