I'll Be Here All Week Read online

  He was twenty-one the first time he had this feeling. He went to an open mic night at the Comedy Corner in Baltimore when he was home for Christmas. He signed up and watched the other amateurs try their jokes. Most of them sucked. A few were good. When he did it and people laughed, he knew he had to have more. He had to do it again. He wasn’t even very good. Back then, he would have killed to get work at the Electric Pony in Oklahoma. Back then he would gladly work for free. Now he does it for a living and feels like he’s being robbed.

  But he still loves being onstage.

  “You guys have been great,” Spence says as he puts the final touches on some mindless joke about masturbating penguins. He knows better, but he leans in on the microphone and decides to go for broke. “Really, you’ve been the best goddamned audience I’ve had all week. Thank you, good night!”

  The applause is thunderous, and a half-full cowboy bar sounds like Carnegie Hall in his head. He doesn’t walk offstage so much as he swaggers. His adrenaline is up, the ego he checked at the door has returned, and the smile on his face is bigger than his already oversized head. He’s probably going to be in trouble, but at the moment he just doesn’t care. That applause is exactly why he got into this business in the first place. It’s one of the reasons he stays in it. It might as well be a needle in his arm. He takes a moment and lets himself enjoy it.

  Billy’s desk is cluttered with paperwork, random stacks of money and cash register drawers, and an ashtray that needs to be emptied. On the wall is a poster of Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, holding a beer bottle near her breasts and looking surprised. The poster reminds you to have a great Halloween five years ago. On another wall hangs a calendar that hasn’t been changed in two months. Billy is counting money out loud while watching ESPN half-assed over his shoulder.

  Sitting and waiting for Billy to pay him, Spence pretends to be checking his cell phone for text messages. Out in the bar he can hear “Friends in Low Places” being played, and he guesses the bar will wind down before too long. It’s pushing one a.m., and he figures they won’t go past two, even in a place that parties as hard as this one. The drunks will tire of line dancing and eventually find somewhere to pass out or screw or both.

  “Not bad, son,” Billy says to him after throwing a rubber band around a stack of money and tossing it into a safe next to his desk, “even if you did do exactly what I told you not to do.”

  “What’s that?” Spence says. He gives his best impression of someone who has no clue about what Billy is talking about and tries to look innocent. He’s not good at it.

  “I heard you say GD,” Billy says.

  “I did?”

  Billy nods.

  “I didn’t realize I said it again,” Spence lies.

  “I got what you were doing.”

  “Just doing my show.”

  Billy smirks at him, takes a long pull off a bottle of beer he has sitting on his desk, and swivels around in his chair. It makes a tired, groaning squeak from under his weight and sounds like it could collapse at any moment. Looking up at Elvira, Billy sighs and rubs his eyes. He’s one of those fat men who always breathes too loudly, even when he’s just sitting still. He’s probably awful to sit next to in a movie theater or on a plane, since he constantly sounds like he’s a few breaths away from dying.

  “Ever since we started doing comedy here on weekends, people started calling and bitching about shit. It’s always something,” Billy says.

  “How many complaints do you normally get?”

  “I dunno,” Billy says. “Maybe six calls a week. Sometimes more. Sometimes less.”

  “There were over a hundred people at both shows,” Spence tells Billy. “They all had a good time. That should easily outweigh any complaints. I’d say it’s way better to make a hundred people laugh and piss off seven people than the other way around.”

  “That hundred people laugh and go home. The six or seven call me on the phone and bitch me out for an hour.”

  “You can’t please everybody.”

  Billy snorts and shrugs his shoulders and makes a sound that might be an agreement or might be gas.

  “Did you see the movie Transformers?” Spence asks.

  “Sure.”

  “Did you like it?”

  “Didn’t care, really.”

  “Millions of people loved that movie,” Spence says, “and people will remember that long after they remember that critics thought it sucked. You just can’t please everyone. That’s comedy. If you please the crowd, mission accomplished. It’s a true democracy. Majority rules.”

