The One-Two Punchline

“Something a lot of people don’t know about me is that I was actually meant to be a twin. It’s true, no bullshit, stay with me here, my brother, his name was Davy. It’s true, my parents looked at us as auditions for the world’s most generic name awards, I guess. He ended up dying in the womb though and I never had any brothers or sisters, so it was always me and the parental units, as us robots call them,” Jimmy Lawson flashed a small smile at the remark. “I remember when I was a young boy, I lived with my mother and father. You see, they are divorced now, which is sad, but not surprising given the relationship they had with each other,” he prefaced early.

Things were going well. He did his best at carrying a genuine energy and enthusiasm around the crowd but was not always certain what to do with his hands. Instead of something resembling a composed comedian honing his craft, he imagined he resembled something close to a baby bird flapping its wings and trying to take flight, but not really knowing how to yet.

“I, uh, I can remember a lot about my childhood. I would say my upbringing was normal for the most part, sort of the basic family template, I think. My father was a man’s man and my mother was a very 1950s style woman, you know what I mean? She knew how to cook from scratch, which is, … I don’t even know if I understand what scratch is!”

The comment received a small chuckle from the crowd. Jimmy laughed a little himself. That line had been improvised.

“Do you buy it at the store or, uh, what’s it categorized as? Oh, yes, we have a small container of scratch, bottom shelf, right by the condoms.” The last line had Jimmy doing his best impression of a retail employee on an intercom, but it was met with the sound of crickets.

He let out a nervous laugh, the joke did not have the legs he initially thought it would. He needed to go back on script.

“I love my father very much,” Jimmy smirked, for the crowd’s benefit, then, added: “Now.”

“And he and I have a very good relationship as adults, but, when I was a young kid, I would have sworn to you that he loathed me with an undying passion. It was crazy, it was like I wronged him in a past life. I spilled a drink, and he was ready to come at me with a belt.”

He stopped for a moment, untangling the wire of the microphone from around the stand. The crowd winced when he mentioned the belt. He had to acknowledge that.

“A lot of damn millennials in the crowd tonight,” He jested. “Never had your asses beat by a strap of leather, and, you know what, I know it is not cool to do now, but I never remembered the beatings, so much as I remembered the mean things he said. Physical pain is fleeting, but my father was like a mental assassin when it came to his one liners and insults. The man was an absolute master at it! My mother, on the other hand, I think she may have evened him out a bit. She was kinder and more patient, which, it might surprise you to learn this, but I was the type of child that needed a lot of patience.”

As Jimmy spoke, he admired the many different faces that pointed themselves in his direction. You never really appreciated how ugly everyone was on a universal scale until you were faced with a whole lot of them. Perhaps saying a whole lot was an overstatement though. There could not have been more than eighty people filling The Laugh Track Comedy Club tonight.

“I remember once though, I did do something that upset her a lot and it upset me a lot as well, but for an entirely different reason. I can remember it was the only time in my life that my mother has ever downright insulted me. I was thirteen years old and, as many of the guys here can attest, that is a very special time in a young man’s life.” The laughter of the crowd at the comment brought Jimmy a small chuckle, so he acknowledged them: “Some of you, I see, already have some theories about where this is headed.”

“On the occasions when I used to partake in my one-handed shenanigans, I usually locked the bedroom door. What you need to understand is that our house was very old. Every door took a skeleton key, only problem was, when we bought the house, my bedroom belonged to a toddler, a bitch named Samantha who shoved crayons in the keyhole, so my door was the only one that didn’t lock. It also didn’t click properly, like, you had to wiggle the whole door around for it to latch.”

The shock value of calling a toddler a bitch always drew a response from the crowd, this time was no different.

“I prided myself on my ability to know whenever anyone was nearby, like I had enhanced hearing, like the world’s lamest superhero. But, one day, my father was at work and my mother was out shopping, so, you know, I figured I would make a day of it. Light some candles, set out some roses, steal one of my dad’s porno mags, you know, the works! I sprawled myself over my bed, legs spread eagle like, uh, well, like an eagle. My jeans, my boxers, even my shirt, all of it was strewn around my bedroom, I was into it, man. Then, I heard someone open the front door.”

“Needless to say, I was terrified. I stood up to my feet, tally whacker flapping around in the breeze, I ran over to the door as fast as I could, and I slammed the motherfucker shut! But then, something happened. Something happened I could not have imagined in my worst nightmares. I slammed it hard, but it did not latch. Instead, it ricocheted off the hinge and came hurling back, and, I don’t know if it was the way I was standing, but my foot was lodged underneath the door! I am not fucking around, the bottom of the door literally had itself splintered into my foot, and I cried bloody murder when it happened. So, of course, when Mom comes running, drops her groceries, ‘oh dear, oh dear, my baby boy!’, and there I am. Naked. My foot is stuck under the door. Bloodshot eyes. I am crying like a baby. And, I have a boner. My Mom sees me in my predicament, laughs and says, ‘clearly your brother had the brains of the operation’.”

“Thank you so much, Marybeth! You have been wonderful.” The crowd was at an uproar. At least, about as much of an uproar as a small audience could muster. It was not bad. It certainly could have been worse, Jimmy thought, remembering all the hecklers he had encountered over the years.

Jimmy smiled and waved them all off as he disappeared behind the curtain. The next guy’s set would start now.

2.

Jimmy sat on a stall before the bartender, holding the glass bottle of scotch in his hand. Every now and again, a man or a woman would stop by and sing his praises, for which, he appreciated. So little did their compliments ever result in a sale of a CD or anything beyond the fleeting ego boost, but he was happy they had a good night out and he contributed to it.

When someone tried to start a conversation, he politely shushes them, extending out his index finger and pointing at the stage. This was the young man’s first night doing standup, which meant he wanted to be a supportive set of eyes if he happened upon him watching.

That was more than anyone else did for him when he started out five years back and the crowds did not know to consider things like that, spinning yarns of their own amid someone’s set and heckling, trying to make themselves part of the act.

Jimmy brought the alcohol to his lips and watched the young man; he was not too bad, a little rough around the edges, at worst.

Some of his jokes landed, some of them didn’t, but what was important was that he kept moving forward and didn’t lose momentum.

If you lucked out, a person would leave a show thinking it was their own fault they didn’t get a joke, because you didn’t stop to let the crickets chirp or allow any tomatoes to be hurled in your direction.

The young man’s name was Dalton Collier, a handsome boy who must have been fresh out of high school. His delivery was the antithesis to Jimmy’s. Jimmy’s act was all about enthusiasm and high energy, that way, even if a joke didn’t land, the audience might still be entertained by a wacky character. That was not Dalton’s shtick at all. Dalton was the slow burn, bombshell dropping, one liner type, saying his words with careful precision.

Jimmy watched on and smiled. He could remember when he first stepped in front of a crowd.

The crowd laughed in unison; Jimmy had been too lost in his own thoughts to catch the punchline he had said.

Dalton Collier was certainly a lot less nervous than he had been his first time around. Maybe that is why Jimmy had been earlier on the lineup, maybe this kid had already lapped him in the club owner’s eyes?

Jimmy shook his head and laughed at himself for the thought. It was his own insecurity clouting his judgment. The club owner had him set ahead of Dalton for the exact opposite reason, because he needed someone to break the ice with the crowd. The club owner, a chubby guy named Paul, had already said as much to him earlier in the day.

The crowd burst out again, offering Dalton Collier a near-unanimous ovation for his act, Jimmy even heard a few whistles from some of the females in attendance.

Come to think of it, Jimmy could not remember a time they were ever that loud for him at The Laugh Track. He sighed and laughed at himself again. The night had gone without out a hitch, and, here he was, trying to ruin it for a dumb, imaginary reason.

As Dalton took a bow and delivered his final comment, Jimmy made certain to stand up from his bar stool and clap as Dalton disappeared behind the curtain.

