Jimmy was a promising young line cook at a well rated Brazilian steakhouse in sunny Las Vegas before he met Michelle.
Michelle was a bartender at his favorite twenty-four hour pub in the same plaza in North Las Vegas. She was a slim blonde covered with tattoos and always wore heavy eye makeup and poured his drinks heavy and flirted with him when he came off shift with the other guys. He became a regular and she treated him to the occasional beer "on the house". They began dating after a few weeks and that was when he discovered how she really got her kicks.
They were on a date, hitting the casino bars and partying with a group of friends when she pulled him back to her car for a break from the action. He smoked his last cigarette in the pack as she rummaged through her hatchback.
"I need a little something extra, baby," she slurred as she opened the glovebox and pulled out a neat little leather kit. Inside of the zippered pouch was a needle, a spoon, a baggie with some chaulky powder.
"That's not what I think it is, right?" Jimmy asked nervously. He had never done any of the hard drugs or injectables, he was the the kind of guy to sometimes smoke a joint after a hard Friday night working the grill, but not shooting up or snorting anything.
"What's wrong? Never seen heroine before?" she teased as she loaded up the spoon from the driver's seat and readied the syringe, "I got enough for both of us, what do ya think lover?"
She groped his inner thigh through his jeans because she knew his weaknesses. A guy like him was easy to read. He rolled up his sleeve and held his arm out to her, not wanting to look as she dosed him and then herself. What happened next could only be described as magical.
He felt euphoric as they rejoined their group of friends to watch a Hollywood action movie at the theater inside the casino. He felt like everything was warm and good with his life and he felt like giving the whole world a big hug if he could. Jimmy felt like he loved everyone, and especially Michelle, the one who introduced him to his new obsession. It changed his routine and eventually ruined him.
Every day at work he would feel like he was nodding off a bit, and all he could think about was the next time he could get high. He worked mechanically in a dream state, sometimes with terrible consequences, like when he accidentally sliced off the tip of his finger while slicing tomatoes but was too strung out to notice the blood all over his cutting board and knife. The chef kicked him out of the kitchen for the night and told him to get his shit together.
But Jimmy didn't get his shit together. Far from it.
Every week he looked worse and worse. His cheeks hollowed out and his eyes stayed glazed and dark-ringed, his favorite injection sites became infected causing his arm to swell up. He would show up late to work, if he showed up at all. His boss was a former addict and had a soft spot for helping people out, but he eventually decided enough was enough. Michelle put up with supporting him for a short time before she found another man, and they kicked him out of her apartment in the middle of the night.
Out on the street and out of money, he slept beneath an overpass that he used to drive on the way to work. His car was a thing of the past, something that he sold like everything else he owned. Jimmy stared at the dirty needle loaded up with a murky solution, the drug of his choice. A needle that had already used too many times to be considered clean anymore. He fought with himself, trying to battle the shame and regret of pushing the needle in his last unflattened vein and pumping himself up with good feelings one last time.
In the end he chose the drug and it finally claimed his life.
