Jimmy grabs his shit like it’s an evac­u­a­tion and stuffs it in the nearest bag. Shirt, boxers, socks, Gravity’s Rainbow, tooth­brush, and small body spray, the brand that brings in the ladies in waves, wet and ready for action, or so the relent­less com­mer­cials during Sports­cen­ter claim. Looking in the mirror one last time before he splits, he sees it’s true. Every­thing to Jimmy is a last second evac­u­a­tion and without any escape routes. But not today, Jimmy thinks. Not this morning. This morning there is a way out, even if just for a few nights. Already he checked his account, did the painful math, and bought the same-day ticket to get him to the Golden Nugget for a two-night, three-day escape from his own impend­ing and con­stant emer­gen­cies, all caused by hands direct­ly con­nect­ed to his own body, a body con­nect­ed to a mind often invol­un­tar­i­ly severed from what he longed to think of as himself. 

Hot and cold, people called him. When you’re good, you’re good, former friends had said, but when you’re bad, the good ain’t worth it. Real flimsy, sketchy. Damaged item, no returns. Fool’s gold. Or, like his only actual, now ex-lover had put it not too long ago, “Jimmy, think about it, kid. If even someone who likes you as much as I do can’t make it work with you, how is the rest of the world sup­posed to?” And the names didn’t stop, the descrip­tors. Manic Depres­sive is what they had called his mother, then Bipolar by the time of her over­dose. At twenty-seven, the experts told him he was a new strand, or strain, or maybe they said neither, but what they called him now was Schizoaf­fec­tive, which was sup­posed to be better, less severe, than Schiz­o­phrenic, but somehow sounded and felt far worse. At least people knew what a schiz­o­phrenic was, however incor­rect­ly, and he would rather someone have the wrong idea about what he had, or what he was, than have no idea at all. Why was it, he thinks, that when people heard some­thing they hadn’t heard of before it auto­mat­i­cal­ly became some­thing so fucking tragic? 

Before Jimmy knows it, he is in a stranger’s small, dis­in­fec­tant-rich hybrid, scan­ning his board­ing pass and car rental doc­u­ments for the eleventh time. Eleven times check­ing the doc­u­ments, eigh­teen times check­ing his wallet for ID and bank card, twenty-three times for his pre­cious pills (Latuda, Sero­quel, Lithium—blue, purple, pink), seven times for sun­glass­es yet again on his face, and count­less times for the sus­tained exis­tence of his knees, triceps, and top of head. For the driver looking in the rearview, it must’ve looked like a deranged unfor­tu­nate trying to tickle himself for the first time. 

Soon Jimmy sits at the Ter­mi­nal 33 bar with a tall light beer and a double shot of well bourbon in front of his chest. The Masters are on, first round at Augusta, which gives the space a sooth­ing sense of time and place for Jimmy. A sense that life, thank­ful­ly, can only be so many things. This allows Jimmy to take the first deep and real breath he has since he decided to make this trip upon waking today at 3:03 am—always 3:03 am, ever since he was a boy it was 3:03 am, even if he fell asleep at 2:55. At this rabid 3:03 am awak­en­ing, he knew escape was demanded. 

Demand­ed, not wanted. Required, the kind of need that if he didn’t listen to it and get the fuck out of his rented in-law unit sit­u­a­tion for a few days, he would cer­tain­ly kill or be killed, like on a pre­or­dained and ome­nesque level, and for no sane reason he could con­ceive. Kill who or killed by whom? Of this he had no information. 

But Jimmy had learned through many other lives eerily like this one, that if a schizoaf­fec­tive person like himself decided to be prudent and wait for the incom­ing and much-needed further infor­ma­tion, then that person would be waiting until kingdom came and went, until the whole world was high and dry. Nope, not this time, not gonna fool Jimmy like that again. This time the 3:03 am evac­u­a­tion bells rang and Jimmy was willing and able to heed the call, to pack and skedad­dle, to high tail it for dry ground. And what ground was drier than the lit-up, glis­ten­ing desert of Nevada? 

