I'll Be Here All Week (18 page)

“Thank you very much,” Spence says to Ashley before turning back to Marcy. “I'm sorry about that. She's kind of bitter about having to walk around with two enormous balls.”

Marcy laughs again. “No problem. But you could just have those drinks with me. I won't bite.”

“You talked me into it,” Spence says. “Just anywhere but here, okay?”

“Anywhere you want,” Marcy says. “I'll get my coat and be right back.”

She bounces off around the corner, and Spence promises himself he will only have one drink with her and nothing more. No sex. Not even a kiss. If he's going to make anything work with Sam, the first thing he has to do is not sleep with the hot, young girl with the stupidly nice body. He promises himself nothing will happen, even as he tries to remember whether or not he has any condoms in his suitcase.

“She looks like a Barbie doll,” Ashley says from behind him and scares him half out of his wits. “A fire crotch. You gonna nail that?”

“Cripes,” Spence says. “What is it with you? I'm just gonna have a drink with her. Calm down.”

“A drink, sure.”

“I'm serious.”

“You'd let that piece of ass go just like that? Why aren't you in that car right now getting a hummer?”

“Not interested.”

“She's smoking.”

“She's a pretty girl, yes. But I'm not trying to sleep with her,” Spence says, not sure who he's trying to convince, Ashley or himself.

“You don't have to try,” Ashley says. “She's making the move for you.”

“I'm behaving tonight, thanks.”

“I'll still do you,” Ashley says, standing suddenly closer.

“Rain check?” Spence asks, stepping a few feet backward and reaching for his cell phone to text Sam. Thinking of her makes him feel like behaving. He ignores Ashley's cleavage and reminds himself that Shania Twain is Canadian.

Ashley shrugs and starts to walk back into her office. Spence looks around the club now that the lights are all out and can't help but notice how nice it is. He likes working here, and has for years, but he never really stopped to notice how much money has been invested in the place. The furniture is leather and shiny. The carpet is always clean. There is expensive neon all over the place.

One thousand dollars,
Spence thinks, remembering how much pay he's picking up from Rodney for this gig.

“Hey, Ash,” he calls before Ashley can get into her office. “What am I making this week, anyway?”

“Two grand,” she says. “Same as always.”

Fuck you, Rodney.

 

“Meet me in the middle,” Marcy says as she lines up the shot glasses on the bar and picks up one on the end. Spence doesn't bother to count how many glasses are there or how many he puts down as he picks them up and quickly shoots them back. The taste of Jägermeister hits his tongue and immediately causes him to wince. He moves slow enough that he doesn't have to drink many. The taste is awful, and he'd just as soon have stopped at one.

Marcy drinks like a champ. For every shot Spence has had, Marcy has had one, too. All the while, she's been sipping on a cocktail in her hand. She can't weigh enough to not be completely smashed, but she seems to not even be slurring.

“Come on, lightweight,” she says to Spence. “You gotta be quicker than that.”

“You're lucky I'm still standing,” Spence says. Truthfully, he's not doing too badly, all things considered. He's been pretty good at pacing himself up until now. In between drinks, he's managed to put down a few glasses of water whenever Marcy has gone to the bathroom.

“I don't want you getting too drunk on me,” she says. “You're no good to me if you pass out.”

“My ex-wife would disagree with that statement.”

Marcy laughs and rolls her tongue over her cocktail straw. Spence feels the buzz from the liquor hitting him full-on and knows he probably won't be able to resist her much longer if he keeps drinking like this. In the background, “Paradise by the Dashboard Light” is playing on the jukebox. Meat Loaf is not Canadian.

“So how long has it been since I saw you?” Spence says, his liquid courage making him more confident about the fact he still doesn't remember Marcy at all.

“About five years,” she says and motions to the bartender to bring more shots. “I was an undergrad then. You don't remember, do you?”

“Sure I do,” he lies. “Just not when exactly. After a while, it's hard to keep track of when I've been somewhere.”

“And who you sleep with?”

“But we didn't sleep together.”

“No,” she says and sips her drink, “no, we did not. Not once I found out you were married, anyway.”

“Yeah, that put a damper on my sex life back then.”

“Didn't stop you from trying, though.”

“Can you blame me?”

“For being an asshole?” Marcy says, and her face looks serious for a second. “Sure I can.”

“Damn,” Spence says and feels the pinch of sobriety hitting him a bit. “Harsh.”

Marcy looks at him for a split-second and then winks. Her tongue rolls back over her straw, and she takes a long sip while smiling at him as seductively as she possibly can.

