I'll Be Here All Week Page 10

  “You may be good at comedy, but you suck at opening doors,” Sam says and squeezes his arm while giggling a little too close to his right ear.

  “Hey, shaddup,” Spence says. “This is high-tech stuff.”

  “Yes, I could see a man your age being confused by such advanced technology like a hotel key.”

  “Ouch. She hits below the belt.”

  “Relax, I don’t like boys my own age anyway.”

  “Thanks,” Spence says and makes it sound like a question. The key card is inserted into the door lock one more time. A green light flashes, and the door unlocks. “Success!”

  “My hero.”

  Spence puts his arm around her waist as he opens the door with his other hand. Sam practically twirls into the room, taking him with her as they both laugh. More than one drink has been consumed, as well as a bit more poutine just to help soak it all up. The door has barely closed before she has her mouth on his and has pushed him against the door. He loves the way her hair smells as it falls in front of his nose.

  “You want a drink? I have some whiskey here.” He stops kissing her long enough to motion to the bottle of Crown Royal sitting on the nightstand. He never realized that Crown Royal is Canadian before today.

  “Blech.” Sam scrunches up every part of her face.

  “Or not,” Spence says.

  “Agua.”

  “You learned that on Sesame Street, I know.”

  “Bring me water.”

  “Your wish is my command.” He pulls free of her embrace and walks into the bathroom. He pours her a glass from the tap and looks at himself in the mirror.

  “I don’t like boys my own age anyway?” Spence thinks to himself. What the hell is that supposed to mean?

  At this moment, he doesn’t feel old. He doesn’t even think he looks old, which makes this the first time he’s thought that in weeks. He feels pretty damned good. An amazing show followed by food and drinks and laughs. Now the pretty girl with the short hair and glasses is back in his hotel room and everything is going according to plan. Everything is perfect.

  Everything being perfect is exactly the reason Spence can’t figure out why something is eating at him. Everything feels amazing. It feels like this is exactly where he wants to be and he’s with who he wants to be with. But something about it all seems a bit off. He’s not sure what, since he’s been right here dozens of times before.

  He walks back around the corner. There, Sam is already lying on the bed. The remote control is in her hand. She’s fully dressed, although she has pulled back the blankets and sheets and has propped up the pillows behind her head.

  “Now you see why you got me back here so easily.” She looks up at him and grins. “Pay-per-view.”

  “You’re not about to tell me you’re into hotel porn, are you? Because that’s the worst kind of porn there is.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. There’s this invention called the Internet,” she says. “No one pays for porn anymore.”

  “Good point. Guess we’re stuck with action movies.”

  “Rom-coms,” she says, “or I walk.”

  “You drive a hard bargain,” he says. “You should be a talent agent.”

  “And give up the glamour that is retail sales? Forget it.”

  He hands her the glass of water, which she downs very quickly before reaching up and pulling him down onto the bed with her. She moves over so he can lie beside her, but doesn’t do anything more than put her head on his chest as she flips through the channels. Spence kicks his shoes off and rests his chin on the top of her head.

  “I’m so glad you were funny,” she says. “I was totally going to sneak out if you sucked.”

  “Not after they sat you in the front row, you weren’t.”

  “Yeah, what the hell was that all about?”

  “Wasn’t my idea, believe me.”

  “At least you were funny.”

  “That’s what I thought about you,” he says. It makes no sense, but she laughs anyway. Mission accomplished.

  “You were worried I wasn’t going to show up,” she says and runs her right hand across his chest.

  “Not at all,” he lies.

  “A little?” She holds her index finger and thumb up to show him a tiny amount.

  “Maybe this much,” he says and moves her finger closer to her thumb.

  “Good enough,” she says.

  Better late than never, Spence thinks to himself. He didn’t let on to Sam that he was worried she had stood him up. He made it seem like he didn’t much notice that she wasn’t there. He’s pretty sure she can see through it.