See, Jimmy thinks as he orders his second round of the same, who says a crazy shit like me can’t learn nothing. 

On the flatscreens in front of him, a fit, well-dressed man plucks a small white ball out of a hole dug in some very well-man­i­cured grass to the sound of a quietly clap­ping audi­ence, all nicely dressed and wearing hats of many shapes and sizes to help guard them from the dangers of this gor­geous, camelia rich, sun­drenched tele­vised day in Georgia. 

The last time I saw a non-tele­vised golf club, Jimmy thinks, it was a Big Bertha, and she was slam­ming it across my ribcage as I napped. First sleep in over three days, if I remem­ber right. Pretty sure I do. 

Out of the screen an invis­i­ble man says, “This course can be mean, Jimmy, but it can sure be real nice too!” 

Jimmy springs his hand up toward the bar­tender as if he were back in grade school, in Mrs. Takehashi’s second grade class; he could still smell her raging, exotic breath making the sounds, “Demerit! Deten­tion! For Christ’s sake Jimmy, why can’t you just make it easy on yourself!”

“You need some­thing else there, sweet­heart?” the bar­tender asks.

“Hi, yeah, uh, sorry, but the drinks are great, yes, almost ready for round three, actually.” 

“Okay, but I can’t serve you until you finish what you have, not allowed. Airport bar rules. Lame. If it were up to me, I’d line this whole bar with big beers and shots to the brim and let you boys have at it. But shit, it ain’t up to me. What is, am I right?” 

“Oh, yeah, totally, yes. But it’s not that.” 

“Alright, then what is it?” she asks with a wink. 

“It’s just,” and at this Jimmy kinks his neck, too, through a nerve-addled mimesis, “it’s just, well, I don’t want to sound crazy here, but did you just hear the man in the tele­vi­sion say my name? My name’s Jimmy, by the way.” 

“Aw, is that a cute way of telling me your name, doll?” Upon notic­ing the tense­ness in his eyes, she pivoted, “No, I didn’t hear that, but I wasn’t really lis­ten­ing, either. OMG, are they sending you top secret mes­sages in there? Do they have you on a special fre­quen­cy?” she giggles before turning to the taps. 

A few moments later, Jimmy sees the broad­cast­ers listed on the bottom right portion of the screen, and sure enough, one of them is none other than the great Jimmy Roberts. Not just plain Jimmy, not himself. No, not himself, just plain Jimmy, not the schizoaf­fec­tive guy with a per­fect­ly healthy body and sym­met­ri­cal face, but an unseen mind that half the time needed an indus­tri­al-strength brace to hold it up and the rest of the time needed a mil­i­tary-grade net to hold it down. 

But it is good news, he reminds himself, that Jimmy Roberts is real and the tele­vi­sion is not speak­ing to him, specif­i­cal­ly, at the airport bar on the way to the Golden Nugget. He empties what is in front of him and orders round three, sixty-six minutes until take-off, exactly where he needs to be.

 * 

It is an error to be at the car rental station. Jimmy knows this now and much too late. Why he didn’t know it at 3:17 this morning when he booked the car, he has no clue. But he knows it now, and the four tall beers and four double shots before the two-hour flight (on which he had two more rounds to ease his nerves) are all begin­ning to thicken in him. He should be in an Uber right now, not in line waiting for a car he is slated to drive. He knows he can still back out, buy the ticket and take the rideshare. But he also knows he can’t, because what if his first thought was his best thought and he would need a car, for some reason, during the next two days, days he planned to live com­plete­ly within a casino. 

It might be a trap, the alcohol sug­gest­ed slug­gish­ly. You might need the car. You might need to run. And the other part of him, the part that might remind him his mind itself was the trap, was silent. Frozen in time, bound and ball-gagged in a pad­locked closet back in his child­hood home. 

