3 Women Walk Into A Bar

by Linda Sands

He banged on the door and yelled for Angel, pleading with her to forgive him, begging until he was hoarse, but she refused to open the door. She just said, “Go away, asshole, or I’m calling the cops.”

  Jimbo drew a drippy red heart on the front door of the house with a lipstick he found in the Chevy’s glove box. Then he drove to the library, because that was one place in his shithole town where no one could ask him to leave.

  Arranging himself in a computer carrel, Jimbo logged in and waited for the chirping welcome message. On the drive over, he’d come up with an incredible idea. He supposed with all those other people out there wondering, pondering, musing, and fantasizing, that someone else had already thought of his great idea. Somebody, somewhere might have already done it—surely somebody had written about it, made a movie even. There weren’t any more unique ideas, not since Leary’s psychedelic-induced high ideas of the sixties or Dr. Mengele. And even then, you could argue the point.

  Jimbo might have burst a few brain cells hatching his plan. He hadn’t come from a family of thinkers—or doers, for that matter. They were tall and pretty, which was usually enough in a material world. The common Smith moniker made life even easier, with no need to spell or correct or explain one’s name.

  His mother, Sandra Wykowski, had embraced the commonality of Smith, happily advancing a few letters in the alphabet when she married Big Jim. She moved to salads on the church rotation and out of desserts, leaving all those Polish jokes and cream pies behind.

  The newly wedded Smiths bought a house in the suburbs and filled the rooms with plastic plants and overstuffed furniture, thinking that was what made a home. In a few years, when Sandra was fat, clumsy, and pregnant, it became an unbearable place for Big Jim. He tried to look past the big TV and the private yard, but saw only projects he could never finish, a long list of to-do’s that he didn’t remember writing. As Sandra sat crooning, stroking the growing bulge under her smock that would soon become their son, Big Jim escaped to the basement. He drilled holes in planks of wood, then sanded them smooth. If asked, he might say he was making a doghouse, a shed, or an entire miniature kitchen set, complete with working plumbing.

  The baby, James John Smith V, was born in the spring of 1965. His name was proudly abbreviated on the hospital’s plastic bassinet as “JJ #5.” Another James John. The new heir to anything monogrammed: luggage, cigarette holders, desk sets, and mismatched pieces of silver serving ware.

  Jimbo Five, his daddy started called him when the nickname “Fifth” got too confusing— Sandra would hand him the baby when what Big Jim wanted was bourbon.

  Bourbon. That was what killed him. Not cirrhosis of the liver or anything as invisible and lingering as that. No, James John IV went out the way he lived—loud, messy, and unprepared.

  It was a cloudy Monday in 1971. Big Jim did all the things he normally did before leaving the Smith household. He kissed his son on the top of his head and planted one on his wife’s cheek. He said, “Do something wonderful today, people.”

  As Big Jim walked out the door, Sandra murmured, “You bet I will,” then wiped his kiss from her cheek with the back of her hand.

  Jimbo ran to the window to watch his daddy drive away. He waved and waved but, like always, Daddy didn’t wave back.

  Big Jim pulled into his assigned parking spot at Smith Company. Most days at work were tough, as he was never sure what was expected of him or where he was supposed to be. He had a constant fear of being called into the boss’s office (occupied by a second cousin), and being pegged an impostor. He was afraid they would admit their mistake in promoting him to head the department, that they’d find the last six months of work shoved in his bottom drawer instead of filed with corporate, like he’d told them. He was sure it was only a matter of time before they’d find the stacks of incomplete forms with bogus data, his reports ringed with coffee stains and smeared with ashes, the graphs drawn in crayon.

  Big Jim had not slept well in months. He’d wake panting and sweating from nightmares where he was running naked through the office corridors as his coworkers pointed and laughed, not taunting his nudity, but his ineptness. “Jim doesn’t know the difference between the CMP report and the CDP!” “Jim had to ask tech support to upload the ROD for him!” “Hey, Jim, what’s your day to year plan on the ASTAP?”