  The good performance he’d had the night before at the Comedy Crib was nothing compared to the show he put on tonight. Every beat was perfect and every punchline hit like it was supposed to. From the moment the microphone touched his hand, he spoke nothing but gold into it. As much as he tried not to make eye contact with Sam during the show, he couldn’t help but occasionally glance over at her. She looked stunning when she laughed really hard.

  “I think I’m your muse,” she had told him when he walked offstage and had her brought back to the green room after the show.

  “I think you may be on to something,” he had said back, although he was being flattering. This wasn’t the best show he’d ever done. But it certainly felt better than most.

  Sam now tilts her head upward and kisses him. It’s sweet and as if she knows he was just thinking about her. Spence leans down and touches the side of her face and returns the kiss. In just a few seconds, they are on top of one another, rolling over in the bed, pulling at each other’s clothes while keeping their mouths locked together.

  Sam pulls his sweater over his head as she whispers in his ear, “What’s next?”

  “What?” Spence is distracted and stops fumbling with her bra. He pulls his head back and runs his hand through his hair. “Oh, well, I think I’m going to Iowa next week. Or Indiana. I don’t remember. Then it’s Ohio and Illinois.”

  “No.” Sam rolls her eyes and smirks at him. “I mean us. What’s next?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean I want this”—her eyes run up and down his body and back to his eyes—“but not if you’re just going to kick me out afterward.”

  It hits Spence what felt odd this entire time, why he couldn’t quite relax. Everything with Sam tonight has been amazing and perfect. It’s also been typical. It’s been what he has done so many times before. As much fun as she’s having, even Sam can tell it’s been his routine.

  “I’m not going to kick you out,” he says. “I want you to stay.”

  “Me too.”

  Spence kisses her again, softly, then puts his arms around her and squeezes her tightly against him. He loves the way she smells and the way her hair feels when it tickles his bare shoulder. She pulls her head sideways and kisses his neck. He rolls over onto his back and holds her against him.

  Isn’t everything different here?

  Spence leans in for one more kiss, this time looking in her eyes. He runs a hand through her hair and smiles. “So tell me what movie you want to watch.”

  Sam kisses him on the cheek and wakes him from whatever he was dreaming. He turns over in the bed and sees that she’s already dressed and fully made-up. She looks beautiful. How did he manage to sleep through her getting ready?

  “You talk in your sleep,” Sam says.

  “Really?” Spence says. He’s been known to sleepwalk in the past, but he didn’t realize that he yammers when he snoozes.

  “Yeah,” she says. “You talk onstage. You talk in your sleep. It seems that you never shut up.”

  He chuckles and wipes his eyes. He hopes he didn’t say anything incriminating. The last thing he wants is to call her by the wrong name while he’s in Sandman Land.

  “What was I saying?”

  “Mostly gibberish,” she says. “You were going on about how the motions need to be filed and how the account executives were falling behind.�
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  “Really?”

  “Yep.”

  “Like in an office?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Damn.” He stretches his hands and looks around the hotel room. “Other people dream they can fly, and I dream I actually have a job.”

  “Could be worse,” she says and shows him her Gap name tag.

  He rolls over and sits up in the bed. Putting his arms around her waist, he looks into her eyes. She really is beautiful. It’s a different feeling for him to wake up and have this conversation. He’s used to trying to kick women out of his hotel room as soon as possible. Looking at Sam on the edge of the bed, he just wants to sit here for a while longer. He doesn’t want her to leave.

  “I don’t want to leave,” Sam says. How appropriate. “But I’ve got to go to work.”

  “Those pants aren’t going to fold themselves,” he says.

  “Don’t I know it?”

  “I have to leave town today,” he says with a painful grimace.

  “I know,” she says. Her mood suddenly changes. She’s still smiling, but her voice gets quiet. “Send me a text message before you head out, okay?”

  “Sure will. You want me to stop by the Gap and see you?”

  “You cruising for a new sweater?”