The closet was always only for short periods of required rep­ri­mand, he reminds himself as he waits in line, lis­ten­ing to the woman at the desk who is two brutal trans­ac­tions in front of him. His times of reflec­tion in the closet, never more than an hour at a time, and always neces­si­tat­ed by his own con­fus­ing behavior. 

Dad’s timer def­i­nite­ly only went up to an hour, Jimmy is think­ing when the woman says, “No, that will not suffice!” and breaks his con­cen­tra­tion. Suffice, the very word his father would use after unlock­ing the door and untying the straps—“I hope that will suffice this time, you crazy sonuvabitch.” So Jimmy feels the hot water begin to roil inside of him as the woman takes her keys, feeling the cer­tain­ty flow that there is absolute­ly, pos­i­tive­ly, a reason this woman said “suffice” as opposed to any of the other 170,000 pos­si­ble English words. In non-coin­ci­den­tal times like this, it felt to Jimmy as if someone were care­ful­ly craft­ing his life. It would be wild if someone wasn’t. 

Before he knows it, he is also taking keys and walking toward a lot lined with cars waiting in soldier for­ma­tion. He looks down to the white tag hanging from the chain that says K33 and remem­bers the Ter­mi­nal number at the bar and the broad­cast­er with his name and suffice suffice suffice to say all the ruckus within is getting to be way too rowdy to even walk, so he pauses and checks his phone for the sixty-first dis­ap­point­ed time. 

She made no promis­es when he left this morning, just hinted at the chance that she might be free to meet up in the after­noon at The Nugget for a drink. Maybe, you know how things go. But if he wanted to fly all the way for that poten­tial­ly really fun “maybe,” well, that was his busi­ness. And it was his busi­ness because he made it his busi­ness. The moment and the energy made it so, and her email after months of ghost­ing, dead air after he finally found someone insane enough to find him worthy of a loving entrance. This “maybe” was enough to con­vince him that he needed to do all the things he had done up until this point, and now the woman’s “suffice” and the 33s, it was all con­firm­ing what he already knew like com­mand­ment fact—every­thing was lining up like a perfect eclipse, except this lack of her text. This gaping hole which widened each time he unlocked his screen and found nothing, an empty icon from the only person he had told about his father’s stern way of han­dling a boy like Jimmy. She was a harsh lover who found Jimmy’s story to be, “Not sur­pris­ing. I’d say about as mean as can be expected.” 

Jimmy, never as sure as now that he was risking obliv­ion in the right direc­tion, sits in his Altima cruis­ing at the exact speed limit down Inter­state 15 (1+5 equal­ing 6, of course, which is two 3s, Jimmy assures himself). He checks his mirrors reg­u­lar­ly, respon­si­bly aware that there are lunatic drivers exiting the strip at any pos­si­ble moment. Mere minutes away from The Golden Nugget, the X marking the spot, Jimmy feels his phone buzzing in his pants pocket and pulls it toward the wheel. There is a 1 inside a red circle at the top right of a blue enve­lope and he is lifted, almost float­ing. But before he can poke the enve­lope, forcing the symbol to reveal the ful­fill­ment of his future, the siren sings out and red lights fill his eyes. There is a voice from a loudspeaker. 

“Please pull over. Pull over to the side of the road.” 

Time is instant­ly sucked out from the Altima’s inte­ri­or like Jimmy sees happen to air in space­ship movies, in that one room where all the prob­lems seem to always happen. The trouble spot in every space­ship where high achiev­ing people get their faces ripped off their sturdy skulls. Jimmy sym­pa­thizes with that room so much as he is being cuffed on the side of the lit­tered highway. He knows how it is to be that room where all the trouble always seems to happen. Jimmy knows in his head and feels in his heart what it’s like to be in that room and to be that room all at once. Knows and feels what it is to have one’s face ripped off and be the one doing the ripping, too. So when the officer asks him if he has had any­thing to drink today for the seventh time, Jimmy finally says, “They say a man takes a drink, the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes the man, officer …” and he laughs at that one like it hurts. 