The Laugh Track was not exactly the hottest night club throughout Urgway, but it met adequate standards and was safe. Or, as safe as you could come by in Urgway, a city where you could not walk the streets at night without at least having a fair chance at being robbed by a tweaker wielding half a pair of rusty scissors.

The pay was next to nothing, unless you were one of the headliners, a select group of men that ran the scene of Urgway’s comedy circuit. They are the ones on the marquee, and they are the ones that step out from the clubs and are brought into actual theaters to do their acts in front of thousands of people. That was the dream, and Jimmy would be there soon enough.

It was all about friendships in the greater Maharris, who you knew and how high up the food chain they were. Politicking and networking were key to showbiz, and, after scraping and crawling, Jimmy had more than a handful of important numbers in his contact list acquired over the years. It would be only a matter of time until he would call on the favors and ascend the hierarchy.

The rain was coming down hard when Jimmy stepped outside. He gripped and tugged at the flaps of his leather jacket and hugged himself with them. The puddles of water and sewage drains brought in a smell vaguely of the sea, Jimmy liked it even though he knew most likely would not.

As fate would have it, the man of the hour, Dalton Collier was standing in the alleyway as well. Jimmy’s boots splashed in the rainwater as he neared Dalton, alerting him of his presence. Initially surprised, Dalton smiled from ear to ear when they made eye contact.

“Did you see it out there!?”

“I did, I did,” Jimmy remarked, nodding his head as droplets of rain ran down his cheeks. “You did fantastic, buddy. Congratulations, you are a star! How does it feel?”

Dalton smirked, “I know I have a long way until I am anyone special. Everyone knows you here, you are like a character at The Laugh Track, everyone has their favorite Jimmy Lawson story, you know? But, man, it was such a rush! Getting the chance to play off an actual crowd, hearing feedback in real time like that?”

Dalton’s way of speaking and his demeanor was a lot different than how he showed himself when he was on stage. In front of the crowd, he was subdued and aloof, but Dalton was a boy pursuing his dreams, carrying giddiness and healthy excitability. Jimmy could remember when he used to be excited like that.

Jimmy chuckled, “I have been at it a wink, but you will be at where I am before you know it, believe me. Take in the climb!”

Jimmy winked, a quirk that likely went unnoticed because of the rain. Then, he bowed his head and continued.

“Hey, where are you going!?” Dalton yelled from only a few feet away from him.

“Home,” Jimmy answered coolly. “I have a lot of celebrating to do, another great night coming to an end.”

Dalton smiled, awestruck as Jimmy turned his back to him, and, for a moment, Jimmy figured that would be the end of it. Instead, he heard another yell, “Hey, wait!”

Jimmy looked at him again.

“Did you really get your foot stuck under a door?”

Jimmy laughed and shrugged, “You are not ready for the inside dirt just yet, Dalton. Have a good night.”

3.

Saint Bazaar was a franchise-owned supermarket with chains found throughout all Maharris. For the most part, it was a simple, straightforward store, carrying groceries, clothing, and any other thing you could imagine, things Jimmy would not have been able to identify the purpose for, let alone the brand.

The most peculiar aspect about Saint Bazaar was its name, derived from an archaic word for a large shop and a religious claim. The restaurant’s logo even had a bright yellow halo over the words, and it seemed blissfully unaware in the irony of calling itself holy and bankrupting thousands of mom-and-pop stores over the years. Then again, maybe you became closer to God when you destroyed things, either that, or merely more like him.

The overnight shift was not bad; that was Jimmy’s experience, at least. It offered a laid back, quieter day to day, and offered him a schedule that went well with the other interests he had.

He exchanged pleasantries with his coworkers, as he always did, and eventually became saddled in with the day’s tasks. The store was so often a mess, and on days when they were not up to their eyeballs in freight that needed stocked, that meant they needed to zone up the store. For the uninitiated, a zone was a fancy pants term for a very straightforward objective. When items sell, the other items on the shelves needed to be realigned and moved forward.

“I was thinking, maybe you need some type of gimmick,” Darren said.

They had been adjusting aisles together for a couple hours now, but, honestly, Jimmy had become so caught up in his thoughts he had completely forgotten he was zoning the opposite aisle as someone else.

“What am I, a prop comic? Maybe I will start doing magic tricks in between lines, see how that works out,” Jimmy jested, nearly shattering a jar of pickles while he did.

Thankfully, for some reason, it was embedded in his mind to punt anything he dropped, like he was an action figure having his button pressed, and, because of that, he caught the jar in between an aisle shelf and his legs.

“Maybe you could start playing a character, become like Detective Cleanup,” Darren replied with a shit eating grin on his face.

Saint Bazaar had online training courses every employee had to complete. First, during orientation, and then, routinely throughout the year. If you had ever attended high school and saw a student do a speech with a projector where they uncomfortably regurgitated the information they ripped from the internet, that is about what you could expect during some of the videos they were forced to watch. Some videos, however, had a reoccurring character, a very goofy, cringe-inducing character named Detective Cleanup.

With a sepia filter and generic western music, Detective Cleanup dons a brown smock and a cowboy hat, lurking the outskirts of the aisle ways. On some occasions, however, it is time for action! The pudgy Saint Bazaar employee has discovered a spill! As the music becomes more dramatic, zooming in on his squinting eyes and his hand, he withdraws his weapon of choice – a gaudy handheld terminal used for scanning items in the store.

Jimmy laughed as he recollected the man and his ham fist, over the top performance, “That will put asses in seats.”

“I would watch it,” Darren assured. “Joking or not, you remember him. That is the thing, whether it was funny or not, if you are remembered, that only helps your chances to be remembered when it counts.”

Jimmy said nothing in response to him. It was not the worst of ideas, but, if he had the choice, he wanted to succeed on his own merits, no silly gimmicks or tricks, only from what came naturally within him.

As they continued, Jimmy saw a customer enter at the other side of the aisle. A feeling of white-hot warmth pierced his chest as he recognized him – it was Dalton, laughing as he and a few blurry, unfamiliar faces chatted amongst themselves.

Jimmy bowed his head down and continued working without saying a word. He was not certain why he cared as much as he did.

Most of his friends at The Laugh Track already knew he worked at Saint Bazaar. That was not exactly breaking news. Everyone worked somewhere when the night club shenanigans ended, unless they were a headliner. That was how life worked, and yet, as Dalton’s voice became louder, Jimmy’s anxiety worsened.

Eventually, he did the only thing he could think to do. He stood to his feet and turned his back to him, walking out from the aisle and venturing somewhere else in the store.

4.

As some people might attest, the night shift can lead to an awful day’s sleep. The human body is not meant to function this way and it is easy to tell as much.

Jimmy crawled in bed after an uneventful day’s work, the adrenaline of last night’s performance long since expired. He fought the sunlight by folding his pillow into the shape of a taco shell around his head and tried his best to enter dreamland.

Sleeping was such a strange concept, the way you entered sleep by laying in your bed and staying still, doing your best impression of someone asleep, like you were trying to fool the sandman into believing it a reality.

Jimmy did not have the same problem a lot of adults had when it came to adjusting to the graveyard shift. This might have been for several different reasons, but he slept well. He slept well almost always.

As he laid down in his bed, he felt exhausted. Performing at The Laugh Track and working a full shift, his body felt ready to rest. He shut his eyes and slept.

* * *

In a dead sleep, Jimmy awoke; confused and with heavy eyelids. This had happened a few times in his life, and when he did, he knew exactly why. He looked over to the small, plastic container on his dresser.

Since he was a small child, he had grown accustomed to dreamless sleeps, of closing his eyes at day’s end and opening them to start the next, all in what felt like a blink. This had to do with the medication he took, which knocked his happy ass out. Jimmy suffered from auditory hallucinations when his medicine was not in effect.

It was not a psychosis. It was not schizophrenia. It was merely a glitch in the system, a small quirk that Jimmy was not at all concerned with. Even the doctors did not know exactly what to make of it.

The sounds were muffled and nonsensical. It was not anything crazy, like his inner madman telling him to go on a rampage, but something closer to a grinding sound that brought a warmth to his throat.