  He knew he should quit, but it was his grandfather’s company, and as the sign on the wall continually reminded him: a smith never quits. Instead, Big Jim left early most days and tried to avoid screwing anything up too bad.

  Rushing out of the Smith Building at ten minutes before noon, Big Jim decided to skip the soup-and-sandwich part of lunch and go right to the liquid part, treating himself to a few cold ones at Ghilley’s Pub, then a few warm ones. Eventually he forgot to eat at all.

  Later, Big Jim walked out into the sunlight, feeling like the King of the Smiths. He had grand thoughts about his department—heck, the whole company—and couldn’t wait to get back to the office to share them. He grinned as he pulled out in traffic, popping in his favorite Johnny Cash 8-track. He was imagining his name engraved on the coveted Employee of the Month plaque as he sped around the corner, tires squealing, belting one out with the Man in Black. He reached under his seat for a bottle of mouthwash and never saw the blinking yellow school zone warning lights, never heard the whistle of the crossing guard or the screams of the girls.

  The impact forced the car left, and when Big Jim looked up all he saw was concrete. Even with two heavy feet on the brakes, the LeBaron was unstoppable. It accordioned itself into the wall like 3-D graffiti, except with the smoke and blood and the sound of Johnny singing about a boy named Sue, it was more like 4-D.

  The cops came and the teachers cried, and when the paramedics couldn’t pull Big Jim from behind the steering wheel they cut right through it and laid him on the stretcher with the shaft of the column protruding from his chest like a vampire’s stake, his face frozen in bug-eyed wonder.

  As the ambulance pulled away from Greenwood Elementary, the driver talked with his partner about what to order from the NY Deli—smoked ham sandwiches, no mayo—even as he pulled sheets over two little girls in pigtails.

  Most families would have moved. Most moms would have gotten counseling for their sons or at least offered comfort. But Sandra, now Sandy, thin and blonde, was too pleased with her new lease on life to care much about the little boy who woke up wet and screaming. The little boy who slept curled up in a ball at the foot of her bed, who rocked in front of the TV set and refused to eat anything but hot dogs—and only after she peeled off the skin and dipped them in ketchup. This same boy captured tiny green lizards, named them Jim, and sealed them in glass jars until they died, then lined up their dehydrated corpses on his bookshelf under picture books of sad puppies and fuzzy ducklings that no one loved.

  Every month Sandra said, “This was the only good thing your father ever did,” as she slit open the envelope from the insurance company and plucked out the check, waving it in the air. “The only good thing your father did.”

  “Except make me, right Mom?” Jimmy would ask.

  Sandra looked at the little boy, who was just another Smith to her, and nodded slightly with watery eyes. “Right, kiddo. Except make you.” Then she turned around before he made her too sad and tucked the check into her new purse. She primped in the mirror, smacked her lips to spread the red, then tied a silk scarf around her head.

  “Don’t want to mess up my hair. I just had it done,” she said, patting her cotton-ball hair and pushing her sunglasses into place.

  “You could put the top up, Mom.”

  But Sandy shook her head and sighed. “Jimbo, Jimbo. A lady needs to be seen to be noticed.”

  There were so many things Jimbo didn’t understand. His mother was just one of them. He was baffled in the math department, had read that birds could puke but not burp, and had no idea why caterpillars would even bother turning into butterflies.

  He didn’t understand the men his mother br
ought home: the nerdy guy who challenged him in Atari, the guy with the perfect left-sided part and pressed shirt who called him “Little Buddy” whenever Mom was in the room and “Dumbshit Punk” when she wasn’t. Jimbo sort of understood why he put the carpet tacks under Pressed Shirt’s Porsche tires and why he added Syrup of Ipecac to the nerd’s perfect Manhattan, but even those things didn’t help him feel much better about his own mother.

  She used to want peace, quiet, and a hot dinner. She used to be happy with a dress from Sears, a fresh coat of paint on the front door. Now she wanted diamonds, a house on a golf course, a four-car garage, friends with family estates in the Hamptons. She wanted to belong somewhere else, and seemed willing to do just about anything with just about anyone to get there. Jimbo might still be a little boy, but he understood liars. He understood manipulators, fakers, and bad, bad, people. They were his people, and he could smell them a mile away.

