Jumper

JUMPER

Joe sighed heavily and breathed in the stuffy office air. He propped his feet up on his shabby computer desk and leaned back in his chair. His paperwork was strewn about like a poorly dealt deck of cards. The shriek of a loud police radio bleep filled his ears and made his head pulsate.

He was working the night shift and had been at his desk for three hours. They had been long hours. Still eight more to go, he thought, glaring at his watch. He groaned and pondered what type of candy bar he was going to get out of the vending machine in the basement.

Joe was a young man of twenty-eight. He felt a hell of a lot older than that.

“You look like shit, man,” Porelli, a beat cop, said as he sauntered by Joe’s desk. Porelli was a young, fat bastard of a cop who never ironed his uniform and rarely wore deodorant. Either that or he couldn’t find a brand powerful enough. He sipped at his Styrofoam cup of coffee smugly and waited for a reply. Joe could usually put up with Porelli, but not tonight.

“Fuck you, Porelli.”

Porelli was taken aback by the blunt retort. He lifted his eyebrows and sucked in his gut. Joe looked up and shot him a glare. Not knowing how to respond, Porelli sneered and waddled to his desk, this time a little rushed, with no hint of a saunter.

Joe did look like shit. And he felt like it. His hair was tousled and he hadn’t shaved. The skinny end of his tie hung down too low. He looked at his watch again and sighed. He needed a cigarette. He pulled himself slowly up from his desk and headed for the side door. He didn’t want to use the front because he didn’t wish to have any kind of conversation with Maggie, the bleach-blond, forty-something, overweight cop—more of a secretary, really—who worked the front desk at night. She always directed a vaguely sexual comment at Joe whenever he walked by.

“Goin’ out, stud?” Maggie wheezed as she caught him leaving.

“Yup.”

Joe breathed in the chilly night air and took a long haul off his Camel Light. His wife hated it when he smoked. Wait, make that soon-to-be ex-wife.

His wife had told him this morning she was leaving him. For some twenty-year-old college kid. He was a musician. He was creative. He was sensitive. He liked to cuddle.

Joe was “Communications Officer” for the Ipswitch, Wisconsin Police Department. He had been there for three years. He was getting the same pay as the day he started. He dealt with attempted suicide jumpers, drunken rednecks with hostages who wanted money or meth in exchange for the safety of their stepkids, old ladies threatening to slit their wrists with kitchen knives—shit like that. It was Ipswitch, so he wasn’t very busy. Maybe a couple calls a week. On his down time—which was essentially all the time—he typed press releases, made notices for department picnics and filled out paperwork for the rest of the office. He was a police negotiator filling out paperwork, like a goddamn secretary. And the other cops knew it, especially Porelli.

Joe had grown exceptionally unproductive in the past few months. He loathed what he was doing and didn’t possess the motivation to engage in any kind of gusto. He left his paperwork strewn about his desk and didn’t often file it on time. He spent most of his time playing Solitaire on his archaic computer—it was the oldest one in the office and froze to a halt constantly—and staring at his watch.

His wife told him he didn’t know how to communicate. Imagine that, a communications officer who doesn’t know how to communicate. And she was right. He didn’t especially enjoy talking to people he didn’t know; hell, he didn’t much like talking to people in general, much less trying to talk them out of blowing holes in their heads. 

He felt like his job wasn’t going to last much longer anyway. He knew the Captain had it out for him. The Captain was a well-built, balding man with a carefully preened mustache and a permanent smirk. On the rare occasion he left his cozy little office, he would pace around the department with his arms sternly crossed, trying to look busy and important. Joe had never seen someone look so busy and yet do so little. The Captain had cocky, all-important swagger to his step. The Captain loved Porelli.

As soon as Joe returned to his desk, his phone rang. It was Maggie at the front desk.

“Hey there, cutie.”

“Maggie, you don’t need to call my phone. You’re only on the other side of the room.”

Maggie smiled and waved fetchingly as she held the phone to her face, caked heavily with makeup much darker than her skin tone.

“Looks like you’ve got some action tonight, handsome.” He didn’t like the way she emphasized “action.”

“Well, what is it?” he asked, his patience strained well beyond thin.

“We got a jumper on the third floor of the Shuffle Inn downtown. The ambulance is gonna be a little late. Lieutenant says to head out there right away.” She grinned. “Porelli can take you.”

Shit, not Porelli. Couldn’t he drive himself for once? Oh, that’s right; someone who could actually carry a gun was required to escort him.

“Okay, Maggie, on my way.” She winked at him from across the room as he slammed his receiver down.

He breathed in deeply and got begrudgingly up from his desk. He walked over to Porelli’s desk. The cop was munching contently on a Twinkie and was flipping through the pages of an old issue of Field and Stream.

“We got a jumper at the Shuffle Inn downtown, Porelli. You’re taking me.”

Porelli looked up excitedly. “Sweet, dude. I’ve never been on one of these before.”
His faced turned solemn. “You better not be a dick on the way over, though.”

Porelli yammered on about the modifications he was having made to his Camaro on the cruiser ride downtown. Joe had grown adept at tuning out Porelli, but tonight the nasally voice ground away at his doddering nerves. 