Jimmy rested in bed, staring up at the ceiling. It was too late to take his medicine now, if he did, it would only make him drowsy for the rest of his day. Instead, all he could do was stare at the ceiling fan as it spun around, around, and around, while he waited for the grinding sound in his head to run its course.

5.

Something no one tells you about show business and superstardom is that it is difficult to attain. It was not by coincidence that every actor on television and every musician you will see dancing around on stage is photogenic and larger than life. This was by design. And, unless you come from fame or fortune, it is almost impossible to capture the zeitgeist.

Maybe it had something to do with momentum, like a snowball effect that saw objects compiling atop one another into something larger. Jimmy didn’t have any insights other than his own speculation

The next couple of months played out a lot like the last, which, in turn, played out a lot like the moths before that. All of it was a grind. Every day at work, coming home sore from lifting fifty-pound bags of dog food, and then, on occasion, his routine appearance at The Laugh Track. This was life, he supposed.

One thing had changed, for the better, however. He had begun dating a woman named Elvira Harkey. She had a big heart, which managed to wedge itself into her petite figure. Her skin was pale, and her face was small, with a small nose and a small mouth, met with big brown eyes. She had a tattoo on her chest of an emerald dragon, with fiery breath that traveled all the way up to her neck. Jimmy had never been of neck tattoos, and when she wore a shirt, the dragon was hidden, so it looked like her tits had caught fire. However, he liked Elvira despite that. In fact, he liked her an awful lot.

Jimmy bowed to the crowd and waved at them, recognizing their reaction as a sign of a job well accomplished. As he walked behind the curtain and went down the steps, leading straight to the bar, Elvira was still clapping and laughing as he saw her. The adrenaline still coursed through him, and so, he did not even mind that the laughter had lasted too long to be sincere.

“My comedian,” Elvira replied, offering a toothy grin.

Jimmy feigned a curtsy and had a seat beside her, snatching the glass of bear at the table and taking a small sip as the perspiration soaked his hands. “Did you happen to see what David Nix thought of it, did he laugh or say anything about it?” Jimmy asked in a small whisper, peeking over Elvira’s shoulder as though he expected David to look back at him and give him a thumbs up or thumbs down for the fact.

He did not, unfortunately.

“I, uh, was not watching for him, hon,” Elvira answered with a befuddled expression. “Who is David Nix?”

“Nobody,” Jimmy mumbled, then, repeated it again, “Nobody.”

That was not the truth, however. David Nix was, in fact, somebody somebody. Mr. Nix was a talent scout in the Maharris comedy circuit. A former headman in a traveling troupe in Acera called the Magnets, David Nix was a well-respected funnyman with a lot of weight in the industry.

The warmth filled Jimmy’s chest now. He had not known David Nix would be here, only discovering him after his performance. If he had, he would have brought his best material. If he had, who knows if he would even have had the courage to perform.

David Nix stood up, smiling at a woman, his wife, maybe, before he kissed her on the cheek and walked toward the stage.

“Nix!”

Even if Elvira might not have recognized him, it seemed many regulars in the crowd certainly did, offering him claps and hollers as he brushed past them.

David took the stage and waved at the crowd. He wore an expensive black suit, and his hair was short, with facial hair that felt meticulously maintained. He was a car cry from the David Nix of the nineties, whose hair was long and unkempt, and whose mouth was every bit as unpredictable. As corporate as he came across, his black suit could not disguise what Jimmy knew, his signature tattoo of a whoopee cushion on his left bicep.

“Thank you,” David Nix said. “Once upon a time, I would do a cartwheel on the stage and yell obscenities like a buffoon. Now, if I tried to do a cartwheel on the stage, I would never get back up again, but still be left yelling obscenities like a buffoon.”

Polite laughter followed.

“Times have changed and my days as a buffoon yelling obscenities have come and went.”

The boos from the crowd showed they disagreed.

“Now, now, don’t you worry about me. I will remain very rich. The reason I am here is because I have decided to dedicate the next chapter of my life to finding the next line of buffoons to yell obscenities at you. There is a lot of buffoons in Urgway and there are a lot of buffoons right here in Marybeth. Tonight, I am happy to sign one of your finest to a contract that will see their buffoonery taken to the next level, yelling obscenities worldwide!”

Jimmy felt a warmth in his chest. His hands were rattling like maracas, and it felt like his anxiety was cutting off the oxygen to his brain.

“Rabies and germs, you know him, you love him, put your hands together for Dalton Collier!” David Nix exclaimed with cranked up gusto.

Jimmy’s heart felt as though it sank to the bottom of his stomach. And yet, as the red-hot heat engulfed his entire body, he clapped and cheered when Dalton made his way to the stage. Elvira was clapping as well. She looked at him with an oblivious grin. Jimmy wondered if his eyes looked as watery as they felt.

Dalton Collier shook David Nix’s hand and did a half-hug before he grabbed the microphone off the stand.

“I wonder how it feels for all of you at The Laugh Track. Some of you have appeared and performed for years, biding your time, scraping and crawling in a desperate attempt at what I have accomplished in months.” Dalton flashed a sly smile.

He was in character.

“Some people might think it is unfair, but I can’t help it. I did not ask for this. People stop me on the street, they tell me I should be in movies. Children walk by those people on the street and hear me speak, they say they wish I could read read them stories before bed at night, instead of their shitty old Dads. I did not ask to be a prodigy! Oh, my pain!” Dalton deadpanned the speech.

“Maybe I should be humbler. Someone humbler might thank everyone at The Laugh Track who has nourished me and build me up, like Jimmy, thank you, Jimmy. You have done wonders for my career, and while I am raking in millions of dollars, banging hot chicks, I will think about you, getting your foot caught under the door at this wannabe bingo hall. Have a great night everyone, thanks for coming!”

The crowd was livelier than they had been for the entire night, hooting like a bunch of owls. Jimmy did his best to join them, even if he did not necessarily feel like celebrating now.

6.

It was his own stupidity that upset him. Why had he allowed himself to thin, even for a second, that David Nix might say his name on stage? He said he had signed a comedian, which meant, surely, he would have contacted him in some way beforehand.

It was the excitement in the air, the way the oxygen depleted from his head, that made him susceptible to his own delusions of grandeur.

Jimmy felt so tired and downtrodden, so worn and defeated. Elvira slept in the bedroom.

He called out from work and was now busily scribbling down ideas and one liners in his notebook. All of them were terrible. They were fucking terrible, as a matter of fact. Trash. All of them. Fucking trash.

He rubbed away the knots forming on the back of his neck and sighed. All he had ever wanted was to be an entertainer. His life had been built around achieving that singular objective. Performing offered him an escape of life – the healthiest, least messy form of suicide there was – at least, temporarily. He had failed as a person in all other fields in the meantime. What did he have to show for it when all was said and settled.

He slid beneath the blanket covers beside Elvira, the light from his cellphone shined off his face like a little boy telling ghost stories at a campfire. As he wound down, his head rested against the pillow, and he shut his eyes from a day that he could not wait to forget.

* * *

“Jimmy!”

Jimmy could hear the voice calling from afar, but he could not yet fathom the meaning of it.

“Jimmy!” The voice yelled again, and, this time, Jimmy opened his eyes, seeing Elvira staring back at him with a look of panic painted on her face.

Elvira did not have to say a word to him, and yet, for some reason, Jimmy felt confident he knew what had happened. His eyes went over to his dresser drawer, another day, another night of forgetting to take his medicine.

“I’m sorry, it’s …, sometimes I mutter in my sleep,” Jimmy answered dreamily, sitting up from the bed. “It is a side effect for when I don’t take my medicine before bed.”

“It was very weird,” Her eyes made it seem like she remained spooked by it.

Jimmy shrugged his shoulders, “You knew what you were getting into.”

“Oh, it’s fine, don’t worry, it’s just,” She stopped for a moment.

“What is it?”

She shook her head and laughed at herself, “It just sounded like you were both snoring and mumbling at the same time, … isn’t that crazy?”