* 

The bald bail bonds­man looks as if he’d be a pawn shop cashier if he was doing slight­ly worse, a cop if slight­ly better. Best case: sci-fi total­i­tar­i­an dic­ta­tor, Jimmy thinks as he limps into the over-lit office, walls made of adver­tise­ment-laden windows from ceiling to floor. 

“You okay, pal?” the bald man asks. “You look like I did some­thing to you. Ha!” 

“No, sorry. I guess I was just expect­ing a little more privacy is all, but it’s fine. Sorry about my face or whatever.” 

“Ya, not a lot of privacy in the shitbox you just came from, that’s for damn sure.” Behind the bail bondsman’s head is a poster that promis­es no inter­est for the first thirty days, per­son­al­ized ser­vic­ing of the loan, and sat­is­fac­tion guar­an­teed, no ifs, ands, or buts. 

“What was that place?” Jimmy asks without knowing the words were out of his mouth.

“What? Clark County? Yeah, it’s always been a shit­hole, my man, but now it’s too over­crowd­ed, I hear. Under­staffed. Too many bad guys and not enough good guys, I guess. Not that you’re a bad guy, my man. You get it. Shit happens to all of us, no sweat,” as he points at a cres­cent scar just above his right eye. “This one I deserved, chief. But the one on my ass, that one was bull­shit!” as he laughs and pushes a thumb-thick stapled packet of papers at Jimmy. 

“I think my hand might be too shaky to fill this out, I’m afraid,” Jimmy says so sin­cere­ly it makes the bald man wince. 

“Not to worry, pal. You can just tell me the answers and I’ll write ’em down. Had a real tough time in there, huh? First time, I’m guessing?” 

“Yes to both. What is it, why was I? I mean, all I did was look at my cell phone and … they wouldn’t let me leave and more men kept coming in, bigger and louder men. I didn’t even know the rules about the roads and then I’m in there and I don’t know the rules in there and they … they tell me every­one figures it out even­tu­al­ly … they tell me one way or another … and the woman with the rolling trays comes by every few hours and I beg her that I don’t belong here, and she says that’s what every­one says and I cry and beg and she gives me one pill at first then after a day she starts to give me two and what was that place, mister? Why was I there? Will they take me back? They took all my money, the cops, and when they finally let me out they gave me a plastic card and they said all my money was in it, but none of the places around here take the card, and I think I missed my flight back home because … what day is this? I don’t know what day it is and I think I flew on a Thurs­day, first round of the Masters is always on Thurs­day, and I don’t know what she gave me but my hand is so shaky and it put me down like a rhino right away and nothing does that, not to me, I stay up and up but she shot me down with one pill then with two, but what the hell is that place, mister, because I’ve been in drunk tanks plenty of times before and overnight jail cells too. I’ve been 51/50ed and detoxed and IVed and strapped down and special jack­et­ed, all the options and that’s me. But what the hell was that place, mister?” 

“Easy, my man. Take a breath. You’re in good hands here. Sounds like what­ev­er she was doling out in there was pretty nice though, huh? Some of that super Ativan I’ve been hearing guys talk about once they get in here. They say it’s not Ativan anymore; it’s Ati-tank!” 

“What day is it?” Jimmy asks, looking for a cal­en­dar near the desk. 

“Monday morning, Jimmy. Fresh start to a new week. So now, let’s get down to choos­ing the payment plan that will work best for you, cuz Jimmy, I just need to make this part very clear to you, as a friend, cuz I know you’ve had a rough go of things the last few days, but it’s really impor­tant, vital, that you pick the payment plan that you can actu­al­ly make happen. Cuz if you don’t, if you can’t for any reason, and I do mean any reason, then I will need to do what I must to recoup my invest­ment in your… freedom, and Jimmy, this is the real impor­tant part. If you fuck me, I don’t play nice. But if you pay on time, I even toss in a three-day grace period for my favorite cus­tomers like your­self, then I will be your best friend, your biggest ally, until you pay off this small bill for all this free, fresh air. Sound good?” 

