I'll Be Here All Week (5 page)

“Nice,” Spence says. He remembers that he was out of college over five years before he finally got the diploma matted and framed. It's never been hung on a wall, just moved around from one apartment to the next. At one point, it leaned against his desk for four years.

“This too.” She holds up a key and drops it in his hand.

“What's this?”

“The key to your storage place. My key.”

“You should keep this here,” Spence says. “Just in case.”

“No.” She smiles. It's an awkward smile. “You need to take it.”

“But, what if—”

Beth holds up her hand. “It's time.”

Spence looks at her and looks at Evan and then back at Beth. She doesn't look at Evan. Evan smirks—it's hard to see it, but he definitely smirks—turns and walks back to the kitchen table and takes a long sip of his wine. Spence realizes that Evan won this battle before he even got out of bed. Checkmate, indeed.

“And my mail?” Spence asks.

“Time to move on with that, too,” she says. “It's been long enough, okay?”

“But what if I—”

“David,” Beth says and looks at him sternly.

Spence hates it when she calls him by his middle name, and she knows it. But she only does it when she's letting him know she doesn't want to lose her temper. He shrugs and sighs. It would probably bother him if it were a surprise, but it isn't. He actually thought she was going to have this talk with him six months ago. He's lucky he got away with it this long. He looks over at Evan, who doesn't look back at him, but just keeps looking out the window, sipping on his wine. At least the douche didn't gloat.

“Alright,” Spence concedes, “I'll change my address. Maybe get a PO box. Have it sent to my parents or something.”

“Cool,” she says.

“I'm off,” Spence says and makes his way to the door.

“So long,” Evan says and waves over his shoulder without looking at him.

At the front of the condo, Beth puts her hand on his shoulder as she opens the door. “Christmas decorations, okay?” she asks.

“Sure.”

She leans in the doorway for a second, looking around the breezeway. Spence tucks the picture frame under his arm and pulls out his car keys. He fumbles with the key ring for a minute and finally gets Beth's house key loose. He hands it to her, and she puts it in her pocket.

“You okay?” she asks.

“Yeah, I'm fine,” he says. There's a second where Beth starts to walk back into the condo, but she stays in the doorway instead. They smile politely at each other for a few seconds, and he shrugs.

“You need a girlfriend,” she says.

“I'm okay in that department,” he says.

“No, I know you're getting laid,” she gives him a tsk-tsk look and furrows her eyebrows, “I mean you need a girlfriend. A date. Someone else to talk to.”

“I talk plenty. All I do is talk. I talk for a living,” he says.

“You know what I mean,” she says.

He laughs. “Sure. That's what every woman wants to date, right? A homeless, broke comedian.”

“Women love comedians. I did, remember?”

“How'd that work out for you?”

“Not fair.”

“Sorry.”

Spence sighs deeply and runs his free hand through his hair. He's never understood Beth's fascination with whether or not he's dating. Part of him guesses that she feels a little bit guilty for replacing him with Evan so quickly after the divorce. He finds it odd that she always seems eager for him to find someone else to never be home with.

“You're doing better than you were this time last year,” she says. “You're still working. That says something about you, right?”

“My last gig was at a place in Oklahoma with a mechanical bull next to the stage.”

Beth laughs. He cringes from it, but he knows just how ridiculous it must sound.

“Hey, you're the one that wanted this life,” she says. “You could've stayed right here and waited tables or been a bartender or done all kinds of things to pay the rent. You chose to live on the road, remember?”

She's right. It really seemed like a good idea at the time. The idea of not having a day job and being able to make money doing only stand-up was tempting. When Rodney started finding him work, he said yes to every single job. That meant he was never in one place for very long. Next thing he knew, he was never home. Not long after that, he didn't even have one.

“You're the one who hated to be alone, remember?” he says.

“And I always was.”

He looks over her shoulder at Evan, back on the patio and scraping off the grill. “Not anymore,” he says. It's a quick jab, but he knows it's not fair. He would have done the same thing had he been her.

At least now, he and Beth get along fairly well and speak to each other without losing their minds. The last two years they were married it was outright chaos. She was happy to see him getting so much work and then crying to him on the phone every night that he was never home. At first she was sad all the time. Then she got angry and the screaming kicked in. After a while, they argued when he was away and kept arguing when he was home. The fact that the divorce was so easy was hard to believe. That they managed to somehow have the shell of a friendship left over was a miracle.