  “I guess,” Billy says, “but it sure as hell is a pain in my ass. Doesn’t even bring in that much money for us.”

  Spence hears this and immediately does the math in his head. Each person that walked through the door that night paid ten dollars plus a two-drink minimum. About half of them stayed around and drank for another two hours after the show. The numbers he comes up with turn out to be better than the average comedy club, where people watch a show for a couple of hours and then immediately leave. At least the Electric Pony has dancing. It’s now one a.m. and the place still has people there, buying drinks and trying to hook up.

  “Do you normally have more than a hundred people in here at eight o’clock?” he asks.

  Billy shrugs. “Well, we used to bring in this hypnotist every few months. That was one funny dude. He’d sell out, every single time. Hell, we’d have to add chairs to the dance floor just to fit people in here.”

  Spence cringes when Billy tells him this and he takes a sip from his glass of whiskey. He’s not a fan of hypnotists. They always pull audience members onstage and make them do silly tricks. People love them, and they always sell out because everyone wants to watch their friends act like idiots. They’re all the same, and there’s no real writing or stand-up to it. To him, it’s like watching monkeys dance.

  “You can’t have a hypnotist every week,” he says to Billy.

  “Hell.” Billy swivels around in his chair. “I would if I could. They sell out every single time.”

  Spence takes a sip of his whiskey and just nods. Strippers would sell out, too. So would midget wrestling. So would cock fighting. He wonders if Billy even likes stand-up comedy.

  “Here you go,” Billy says as he takes a stack of money, thumbs through it, and tosses it to him from across the desk.

  Pay day at last, Spence thinks as he picks up the stack of cash. He takes off the rubber band and counts through it. He always counts the money immediately, just in case it winds up short. And in this case, it does.

  “We’re two hundred short,” he says to Billy, holding up the stack of cash.

  “That’s because we canceled the Friday late show,” Billy explains, lacing his hands together and putting them behind his head as he leans back in his noisy chair.

  “Yeah, but I get paid by the night, not by the show.”

  “Not according to our paperwork,” Billy says. “No show, no pay. We cleared that deal with your boy a couple of months ago.”

  Spence takes a deep breath, then leans back in his chair and polishes off the rest of the whiskey in his glass. Thankfully, it’s way more than just a shot.

  Fuck you, Rodney, he thinks.

  “Alright,” he says. There’s no point in arguing if Rodney is the one who screwed up, but this really throws a monkey wrench in his plans. Two hundred less bucks means he’s not going to get his hair highlighted and the outlet mall will have to wait another month. It also means he’ll likely eat off the dollar menu at McDonald’s the rest of the week. He runs through the numbers in his head for a few seconds and manages to budget out his travel expenses. He figures he can squeak by for the week. But he’s not happy. He wants to fly to New York and punch Rodney in the face.

  “There’s one more thing.” Billy hands him a long piece of cash register tape across the desk. “This is your bar tab.”

  “Whoa,” Spence says to Billy as he takes the bill. “I thought drinks were fre
e.”

  “Beer is free,” Billy says, “but you drank whiskey all weekend.”

  Spence looks at the bill and wants to cut his own throat with it. “I thought you said you were going to take care of me,” he says.

  “And you thought that meant I was going to let you drink for free?”

  “Something like that, yeah.”

  “Naw,” Billy scoffs. “I meant that I was going to make sure you got everything you wanted.”

  “Great,” Spence says. He feels his shoulders slump as he goes over his budget one more time in his head. He wonders if Billy would respect him less for curling up into fetal position right there on the floor. Instead, he counts out the money for his drinks and lays it on the desk.

  Billy flicks his Zippo lighter open and shut and looks around for a pack of cigarettes lost somewhere in the clutter on his desk. “Tell you what, I’ll buy you one for the road. How’s that?”

  Kiss my ass, Spence thinks.