  “Of course.”

  “Sounds like a plan to me,” she says and kisses him. He gets out of the bed and puts his arms around her. She could probably call in sick, right? A Gap store doesn’t need a manager to operate on a Sunday, does it? He wonders if begging her to stay would cause him to lose his cool exterior.

  “You were great last night,” she says.

  “And what about my stand-up?” he jokes. She bites his shoulder, and he howls. He laughs and massages it as he puts on his clothes so he can walk her out.

  He holds her again and stands there for a minute enjoying the silence. This was not at all what he expected. He figured a week in Canada would be about snow and starchy foods and people saying “eh.” He thought maybe he’d get laid like he sometimes does and that maybe he’d enjoy entertaining some different audiences for a while. What he didn’t expect was to wind up holding some woman from Montreal and hoping she could stick around for a few more days or decades.

  “You’ve got my number, guy,” Sam says after what feels like a year and yet not long enough.

  “Yes, I do,” he says.

  “So”—she tosses her purse over her shoulder—“use it.”

  “I promise,” he says and for the first time thinks it’s quite possible that he isn’t lying.

  “Pinkie swear,” she says and holds out her littlest finger for him to grab. When he does, he figures that now he actually has to call her. Breaking a pinkie swear is tantamount to blasphemy in the Vatican.

  “Don’t walk me out,” she says. “I kind of like ending it here.”

  “It doesn’t have to end here,” he says before he realizes what is coming out of his mouth. “I’ll call.”

  “Use the number, guy. Montreal ain’t that far away.”

  She’s nuts. It might as well be China.

  A moment later she has kissed him, hugged him, and walked out the door. He stands there staring at the room for a few minutes before deciding it’s time to pack up and move on. He looks out the window of the hotel at the people below, scurrying like ants down the sidewalk. They are off to eat French bread and French fries and buying French maid outfits or whatever people in Quebec do on Sunday afternoons. He wonders if he can see Sam down there if he surveys the crowd.

  Then he remembers that Barenaked Ladies is a Canadian band.

  8

  Spence wakes up, and his head feels like he got into a fight the night before. He can’t remember if he did or not, but if it happened, he definitely lost. This is by far the worst hangover he’s had in a long time. It takes him a few minutes to realize the ringing in his head is actually the alarm clock on the nightstand. He slaps the top of it a few times before it finally turns off. He switches on the lamp next to the bed and takes a long look around the hotel room to get his bearings.

  It looks like most hotel rooms he stays in. His clothes are in the same place as where he pulled them off last night. His laptop is still sitting in the middle of the desk. His suitcase is still where he left it. He’s not sure why but, every day when he wakes, he looks around to see if everything is how he left it the night before. As if elves were going to come in while he slept and rearrange the furniture and put his computer in the bathtub.

  He’s lying in a huge king-sized bed and yet managed to wrap himself in the blankets like a burrito. The bad news is that his head is killing him and he has to actually get up and get dressed. The good news is that there isn’t a strange woman lying next to him. He might have had a few too many drinks last night, but at least he went home alone.

  It’s six a.m. He puts his feet on the floor and sighs. He has to get dressed and drive over to the local radio station for an interview at six thirty. How long did he sleep? Three, maybe four hours? Not enough. When he started touring, three hours was enough sleep for him to drive the entire next day. Now he’s going to need an entire pot of coffee just to get through the interview. He gets up and walks into the bathroom and turns on the light.

  Fluorescent lights are evil. They offer no mercy. They show every flaw he’s ever had on his skin. He even notices scars from pimples he had when he was a kid that he thought disappeared long ago. There is definitely gray on his temples now, and the drinking did not help his eyes look any younger. He thinks he has aged more in the past three years than he did in the previous ten.