“I'm glad you guys are doing so well,” Spence says and knows how phony it sounds. The chuckle Beth gives back lets him know he's right.

“Oh, sure.” She smiles and rolls her eyes. Every once in a while, he sees what everyone else does. She's beautiful, and everyone he knew envied him for being with her. When they did get along, they laughed a lot. She was a great sounding board, and always knew which bits he was working on would be great additions to his act and which ones would fail. He wonders if she laughs a lot with Evan.

“You look good,” she says.

“I thought I looked tired,” he says.

“Well, yeah.”

“You're a bad liar.”

Beth rolls her eyes again, but this time it doesn't feel quite as friendly. “Just look for the decorations, okay?” she says and starts to close the door.

“Okay,” he says.

“And you need to fire Rodney,” she tells him. “He's sending you to redneck bars? That's bullshit.”

“Mechanical bullshit.” He grins. Rim shot.

The door closes, and Spence walks out into the parking lot. He stands there for a minute and looks around at the rest of the condo complex and all the cars parked in a neat little row. Evan's Audi really is very nice. He probably gets it detailed regularly and changes the tires even when he doesn't have to. It probably still has that “new car” smell and always will.

Putting on his fake Wayfarers, Spence tosses the stack of mail into the backseat of his car. He sits there for a second and looks at the different condos in the complex. This really is the only part of New Jersey he ever liked. A minute later, he sees Russ and Debbie climbing out of their Honda Accord. He scratches his temple and pretends not to see them when they wave at him as he drives away.

Rodney used to have an office in downtown Manhattan, but now uses some dump in Brooklyn. There's no telling where Rodney's actual home is. It has never even come up in conversation or been mentioned. There have been times when Spence has called there at two a.m. only to have Rodney pick up the phone. The guy is not that efficient an agent, so there's no way he'd be doing work at that hour. It seems more likely that the sofa pulls out into a bed and Rodney lives in that little room around the clock.

“What's up, you filthy man-whore?” Rodney yells at him when he walks in the door. The place is a mess. There isn't a single place to sit down since every corner is covered with paper, trash, headshots, and videotapes. The videotapes stand out the most. Rodney still uses a VCR to copy the videos of comics that he sends out to clubs. While the rest of the world is watching clips online or, at the very least, on DVD, Rodney is still lamenting the death of Betamax.

“Love what you've done with the place,” Spence says to Rodney as he climbs over the remains of other comedians' careers.

“The cleaning lady comes tomorrow,” Rodney says. The phone is on his shoulder, but he isn't talking to anyone, so he must be on hold. Some teenager is sitting on the floor, sorting through papers.

“Intern?” Spence asks, tilting his head toward the kid doing all the work. Rodney nods, holds up his index finger, and swivels around in his chair. Rodney has a new intern every month. They work for school credit, hoping to leave NYU and get a job at the William Morris Agency or with Gersh. Most of them will wind up in Brooklyn, just like Rodney, or in Jersey, where the rent is cheaper. Also like Rodney, they'll all become D-list agents, managing the careers of comedians climbing or falling back down the show business ladder.

Agents like Rodney are everywhere, and they're surprisingly in demand. In both New York and LA, there are hundreds of comedians, actors, musicians, jugglers, magicians, and even balloon artists desperately seeking someone to desperately find them work. The only thing more amazing about how many talent agents there are is how difficult it is to get one. Every working comedian knows that having one gets you more work, and you don't ever fire your agent until a better one finds you first. Spence can't remember the last time another agent returned his phone calls.

Rodney looks like he slept in his clothes, which answers the question about where his home is. The ratty baseball cap covers a bald head that would probably still be bald even if Rodney didn't shave it. The remnants of an ill-conceived goatee cover his round chin, and he looks as if he hasn't gotten any sun in about four years. And he's wearing shorts. He wears shorts year-round, even when visiting the Christmas tree in Rockefeller Center.

Spence waves a friendly hand to greet the intern as Rodney goes back to talking to no one on the phone. Stepping over more clutter, he walks over to the filing cabinet in a corner of the room and opens it to his own file, marked under
S
. Right there, in a manila folder, are about two hundred of his headshots. He rolls his eyes and lets out a long, dramatic sigh. The filing cabinet is perfectly alphabetized, which is probably why Rodney can't seem to figure it out. Spence takes the photos out of the cabinet and tosses them on Rodney's desk.

“Thanks,” Rodney says when the photos land in front of him, “where'd you find 'em?”