7.

“And, that kid has only been a comedian for, what, like a week?” Darren asked, offering what sounded like he was sincerely offended on Jimmy’s behalf.

“That goes over, … there,” Jimmy said, pointing his finger at a specific brand of vacuum cleaners that Darren had not yet been able to find. “It has not been a week, but, yeah, he has only been performing, from what I can tell, a couple of months, at best.”

“Is he, like, really good or something?” Darren said, stuffing a vacuum cleaner box somewhere that only barely fit with the way the shelves had been arranged.

“I would not say he is the best, but he is not horrible or anything, about on par with a lot of comedians with his level of experience, certainly not among the best at The Laugh Track or any of the other nightclubs in Marybeth.”

“Because that would be you,” Darren affirmed, offering a smirk.

As far as Jimmy could tell, he had meant it as a genuine, although playful compliment. Jimmy smiled on impulse, but it had initially hit him in a different way. As though it suggested his own arrogance for thinking he was deserving of such recognition.

As they finished their pallet of housewares freight, Jimmy took the reins on the empty skid, lifting it with his pallet jack and progressing toward the front of the store. As he backed up and maneuvered his way through the aisle to keep from knocking anything over, he turned back around again and saw Dalton Collier looking back at him, alongside a group of people Jimmy did not recognize.

“Jimmy,” Dalton said firmly.

There would be no escaping him, it seemed.

“Hey, buddy, how’s it going?” Jimmy said back, offering a grin that was so phony it might as well have been painted on.

“Things have been really great, Jimmy. Meeting David Nix has been a real dream come true, and, in a couple days, I will be joining a tour bus that will be traveling across Maharris.”

Dalton’s enthusiasm seemed subdued in some way, like he was toning it down to keep from sounding like a braggart.

“Yeah, that’s, uh,” Jimmy rubbed the back of his neck, feeling around like he thought he would find the rest of his sentence back there. “That’s great, really.”

“I stopped by to thank you for all the help you have given me and all the support, it meant more to me than you could ever know. I also wanted to see if you wanted to grab a bite to eat with me before I leave. There’s, uh, restaurant called Buddy’s Diner I really like. It isn’t exactly Ollie’s Abil or that type of fancy food, but it is a nice stop for a bite.”

Jimmy stayed quiet for a couple of seconds, traversing his own emotions in favor of rational thinking. Here he was, a friend to Dalton, who was not acting like one, because his own sour grapes. Jimmy’s face loosened from a taut frown to a weak smile, “That sounds great, Dalton. Just tell me when.”

8.

Elvira slept in her own bed tonight, or to …, this morning, the sleeping schedule of someone on the graveyard shift was hard to predict.

Jimmy expected as much by how freaked out she seemed yesterday. It was something that would be an adjustment, he supposed, and he would have to be more certain to take his medication from now on, no more forgetting about it.

He could not say he blamed her, from what she said, it had been a very odd predicament to say the least. Jimmy’s situation was no doubt peculiar, and he could not pretend he understood the gist of it.

Jimmy smiled in front of the mirror as he adjusted the collar of his buttoned-up shirt.

“Reflection perfection,” Jimmy jested aloud, and smiled, but, as the words left him, he was confused when he found his lips had not moved.

Surely, it was a trick of the mind. He supposed he had not been watching his mouth with intent, after all.

He said it again: “Reflection perfection.”

His lips moved. Plain and simple, case closed. Maybe he hadn’t even said it aloud the first time, after all, maybe he had only thought about it.

He walked out from his bedroom and into the living room. It was a small one-bedroom apartment, about all his paychecks were worth. He stepped outside and walked down the hallway, eyeballing the ugly, puke-green carpet the landlord had decided to line it with.

His car was not bad. It was a decade-old sedan with a dulled blue paintjob. It may have had a lot of mileage on it, but it ran well enough. Never once had it broken down on him and it did not have any unidentified squawks to speak of.

Jimmy was familiar with Buddy’s Diner. The establishment was quaint and understated, with all the charm and homeliness you would expect from your grandma’s house (without the smell of cigarette smoke and racism).

The food was not fast nor was it the type of restaurant cuisine Jimmy was accustomed to. They went the home cooked meal route, mashed potatoes, macaroni, stuffing, steamed broccoli, that kind of stuff. Jimmy would be more than happy to stay in his comfort zone and order a cheeseburger with a side of fries and a soda.

An older woman, barely five feet tall, stared back at him. Her black hair was pulled back in a ponytail and her face told the storied history of someone who was very much not in the mood to be serving him. Jimmy smiled at her, and offered a friendly greeting, which the woman forced enthusiasm for.

“Dining by yourself today?” The woman asked, looking around the restaurant for a proper seating arrangement.

“A friend of mine will be joining shortly,” Jimmy began, standing on his tiptoes, looking around at the tables as well. “But I don’t believe he is here yet.”

The woman nodded her head knowingly and then handed him a menu and went to tend toward a table of customers, doing a wavy hand-gesture that Jimmy took to mean as sit wherever you want.

It was lunchtime, which explained why she was as busy as she was. The close-quarters arrangement of tables did not help remedy the feeling of claustrophobia the restaurant created when it was too encumbered with customers. Jimmy did as he believed he was told, having a seat in a corner table with a window view of the main road outside.

He spent a short time staring out the window like a puppy dog waiting for his owner to arrive, til its tedium became too much for him to deal with.

Instead, his eyes began surveying the lunch menu, unnecessarily skimming his fingers across each individual lunch item, despite the fact he had no interest in changing his preferences.

Once that became too became tiresome, Jimmy fidgeted with some of the salt packets on the table, making them intermingle with the plastic jelly containers. Oh, look at you, ketchup and mayonnaise bottles, eyeballing each other from across the dance floor, both too afraid to make the first move.

Thereafter, the excitement of playing with condiments soon dulled as well, and Jimmy was left with no other option than to acknowledge the situation – Dalton had not yet arrived.

And, as minutes collected to form a half hour, with no messages or missed calls on Jimmy’s phone to speak of, Jimmy had to wonder if that was by design.

He dialed Dalton’s number and waited, after a few rings, it went to voicemail, and Jimmy’s ears were met with Dalton’s prerecorded voice telling him to call again later.

Jimmy sighed.

Why was Dalton nowhere to be found? Surely, Dalton would have a logical explanation for standing him up for lunch? That was the rational side of Jimmy’s thinking, but, on this occasion, that was not the side of him that won out.

His anger pulsated. His throat burned with intensity. Dalton had played him. But, for how long had he been doing so? Could it have been a con from the very beginning? Jimmy shook his head, leaving the diner behind him.

Dalton was a dick, but that did not mean there was a grand conspiracy against him. As he stepped outside, he tried his best to calm down. It was not worth it, and he was not worth it. Besides, it was not like Dalton would ever be in his life ever again.

Jimmy thought about that for a moment. He may not have been in his life, but he might be on his television screen. He might be on the marquee of major theaters he drove by, if David Nix was able to bring him to the top as he claimed.

He walked over to his vehicle and sighed again, a large pickup truck had done him a disservice and wedged itself in between Jimmy’s vehicle and someone else’s, although it left barely any room at all for Jimmy to squeeze himself in on the driver’s side door.

“Goddammit,” Jimmy mumbled beneath his breath, shaking his head in disbelief.

He ventured over to the passenger’s side door, figuring he would simply crawl to the driver’s side. However, as he opened the door, something stopped him. He closed the door and went back to the driver’s side, “It isn’t my fault. I shouldn’t have to!”

Jimmy yanked his driver’s door open, banging a considerable dent into the side of the person’s truck. It would be a tight fit, but he would be able to squeeze his way in.

“Hey, what the hell, man!?” A gravelly man’s voice yelled out.

Jimmy looked over to him, gritting his teeth uncomfortably. “I, …,” Jimmy stayed quiet.

“Who do you think you are? A real Billy bad ass, aren’t you?” The man walked over to him.