  “Thanks,” he says.

  “Don’t forget to pay the bartender for your burger on the way out, okay?”

  “Damn,” Spence says, “is there anything I get for free?”

  “Yeah,” Billy says. “The hotel.”

  Some perk, Spence thinks. The hotel is always free. That’s the only part of the contract Rodney always gets right.

  He stands up and shakes Billy’s hand, mostly just because it’s customary. He starts doing the numbers in his head again, trying to figure out what the average person’s check would be on a two-drink minimum and then adding that to the cover charge at the door. When his temples start to hurt, he just smiles and opens the office door. The music from the bar pours into the room.

  “We’ll have you back next year,” Billy says to him, although he’s probably lying.

  “Maybe then you’ll have a Friday late show,” Spence says.

  “The hypnotist sold out both shows.”

  “But that’s not really stand-up comedy.”

  “Tell me again all that stuff about Transformers.” Billy grins.

  Checkmate.

  “Later,” Spence says and starts to leave.

  “Don’t forget to pay for the food,” Billy says as he finally finds his smokes and pulls one out of the soft pack. Lighting up, the fat, old cowboy turns around in his noisy chair and goes back to watching ESPN.

  Spence leaves Billy’s office and steps back out into the club. On his way out the door, he drops ten bucks on the bar. The bartender who hates his guts is standing there and, from the look on his face, the hatred hasn’t passed.

  “For my burger,” he says to the bartender. “Tell Mandy I say hello.”

  “Who?” the bartender asks as he scoops the bills up and counts them out, frowning the entire time.

  “That girl from last night. The one who drives the black Jeep.”

  “Cindy,” the bartender says and looks at him from under his thick eyebrows.

  Cindy, Spence thinks. I knew it was something with an “e” sound at the end.

  “Yeah, her. The one with the tattoo right there,” he says and points at his crotch. “She was something else. Really. Something. Else.”

  He doesn’t stay to see the bartender’s reaction. He’s pretty sure it’s just a meaner version of the same scowl the guy has had for the past two days anyway. The satisfaction of knowing that the kid will be miserable for the rest of the night is almost worth the price of the cheeseburger. Almost.

  Spence steps out in the parking lot and looks around at the collection of trucks and cars that are much nicer than his. It’s quiet outside, and the silence makes the entire night seem a little anticlimactic. An hour ago he was a celebrity. Now he’s just the hired help quietly shuffling away for the night, just like the guy who washes the dishes in the kitchen. He’s back at the hotel before he realizes that he left without having that free drink Billy offered.

  The sun is bright and it looks like the middle of summer, despite the fact that it’s February and still freezing out. From his window, Spence can’t even see the snow plowed up around the corner of the hotel. He could’ve slept all night and thought he’d woken up in May had he just looked out the window when he got up at noon.

  He likes to drive on sunny days like this. Just the right music on his radio and plenty of sunshine can make even a ten-hour drive that much easier. The one good thing about shows out in the middle of the country is that he rarely has to deal with the traffic and congestion that always hits him when he works in any of the major cities. Driving straight east for two days isn’t so bad when there’s a nearly empty highway the entire trip.

  His cell phone rings and it’s Rodney. He puts his imitation Wayfarers on and tosses his duffel bag in the backseat of his Camry as he answers.

  “Gimme the good news,” Spence says without saying hello.

  “Asshole,” Rodney says.

  “I take it Leno’s people didn’t call?”

  “The Electric Pony doesn’t want you back,” Rodney says.

  “Already?” Spence asks. “It’s only been a day. Not even twelve hours. Hell, it usually takes them at least a week before they call and have me banned.”

  “Guess you broke your own record.”

  “What was the reason? Because I said goddamnit?”

  “Did you?”

  “What’d they say?”

  “Whatever,” Rodney says. “Same thing anyone ever says: You’re difficult. You’re a prima donna. You’re spoiled.”