“The first place I looked,” Spence says.

“Right.”

“You have a check for me?”

“For what?”

“That casino in Syracuse, New York. Two months ago.”

“Oh, yeah,” Rodney says, still on hold, “that gig. I think I do have a check, yeah.” He reaches into his desk drawer and takes out a stack of envelopes bound together with a rubber band. Then he flips through them, finds the right one, and tosses it across the desk.

“Thanks,” Spence says as he picks it up and checks the balance. It's exactly what it should be. No deductions for drinks or food or postage stamps. Just his money minus the usual cut Rodney takes for booking the gig. He puts the envelope into the breast pocket of his coat.

“Any news about Cleveland?” he asks.

“What about it?” Rodney asks.

“You were going to see about getting me a gig there to make up for Rockford.”

“What do you mean ‘make up for Rockford'?”

“You told me the club in Rockford closed.”

“It did?”

“Oh, for Chrissakes, Rodney.”

“Oh, Rockford, Illinois.” Rodney nods and puts the phone down. “I was thinking something different. Yeah, that club's closed. Scratch it off your schedule.”

“Yeah, I did that,” Spence says. “How about getting me booked in Cleveland instead?”

“Good idea,” Rodney says. “I'll look into that. Maybe Baltimore.”

Spence shakes his head and then looks down at the intern sitting on the floor. The intern gives him the same look back. The kid will change his major in three weeks and wind up going into computers.

“What are you doing here, anyway?” Rodney asks.

“I told you I was coming,” Spence says.

“You did?”

“Yeah, three days ago.”

“Right, after you screwed up in Oklahoma.”

“Bite me.”

“So why are you here?”

“I needed to get my mail,” Spence says, “and warmer clothes, remember?”

“What for?” Rodney asks, absolutely clueless.

“The gig in Key West. You got me that gig at the resort.”

“Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. The beach gig,” Rodney says. “Enjoy that. That should be a lot of fun.”

Unbelievable,
Spence thinks.

“You are such an ass,” he says instead.

“What?” Rodney asks.

“You don't keep track of my schedule at all, do you?”

“What are you talking about?”

“You arrange the thing, and you really don't pay attention to it at all.”

“I do too.”

“Why would I need warmer clothes if I'm going to Key West?”

“Beats the hell outta me,” Rodney says.

“I'm going to Canada, Rodney,” Spence says.

“Canada?”

“Yeah, you know, moose and beavers and snow.”

“That's this week?”

“Yeah, that's this week,” Spence says. “I'm driving up tomorrow.”

“I thought it was next month.”

“Christ.”

“Hey, you know how many assholes just like you I have to deal with?” Rodney asks. “You think I can memorize everything you do? You can't even keep track of it yourself. Imagine having to keep track of a couple dozen guys at once. That's what I gotta do.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he says to Rodney, “cry me a river.”

“I mean it,” Rodney says. “I've got to deal with you, a bunch of other guys out there on the road, and people right here in the city every single day.”

He's telling the truth. Rodney has more clients than he knows what to do with. Besides booking comedians, he also represents actors and musicians and dancers. If there's the possibility of making a few dollars from it, Rodney will represent it. There are rumors that Rodney has booked everything from children's parties to singing telegrams to mimes on street corners. Somehow the fifteen percent commission on all of these jobs manages to add up to a livable wage.

“It's your job to keep track for all of us. Maybe you're spreading yourself too thin,” Spence says.

“Shit. You wish I had the time to only worry about you,” Rodney says. “You don't make me enough money.”

“Whose fault is that?” Spence asks.

Rodney gives him the finger. “So when are you going to Key West?”

“There really is a job there?”

“You've never worked it?”

“I didn't even know it existed.”

“That was a bluff?” Rodney asks, raising his eyebrows and slowly nodding his head. “Touché.”

“I'll go there next week if I can get it,” Spence says. “Hell, there are plenty of holes in my schedule. Make that gig happen.”

“I'll work on it,” Rodney says.

“I'll hold my breath.”

Spence often wonders just how many sweet gigs like Key West are being kept from him. There's probably six weeks of work in Cancún that he doesn't even know about. Right after the Kilborn show, Rodney got him all sorts of A-room work. There were some resorts and some casinos. There was even a two-week stretch at the Improv in Houston. When more TV offers didn't happen, the gigs became B- and C-list. Five years ago, he never would have been booked at a dump like the Electric Pony. Five years ago, he thought
The Late Late Show
wouldn't be his only TV credit.