“I've always been attracted to assholes, if you must know,” she says and winks again. Spence lets out a small sigh of relief that he hopes she doesn't notice. A second later, another set of shot glasses appears on the table in front of them.

“No way,” Spence says. “I can't do any more.”

“Just one,” Marcy says. “And then we can get out of here.”

Spence sighs and looks at his watch. If he leaves right now, he can go to bed, sleep off most of the hangover that is sure to come, and still wake up without feeling too guilty. If he stays, he knows that it will only lead to him in bed with Marcy and feeling like an utter cad in the morning.

This girl is so hot, your chick in Canada would want you to do her
. Spence hears Jamie's voice ringing in his head.

“One more shot,” Spence says, “and that's final.”

“Ooh, you got it, sir,” Marcy says and salutes him as she picks up her own shot glass. Spence downs the Jägermeister and slaps the shot glass back down on the table with a flip of his wrist. The sound it makes against the table is a defiant “quitting time” signal. The buzz in his head is just right, but feels as if it could lead to puking in a hotel toilet all night if he's not too careful.

“Well done.” Marcy gives him sarcastic applause as she polishes off her drink. “You feeling good still?”

“Absolutely,” Spence says and stands up from the table. His bladder feels like it could use some relieving, and he looks around for the restroom. Spotting it, he tosses a few bucks down on the table and smiles at Marcy. “I'll be right back.”

There is a pause. Then nothing. Then blackness. Then a bright light in one eye. Then a bright light in the other eye.

Spence feels a pounding in his head and all down the side of his face. He closes his eyes for just a minute. His head hurts, and he feels dizzy. He hears a woman's voice and shakes his head for a second, trying to clear his mind and get rid of the headache. A second later, he opens his eyes and looks straight ahead. The bar is gone, Marcy is gone, and two women he doesn't recognize are looking straight at him. One of them holds a pen-sized flashlight in her hand, and she's shining it right in Spence's eyes.

“He's awake,” the woman with the flashlight says to the other.

“You coming around?” the other woman asks Spence.

“What?” Spence says, his head pounding.

“You're in the hospital,” the woman with the flashlight says. “Can you tell us your name?”

“What the hell happened?” Spence sits up in the hospital bed, staring wide-eyed at the two nurses looking right back at him the same way.

“We were hoping you could tell us that,” the bigger and older of the two nurses, a rough-looking woman in her early fifties, stops shining the flashlight in his eyes and puts it into the pocket of her scrubs. She glances at the other nurse, a younger woman with long, black hair, who writes something on a clipboard she is holding.

“I just said I'll be right back,” Spence says.

“When?” the older nurse asks.

“Just now.”

“To whom?”

“The girl at the bar.”

“When was that?”

“Just a few minutes ago,” Spence says and closes his eyes for a second. His head hurts more than he can remember it ever hurting before.

“You've been unconscious for over nine hours,” the older nurse says.

Holy shit,
Spence thinks.

“Are you kidding me?” he asks.

“Do you know where you are?” the younger nurse says. “Do you know
who
you are?”

“I'm in the hospital,” Spence says.

“We just told you that,” the younger nurse says.

“I didn't need you to tell me that. I can see that.”

“Calm down. Do you know why you're here, Spencer?”

Spence shakes his head, but it hurts worse when he does that. “I don't go by that.”

“That's your name.”

“My last name.”

The younger nurse makes a note on the clipboard she's holding. Spence feels his eye twitching every time the fluorescent lights on the ceiling flicker, like hospital lights always seem to do. The twitch in his eye must make him look crazy, because both nurses look uneasy around him. The older one puts her hand on his chest and gently pushes him back down, easing his head into the pillow on the hospital bed.

“Alright, now, let's just take a deep breath and try to remember what happened, okay? Can you tell me where you were last night?”

“I just said that I would be right back,” Spence says, feeling the pain in his head going all the way down the side of his face. “That was just a minute ago.”

“Who did you tell that to?”

“The redhead.”

“What redhead?”

“The redhead at the bar.”

“What was the name?”

“Her name was Marcy.”

“Not the redhead.” The older nurse shakes her head. “The name of the bar.”

Spence can't remember the name of the bar. Marcy drove him there, and he was too busy looking at her in the car along the way to pay much attention to anything else, let alone the name of the bar or even where it was. He remembers her red hair, several shots of Jägermeister, and then nothing else.

“I'm from out of town,” he says. “I'm a comedian, here doing a show.”

“You're a comedian?” the younger nurse repeats. “Well, this isn't some joke, you know.”