He was a large man with a worn dark-green hat and a white shirt that his belly hung out from.

Jimmy felt like a deer caught in the headlights. He gritted his teeth some more, waiting for inspiration to strike.

“Oh, it is not like anyone would even notice the dent, given all the other bumps and scratches on this pile of junk. Why don’t you park better if you don’t want this kind of shit to happen?” A voice said.

It was not Jimmy’s voice, however. Even if it might have been projected from his body and even if it might have come out from his mouth, that was not Jimmy who spoke.

The man gawked at him and rolled his eyes, but underneath that, Jimmy was able to read the perplexity in his disposition. It was because, he, too, knew what Jimmy knew – that Jimmy had not spoken, but a voice came out of him, nevertheless.

With a lost expression, Jimmy said nothing to negate the verbal onslaught. Instead, the burly man turned his broad shoulders away from him and walked back toward Buddy’s Diner, deciding the conflict was not worth pursuing further.

Jimmy, on the other hand, could not walk away from the talker’s words. He was brought to a standstill by his own fear, petrified with no idea of how to continue forward.

After a moment that felt longer than it was, he entered his car, gingerly forcing himself inside, being careful not to further damage the truck driver’s vehicle.

He met eyes with the rear-view mirror, and kept his eyes locked on his reflection.

Nothing happened.

He had expected something, anything, to clarify whether he was out of his mind or not. Like an involuntary flicker of an eye, he wanted some type of response from his inner madman. He propped himself up in his chair, so that his mouth showed in the mirror.

He watched his lips, snarling and smiling, and grinning and frowning, trying to drum up some type of reaction. Nothing came up, however. Jimmy dropped his head against his steering wheel.

9.

Jimmy had stuffed yesterday’s “incident’ in the back of his mind the best he could. For all he knew, it could have been nothing except confusion on his part. Maybe he had, in fact, said something to the trucker without realizing it. After Dalton’s betrayal, he was angry and frustrated, and it made sense that he might try to instigate a physical confrontation as a result.

For the most part, it was another day at the office, and, by office, he, of course, meant the entire supermarket. The freight to run was light and doable, and they had enough crew members on their shift that they would not run into too much conflict. This was a stark departure from the usual skeleton crew they had become accustomed to.

Jimmy started his day off by running several pallets of housewares. Most of them went up fast; ones comprise mostly of plastic totes or microwaves were straightforward and easy enough. Others were more time consuming. The pallets of nothing but candles and lamps that had been mummified with plastic wrap before delivery by the vendors made for a longer, more extensive commitment. The worst was when you found a box that had already been opened prior, only to discover a shattered jar of “lavender medley” that a prior shift had left as a little surprise for them.

That stood no match against him tonight though, and they, like the rest, were dealt away with, leaving him with nothing to do except wander the store in search of his next task.

This was one of the more peaceful moments on his shift, one of the moments that did not happen very often. All the nights when time was of the essence, and, here he was able, able to walk around one side of the store to the next, then, once that was accomplished, if he wanted to, he was free to do it again.

No doubt, if he looked hard enough, he would be able to find one thing or another to do, but his tasks had been completed and he was, thereby, in no one’s debt. “Hey, Jim, want to help me spruce up cereal?”

Unfortunately, his manager Joe believed otherwise.

“Sure,” Jimmy replied, joining him in the aisle with a feigned smile in spite of his own misfortune.

“I tell you what, Mr. Jim, we don’t get many days like this, I tell you that much,” Joe explained to him.

Joe was a nice guy. He was an older gentleman, but not yet too far over the hill, with a bald head and the quirk of calling Jimmy ‘Mr. Jim’.

“It is a nice change of pace,” Jimmy agreed, not really knowing what else to say about it. “Did you that White Fox match Tuesday?”

“Yeah, I did. It was not a bad match. I don’t like the White Foxes though, no, not one bit, a bunch of whiny types, and I mean, come on, it’s soccer, man up, you know?” Joe explained.

The one shortcoming Joe may have had was that he tended to participate in full body conversation. As in, when he talked, he did nothing productive while he talked.

Jimmy smiled and nodded in response to him. In truth, he, himself, had not seen the White Foxes match nor had he seen any match in the last five years, for that matter. But he knew Joe was a sports fan and took the ball and ran with it.

“You know that Greg Palmer, that is a strong guy, you know about Greg Palmer? The man broke his ankle in three different places and still made it in the very next season. I tell you what, in a game where footwork is as important as it is in soccer, they should double his points for every score the man is able to land,” Joe said, and, as he spoke, Jimmy could not help but notice he was once more refraining from the task he was supposed to be ‘helping him with’.

Jimmy let it be and turned his back to Joe as he continued organizing the cereal boxes on the shelves.

“Maybe you should stop talking and get your ass back to work!” A voice commanded.

Jimmy rested his head down against a box of corn flakes, knowing he had not said it, but also feeling the warmth in his throat.

“Sir, I am so sorry about that,” Jimmy replied shortly after, looking over to Joe, expecting the worst.

Joe looked at him with an awestruck expression, but it was not entirely clear to Jimmy where that expression landed. Then, Joe became serious for a second, speaking with a somber cadence in his inflection, “Is it because of what I said about the White Foxes?”

10.

Jimmy’s manager Joe was not thrilled about the outburst, but it was not entirely clear what repercussions would ensue for it. Joe was called away from the aisle to assist with a matter upfront at the registers, and once Jimmy finished straightening everything up in the cereal section, he hightailed it out from the store.

Jimmy returned home after work and did only what he could think to do. He took his medication and slept away the day’s sorrows and misfortunes. When Jimmy left his bedroom and turned on the bathroom light, his eyes stared at the reflection that looked back at him. His eyes looked tired, and his eyelids sagged. His medication made for certain he slept, but his body remained fatigued, and his mind felt exhausted.

No matter how badly he may have wanted it, no explanation came for his outbursts or how he felt, the carrot dangling forever out of his reach.

Jimmy shook his head at the mirror in frustration, resisting the urge to club the reflection’s ugly mug with his forearm.

* * *

Jimmy had not shared anything with Elvira about his situation. He had not said anything about Dalton’s betrayal or how he might be unemployed soon. And yet, Elvira had not needed any of that information to know something was bothering him. Some people were simply intuitive like that.

Her living arrangement was better than his, she had a house she owned, not an apartment she ranted, and she had an actual yard and a finished garage. She was an orthopedic doctor, a profession that Jimmy did not necessarily know the ins and outs about. However, because of the inclusion of the word “doctor,” Jimmy knew she could have snagged someone better than a stock person slash wannabe comedian.

Jimmy smiled as she peered at him from her kitchen; upbeat instrumental music played from a small radio on her counter. He leaned back on her couch and innocently surveyed every knickknack and souvenir that decorated her bookshelves.

The television blared on about something or another, a godawful crime-comedy about a halfwit police officer that accidentally stumbles into evidence and clues. Even more than usual, it entertained nothing more than itself.

Maybe all of it was in Jimmy’s head. If he was willing to accept what was now being presented to him as the truth, then why should his own perception not be a subject of debate? Clearly, it did not appear to have the most stable legs for the real world.

The question did not sit well with him. It was easy to judge someone else or make declarative statements about someone’s state of mind, but he was the one on the wrong side of the trigger now, and that was not an easy thing to be.

Again, he smiled at Elvira as her head bobbed out from the kitchen doorway.

“It smells great, sweetheart!” Jimmy complimented, and it did smell great. That was not a lie. Elvira had always been a good cook.

She was not exactly making Beef Wellington, but it was the classics – an assortment of pork chops, macaroni, corn, and green beans. It was a meal fit for a modest king and Jimmy could not have been more grateful when she brought him a plate of food.

As they both sat on the couch and enjoyed their meal, Jimmy made the mistake of letting a sign escape him. After having nearly cleaned his plate, it was by no means a criticism of the meal, but a slip up he failed to contain.

“Something is bothering you,” She said. It was the second time she had seen, but, this time, she was not framing it as a question.

