Serious

Jimmy was serious. Jimmy didn’t fuck around. Anybody who knew Jimmy knew this because Jimmy told them all the time. “I’m serious,” he would say. “I am not fucking around.” Sometimes his friends provoked him. Jimmy would say something—“I think I’m gonna ask my girlfriend to marry me,” or “man, if we don’t find a gas station soon I’m gonna piss my pants”—anything—and Frank or Johnny or Carl would ask him, “Are you serious?” and Jimmy would answer, “Fuck yeah, I’m serious.” And then when they laughed he’d add, very seriously, “I’m not fucking around.” That’s what happened when Jimmy suggested they take their two weeks off from the factory at the same time and all go to this place in Thailand he’d heard about where there were like a thousand whores who would spend the whole night fucking you for less than twenty-five bucks. They thought he was full of shit, but they checked it out on the internet and it was true; this time Jimmy was not fucking around.

They all got drunk on the plane, slept, woke up, and got drunk again. They got a mini-van at the airport, which was no easy task because they couldn’t understand a word anybody was saying to them, and they weren’t even sure how much they were supposed to pay or even how much that might work out to in US, but they were just glad to get out of the heat and into the air-conditioned van where they all slept again. The place they were taken to was like a motel and each room had an outdoor entrance so no need to go through the lobby which they figured was best because they didn’t know how that would be later with the whores, and they decided on two double rooms with the understanding that whoever found one first got the room and the other would either have to wait or get another and, yeah, OK, they’d split the cost.

They showered and shaved and dressed sharp and not five minutes walk from their hotel, hounded the whole way by neon calls of “handsome man, handsome man, where you go, where you go,” they found a place with no less than twenty girls, and no less than twelve of those, they all agreed, were way hotter than any girls that turned up at the bars they usually went to back home. They ordered beers and were surrounded by sexy brown-skinned girls of varying ages, though none appeared to them to be over twenty-five and most much younger. “Fuckin’-A,” Jimmy said to the other three as he sat on the high barstool with a sexy little thing in a tight mini-skirt and ass-length hair standing between his legs, “Are we fucking loving it, or what?” And the other three agreed that, yes, they were loving it.

Carl left with his girl first and Jimmy was pissed because now he’d have to get another room, but he figured fuck it, I’ll drink a while longer, want to anyway, and at least Frank and Johnny are still here. Frank and Johnny argued for a minute and then Johnny gave Frank some money and they left with their girls, slapping Jimmy on the back and wishing him good luck.

Jimmy was alone.

“Why you not take me go?” Jimmy’s girl asked, looking up at him with sad eyes.

“OK. Yes. You want to go, I take you go,” Jimmy answered and gave her what she asked for, pretty sure that it was less than twenty-five bucks.

The girl took him by the hand and pulled him and they headed towards the hotel. Jimmy was excited. Jimmy was hard. Two blocks from the bar, a motorcycle pulled over in front of them and a young guy, nineteen or twenty at most as far as Jimmy could tell, jumped off and started yelling at the girl. Jimmy couldn’t understand what the problem was and just stood there. Then the guy hit the girl, so Jimmy hit him. Next thing he knew the guy was close up on him and he felt a dull pain emanating from his belly and doubled over and then the guy was on his bike again and gone. Jimmy clutched at his stomach. When he stood straight and removed his hand he felt a warm stickiness. The girl looked at him, said something he couldn’t understand, stood for a moment with lips quivering, and then she ran.

Jimmy knocked on the door hard, but Carl didn’t answer so he knocked again. “I’m fucken’ busy in here, Jimmy,” Carl’s voice came through the locked door. “Get another room and we’ll work it out in the morning.”

“Carl, open the fucking door,” Jimmy said as loud as he was able. “I’ve been fucking stabbed,” Jimmy said. “I’m bleeding like fuck, Carl. I think I’m fucking dying.”

“Are you fucking serious?” Carl yelled.

Jimmy never answered. Jimmy was serious. He was not fucking around.