Jessie

Most of all I miss Jessie, the doorman that looks like a cross between Herbie Hancock and Flava Flav. A couple weeks before I’d left Lakeview he stopped me before I could push my way out of the lobby doors and told me he’d heard the news. He sighed and said it was a damn shame.

I smiled. “I’m gonna miss our talks too, Jessie. But I’ll drop by and say hello whenever I’m in the neighborhood, I promise.”

“Naw man,” Jessie replied, giving me that who farted? look that he does. “I ain’t even talkin’ ‘bout you. I’m sayin’ it’s a damn shame I ain’t gon’ get ta see dem girly friends of yours again!”

Jessie was referring to my friends Angie and Marci. One night, at my urging, they flirted with him for a bit in the lobby before we left for the bars. Angie made sure to hang some cleavage over Jessie’s desk, and Marci spoke softly with her epiglottis open the whole time, the way Marilyn Monroe did when she sang “Happy Birthday, Mr. President” to JFK.

It seemed like a good idea at the time, but then he wouldn’t stop bugging me about them. “When they gon’ be back, Mr. Pete?” he’d yearningly ask days later, and: “I think the shorter one was feelin’ me, whatchu think?” and: “You think they aight wit’ an old black man?”

So I gave him Marci’s phone number and told him to just go do something about it. Jessie grew very nervous at the thought of this.

“But what I'mma say? What kinda man she like?"

“Make her laugh,” I told him. “Marci likes a man that can make her laugh.”

I coached him for a good ten minutes on what kind of jokes he could say over the phone to her. “She’s a nurse, right, so I think it’s a good idea to execute a joke related to her profession. Like: ‘What do you do when your patient has an epileptic seizure in the bathtub? Throw your laundry in quick!’ This will surely lead to phone sex.”

Jessie said, “Yes suh.”

A day later, after a creeped-out Marci threatened me with a few angry messages over Facebook, I checked in with my hombre to see how he thought the phone call went.

“Shhhiiiiieeeettt...” Jessie said, giggling with a sly look on his face. When Jessie says “shiiiet” like that, it only means something good.

“I think she likes me. I think I done made her fall in love wit’ me.”

I was so proud of him.

“Perfect,” I said, pulling out my iPhone, “now smile for the camera.” By now I had already decided that I needed to write about him.

“You gon’ show this to Marci?” Jessie asked, putting on a fedora he had kept hidden under his desk.

I nodded and took the picture, then waved goodbye and walked towards the elevator.

“Aiyyo Mr. Pete!” he yelled a few seconds later. I stopped in my tracks and spun around. “Take another one, this time without muh glasses.”

“You look sharp, dude.”

“Aw hell naw, f’real? Better than Ursher?”

“Better than Usher. Now don’t forget to call her again tomorrow. She’s waiting for you to holler back.”

“Shhhiiieeettt...” Jessie said, smiling ear to ear.