Well, it was either drinking alone or walking alone, and without knowing why, Jimmy chose the latter. Somehow the rain and the cold, dark night seemed to fit the moment better than the warmth of a bottle. Perhaps it was an extension of his self-punishment over trying to write that still untold and unknown story. Of course, the alleged comfort of a bottle and forgetfulness might have been the same extension, and who can say which is the greater of two seeming evils, if evil they are.

Jimmy's life had always been a lonely walk on a fine line - a tight rope without aid of a balancing bar. But never so high as to prove deadly when he fell - just enough to inflict the pain that always seemed rightly deserved. Why he walked it, he knew not. He wasn't friendless - in fact he was well-liked despite his natural bent to a shy, pessimistic, introversion. And he never thought of his feelings about life being lonely as a reflection on those who loved him or whom he loved. It was just that loneliness struck him not so much as a condition he had that could be cast off with a better thought, a better medicine, etc. No, it was more like the atmosphere within which he lived, and within which, ultimately, he felt everyone lived. Wherever Jimmy was walking, the ultimate destination, as the ultimate origin, of his path seemed the same - alone, dark, unknowing and silent, except for the internal voices whose volume only sufficient alcohol could temper.

Yet here he was walking, literally and figuratively, without his "silencer" as he liked to call it. He rarely thought of suicide, even if he often tacitly wished his next step was his last. Was he more afraid of life or death? It seemed all he could do was walk his tightrope as a choiceless avoidance of the question. If he stopped walking would he die or live?