I'll Be Here All Week (13 page)

“Nothing,” the bartender says.

“Mighty kind of you.” Spence stands up to leave.

“The comedians all drink free here,” the bartender says.

“What?”

“Yeah”—the bartender nods—“that's the club policy. The comedians drink free and eat for free. We've got a full menu if you're hungry.”

Spence sits back down on the barstool. “My drinks are free?” he asks.

“And your food.” The bartender grins and slowly nods. He gets it.

“I'll have two steaks, medium rare,” Spence says without looking at the menu. “What's the most expensive Scotch in this place?”

The bartender winks and reaches into a closed cabinet behind him. He pulls out a bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue.

“This is Frank's private stash,” the bartender says with a sly little smirk.

“I'll have three fingers of that.” Spence puts his glass down on the bar.

“How about four?” the bartender says and fills the glass.

“Perfect,” Spence says. If he's going to get his pay shorted by four hundred bucks, he's going to eat and drink his money's worth. At least the bartender is thinking the same way.

“Hey, man, forget about that show.” The bartender sets the bottle down next to Spence. “I heard you on the radio this morning. You kicked ass.”

“Thanks.” Spence shrugs his shoulders and turns away. He wants to cry. He can't remember the last time he did. He doesn't know what he feels more: anger or helplessness. He takes a long gulp from his Scotch and paces in the middle of the lobby, waiting for his food. He has no appetite. He'll throw it away if it will make Frank lose money. He'll do it again tomorrow night.

He steps outside and lets the air hit him. It's getting warmer. A few weeks ago, he was in Montreal and freezing, but it's unusually warm here in Peoria. Either that or the Scotch is kicking in very fast. He looks down at the clock on his cell phone. It's midnight. It's late. He knows he shouldn't call Sam, but he does it anyway.

“What's wrong?” she asks. He has talked to her several times since he left Montreal, but never this late.

“I fucked up,” he says.

“What'd you do?” she asks quietly.

“Nothing,” he says. “I mean, everything. It was just a shitty night. I didn't really do anything wrong. At least I don't think I did. I don't know.”

“What happened?” she asks. He can tell she was asleep when he called. It's one more thing he feels bad about. He can feel the tears welling up in his eyes. How long has it been since he cried? He feels like such a pathetic loser right now, but he really doesn't care. He wonders if what he needs is one good tantrum to make him feel better.

“I don't know,” he says. “I just can't keep going like this. Something has to change. Something's gotta give.”

“The job?”

“Yeah, the job.”

There's a long pause on the phone. He closes his eyes and waits for the feeling to pass where he doesn't think he's going to start bawling. He wants the booze to kick in and make him not give a damn. In the background, he can hear music still playing in the bar. He tries to think of Canadian bands and singers. Does he know this woman enough to spill his guts out like this? Sure, he spent a few days with her. Sure, he calls her from time to time. But does he know her well enough to show her this?

“I'm sorry,” he says. “Are you still there?”

“I'm here,” she says. “I'm listening.”

Spence stands onstage, looking around the room. The club is completely empty, and he's standing under the lights, trying to see if anyone is coming in. He knows he's on time and he's supposed to be there, but he's the only person in the room. He's cold even though the lights are so bright he can't see past them without shielding his eyes. There's a drum being played offstage, but it's not a rim shot for his jokes and there's no other instruments. Just three beats, a pause, then three beats. Then it's “Shave and a Haircut, Two Bits”; five quick beats followed by two quick beats.

Spence opens his eyes and realizes that he's not standing onstage, but standing in the middle of his hotel room. Someone is knocking on the door, and he's standing in his underwear with the sheet draped over him like a cape. He's like a half-naked superhero in the middle of a Red Roof Inn. Here to rid the world of sleeping past checkout time. He tosses the sheet back onto the bed and rubs his eyes.

“Just a second,” he yells through the door and looks around for his pants. This is not the first time he's woken up standing in the middle of the room. He does it every few months. Sometimes he wakes up sitting at the desk. He's always draped in the bedsheets or whatever he's thrown over himself in the night. Each time he wakes up and is unaware of where he is. By the time he puts on his jeans, he remembers that this time he's in Pittsburgh.

He opens the door and lets the sunlight burn his retina for a few seconds. He steps back into the darkness of the room and looks at the silhouette standing in the doorway as his eyes adjust to the light.

“You don't look like housekeeping,” Spence says.

“I'm not.” The silhouette chuckles. It's a young black man, about twenty-five or so, almost six feet tall, with a shaved head and thin beard only on his chin.

“Jehovah's Witness?”

“Nope.”

“And you're not selling cookies.”

“Not at all.”

“Then you must be a comedian.”

“Bingo,” the kid says.

“C'mon in,” Spence says and looks around for a shirt to put on.

The kid walks in the room and closes the door behind him.

“What's up?”

“I'm Jamie.” The kid shakes his hand and looks around the small room. “Jamie Hernandez. Remember? We met last year at the Comedy Corner in Philly.”

“Yeah, I remember,” Spence lies. “How have you been?”

