I'll Be Here All Week (20 page)

“I don't know,” he says. “I don't think so. But I won't lie to you. I really don't remember.”

“Okay,” she says and looks back out the window.

“Look, there was a time—”

“You don't owe me an explanation.” She raises her hand without turning around to look at him. That's the end of it.

Spence walks into the bathroom, shuts the door, and looks in the mirror. The florescent lights make the bruises and cuts look even worse, and he suddenly wants to cry. Nothing comes, and he just stands there instead, wincing at himself in the mirror and wondering how long it will be before his face heals. He tears off the hospital gown and looks at a body that is five years older than he's been telling everyone for years. He steps into the shower and lets the hot water wash the dirt and dried blood and shame out of his hair.

Forty-two,
he thinks to himself.
When did that happen?

After stepping out of the shower, Spence towels off and thinks of Sam in the next room. He wonders if she has makeup she can put on his face to make it look better. Or maybe younger. He wonders if she realizes how old he is. He wonders if she'll care when she finds out. He doesn't remember if he ever told her or if it has ever come up. He knows she is younger than he is, but doesn't know how much. He wonders if she'll freak out when he tells her, but figures he might as well keep the honesty going now that he's on a roll.

“I guess I should tell you,” he says as he steps out of the bathroom, drying his hair with a towel. “I'm almost forty-two years old. There, I said it.”

But when he looks out from behind the towel, he sees that Sam isn't there anymore.

“I've decided that I'm going to let you be my new agent,” he says to Jamie while lying on his hotel bed. He kicked the comforter to the floor, which is usually the first thing he does when he gets into the room. Those things are hardly ever cleaned, and God knows what has been sleeping on them. He is lying on top of the sheets with his head propped up with all six of the pillows he was given.

“Yeah?” he asks. “Does this mean I can quit being an underpaid opening act?”

“Hardly.” He laughs. His cell phone feels hot against his face, but he doesn't care. It's nice to hear a familiar voice. For the past ten days, he's felt like the loneliest person on the planet.

“Can I at least buy a car with the extra income?” Jamie asks.

“Not a chance.”

“Shit, man. How about a scooter?”

“Now you're thinking,” he says and looks around the room. This Holiday Inn in Des Moines is nicer than the Starlight Motel was in Crete, Nebraska, but not much. He likes Best Westerns the most. They always give him plenty of pillows, and the comforters feel clean.

“Why am I making this career change?” Jamie asks and knocks Spence out of his deep thoughts about important things like pillows.

“Think I'm a bit underpaid,” Spence says.

“Join the club, my man,” Jamie says. “Ain't that part of the gig?”

“It's worse than that,” he says. “I think I'm actually paid pretty well. I'm just not seeing it. I think I'm being robbed.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“What happened?” Jamie asks. Spence tells him the story of the overpayment and how it's quite possible this sort of thing has been going on for a while, maybe even for years.

“Shit,” Jamie says. “You really think so?”

“Maybe.”

“Damn.” Jamie grunts. “I work for Rodney, too, man. You think he's skimming off the top of my cash?”

“What'd you get paid for Toledo?” Spence asks.

“Five hundred.”

“Nah, that's standard feature act pay. You're getting scale.” Spence switches the phone to his other ear. “He negotiates more for me because I'm a headliner with some TV credits.”

“And you think this is typical?”

“I don't know,” Spence says. “Maybe not. But if it's happened once, what are the odds it hasn't happened more times that I just don't know about? I've been asking for a raise everywhere, not just my college gigs. What if I got a raise at lots of places he never told me about?”

“So you're still getting paid.”

“But the money isn't going up. Or is it?”

Spence starts doing the math in his head and trying to piece together all of the checks that he got from Rodney and not from the venues. It drives him crazy the more he starts adding it up, but he can't help but do it, over and over again. He has spent the past couple of days trying to figure out if all of the clubs he works have any idea how little money they're actually paying him and how much is going to his agent. He thinks of everything he could have bought and the bills that could have been paid.

“How many of your gigs are paid through Rodney?” Jamie asks.

“Most of them. Three quarters.”

“God-
DAMN
.”

“Yeah.” Spence sighs. “Goddamn, indeed. This could be the reason everyone thinks I'm paid so well. I might just be.”

“No wonder you're always on tour.”

“No wonder everyone thinks I'm such an arrogant ass.”

“Me too,” Jamie says.

“Get ready for it,” Spence says. “Your day is coming.”

