33

Thirty-three. It's a tough one. A lot of all-time greats went down at 33. Jesus was 33 when they hung him up on that cross. So was Keith Relf of the Yardbirds when a high-voltage shock unplugged him forever. Rushton Moreve from Steppenwolf was born to be wild but not to see 34. He died at 33 in a car crash. Same thing happened to Rob Collins from the Charlatans UK. Don't forget poor Lester Bangs, dead at 33 of "flu-like symptoms." The great Sam Cooke got shot dead before he could sing himself a sweet, happy 34th. Remember Lee Morgan, the legendary jazz trumpeter? Murdered when he was 33. And, of course, there's John Belushi, who was done in by a speedball at 33. Fifteen years later Belushi lover Chris Farley performed the sincerest form of flattery and did himself in the same way. At 33.

Dempsey's looked into it; he knows 33 can be a make-or-break kind of year. It's troubling to think about. So, before he thinks about it anymore, or anything else for that matter, he flops on the couch and sucks on his cigarette. The smoke burns where his lungs and throat already burn from too many cigarettes. An empty Heineken 22-ouncer is on the floor in front of him. He kicks it out of sight, but there's another one over there and another one over there, all reminding him of how things went wrong last night, of how he got all jumpy and drunk again, despite his promises to get off this jag. But here's the morning again, and it appears that only the smallest things changed in the night, like how Dempsey now looks like an alien with no eyebrows and a patch of hair missing from the front of his head. The big things — those stayed the same.

Dempsey turned 33 himself last night. That's partly what had him so jumpy. Even though he knows it's not bona fide to compare himself to these big people and their short, bright lives, and it's especially wrong to compare himself to Jesus (although Jesus sometimes feels more real to him than the rest), Dempsey still thought it reasonable that a person could be a little jumpy at 33, even if that person isn't a rock star, or a comedian or a savior or anything like that.

So instead of celebrating his birthday in the way he had imagined it might be someday — in some fancy restaurant with friends and well-wishers toasting his somewhat improbable success — Dempsey sat in his apartment last night on the couch he got at a yard sale down the street and had a chocolate bar, smoked some cigarettes and cracked open that first 22-ouncer — one of four things in his refrigerator. The other three things were also Heinekens. The beer only got him more restless, though, and onto thinking about how he was pretending to be carrying on with some half-baked plan about being a writer. Carrying on. Carrying on. Carrying on. As if the plan was the person. But not really carrying on with the plan because, truthfully, what the hell had he written?

Funny thing is he almost wrote something last night on his birthday. After his second 22-ouncer, he got up off the couch and went over to the computer and started typing notes about a guy who can't sleep and who decides he wants to go out in the pre-dawn to find an all-night donut shop. Only the guy is having trouble getting out the door. He fumbles with his clothes and can't find his socks or shoes, and doesn't know where his car keys are, and all the while it's getting closer to daylight. If he could just get out to the donut shop while it's still dark, his whole life would change because what he doesn't know is the donut shop that's calling to him is magic. It's a place where all these strange and magical people congregate in the off-hours: There are diamond smugglers from South Africa and the mistresses of drug barons from South America, and sailors ready to ship off to the South Pacific (all the crazy stuff must happen in the Southern Hemisphere), and renegade housewives from the Midwest (except that), and there's a clown entertaining everyone in the shop, doing stupid magic tricks. All sorts of unforeseen possibilities are waiting there, if only he could get out the door before light. Because when the dawn comes, the light turns the place back into a regular donut shop with plain donuts, plain people and plain coffee. But this guy Dempsey was thinking about just keeps bumbling around messing with one thing after the next — the socks, the shoes, the hair — making a big production out of getting out the door, and by the time he turns the doorknob, it's light out and he suddenly doesn't want to go anymore and the spell is broken.