“Great, man,” Jamie says. “Doing all right. How have you been?”

Spence extends his hands and shows off his hotel room. “The same.”

Jamie nods. “Yeah. Keeping busy, I see.”

“Always.”

“So Rodney told me you're cool, right?”

“Cool with what?” Spence asks and wonders if he's in the middle of a drug deal and no one told him.

“About me tagging along to Toledo,” Jamie says.

Spence has no idea what Jamie is talking about and he's certain Rodney never told him anything about it. This comes as no surprise whatsoever.

“Shit,” Jamie says. “He was supposed to ask you if it was okay if I catch a ride with you to Toledo. I'm opening for you, but I don't have wheels. Rodney said you'd be cool giving me a ride there.”

“Sure, I'm cool with that.” Spence nods. This isn't the first time and probably won't be the last time he's had another comedian ride along to a gig. He did it himself when he was an opening act. There's no way Jamie is getting paid very well; opening act money is always awful. The least he can do is throw the kid a bone and make it a little easier.

“Great, man,” Jamie says and pulls out the chair at the small table in the corner. “I really do appreciate it. And I'll chip in for gas.”

Spence waves his hand dismissively. “I'm going there anyway. Don't worry about it.”

“That's cool, man,” Jamie says. “Thanks.”

“You live here in Pittsburgh?” Spence says as he starts packing up his stuff. He would've slept another hour had Jamie not shown up, but he figures there's always time for a nap when they get to Toledo.

“Yeah,” Jamie says. “Born and raised, man.”

“Got your start at the Funny Bone, right?”

“You remember,” Jamie says. He's wrong. All Pittsburgh comedians started at the Funny Bone. It's a safe assumption Jamie did, too, and was just a lucky guess.

“Getting out on the road, huh? Gonna start touring the country?”

“I hope so, man,” Jamie says. “That would be amazing.”

“Sure.”

“I just wanna work as much as possible. Maybe get more work from Rodney, you know?”

“I do know,” Spence says. He smells a T-shirt he found in his suitcase to see if it's the clean black one or the dirty black one. He thinks it's the clean one. He's not sure. He has several that all look the same. He puts it on. If he's going to be in the car all day, it doesn't really matter if it's clean or not.

“Can you drive a stick?” he asks Jamie.

“Naw, man,” Jamie says. “Is your car a stick shift?”

“No, I was just curious.”

“Really?” Jamie asks.

“What do you think?”

“Aw, man,” Jamie says, “you can't mess with me like that. I'll fall for it every time, man.”

“Get used to it,” Spence says. “It's a long drive to Toledo. You ready?”

“You got it,” Jamie says.

“Cool. Get my bags.”

Jamie stands up and goes to grab the suitcase.

“Get the hell outta here.” Spence laughs and brushes Jamie away from the luggage. “I'm kidding. Damn.” He takes his suitcase and tosses the strap over his shoulder. Jamie shrugs and opens the door to the hotel. The light hits them both, and they each scramble for their sunglasses. Jamie grabs a duffel bag he left lying outside and tosses it into the Camry.

“You sure you don't want gas money?” Jamie asks as he plops into the passenger seat.

“I'm cool,” Spence says. “Just remember it's my car. I get to control the radio.”

“You got it, man,” Jamie says. “I'm cool with pretty much anything.”

“Good, because all I listen to is country music.”

“For real?”

“Or talk radio,” Spence says. “I like Rush Limbaugh the most. Whatever, as long as it's right-wing stuff.”

“No shit, huh?” Jamie says.

Spence looks at Jamie and raises his eyebrows. He waits a second. After a beat, the kid catches on.

“Aw, man. You're screwing with me again. Shit,” Jamie says. “I was worried for a minute there.”

Spence starts the car. “Hope you like the eighties,” Spence says. “And this time I'm not screwing with you.”

He tunes his satellite radio to the channel that plays all eighties music and aims the car away from Pittsburgh and toward Toledo. It's nice weather for a drive, which is just what he needs. He's been sitting in the Red Roof Inn for days, letting the rain make him miserable and lonely. Now he's feeling okay as he lets Rick Springfield lead him onto the Pennsylvania Turnpike.

“Hernandez?” he asks Jamie. “That your real last name?”

“Yeah, man. My dad is Mexican.”

“Get the hell outta here.”

“Yeah, man, it's true.”

“And your mother is black?”

“What gave it away, man?”

Spence laughs. Jamie nods his head to the music and smiles. He's a charming kid. Women probably love him. He's probably still at that point in his career when he's happy to get work just because it gets him laid all the time. The money is an afterthought.

“That's cool,” Spence says after a few minutes listening to the radio tell him about Jesse's girl. “Half black and half Mexican. I bet the material is endless.”

“It's alright.”

“You kidding? With that kind of heritage, you didn't have a choice. You had to become a comedian.”

“You said it, man,” Jamie says. “Or a boxer.”

This makes Spence laugh again. The kid is lucky, in a way. Having a background like that probably gives him a ton of stories that he can turn into bits and milk them for God knows how long. TV people love that, too. They love having some kind of catchphrase or trait they can latch onto if they think it's marketable. A young, biracial comedian screams “hit sitcom.”

