JUMPERS

by Duncan Smith

A coming-of-age story set in L.A. in the early 90's, Jumpers' narrator-protagonist ('Guv' Wilson) has been in a drift that has taken him from New Hampshire (Dartmouth) to a boring job in Utah and ultimately to the employer's convention in glitzy Los Angeles. The novel's opening "I'm about two beers shy of a tattoo. Two beers is all it would take, a pint and a half of conviction, and then I could drag my sorry ass down to the local tattooist and have a biceps stenciled with the barbed-wire of my discontent." Guv is attracted to the hustle and glamor and opportunities of L.A. and finds an employment ad in "Daily Variety" for a menial job at a business management firm that provides all financial services to wealthy people in the film and television industry. Later that evening, he sees a crowd of people in tuxedos and gowns, movie stars among them, arriving for a huge charity bash and filing into a ballroom for a dinner that his convention won't possibly provide. By the end of the first chapter Guv is standing on top of a luxury hotel and scanning the breath of the L.A. basin. He comes to this "The bus ride into town today afforded a view of the frenzy that is Los Angeles, of the variety, of the graffiti, of the homeless competing for street corner handouts - and not just the sub-tropical heat of a perfect winter evening - that is overwhelming. Los Angeles seems a city, cities even, of limitless space and opportunities. This is a city that must kindle more dreams than it extinguishes. If I have been in this city for five hours and am not yet an expert, I do know that my dreams need rekindling, that I have been in a drift. I have slid all the way from New England to California, and there's been no resistance to the slide. I have slid until I can slide no more, until I have run into the sea, and since I'm not disposed to cross it or throw myself into it, I must stop the drift. There exists the possibility of waiting out the convention and riding the bus back to Utah, of simply reversing course, but to head east is to head towards home, however distant, and I am not prepared to do that. Not yet. I need something first. Something tangible, some small victory. I won't go back empty-handed." Thus, Guv decides to "jump" ship in L.A. and lands a job as a "runner" at a business management office. The checks that the directors, producers, actors receive all arrive at the office, and Guv does the banking errands, and ferries cash and documents that need signing to the clients at their homes or offices. He soon meets a famous actress, not yet fifty but too close, who recognizes how smart Guv is and how useful he can be in a war that she is about to launch against another firm client, her husband. Guv becomes extremely involved in a conflict that quickly threatens to spin out of control. Guv has his own conflicts that he hasn't yet sorted through, events that divided and scattered his family and complicated his ability to establish and maintain a relationship with a young woman, as he develops a close friendship with the actress, who hasn't yet come to terms with a long-ago trauma in her life. Her career stalling, the actress hopes to bring Guv (she needs visible "youth" involved) aboard a tiny production company that she intends to start, and Guv's prospects brighten while the clash between the actress and her husband turns dark, exacerbated by other characters. Each Guv and the actress have a past event to reconcile with, and a future that may glisten. If things don't spin out of control.

380 pages, Paperback

Published October 31, 2020

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