“For real?”

“Definitely. I was just like you when I started this business. Look at me now.”

“Damn,” Jamie says, “is that what I have to look forward to?”

“Only if you're lucky. It could be much worse.”

“How do you figure?”

“Hell,” Spence says, “I've been working nonstop for years. I'm considered a success in this business.”

“But you're broke and pissed.”

“Now you get it.”

“Screw that,” Jamie says.

“Screw that, indeed,” Spence says. He rolls over onto his side and picks up the bottle of ibuprofen off the nightstand. He's been eating them like candy since waking up in Syracuse with a broken face. As the swelling in his face has gone down and the scratches have started to heal, his consumption of aspirin and any painkillers he can get his hands on has gone up. He chokes back four with a bottle of warm Diet Coke and rubs his forehead a bit.

“Maybe I'll just be a publicist,” Jamie says. “No more of this dead-end comedy thing.”

“If I thought you were serious, I'd tell you that's a good plan,” Spence says. He wonders at what age he became too old for a career change, too old to suddenly go work in an office somewhere.

“I dunno,” Jamie says. “I could at least do a little pimping you out. I've still got that demo of you from Toledo. I need to send you that thing. It was tight.”

“Thanks,” Spence says, “but I don't know what I would do with it. Don't worry about me. I'm a middle-aged white guy doing stand-up comedy. I'm a dime a dozen. You're a half-black, half-Latino young guy. You're going to be hugely rich and famous. I just wanna be your assistant when it happens.”

“True that,” Jamie says. There's a pause on the line, and Spence can hear Jamie typing, probably sending an e-mail. The kid is an amazing multitasker, always doing a million things at once. Spence knows that, if he wanted to, Jamie could probably be a great manager or agent. Better than Rodney, for sure.

This thought makes him cringe for a second. He's avoiding the talk with Rodney and has been for almost two weeks. Every day in Syracuse was a chore. Between having to listen to Ashley make fun of his bruises to the nagging fear that Marcy would show up—this time with a gun—he hasn't made firing his agent a priority at all, let alone the top one. Having not spoken with Sam since she walked out of his hotel room that day, he's had other things on his mind.

“The only thing worse than having a shitty agent is not having one,” Spence says and listens as Jamie grunts approval on the other line. That's what it really comes down to in the end. Rodney might not be the best agent in the business, but even a bad one is hard to get. There are plenty of comics who would trade places with Spence to be in his shoes.

Six months,
Spence thinks to himself. That's how much work he has on his calendar. That's how many weeks worth of gigs he has lined up. Almost every single one of them is because of Rodney. Some money is good; some is not. But the second he fires Rodney, they all cease to exist. He can't afford to lose half a year's work.

“Hey, man,” Jamie says, suddenly perked up. He must have finished typing his e-mail. “How're things going with that chick up in Canada?”

“Eh.” Spence shrugs and feels his stomach hurt. “Don't ask.”

“What? Damn, man, you'd better not tell me that ain't happening anymore. Not after you kept me from getting laid in Toledo.”

“It's a long story,” Spence says and looks at his face in the hotel mirror. It's still healing, but the remnants of his battered face still linger. He wonders if it's been long enough for him to call or text message Sam. He wonders if she's forgiven him enough to at least speak with him.

“What kind of story is it?” Jamie asks. “Comedy or tragedy?”

“Heh,” Spence says. “It's always the same story, pal. A little of both.”

The phone on the nightstand rings, and it scares him half to death. It's a loud ring, reminding him of a phone his parents had in the mid-eighties. That was probably the last time the phones in this hotel were replaced. He's almost surprised it isn't a rotary dial.

“Hold on,” he tells Jamie and, with his other hand, picks up the hotel phone. “Yeah?”

“Hey, Spence, this is Dustin, down at the club?” The voice on the other end sounds a little high-pitched for a man who is probably in his mid-forties. “You all checked in and ready for tonight?”

“All is well,” Spence says to Dustin. A stocky guy, going bald but denying it, Dustin looks more like a trucker than a club owner. He's fond of denim shirts and dipping tobacco.

“Well, great,” Dustin says. “Uh, listen, you know all about the charity tonight, right?”

“No, I do not.”

“Oh, well, there's this charity function at the club tonight. The local Jaycees.”

“Okay.”

“Well, I just need you to dress real nice tonight, okay?”

“I always do.”

“No, I mean
real
nice,” Dustin says, “like in a suit. They really want the comedian dressed to the nines.”