They arrived at the Shuffle Inn, a grimy four-story motel where the “no” in the vacancy sign flickered sporadically.

“What a shithole,” Porelli sneered.

The two got out of the cruiser and looked up to the roof and saw the jumper, who had seen the squad car pull slowly up.

“You cops can get the fuck out of here! I’m jumping, and I don’t care what you try to say to me!”

“Just calm down for a minute, buddy,” Joe called back up in a smooth, monotone voice. It almost felt like a lie, saying that, in that tone. But he had to at least try to make it sound like he gave a shit.

Console. Pacify.

“I’m just going to come up and talk to you for a second, okay? We’re just going have a talk.”

“Whatever. I’m just gonna jump anyway!”

“Well, just wait a second then,” Joe replied in a slightly harsher tone.

The desk clerk was a greasy, balding man in his thirties. His hairy belly spilled out from beneath his stained Grateful Dead T-shirt, exposing his lint-filled navel.

“He’s on the roof, talkin’ all crazy,” the man said. “He’s a crazy bastard, man. I think he’s gonna do it.”

“Which way to the roof?” Joe asked.

“On the left, three flights up.”

“Thanks. We’ll take care of it,” Joe said. Porelli postured and tried to resemble a chubby Dirty Harry.

Porelli was huffing and puffing like he had run a mile when the two reached the roof. “Whew, I gotta jog more.”

“Porelli, just wait here and shut up.”

Porelli scowled and sucked in his belly. “All right, I’ll just wait here then.” Tapping one hand to the butt of his pistol, he added smugly, “If he pulls a gun, I’m takin’ him down like a clown.”

Joe walked gingerly over to the man, who was facing into the night towards the road below. Joe stood slightly behind the man.

“Hey, buddy.” The words tasted bitter with feigned sympathy.

“Just go away, man.”

“Why don’t you tell me what’s going on?”

“You don’t care. You’re just paid to do this.”

“No, I really do care.” The obligatory words scraped past Joe’s lips. It’s just protocol.

“My life sucks, okay?” said the man, turning to face Joe. He was a handsome, college-aged hipster kid with stylishly matted, dirty blond hair. He was tall and lanky and wore a ratty sweatshirt and torn up jeans. “Nothing you can say can change that.”

“Well, just tell me why your life sucks.”

The kid chuckled and his voice quavered. “Where do I begin? Well, my parents cut off my money so I can’t get a new guitar, and I think my band is breaking up.”

“Oh, you’re a musician?”

“Yeah, but I don’t feel like I can get anywhere. The other guys in my band are douchebags, you know?”

“Yeah, I know some douchebags myself.” He’d driven over with one; he was staring at another.

“Anyways, I’m failing out of school this semester and I might have to go back home to my parents.”

“Well, how bad could that be? I’m sure your parents love you.”

“No, my dad’s just a corporate Republican dude who doesn’t give a shit about me and my mom’s a raging bitch.”

“They can’t be that bad, can they? Anyways, maybe you can study extra hard and pull your grades up. The semester doesn’t end for another couple weeks, right?”

The kid wasn’t even listening. He gazed down at the pavement and chewed on his lower lip for a bit, and then, sheepishly, said, “And worst of all, I’m banging some dude’s wife. She’s hot and everything, but now she’s saying she wants to leave her husband and run off with me. She’s fucking crazy, dude—I can’t deal with that.”

Joe’s eyebrow’s lowered into a frown. He glowered down at the kid’s feet, which were inches away from the roof’s edge.

“What was her name?” he asked, glancing back at Porelli, who was looking the other way and picking his nose.

“Meredith,” the kid said with a resentful laugh, shaking his head.

“Meredith Brooks?”

The kid’s head snapped back to face Joe.

“Yeah, how’d you know?”

Joe paused. “She’s my wife.”

The kid’s eyes widened as Joe shoved him. Joe watched him fall. The kid squirmed and fought as he hurled toward the earth below, but he never uttered a sound.
Joe heard bones break and flesh spatter. The kid was lying in a spreading pool of blood with his arms and legs stretched out as if he were in the middle of a jumping jack.

There was the sensitive, cuddling, creative musician. Dead.

“What the fuck happened?” gasped Porelli, scurrying over to the edge of the roof.

“What do you think?” Joe replied, with a hardly inaudible snicker. “He jumped.”

“Hmph,” Porelli snorted, staring for a moment at the corpse, crumpled and broken like a discarded doll. He turned and headed back for the stairway. “Have fun filling out the paperwork.”

* * * *

The radio screamed and Joe’s head shot up from his desk. He yawned and rubbed the blurriness from his eyes.

A stack of paper landed on his desk with a smack. He looked up. It was Porelli.

“Getting your beauty sleep, sunshine?” the fat cop cackled. “Hey, would you mind filing these? Awesome, thanks.”

Before Joe could say a word, Porelli had turned his broad back and was wobbling toward to the coffee machine.

Joe groaned. He reached for what seemed like exactly the same cigarette he’d been smoking for the past three years.