“Is it that obvious?” Jimmy asked, but he had little energy behind his words. It was an empty sentence with no soul to it, and no real intent other than to stall until he could think of a way to change the subject.

“What’s the matter, big guy,” Elvira asked, grabbing the plate and silverware off from his lap and dropping it down on the coffee table in front of them.

Her voice sounded playful, a childish way of talking that made it feel like she was not taking him seriously.

“You couldn’t understand.”

His choice of words had been, deciding on “couldn’t” instead of “wouldn’t”. He rolled his eyes after to show how offended he was. This was something he would have to deal with and deal with alone. Unless he wanted to be locked in the loony bin and be forgotten about.

“Come on,” Elvira insisted. Her tone now dignified how serious Jimmy felt. “Talk to me.” Jimmy relented the tension he felt and forced a grin. The stress was starting to build now, and the waters were only just stopped by the damns in his mind, but that damn would not hold forever.

Meanwhile, the police officer on the television screen had managed to solve a murder because the dopey serial killer accidentally called him with his real phone and not a disposable one. If only life’s puzzles could be solved so effortlessly.

“I feel like my whole life, all I have ever wanted to do was perform. All the eggs I have in this world, and I put them into that one basket.” Jimmy stopped for a minute, wondering how honest he could truly be with her. “I built my life around this dream and let it be who I was. And … I am not.”

This time when Jimmy stopped, it was not for Elvira’s sake, but his own. He had let on too much. He had said something he had not even accepted or known about himself yet.

“I have tried so hard, and this is all I must show for it. A kid can come onto the stage and do in a couple months what I have only dreamed of. It is hard to laugh it off that there is not anything special about me.”

Elvira gave him a look. What kind of look she gave; he could not exactly say for certain. It was not a smile, and it was not a frown, the creases between her lips made a line as straight as Jimmy’s flat-lining career.

“Everyone wants to be special, but no one is, not really. Do you think I like hearing about the cricks in people’s neck all day? I know it may not feel like it now, but you are not alone in feeling that way.”

“You have a nice house out of it, if nothing else,” Jimmy said, trying to add a little brevity to the situation.

“Maybe you need a new outlet, maybe this is the first day of the rest of your life and this is your chance to start fresh?” Elvira smiled a large toothy grin as she spoke, but Jimmy did not reciprocate that optimism.

Instead, he felt bewildered.

“What the fuck are you talking about, … starting fresh, …,” Jimmy shook his head in disbelief. “I am down about myself, and you are my girlfriend, you are supposed to pick me back up and reassure me. Tell me I will get it next time and all that, instead, you are, like, telling me I suck, and I should give up.”

Jimmy climbed up from off the couch, his fingers combing aggressively through his hair. His heart felt like it was beating a mile a second. He could not tell her everything that was bothering him. He could not tell her about the outbursts, or about how he was losing his mind. And yet, he could feel himself getting angrier at her for reasons he knew were not her fault.

“I am not trying to hurt your feelings, all I am saying is, maybe if it is not making you happy then,” Elvira had started to explain herself, but Jimmy did not care about what she had to say to him.

“But …, but nothing, I am sorry I don’t have a fucking house or a fucking doctorate like you. Maybe if I slept my way through college then I would have one as well.” As the words escaped from Jimmy’s lips, a couple of things were obvious to him.

First and foremost was that he should not have said it. He should have bit his tongue or showed restraint, and even though he realized that he felt like he was in the passenger’s seat of his brain, watching himself make a reckless decision.

The second was that this was on him. This was his outburst and no one else was to blame but him. Maybe it was all him, after all. Maybe the man at Buddy’s Diner, maybe Joe, maybe all of it was him.

Elvira’s face flushed when the words landed, but she was swift when it came time to mask her hurt with anger.

“I think you should leave.”

Jimmy feigned shock at her reaction, ready to play the victim as though he had not been the one who was out of line at all. He offered a condescending grin and shook his head, not knowing how he could sort out what had been said. The part of him that was calling the shots did not even care to either.

The anger peeled off him like a face mask when he heard Elvira’s door slam shut behind him.

He offered a forced chuckle, for some reason, feeling the need to laugh in the face of his own tragedy, and soon, that chuckle evolved into a sigh.

He wanted to scream, but didn’t, which meant he had at least some control of what came out of his mouth.

11.

When Jimmy left Elvira’s house, the day had only brushed shoulders with the afternoon. It was late at night now when Jimmy finally arrived home.

He had spent a lot of time at The Laugh Track over the years, but he had never been much for drinking or the whole bar experience. He did it sometimes to calm his nerves before a show and during social events but had never been publicly intoxicated. This time, he did it because he wanted to be drunk.

Maybe it was for a poetic reason, one that he knew about only subconsciously. That, if he was no longer in control, now, he would be really not in control.

As he struggled to fit the key into the keyhole, all he really knew for certain was that he wished he would have left his door unlocked.

After he stepped inside, he flipped on his living room light switch and tossed his keys toward the coffee table. They missed, making a clanking sound when they ricocheted off the table and onto his carpet.

With each step he took, the floor shifted and turned lightly, like he was gently rocking a canoe as it floated across a riverbank or like his apartment had become a turntable. This was the best way he could think to cap off the last few days, numbed to it all.

As he entered his bedroom, his eyes went over to the bottle of medication on his dresser drawer, and he considered it. The medication did not react well with alcohol, a night without it would not kill him.

12.

As Jimmy pried his eyes open and free from sleep’s tight grasp, he was pleasantly surprised to discover his head did not throb from a hangover. He still felt like death killed over, but at least he was spared by the physical side of his bad decisions.

His cellphone had a few missed calls that read like a hierarchy of all the people he had burnt bridges with in recent days.

Dalton was at the top of that list, having recently left him a voicemail. Jimmy shut his eyes, rested the back of his head against the pillow, and let it play out.

“Hey, … Jimmy, it’s Dalton, and, uh, I know I am probably the last person you want to hear from right now, and I, uh, I get that, I do. I had something come up and I wasn’t allowed to step away from it. But I know that is really no excuse for what I did, and I am sorry about that. It sucks, and I know it,” Dalton fumbled with his words, a far cry from the calm, collected way he sounded when he was performing something rehearsed. “I do still want to have dinner with you and say goodbye, … if you will have me for it. Let me know in the next couple of days if you still want to meet up. Thanks, and I am sorry, once again. Bye.”

For a reason that only Jimmy’s brain could understand, he swatted at the phone like he was trying to hit the snooze button on his alarm clock. When he finally slapped the right part of his mattress, he clutched his phone and brought it up toward his face. The light had since flicked off, leaving the reflection of his screen staring back at him.

* * *

Jimmy’s eyes watched the mirror while he brushed his teeth, the foam around his lips resembling a rabid animal. “And just when you thought that you couldn’t be any more unhinged.”

Jimmy nearly leaped out of his body and left it behind as the remark met his eardrums. This was not a trick of the eye or an illusion. The words had been said and said aloud! They were not thoughts in his head. Jimmy spit out his toothpaste and let a small stream of water from the faucet lead down the drain. He stared at the mirror intently; anger and sheer terror filling him.

He felt the warmth that pulsated from his throat and clasped his hands around his neck.

“How are you doing this?” He said, staring in the mirror with bloodshot eyes.

He tightened his hands around his neck, until, at last, came a response, “How are you doing this, how are you doing this, how are you doing this,” the voice, … his voice, repeated and again.

The only problem was that he was not the one that said the words. “What,” Jimmy began, but was too taken by what had happened next to finish his thought. More so, he was taken by what didn’t happen. The voice did not stop. For a moment, the vocals overlapped, speaking in unison.

Jimmy’s eyes widened. He released the stranglehold around his throat and the voice stopped. It had been like he swallowed a parakeet, and it was now ready to repeat his words on command.

13.

After cursing ones’ boss, it is not ideal to call in on them, but that was exactly what Jimmy did. As far as he was concerned, he had a more important situation to contend with now.