“I don't have a suit,” Spence says. “I never wear one onstage. I don't even have one with me.”

“Oh, that's a problem.”

“Why? I'll wear a nice shirt and a blazer like I always do. Is that not nice enough?”

“Not this time,” Dustin says. “I'm really going to need you to wear a suit.”

Every so often, a ridiculous request like this comes from a club owner somewhere. Some guy has a ridiculous longing for the days of the supper clubs and thinks that comedians look official if they're dressed like The Rat Pack onstage. Spence thinks it's ridiculous, especially when you consider that most comedy clubs put up fake brick walls behind the stage and try to make the place look like it's a basement in New York City. Why would a guy in a three-piece suit be telling dirty jokes to drunks in the first place? Spence has overdressed before, and he remembers how ridiculous he looked doing it.

“Look,” he says, “I don't even own a suit. If I'm dressed semi-casual and I'm funny, isn't that all that matters?”

“Not if you want to get paid.”

Spence is about three seconds from losing his temper before he realizes that Jamie is still on hold. This isn't a fight he needs to be having, and this isn't the time to be having it. He's not going to win anyway and will only get himself fired before the show starts. He hopes Jamie is listening and getting an earful.

“What do you need me to do?” he asks Dustin.

“Whatever you got to do,” Dustin says.

“A full suit?” Spence says. “Not just a jacket and tie?”

“Nope. This is a real nice function.”

Go to hell,
Spence thinks.

“Then I guess I've got to go shopping,” he says.

“There's a Men's Wearhouse about five minutes from the hotel,” Dustin says before he hangs up the phone.

Spence curses a few times before putting his cell phone back to his ear. “Sorry about that,” he says to Jamie.

“What was that all about?” he asks. Spence tells him the situation.

“Damn,” Jamie says. “Since when do comedians have a dress code?”

“Good question,” he says. “I got into this business so I wouldn't have to wear a suit anymore.”

“True that. What are you going to do?”

“I guess I'm off to buy a suit.”

“Aw, man. That ain't so bad. Get some total pimp-daddy suit that will help you pick up a new chick and forget the Canadian who went and broke your heart.”

“Thanks, Mister Glass-Is-Half-Full,” he says.

“Damn straight.”

He says good-bye to Jamie and hangs up the phone. Still lying on the bed, he feels a creepy feeling crawl over him and wishes he could just turn off the nightstand lamp and take a nap. He wishes he could sleep away the annoyance of having to go out and buy a suit.

There are worse things to have to go and buy, you know,
he could hear Sam saying. He wishes her voice in his head could make him feel better. Jamie is right, and it won't kill him to own a new suit. But it's not like he has money to toss around on something he'll barely wear. He looks down at his worn-out shoes and is reminded of that very fact.

He gets up off the bed and starts collecting his things, looking around for his car keys. Before he gets to the door, his cell phone vibrates in his pocket, and he hopes that it's somehow Dustin calling to tell him to forget the suit. When he looks at his phone, there's no such luck: It's Beth.

“Yeah?” he says as he answers the phone.

“Nice to hear you too, grumpy,” Beth says.

“I'm just annoyed and in the middle of something is all,” he says. “What's up?”

“Everything okay?”

I've been robbed, beaten up, drugged, and dumped,
Spence thinks.

“Just the usual stuff,” he says.

“Alright,” Beth says. “Well, if you wanna talk about it, let me know.”

“Thanks, Dr. Freud,” he says. “I'll be okay. But I do have to run out the door. So what's up?”

“Oh.” Beth sounds quieter than usual. “Nothing, really. Was just wondering if you're coming through town like we talked about?”

We did?
he thinks. It takes him a minute to realize that it's been weeks since he spoke with her. He got so caught up in his own soap opera that he forgot all about it. Slowly, the memory starts coming back to him.

He was always bad about it, forgetting conversations with Beth or putting them aside. Even though the split was amicable, and they got along pretty well even when the divorce went through, he never really got over the sting of it. He knows that now as much as he did then. Even though he wasn't happy, he wasn't that ready to call it off, either. Maybe it was comfort, familiarity, or just routine. But he'd gotten very used to Beth, even when things were rough. When she served him with the divorce papers, it felt like a gunshot. Right after that, he started doing everything he could to put her out of his head and at arm's length. That's how Evan made things easier for him. The sting of the loss was made easier when it was replaced with his distaste of the new guy in his home.