“You know what you can do?” he says to Rodney. “You can get me a showcase at Gotham.”

“Gotham, huh?”

“I think the time is right, yeah.”

Gotham Comedy Club is an A-list room in downtown Manhattan. It's a beautiful club, and one of the few spots in the city where comics can showcase for
Letterman
and sometimes Comedy Central. There was a time when Rodney could get him seen by TV bookers by arranging quick local sets and making a few phone calls. That's how he got the Kilborn gig years ago, and Gotham would be where it could happen again.

“I'll see what I can do,” Rodney says, “I don't know if you're ready for it.”

“What do you mean by that?” Spence asks.

“I mean you're still kinda new, is all. We're talking the big leagues. The TV guys might not be ready for you.”

“Well, I'm ready for them. And I'm not new.”

“That's what every comic says. A few years in, and everyone thinks they're a seasoned vet,” Rodney says.

Listening to Rodney call him “new” after more than a decade of work and eight full years of nonstop touring makes Spence want to puke all over the desk. There is an old saying that it takes ten years to become an overnight success. Some comedians get discovered young while others troll around in the business for decades trying to scratch their way up. He thinks it's quite possibly because the industry is run by people exactly like Rodney.

Spence glances down at the intern, who is cramming comedians' headshots and demo tapes into large manila envelopes, putting together promo packages to send to comedy clubs. For a brief second, he swears that he sees the kid stuffing an envelope with the photo and résumé of a comedian who has been dead for three years. He thinks it's likely that a corpse is getting more work from Rodney than he is. While he's begging for a gig in Cleveland, the dead guy is probably booked in Key West that month.

“Please, just get me a showcase,” he says to Rodney. “Get me in front of Letterman's guy or something.”

“Maybe,” Rodney says. “Can you work clean?”

“I can work clean for ten minutes, sure.”

“ 'Cause I don't want to put you in front of them and have you saying ‘fuck' and making me look like an asshole.”

“I've been working on some clean stuff just for showcasing to TV people,” Spence says.

“Have you ever done TV before?”

Spence wonders for a brief moment if Rodney is able to tie his shoes or if there's an intern that does it for him. “You are unbelievable,” he says as he rubs the back of his neck with his right hand. He can feel a migraine coming on, working its way up from the top of his shoulders.

“Why? What are you talking about?” Rodney asks.

“I did
The Late Late Show
.”

“With Ferguson?”

“With Kilborn.”

“When did you do that?”

“Almost nine years ago,” Spence says. “Jesus.”

“How'd you get that?” Rodney asks.

Spence says nothing and just stares at Rodney for at least ten seconds. “You got me a showcase for them,” he says finally. He wonders how long it would take the police to find Rodney's body if he choked him as soon as the intern left the room. Then he wonders if the intern would help.

“I got you the audition?” Rodney asks.

“Yep.”

“Oh. Oh, yeah. Now I remember.”

Spence stands up and lets out a long, frustrated sigh. “I've gotta go,” he says. “If I stay here any longer, I'm liable to kill all three of us.”

It's at that moment he feels a throbbing pain beginning behind his left eye. In the back of his mind, he knew it would be this way, and yet he came anyway. He decides that next time he'll come with a bottle of aspirin in his pocket. Or at least a flask full of whiskey. He raises a hand in salute as he starts climbing over the mess that leads to the door. Anyone who ever said that society would soon go paperless has never been in Rodney's office.

“Have fun in Canada.” Rodney waves and goes back to leaning on his phone.

“Get me Key West,” Spence says.

“I'll see what I can do,” Rodney says. “How much are they paying you up in the Great White North?”

“A grand.”

“Canadian or American?”

“French.”

“Really?”

“Idiot,” Spence says. The intern on the floor laughs and tries to hide it from Rodney.

“Just make sure you send me my fifteen,” Rodney calls out just before Spence makes it to the door.

“Your what?” Spence asks.

“My commission,” Rodney says. “I get fifteen percent, remember?”

“You didn't get me the gig. I got it myself,” Spence says. He doesn't know why he's bothering to argue; Rodney will likely forget he was even there. He wonders if Rodney even remembers that he just gave him a check for the casino gig. He briefly considers asking again just to find out. “The club owner called me directly.”

“Doesn't work that way,” Rodney says. “I still get commission, even when you book the gig without me.”

“Since when?”

“Read the contract.”

“What contract?”