Spence wants to take the clipboard out of her hands and slap her with it. People always seem to think that comedians find everything amusing, no matter the circumstance. He's just woken up from what feels like a coma and some nurse is acting like he just pulled a practical joke.

“No shit it's not funny,” he says. “I'm not laughing, am I?”

“Alright,” the older nurse says, “just calm down.”

“Calm down? I've just woken up in a hospital with no idea how I got here and you think that because I'm a comedian I think this is funny? And now you want me to calm down?”

“You got here in an ambulance. They found you and brought you here.”

“Found me?” Spence asks.

“You were lying in a ditch in the middle of the median on the highway. The ambulance was driving by and thought you were dead. They put you in the back and brought you here.”

Jesus Christ,
Spence thinks,
how much did I drink?

The bigger nurse tells him that, best as they can tell, it looks as if he stumbled out of the bar, down the highway, and fell down onto the median. Or, at least, that's what it looks like might have happened. No one can tell, and he obviously has no memory of any of it.

“My head really hurts,” Spence says, reaching up to touch it. The bigger nurse reaches over and takes his hand. She holds it politely and shakes her head. Spence knows her not letting him touch his head is not a good sign.

“You'll be okay,” she says to him, “but you should prepare yourself.”

Prepare myself for what?
Spence thinks, but the words don't come out. His mouth just hangs open.

The younger nurse puts down her clipboard, picks up a small handheld mirror, and holds it up so Spence can look at himself. He immediately sees why she didn't let him touch it. The entire left side of his face is smashed and bruised. He has a thick, black eye, and his cheek and forehead are both terribly scraped up. It looks as if someone has hit him in the face with a crowbar.

“Jesus,” Spence says, feeling his eyes welling up, but choking it back. “Did someone beat me up?”

“It looks like you fell,” the older nurse says.

“You broke your fall with your face,” the younger nurse says.

“Holy shit,” Spence says, still staring at his awful reflection. “And no one kicked my ass?”

“Your wallet was on you,” the younger nurse says. “That's how we knew your name. It was full. Money, credit cards. No one robbed you.”

“But I didn't even drink that much.”

The older nurse sighs and shakes her head. “Well, your blood-alcohol level was incredibly high. You're lucky to be alive right now.”

Meet me in the middle,
Spence thinks.

“I've been drunk before,” he says. “I've never blacked out. Not once. Not ever.”

The nurses both look at each other for a second. Spence can't tell if the look is concern or disbelief. They think he's lying. He's seen that look on enough women's faces to know what it means. The younger nurse puts down the mirror and picks up her clipboard again. Spence suddenly smells the hospital. It's an awful smell and reminds him of being around sick people, which he has always been uncomfortable with.

“Have you ever heard of Flunitrazepam?” she asks.

“No,” Spence says. “Should I have?”

“Rohypnol?”

“I don't think so.”

“Roofies,” the older nurse says. Now Spence knows what she's talking about.

“The date rape drug,” he says.

“Right,” the older nurse says.

Just one more shot of Jägermeister,
Spence thinks.

“You mean that someone drugged me?” he asks.

“Looks like it,” the older nurse says. “Unless it was intended for someone else.”

“Like who?”

“Who were you drinking with?”

“The redhead.”

“Did she buy the drinks?”

Spence suddenly feels sick to his stomach. Marcy did buy all the drinks. She kept putting them in front of him. He remembers the first round of shots she bought after he got back from the restroom. They were already on the table. He doesn't know what to think yet and is still trying to clear his head. He knows that none of this is going to make him happy even when it does finally start to make sense. He suddenly realizes that her name probably isn't even Marcy.

“But I didn't sleep with her,” he says.

“When?” the younger nurse asks.

“Ever,” Spence says. “She said we never slept together.”

“I hate to put it this way,” the older nurse says, “but I think someone really wanted to hurt you.”

Spence feels the pain in his face burning and moving its way down his entire body, through his stomach, and into his intestines. He feels as if he's going to throw up all over the bed right there in the hospital. The tears in his eyes start to well up again, but he shakes them away. He always knew that it was only a matter of time before his house of cards fell down.

Why would she do this to me?
Spence thinks.

“I've got to get out of here,” he says.

“Not yet,” the older nurse says.

“Yes. Now.”

Spence starts to get out of the bed when a throbbing pain shoots up his left arm. He winces and snaps his head around to find the source of the pain. Sticking out of his arm is a long IV, hooked up to a bag of clear liquid.

“Take this out of me,” he says.