  Jimbo unzipped his jacket and leaned back in the uncomfortable library chair. Apparently, his tax money had been enough to upgrade the computer monitors but not the furniture. He raised his arms and stretched, resisting the urge to sigh loudly. James John Smith V realized he’d spent the majority of his forty-three years attempting to understand the female sex. He’d read books on how they were uniquely wired, how they had different needs than men, that they wanted to feel desired and loved, and how important a gentle touch was to most women. He came up with a game plan, a course of action for each woman he encountered, one in which he identified, satisfied, and fulfilled their needs and desires. He became the missing link. Jimbo: The Completer.

  He gave love. And he took everything that he could—their money, their pride, their humanity, their dignity, their purity, their confidence. Unlike in the real world, the one of bosses and paychecks and rules and regulations, in the world of women, Jimbo always got what he wanted. Sometimes it was power. Sometimes it was control. Sometimes it was just plain old sex. But always, it was a game. And he needed to win.

  Jimbo figured this thing with his wife, Angel, was an anomaly. It might be his midlife crisis. But unlike other middle-aged men, he wouldn’t be buying a sports car, having sex with prostitutes, or getting plugs of hair from his ass implanted on his forehead. He was going to change. He was going to make the next half of his life better—way better.

  Because right now, he had shit. No kids—that he knew of—his wife hated him, and his only claim to anything was that he was still recognized as “The son of the guy that killed those precious little girls, God rest their souls.”

  At the table beside the computer carrel, a dirty homeless guy scribbled on scraps of paper then arranged them across its top like he was the General of Something Really Important on his way to fight a Nazi group of THEM.

  Jimbo thought about the way the BMW had looked as Angel backed down the drive. It had been like the grille was grinning at him, smirking, calling him a loser.

  The homeless guy rocked back and forth, mumbling, “Cocksucker, cocksucker, cocksucker.”

  Jimbo closed his eyes and saw his hands around the guy’s scabby throat, saw him yanking the bastard across the demure insulating carpet, through the romance section, and out the back entrance, saw his hands slamming the worthless piece of shit into the steel door. He grinned, imagining the satisfying twang of homeless-crazy-person-cranium kissing metal.

  The computer pinged. Jimbo leaned in as the monitor’s blue screen changed to Internet green. Jimbo cracked his knuckles, then typed into the search box: library evil stamped out, hero rewarded millions. He hovered one finger over the enter key, then backspaced, deleting the words. He typed instead: James John Smith.

  With the high-speed hookup, the page came back in .60 seconds with 172,000,000 hits. Jimbo smiled.

  An hour later, he’d read about John Smith and Pocahontas—the real story—on a website that invited visitors to experience the pleasures of loin cloths and smoking huts on a chilly Friday in October, loin cloths optional. He skimmed the list of John Smiths and found a shoemaker, a gynecologist, an author of engineering books, a congressman, the president of Pfizer, and a sad little boy on a sadder-looking pony.

  Then he narrowed the list even more by using constraints—because every game has rules, after all. Jimbo eliminated through those who didn’t make at least $100,000 a year (tax records), had debilitating diseases (medical insurance claims), and those who’d had a run-in with the law (criminal records and background check, $9.95).

  James John Smiths didn’t make the list if they lived in an extremely cold climate or a non-English-speaking country, because Jimbo couldn’t deal with either of those things.

  He could afford to be picky. This was his life, after all—at least it would be.

  He stopped by the bank and helped himself to some traveling cash before the wife cut him off. He made pit stops for a suitcase and some clothes, then dumped the Chevy and took a bus to the train station, buying a ticket before he could change his mind.

  In the station café, he watched a chic blonde in a cashmere coat choose a seat by the window. She balanced a miniature pie and a large coffee on a too-small table.

  Jimbo tossed his chin in her direction and winked. He liked women who ate dessert. It said something about them—as long as they didn’t excuse themselves to go puke it up in the bathroom before the calories landed on their hips.