Jimmy turns to the left to sneeze and he sees a guy he rec­og­nizes from the shitbox just a few hours before, a married man on vaca­tion with his wife, who was arrest­ed driving his con­vert­ible, wood-paneled PT Cruiser with its Min­neso­ta “Star of the North” plates down the wrong way on the strip while a working woman leaned over his lap, her wig bobbing to the bumps on the divider. 

“Is that it? Any­thing else I need to sign? You’ve been great and all, no offense, but I just need to get out of here, find a room. Any­where take this card I got? Can I cash this thing in? Or am I broke?”

“Half a mile down, thatta way, it gets a little, let’s say it gets a little dif­fer­ent down there than it is here. Less lights, less eyes. Your card’ll get you a room there, no problem. Booze stores will take it too. But buddy, don’t just trust the lock and chain on your door once you get settled in, okay? Push a chair or desk or both in front of that bitch, splurge for a glass bottle for comfort and pro­tec­tion. No cheap plastic shit. Understand?” 

“So this is the nice part?” Jimmy’s eyes want to cry but are out of supply. 

“Guess it likely depends on where you’re sitting, at least that’s the kind of shit my old man used to say. One of these days I’m sure I’ll be able to forget all his bull­shit, but I guess not yet, ha! Say, your old man have any shit-for-brains sayings, Jimmy? Any you can recall? I like hearing that kinda shit.” 

“No, can’t say that I do, mister. Was raised by my mom, never knew the guy.” 

“Maybe that’s for the best then, huh? Old men can be a real pain in the ass if you know what I mean.” 

“Yup, I’ve heard that,” Jimmy says, stand­ing to go. 

“How ’bout your mom though? Just before you split, Jim, did your Ma ever have a good saying or two?” 

Jimmy thinks for a moment, pic­tures his mother’s pale face with her open mouth float­ing in the red bath­wa­ter. “Yeah, mister, actu­al­ly she did. She used to say some­thing like, and forgive me Ma cuz my memory isn’t the great­est lately, but she would say some­thing like, ‘boy, look around, all around and tell me, if this ain’t nice then I don’t know if I could tell you what was.’ And that would always seem to make her feel better, I think.” 

“And you? How about you? How’d it make you feel, Jimbo?” 

“You know how it is with women, mister. Can make you feel like you can do just about anything.” 

* 

“You’re where?” his ex asks. “I’ve lived here almost six months and never heard of … what’s it called?” 

“Thun­der­bird Bou­tique,” he says, too exhaust­ed to make any more excuses for himself. 

“Weren’t you sup­posed to be here last week or some­thing?” she asks loudly, trying to drown out a gruff voice rudely speak­ing into her free ear. 

“Are you with someone?” Jimmy asks. 

“No, no. But if I was, that’s my busi­ness Jimmy, right? We’ve been over this a zillion times.”

“Listen, I don’t really have the energy to get into all of it right now, but I’m here until tomor­row after­noon. So, I was just think­ing maybe you could come down here, keep me some company. I got a big glass jug of Smirnoff, for comfort and safety.” 

“For what?” 

“Forget it. Just, will you? Will you come down for a few hours? I can pay you back for your Uber.” 

“I use Lyft, Jimmy.” 

“Right, well I can pay you back for that too.” 

“I dunno, I mean … how am I sup­posed to trust you now? How am I sup­posed to believe that you are going to be at the Thunder Flowers Motel when I get there? Huh? You left me waiting for you like an idiot, and that after all the pathet­ic begging to see me? I mean, fuck Jimmy, not even a text to tell me you were flaking?” 

“I told you! I tried to tell you! And it’s Thun­der­bird Bou­tique, not that it matters.” 