His first reaction had been to check himself in to the nearest hospital. Whatever was happening, it was not a normal thing. Then again, the doctor had known about it. They had to have been aware of it. They were the ones who prescribed the medication meant to repress it. They wanted to lock it away and swallow the key, whereas Jimmy never even had the chance to know what it was.

Doctors would be of no use to him. If whatever it was became too much to handle then he would gobble up some medication and it would be dealt with. Plain and simple.

He wanted to understand what was happening to him. The echo, or whatever it was, appeared to operate on command. At first, he believed it was because of what he said and the way he clasped his hands around his throat, but, upon inward inspection, he found that it could be more inconspicuous than it.

It did not matter where he had his hands so long as he applied focus and intent toward his throat; that seemed to provoke it.

It did not matter if he said the words aloud prior either, if he repeated the words repeatedly in his head, they made themselves known. He imagined it was not unlike a wizard focusing all of their energy on their magic wand.

The longer he practiced, the more he found himself able to accomplish with the “trick,” finding ways to speak faster and in unison with himself. It was a learning process, but with careful deliberation, he saw clear signs that marked his improvement.

What he was unsure of, however, was what he was even improving on.

Jimmy sat in his computer chair and ran his fingers over his keyboard, punching in inquiries in the search engines about his predicament. The results were less than ideal, citing mental illness and other unhelpful and unrelated essays.

Regardless of that, Jimmy started to feel better the longer he had to wrap his head around it.

It seemed unfathomable at first, but, against all odds, he fathomed it, or convinced himself he had.

Not only did he learn to live with it, but his fear started to dissipate in favor of excitement!

He tapped his fingers on the keyboard again. As it turned out, any ventriloquist dummies that were worth a damn were also worth a damn lot of coin. Especially if you expected them to be presentable on a professional level. Then again, maybe that is what Jimmy should have been after, considering he was only now starting out.

Jimmy considered the thought and chuckled. If he decided to become a ventriloquist, he would start out as the very best ventriloquist ever. Ventriloquism was a dying art, however, which meant, unless he outright revealed his hidden talent, it would not matter how efficient he might have been with his techniques.

Once the fear became excitement, the excitement soon became outright giddiness, he had a “hidden” talent. He had something special about himself that no one else had.

He looked over at his cellphone on the desk in front of him. If he had David Nix’s number right now, he would have a talent better than anything Dalton could ever dream of. In fact, maybe he was thinking too small. Imagine a one-man duet, it would not have even mattered that Jimmy had no prior singing experience to speak of.

Unless it was all in his head.

The thought had occurred to Jimmy once or twice already, but he kept stuffing it down to the inner recesses of his mind. He felt certain, absolutely certain, about what was happening to him. This was not hearsay or speculative at all, Jimmy had shown himself indisputable proof.

He had tested it! Wasn’t that how it worked? A hypothesis that can be proven and repeated over and over should eventually graduate into a fact, should it not? But there was a reason the doctors prescribed him the medication they did. No matter how certain he might have felt, he had no reason to think how he perceived things was not all over the place.

It was such a difficult to swallow that his foundations of reality might have been built on sand. However, in turn, it was because of the pill he didn’t swallow that his reality had changed altogether.

14.

Jimmy was not entirely for certain why he had chosen to take up Dalton on the offer of a second attempt at a dinner sendoff at Buddy’s Diner. Perhaps, it was because Jimmy could not think of any obvious alternatives to him.

Dalton was right to think that he was among one of the last people Jimmy wanted to talk to, but he was not the very last. That would have been facing Elvira after the ass he had made of himself the night prior.

That did not explain why he could not have stepped outside of his apartment and walked over to the first bystander he found and asked them, plain and simple, whether he was off his rocker.

As a matter of fact, he could have even asked the waitress who seated him, when she asked if he was dining alone, he could have stared her intently in the eyes and asked her what she thought … in unison with himself.

Maybe it was the theatrical side of him, the performer, that wanted another performer’s reaction. He could have done several other things, and yet, he did none of them. Instead, he had a seat in the chair opposite of Dalton and smiled at him.

“The funniest man The Laugh Track ever had,” Dalton said, making certain the waitress was within earshot as he said it.

Jimmy’s eyes wandered down to the napkins in front of him and then the menu, thinking of how long he had spent becoming acquainted to it all the last time he was here. He laughed a small amount at the thought, even though he did not find it funny in the slightest.

His eyes went back up to Dalton, “And yet, you are the one that David Nix decided to bring onboard.”

Dalton’s smile didn’t fall off altogether, but Jimmy could see the chinks he made in his armor with the comment.

“I would not have been able to do any of it without the example you set for me.”

If Dalton was not a comedian, he would have surely been a qualified ass kisser.

“How have you been, Dalton?” Jimmy asked, deciding to move past it. “I can imagine it must be a very exciting time for you.”

Dalton nodded his head. He wanted his best to come off as aloof or nonchalant about it, but his own excitement had the better of him, forcing a smile to break free on his face.

“It has been everything I have ever wanted and more.”

Jimmy chuckled, “That’s great, Dalton. Just great!” And Jimmy meant that, at least, on some level.

Despite his success, Dalton had never been bad to him. Maybe that was why he wanted him to be the one he opened up with.

Dalton knew the truth about him. Dalton knew that, despite all Jimmy’s masquerading, he was no one at all. He was not a comedian and no matter how much he developed and honed his craft, he would never be a comedian. He had seen Jimmy stocking shelves and likely even asked David Nix about Jimmy’s performance at The Laugh Track only to be met with shrugged shoulders. And yet, he was willing to pretend that it was a couple big shots slumming it as they ate at Buddy’s Diner. For at least one side of him, he felt that was why he wanted to tell Dalton first.

Maybe he wanted to be checked into the psyche ward by a friend who cared. The thought scared Jimmy; the thought that this would be it.

“I found something out about myself, Dalton,” Jimmy said, glaring over at him.

Dalton’s eyes showed his confused intrigue, “And, uh, what’s that, Jimmy?”

“I found something out about myself, Dalton,” Jimmy said again, only this time, he did not say it aloud. He said it with his ‘special’ skill.

Dalton’s confusion only worsened. He laughed nervously for a second, “Are you excited to tell me you bought a tape recorder?”

Dalton looked under the chair, as if he was trying to find a source to the sound. “Or, are you learning ventriloquism, maybe?”

Jimmy held his eyes on Dalton and didn’t waiver, he repeated the question, but, in unison, he asked him another question, “Do you think David Nix could do this?”

Dalton seemed confused, but that was the right response to it. He did not have all the information, after all. Not like Jimmy did.

Jimmy knew all he needed to know – that he was not crazy.

This was real.

And, while one side of him may have one reason for unveiling the hidden skill to Dalton, the other side was much crueler and more conniving, wanting to show Dalton what made Jimmy special and made Dalton even more ordinary.

15.

Everything changed for Jimmy the moment after the words fell out of him; he had a new lease on entertainment and life itself.

He bid adieu to Dalton with a newfound confidence and determination.

This was it.

Everything he had ever dreamed about was now within his reach.

“Everyone has an opinion anymore,” Jimmy said as his boots stamped on life’s eggshells with ferocity. “In fact, it has become so out of hand, I find myself with more opinions than one,” Jimmy smiled as he winked at Elvira from across the bar.

“Do I wear boxers or briefs?” In unison, Jimmy answered himself, saying both answers at once.

The crowd were more confused and perplexed by the ordeal than they were mesmerized.

“Some of you may not know what to take what is happening before you,” Jimmy’s eyes looked around the crowd at The Laugh Track.

No one famous might have been in attendance, but David Nix and every other performer who ever held a microphone would hear about him.

“If I am honest with you, I don’t need to explain it. Sometimes you reach a level at comedy, where it no longer fulfills, and it no longer challenges you, and I am at that level, ladies and gentlemen. As a matter of fact,” Jimmy chuckled as the audience clapped in agreement.