  “Spoiled? How do you figure?” Spence asks. He looks at the fleabag hotel in front of him, then back at his car. There’s an Aquafina bottle on the floorboard full of his own urine from when he was heading into Enid the other day and didn’t want to pull over to leak. He wonders if Steve Martin ever had to pee in a bottle and if it made him feel spoiled.

  “You complain too much,” Rodney says.

  “Oh, screw them.”

  “Screw them?” Rodney says. “Screw you. I get tired of having to clean up after your crap.”

  “Oh, please,” Spence says, “this is always because of something stupid that should be handled before I get to town.”

  “Like what?”

  “Since when do I not get paid by the night, Rodney? They shorted me two hundred bucks because they canceled the Friday late show.”

  “That was just for that one gig,” Rodney says.

  “Well, it was bullshit.”

  “You made that clear, yeah.”

  “Forty-plus weeks a year you get me paid by the night, and suddenly I’m paid by the show?”

  “Hey,” Rodney snaps. “It was either that or no gig at all. You’d rather have been unemployed this week?”

  “No—”

  “I could have sworn you even got lucky last night, right?”

  “Just next time tell me you’ve made that deal before I make an ass out of myself to the guy running the show.”

  “You do that on your own,” Rodney says. “Did you tell him something about how much you love Transformers or something?”

  Spence has to take a minute to figure out what Rodney is talking about. When it dawns on him, he almost laughs despite being so pissed off.

  “No,” he says, “I was trying to make a point about popularity.”

  “How’d that work out for you?” Rodney asks.

  “That jackass wanted to sit there and tell me how it’s bullshit I don’t sell the place out like a hypnotist. Tell him to advertise his own show and they’ll sell more tickets.”

  “That’s not the problem”

  “Yeah? What’s the problem, then?”

  “The problem is you like to screw with people.”

  “I do not.”

  “Just do the shows and get paid,” Rodney says. “Stop whining about what they tell you to do. If they want you to be clean, be clean. It’s always a fight with you.”

  “If they want the show squeaky clean, they should hire a squeaky clean comic.”

  “You would make more money if you
worked clean, you know,” Rodney says.

  This again? Spence thinks but instead says, “I’d also make more money if I were a hypnotist.”

  “Good idea.”

  “You’d probably like that. Then you wouldn’t have to worry about how spoiled I am.”

  “You are your own worst enemy,” Rodney says. “You always have been.”

  Spence winces when he hears that. It never feels good, mostly because it’s true. He tries to count all the times he’s been fired or banned from clubs simply because he couldn’t keep his mouth shut. After he counts six in as many seconds, he shakes his head and kicks the ground. He used to be so good about just smiling and doing whatever he was told. Once he started working the saloon gigs and awful one-nighters he started talking back when he should have just learned to nod his head.

  “I’m not wrong here, Rodney.”

  “Being right never got anyone work,” Rodney says.

  Spence kicks some more gravel and stares at his left shoe. He needs new shoes. He wants all kinds of stuff, but he needs new shoes. He can’t remember how long he’s had this pair, but he knows that it’s only a matter of time before the sole comes off the left one.

  “I had good shows,” he mumbles quietly, “so I don’t know what they’re complaining about.”

  Rodney lets out a long sigh right into the phone. “Look you’re not going to please everybody.”

  “That’s what I told them.”

  “Next time, let me tell them. That’s my job.”

  “No shit.”

  “Whatever,” Rodney says. “They’re probably going to quit having comedians anyway. They say they aren’t making any money at it.”

  “Me neither,” Spence says. He should be annoyed, but he just doesn’t care. The money in Enid wasn’t enough that losing the gig should even matter. Still, it would have been nice to get some new clothes or maybe get his car detailed. His car has seen better days. It has two hundred thousand miles on it, and he’s hoping it can last at least another hundred. Just like him, the car looks older than it is. Again he wonders when he started looking fortysomething instead of twentysomething.