  He laughs. Two weeks and a thousand miles since he left Canada and he’s right back to where he was before. For a brief hiccup, all seemed well in the world. Then he woke up this morning and realized nothing changed. Peoria has been good to him so far, but he still misses the way he was treated in Montreal. His hotel room is just as nice here as anywhere else, but he feels like something is missing. He’s had two weeks of great shows and has been traveling to good clubs in good weather. But he doesn’t feel right. Something is off, which is probably why he drank too much last night.

  He puts on his jeans and the same shirt he wore onstage the night before. He pulls on his corduroy sports jacket, which is standard comedian issue. Then he messes up his already messed-up hair and looks at himself in the full-sized mirror next to the bed. Besides looking exhausted and a bit too old, he looks exactly like every comedian you’ve ever seen on TV. A quick brush of the teeth and half a bottle of Tylenol and he’s ready to baffle the airwaves with his brilliance.

  The sun is just barely starting to come up, but he’s wearing his sunglasses anyway. Part of it is because even the glow from a cigarette lighter would hurt his eyes at this point and part of it is to hide the fact that he looks like a basset hound after this little sleep. He gets in his car and tunes the radio to the station he’s going to be on. He thinks it’s always good to know what kind of show he’s getting ready to do.

  Every morning radio show is pretty much the same. It’s usually two or three hosts talking about local news and playing music. One host anchors the show and tends to be the name behind it. The other host is a wacky sidekick named after an animal or body part. The third host is almost always a woman, and her job is technically to tell the weather and traffic updates. More importantly, her job is to laugh at the other two hosts. If it’s a two-host format, then the main host doubles as the wacky character and the woman is still on the show groaning at his antics. Easily ninety percent of radio morning shows are coed and just like this.

  It doesn’t matter that he’s a bit hungover. He can do these interviews in his sleep. He often has it planned out and knows exactly what he’s going to do. Some comedians simply come in and recite jokes they do onstage or recreate their acts on the air. He sometimes has bits that he does only on radio, but he doesn’t really like to use jokes he plans on using that night at the club. Most times he just follows along with the hosts
’ lead.

  At least he likes doing it. Some comedians hate doing morning radio because they can’t hear the laughter on the other side of the radio. Some just think it’s phony and forced. As true as that may be, he still enjoys it. The interaction with the DJs is often a lot of fun for him and lets him share the spotlight a bit instead of standing naked and alone onstage.

  Sometimes the DJs hate him. It’s not his fault; a lot of DJs hate comedians in general. Sometimes the morning host is a local celebrity and sees the comedian as competition. That guy might think that no one sets him up to be funny every morning, so why the hell should he do it for some traveling comic? But the radio station is usually paid ad money by the comedy club for that interview, so the DJ in question has no say in the matter. That only pisses them off more.

  Spence once did an interview with a host who asked him in advance for the punchlines to the jokes he was planning to tell. That’s pretty standard procedure; the DJ wants to know where you’re going to take the bit. But this DJ took those punchlines and used them himself.

  “That’s why I only date Asian women,” the DJ had said as he claimed the joke as his own.

  Thanks, jerk, he remembers thinking to himself, now I have nothing to say. Glad I could help you be funny this morning.

  Spence arrives at the radio station and checks in at the front desk. This is also pretty routine. Morning show hosts have as many death threats as politicians. There’s always a ton of security to get past in order to get into the studio, no matter how small the town or how tiny the radio station. A young girl who couldn’t be older than nineteen checks his driver’s license and a guy who looks like a bouncer comes around the corner and has him sign a waiver about what he’s allowed to say on the air. This is also standard procedure. Someone obviously said “fuck” on the air at some point and now the station has to cover its ass with everyone.

  It’s never as simple as just language usage. It used to be that he simply agreed not to use profanity over the airwaves. Nowadays everyone gets offended too easily, so the list of things he’s not allowed to say or do is longer than it has ever been. At this station, he’s not allowed to curse, talk about religion, talk about race, talk about politics, insult the local mascot, or say anything overtly sexist. He’s essentially allowed to make fun of himself and anyone who looks just like him.