He knew it was not likely that any of them agreed with that. They were locals who knew him, and they only wanted to be polite and considerate to his act. Nevertheless, he smiled, and let them cheer for a moment.

“As a matter of fact,” Jimmy said again, harmonizing his voice as he spoke. He found it very easy to make his ‘second voice’ sound like a different person. “I don’t even need to do this comedy special; I will let him do it!”

The crowd did not respond to his remark, if only because they did not know how to respond. Jimmy had expected no different. He walked behind the curtain and appeared before the crowd again as he hurried down the steps and off the stage, carrying the microphone in his hand.

Elvira stared at him with as much confusion as the audience had. It was not like he had clued her in on the bit, after all.

Her surprise, like the audience’s surprise, needed to feel authentic.

He offered a cocky grin while he strutted his way to her, brushing passed the different people that filled The Laugh Track. He noted the white lights of people’s cellphones as he neared her.

She was still angry with him after their last encounter, that much was obvious the very second, he looked at her from the stage. She had not expected to attend his comedy show. They would work through that though, and the life he earned for them after this moment would be enough to make it all better.

“How are you doing?” Jimmy said, offering her a small smile as he did, meanwhile, his other half was busy away, reciting lines from his act.

In the end, it all had to be theatrical. Jimmy didn’t look at Elvira so much as he looked through her. All of it required too much concentration to focus on her response, almost all his mind focused on that other voice. He had to focus on how to project himself, how to enunciate in such a fashion that both could be distinguished without it sounding like a shouting match. It was a balancing act, but it felt good.

Jimmy exploited its absurdity. As surreal as it was, since it was not from his mouth that the voice came, he found himself able to project it in other parts of his body; like a set of vocal cords that could squirm about his body freely.

Jimmy continued mouthing half heart small talk at Elvira as he held the microphone up to his elbow and continued the performance undeterred, as though the sound projected through his pores.

The crowd seemed to have noticed that. It was about time they understood. There were no hidden tape recorders, no speaker sound systems. It was two unique voices coming from within the same body.

The rest of the performance went off without a hitch. He returned to the stage and took a bow in front of the crowd. They both thanked them for coming out.

16.

“Did you see me out there?” Jimmy exclaimed, following Elvira out the back exit of The Laugh Track. “I had them eating out the palm of my hands. Did you see all those cellphones? They were all recording it! I will be on every person’s feed by the time morning arises, I can just feel it!”

Elvira did not seem to grasp the levity of the situation, too hung up on the prior night’s event.

“What the hell even was that?” She asked.

Jimmy could not remember a time when he had ever seen her this upset, either with him or otherwise.

“Night before, you tell me I slept my way to become an orthopedic doctor, one of the most specific things to ever sleep your way to, and now, you are all buddy buddy, actin’ like it is all alright?”

“Did you see it though?” Jimmy could not hide the excitement he felt, “This is it! This is the moment I will always come back to, the moment I come back to when they ask me when it all started!”

“I saw,” Elvira stopped for a second, clearly seeing how interested Jimmy was in her response, “I don’t even know what I saw. I saw something at the very least, but that is not what matters.”

“You are not getting it though, that is what matters, it is the only thing that matters. In one whole swoop, my whole life is going to change.” Jimmy looked over at the individuals that left from the front of The Laugh Track and entered the parking lot.

He ducked his head down and shielded his face with his hand. Guess he would have to get used to being spotted from now on.

“Jimmy, I don’t understand what is so wrong with the life you have.”

Jimmy considered her words and thought through a reasonable response to them, and then, threw that out the window in favor of something different: “My life sucked, are you kidding with this? This,” Jimmy flung his hand forward and swatted toward the glorified bingo hall. “This is not me. This is not the person I am supposed to be. I am not the person I was born to be.”

“But I like this person,” Elvira countered, “And everyone here, they like that person. Your friends at work, they like you too.”

“Oh, I am quitting that, you can take that to the bank,” Jimmy replied, the high of performing still coursed through him with every passing second.

This was the best he had ever felt.

“What do you mean you are quitting?” Elvira asked. She still was not understanding him. “Because you have a new gimmick for your act?”

In a single swoop, all the excitement and energy that once pulsated through Jimmy had went away. He looked over to Elvira with a shocked expression, “My, … my gimmick?”

Jimmy stared at her for a few seconds, waiting for an explanation she was not willing to afford him, and so, he merely continued to speak: “That was not a gimmick you saw back there, that was the real deal. I have two sets of voices inside of me and I can use them both, and, … at the same time.”

“That is not medically possible, Jimmy,” She replied, her voice sounding defeated and disinterested.

“You may know a lot about feet, but you don’t know everything, doctor,” Jimmy countered, offering as condescending a smirk as he could muster.

“Oh, well, then, really, go ahead then. Let’s see your second voice that is going to catapult you into superstardom, since you are so very proud of it.”

Jimmy nodded his head, agreeing with her, “Let’s see it, indeed.” And, like that, Jimmy prepped himself and began, but, this time, his second voice was not compliant.

It had been so easy and effortless only a short time prior, and yet, now, he could not force out even the slightest sound.

He smiled nervously at Elvira, whose face carried an expectant frown, he began to reassure her: “…,” However, no words followed. Instead, he felt a choking sensation in the back of his throat.

Jimmy feigned a chuckle that had no sound behind it, then, turned his back from Elvira, and walked away.

17.

Jimmy felt weightless as he arose out from his bed. Every movement felt effortless and second handed. The last thing he remembered was speaking to Elvira, but that was the sum of it. He could not even remember lying in bed at the night’s end.

He sat on his bed with his feet on the floor. His cellphone vibrated on his nightstand. He didn’t really feel like talking to anyone now. And yet, for some reason, before he could even comprehend it, the cellphone was in his hand and then, to his ear.

“Hello,” Jimmy said weakly.

“Good morning, Jimmy, I hope that you are well, my name is David Nix,” The voice on the other end said.

The thought took a second for Jimmy to process, but, once it did, a newfound excitement set in. “Mr. Nix, I, …, I am a huge fan of your work.”

He calmed himself, this was not the way one professional talked to another. Mr. Nix had clearly seen his last performance at The Laugh Track and was seeking him out. If he came off like some fan, that would spook him.

“What can I do for you today, Mr. Nix?”

“Well, you’re a very special man, do you know that?”

“Why, …, why’s that?”

Everything he was, everything he would be, would come down to this moment, and Jimmy felt ready for it.

“Because your friend Dalton wanted me to tell you that you’ve got this. All you had to do is hang in there and your time will come, I promise you that. I can remember when I was only starting out and there were many times when I was discouraged or down on myself, or I was not where I wanted to be. What you must know is, if you hone your craft and you work hard for it, that success will come.” The man’s voice was soaked in condescension and self-righteousness, the man that Jimmy had wasted so much of his time idolizing.

“I am not only ‘starting out’ at this. I have given years of my life to this,” Jimmy stood to his feet, grabbing something off the nightstand, and walking toward the bathroom. “I have given years of my life to this, and I have watched assholes like you reward bastards like Dalton, when they don’t even know the basics of what I know. Ones that would never sacrifice what I have sacrificed. Ones that could not even imagine what I have put into this.”

“Dalton told me you have episodes like this. I will go ahead and leave you to it then. Have a great morning, Jimmy, and thank you for your support.”

“Episodes? I have fucking episodes?” Jimmy yelled, but, as he yelled, something else caught his attention.

The mirror.

He had no idea why he had gone into the bathroom. But no matter that, as he looked in the mirror, he realized – his lips were not moving as he yelled. And, as he realized that, he could not change that. He could not move his arms or his legs, or anything else, for that matter.

Jimmy could only listen as the line went dead on the other end. Then, watch as his cellphone was placed carefully on the bathroom counter. He watched himself turn the knobs on the bathroom sink and fill a glass of water and watched himself twist open the lid from his medicine container.

As he took a large gulp of water and felt his medicine go down his throat, everything around him started to darken.

In the mirror, he smiled at himself, “Bye, Jimmy.”