“You should lie back down,” the younger nurse says.

“I don't care. You can't keep me here, and I want to leave. Please, take this out of me.”

The older nurse calmly reaches over and, with an amazingly gentle touch, removes the small needle from Spence's arm. He barely feels it, even as she covers the small wound with a cotton swab and a Band-Aid. Spence looks around the small hospital room for the first time and realizes that it's not just the three of them in there. There is another patient, thankfully asleep, in a bed just a few feet away. Spence notices the other patient wearing a hospital gown and then realizes that's all he's wearing as well.

“Where are my clothes?” he asks, standing up and feeling the cold hospital air down his bare backside.

“That's a problem,” the older nurse says. “We cut them off you.”

“You did what?”

“When you were brought in, we had no idea what condition you were in. We didn't even know if you were alive. We had to cut them off you before we had your body X-rayed.”

“You had me X-rayed?”

“To make sure you hadn't broken anything, yes.”

I don't remember any of this,
Spence thinks. It is only one of a million thoughts racing through his head.

The younger nurse reaches over to the small table beside the bed, picks up a large, brown paper bag, and hands it to Spence. He looks inside and finds his jeans, underwear, and shirt, all cut to pieces. He suddenly realizes that, if he's going to leave, he has to walk out of there wearing nothing but that hospital gown.

“Did you cut my shoes off me, too?” he asks.

“Of course not.” The older nurse points at Spence's black boots on the floor. Spence puts them on and tries to ignore the pounding in his head and face. He feels like he could fall into that hospital bed and sleep for nine more hours. Or nine more days. He doesn't want to leave, and yet he can't stomach the thought of staying there, either. He wishes he could be nowhere.

“We have to talk to you before you go,” the younger nurse says, giving a quick, scared look over at her boss.

“I don't have insurance,” Spence says. “You'll have to send me a bill.”

“Not about that,” the older nurse says. “But we know you don't have insurance.”

“What about, then?”

“The law requires us to talk with you about the dangers of alcohol. Anyone admitted to the hospital for alcohol-related injuries has to have counseling before they can check out.”

“I'm fine, thanks.” He's not sure if that's completely true.

“It's standard procedure. We just need to ask you about your alcohol consumption and habits.”

Spence sighs and sits back down on the edge of the bed. “What do you need?”

The younger nurse flips the page on her clipboard and starts writing. “Do you ever drink or get drunk alone?”

“Yeah, so?”

“Well, that's a common sign of alcoholism.”

“I also drink and get drunk with friends.”

“Also a sign of being an alcoholic. Do you drink when you're upset or to avoid thinking of your troubles?”

“Yeah, sometimes. Is that a sign of being an alcoholic?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Is it also a sign of not being one?”

The younger nurse looks up from her clipboard. “Well, yes.”

Spence stands up again. “I'd like to leave now.”

Both nurses let out an exasperated sigh at the same time and step aside as Spence gets up off the bed and wiggles his bare feet into his shoes. He looks ridiculous and he knows it. He is wearing nothing but his ankle boots and the hospital gown, tied loosely in the back and just barely exposing his ass to the world. It comes down to just above his knees, looking as if he's wearing a very ugly dress.

“So this is how I leave, huh?” he says and tries to smile. Neither nurse returns the gesture. Spence shrugs and feels the pain in his face again as if he's just been punched across the jaw. He wonders how long he'll look like this and if he'll be able to come up with a funny enough joke to explain it to the audience. He's got a full week of shows ahead of him and now has to do it with a broken face. He knows Ashley is going to give him hell about this for years to come. At least his busted look will keep her from trying to sleep with him the rest of the week.

“You're still legally drunk, you know,” the older nurse says, “so you can't drive anywhere. You need to sober up before you get behind the wheel.”

“I'm still drunk?” he asks.

“Legally, yes.”

Spence realizes he came there in an ambulance and, at the very least, needs to get back to the hotel. He has no intention of driving. He just wants to curl up into a ball and stay there until showtime. And then go back into that ball immediately afterward.

“Can you call me a cab?” Spence says. He waits for one of the nurses to yell “You're a cab” at him, but is pretty sure that neither of them has a sense of humor.

“Your wife is here,” the younger nurse says. “She'll drive you home.”

“My wife?” Spence asks.

“We found her number in your cell phone,” the older nurse says. “We thought you were going to die. We had to call someone, so we called her and she came here to get you. She's been in the waiting room for the past hour or so.”

Jesus,
Spence thinks to himself.
Beth drove from Jersey to Syracuse, New York?