  She looked away when he caught her eye. Jimbo knew the part she was playing. But who was he? A businessman afraid to fly? A journalist on assignment? A man hurrying to his lover’s home on the coast?

  He leaned against a dusty pillar, waiting for the train to begin boarding, his manner unhurried, seductive. He stirred his coffee with the striped straw, drew it to his mouth, all the while watching her face. There it was. She was filled with desire to touch him, to soothe and comfort him.

  He angled his pelvis in her direction, feet planted wide, and sucked the straw dry.

  She rolled her eyes, as if she’d already made the conclusion that he was lacking something she thought necessary, that he wouldn’t be able to handle her, that he’d be the kind of man who said “sorry” all the time. She might have figured he slept in matching pajamas and ate alone in Chinese restaurants—never tipping more than 10 percent—or that he didn’t check out library books but tucked them under his arm, took them home, and never read them, never returned them.

  She might have seen in Jimbo none of the things she wanted and all of the things he would never be—successful, happy, respected, enough—for her. She held his gaze as she poked a fork into her tarte aux pommes and led it to her mouth, her pleasure as she chewed making it obvious she found the pie far more appealing than the man across the room.

  Jimbo gave up the game. He knew her type. A money-hungry whore. A cunt with more shoes than brains. The kind of woman who’d hardly know good champagne from bad, who probably wouldn’t understand the implications of an arsenic-laced pie until it was much too late.

  On the train, in a crowded compartment, Jimbo’s lips moved as he repeated “James.” James Smith. James. As if he was auditioning for a Bond movie. He jammed the empty coffee cup into the space between the seats, then gazed across the car until his eyes landed on a classy older woman in pink. He almost got up to introduce himself, but stopped. What would he say? “Hi, I’m James John Smith. I’ve decided to swap out my old life for the life of another James John Smith. The life I was meant to have. How are you?”

  He shook his head, thinking the whole thing would sound crazy, when the train lurched and a brunette fell into his lap.

  “Well, hello there,” James said in a voice he hardly recognized as his own.

  Chapter 9

  WHO ARE YOU?

  Six months ago, when Angel backed her BMW down the driveway and left Jimbo standing in his pajamas in their garage, she never thought he’d pull the stunt he did. Never thought he’d have the balls to actually leave her. Who the fuck did that?

  She’d handled it fine in the beginning, too pissed o
ff to think about where he was or who he might be with. She told herself she didn’t care, and a few weeks later, when she started to miss him, started to go soft, she upped her workload, took on as many tasks as she could, planned her days down to the minute so that she had absolutely no space for anything Jimbo.

  Maybe it was the sappy movie she’d watched, or the ridiculously unbelievable novel she’d read, but one morning she woke up and knew one thing for certain: she wanted her husband back, and wasn’t taking no for an answer.

  Instead of packing and leaving for her week-long vacation, Angel drove to Erica’s house—a woman who’d traded a life of corporate ladder climbing for an equally messy life as a parent and homemaker. They’d been friends for eight years and Angel had never once called before dropping in.

  She pulled into Erica’s driveway around the empty trashcan, stopping just short of a bicycle lying in front of the garage. She made her way to the front door, stepping over popsicle wrappers, a soda can, and a mashed pile of sidewalk chalk that had been left out in the rain.

  She didn’t bother ringing the doorbell. It hadn’t worked since last spring. She put her shoulder to the sticky door and pushed.

  “Hello?” Angel called, stepping inside and closing the door behind her. The sound of a TV droned in the background. A dog barked, but it may have been the neighbors’—she didn’t think Erica had a dog.

  “Erica?” Angel stepped over a dumped bucket of Legos and a smashed pizza box. Clothes were piled on the sofa. Toys littered the floor. Papers, catalogs, and mail were stacked on every flat surface. If she hadn’t seen Erica’s house before, she might think her friend had been kidnapped, skirted away while in the middle of a major housecleaning, a room-by-room overhaul. When in reality this was how the family lived every day.

  It made Angel nervous, all that stuff everywhere. The idea that you’d have to deal with it again and again, instead of just one time. She thought sloppy people made their lives so much harder.