“Ya, and I tried to tell you! I don’t believe you were in jail for four days because I don’t believe they do that to people like you. Look at your­self, there’s a mirror there, right? People who look like you don’t get treated like you’re saying—you just want some sym­pa­thy, and I get it. It’s been a long time, you need it. You messed up and stood me up, but you’ve had a few days to come up with some Jimmy psycho-bull­shit to make me feel bad for you again, and you think this’ll get me to put some makeup on and drag my ass down there to your shitbag motel where you think you deserve a lap dance or some­thing just for coming up with a tall tale about being locked away with hard­ened crim­i­nals for a weekend. Jesus, Jimmy. And to think I was gonna give you a second chance.” 

The slim phone clicks at him and drops to the ground of its own accord. He looks down to his jug and sees it has a full night left in it, turns on the Golf Channel and hopes to hear the dulcet tones of Jimmy Roberts, his name­sake, recount the world to him and his jug. Or, if not the world, at least the nice parts. 

“A his­toric opening round here for the former cham­pi­on,” Jimmy Roberts says, looking Jimmy dead in the eyes as he sits on the edge of the motel bed. The com­forter is covered in turquoise birds of prey in echelon for­ma­tion, with wings the size of his still-trem­bling out­stretched hand. Focus­ing too intent­ly on their beaks glit­ter­ing with gold, Jimmy’s vision goes blurry for a moment while he admires the flock, same as when he was back inside mem­o­ries at the mall alone as a boy staring at the 3‑D posters until his brain felt like he had ate too much ice cream, at what his Dad liked to call “a break­neck pace,” which meant, of course, that Jimmy had done wrong and needed to stop. 

“Can we expect an equal, or perhaps even a greater per­for­mance from him tomor­row, Jimmy?” the host asks Mr. Roberts, and Jimmy knows Mr. Roberts is going to say yes, knows it like he has seen this live broad­cast before, so Jimmy nods his yes in agree­ment and notices half of himself nodding in the mirror to the right of the tele­vi­sion, which only makes Jimmy’s head nod faster. Up and down as a yes at first, for Mr. Roberts, then even­tu­al­ly slowing down into a left to right motion for every­thing else. 

Bored to death of golf, he goes in to see about the bathtub, check­ing its dimen­sions. He sees that it is unclean, and he sees that this is good. Grab­bing the phone book from the drawer with the Bible, he looks up the last name Perkins, first name James. Because you never know. Finding no such person, he looks under N for noose and K for knives, and that being a lost cause, he looks under S for suf­fo­cate, for schizo, for suffice. Lastly, he grabs for the Gideon, feels its author­i­ta­tive heft which has been build­ing on itself for cen­turies, holding thou­sands of years of people’s honest, measly attempts to make sense out of all the same basic anguish. Carved into the golden side­wall of pages in the hard­back book are tiny dark caves housing strange col­lec­tions of letters such as Hab­bakuk, Obadiah, Zephaniah.

He tries but feels nothing for these names. 

The last thing Jimmy does is head out into the stale wind of Las Vegas Boule­vard where he lights a cig­a­rette and stares at the pink-lit palm tree next to the blue phos­pho­res­cent foun­tain near the drained pool, sadly “closed for the season.” He smokes it down to the nubbin and flicks the filter in the foun­tain before duti­ful­ly taking off his pants, boxers, and shirt. Near the diving board he notices “7ft” and remem­bers how won­der­ful it is that seven is his favorite number, the divine number that has been calling out for him since his child­hood closet. With clothes folded neatly on the ground and glasses safely sat on top of the cotton, Jimmy calmly climbs over the chain link fence, ambles to the diving board, exe­cutes three bois­ter­ous warm-ups on the spring­board and launch­es himself up into the flu­o­res­cent night sky like a rocket, folds his body at the apex so that his fore­head faces the con­crete bottom and wills his brain into the gray pool floor rushing at him from below. 

And Jimmy, finally nearing balance, squirms like an angel out of air, hoping soon, once all this unfor­tu­nate busi­ness is over with, that he will begin to soar away.