Spence never had anything like that. He was never fat or awkward or beaten up. He has no childhood trauma he turned into jokes. He didn't have a weird family, and no one was drunk or abusive to him along the way. His parents are living in some nice retirement community in Florida. He has no emotional scars, and his nice suburban life ruined him for any real edgy stories or personal material. It's probably why he relies so heavily on dick jokes.

Ironic,
he thinks.
Only comedians would see having a happy upbringing as a bad thing.

It didn't start with dick jokes, of course. There was a time when Spence thought of himself as a social commentator. He went onstage and talked politics, religion, anything that was on his mind at the time. The problem was he was in his early twenties. The average audience member is over thirty-five. They don't want to hear a kid stand onstage and tell them about how the world works. When that didn't work so well, he moved on to jokes about dating. From there it was jokes about sex, then marriage. And then it was all about divorce. Somewhere along the way, he found himself going back to the dick jokes. People say it's love, but nothing is really as universal as sex . . . and jokes about penises.

“This is cool, man,” Jamie says after about thirty minutes, right during the middle of A Flock of Seagulls.

“This song?”

“Nah, man. Being on the road like this. Going to a gig.”

“We just left.”

“Yeah, but it's cool just to be going there, man,” Jamie says. “Getting paid to make people laugh. That's cool, man.”

“Sure.”

“No?” Jamie looks over at him.

“Of course it's cool to make people laugh.”

“Then what's up?” Jamie says.

“Just talk to me after you've been in the car eight or nine hours,” Spence says. “It can be a bit much, is all.”

“For real. You drive a lot, huh?”

“That's the job.”

“Yeah,” Jamie says and looks out at the scenery. “Still sounds pretty cool.”

“It can be.” Spence nods. Sometimes the driving is the best part of his day. It's the one time he can escape everyone and not feel guilty about getting nothing else done. There are no e-mails to check when he's behind the wheel, and he doesn't talk on the phone when he's driving. Rodney isn't there to annoy him. All he has to do is sit back and listen to Men Without Hats.

“You don't have another job?” Jamie asks. “No day gig?”

“This is it.”

“That's cool, man.”

Spence smiles. “It can be.”

“I work for a free newspaper,” Jamie says. “Selling ads. That job sucks. I'd choke someone to be doing what you do.”

“I understand how you feel,” Spence says. Glass Tiger on the radio. It takes a second before he remembers that Glass Tiger is Canadian. He wonders what Sam is doing today. Probably working. He thinks about her folding pants and wonders if he should go to the Gap and buy new stage clothes.

“You ever done any TV?” Jamie asks.

Spence nods. “I did
The Late Late Show
once.”

“Sweet,” Jamie says. “With Craig Ferguson?”

“Craig Kilborn.”

“That was a long time ago, huh?”

“Thanks,” Spence says and gives Jamie an “eat me” look over the top of his fake Wayfarers.

“Anything else?” Jamie asks.

“Yeah.” Spence rubs the back of his neck with this right hand while steering with his left. “I wrote some stuff for Keenen Ivory Wayans. I wasn't on the show, but I wrote some jokes for his opening monologue.”

“In Living Color
?
”
Jamie asks. He looks confused.

“No, his talk show.”

“He had a talk show?”

“Briefly.”

“When was that?”

“A long time ago.”

“Like five years?”

“Forget it,” Spence says and shakes his head. When did five years become a long time?

Jamie looks out the window. He taps his feet as Glass Tiger leads into Paul Hardcastle. Outside the car window, Pennsylvania passes by, but it could be anywhere in the country. This highway doesn't look much different than any other. Sixty-five thousand miles were put on the Camry last year, and each mile looked pretty much like the last one.

“I've never done any TV,” Jamie says, “but I've been close. I almost did
I Love the 90s
on VH1. I had a friend who was an intern over there.”

“Nice,” Spence says. “Make more friends like that.”

“Yeah, right?”

“It's true. Best advice I can ever give someone is to make friends anywhere you can in this business. It will help you out a lot down the road.”

“I worked for a publicist once,” Jamie says, “back when I was in college. I stay in touch with her.”

“A publicist?” Spence says. “Stay in her good graces as long as possible.”

“No shit.”

“Well done, grasshopper.”

“Got any more advice?” Jamie says. He's eager and sincere. It makes Spence smile, because he knows that attitude lasts for only a few years. “I'd love to know anything you can tell me, man.”

“Get a reliable car,” Spence says.

Jamie laughs. “For real. But right now I'd settle for any car.”

“Good point.”

The scenery flashes by them. For a while Spence thinks that Jamie is actually enjoying the eighties tunes. He saw him mouthing the words to “Electric Avenue.” He looks slightly left out the window as Jamie looks slightly right. Spence remembers when he couldn't wait for the next gig. When each week was exciting and every gig stood apart from the last one. There was a time when it never felt like a job; he was thrilled to get paid to do what he used to do for free. He remembers when he was eager and sincere.