I'll Be Here All Week Read online

  “Jesus. I was about to sneak out of here before being run out of town.”

  “You’ll be fine,” Marcus says. “But, seriously, don’t say you’re American. They’ll boo you and throw things.”

  “Really?”

  Marcus winks at him and walks away.

  Nervousness is nothing new to Spence but, this time, it feels different. His first time onstage in a new venue can sometimes be a little nerve-racking, but this is his first time onstage in a completely different country. Sure, people can assume Canada is just like the United States all they want, but he suddenly doesn’t feel like he’s simply performing a little north from home. Mostly, he doesn’t want to screw up onstage in a place that already has treated him pretty well.

  The lights go down, and he stands in the back of the room, watching the local comedians perform. There are four of them, each of varying ages, and each of them completely different. There’s the low-key monologist who drones on about Canadian politics. After him, a young hipster takes the stage and essentially reminds the audience that he’s cooler than they are. At one point, an impressionist does what must be excellent impressions of Canadian celebrities and, of course, Arnold Schwarzenegger.

  There’s an energy in this place that he immediately loves. The audience seems to hang on every word. Even when they don’t laugh, they smile. They nod when they don’t outright applaud. It’s often quiet and yet friendly. The comics onstage seem to be pals with the audience instead of just paid performers. Even when the language onstage gets vulgar, it all seems very easygoing. Of course, with all he knows, this is because the audience barely speaks English and they’re just smiling while they try to figure it out. Maybe he got booked on one of those French nights and no one bothered to point it out?

  The MC calls his name, and Spence steps onstage as if he owns the place. He’s not a stranger in a strange land here. He’s not a foreigner and certainly not just the ugly American. On this five-foot-by-four-foot block of wood, he is in charge. This is his home. This is where he lives. He is throwing the party; everyone else is invited to come along.

  The sound of that first wave of laughter after the first joke in a set is amazing. It’s the greatest feeling, and it always follows the same nervous anxiety. He hopes they will laugh. They always have before. There’s no reason to think they won’t. But sometimes they simply don’t go where he wants to take them. Sometimes something is off. Sometimes it’s him. Usually it’s them. He just doesn’t know until he delivers that opening line. When he sells it just right, he can tell in the first two minutes how the rest of the night will go.

  “That’s why I only date Asian women,” he says. The laughter hits him, and he knows that everything will be just fine. They will like him, and he will like them. They will go where he leads them. He will have fun taking them there.

  Part of it is easy. They give him the benefit of the doubt before he takes the stage. After all, he’s paid to be there. He must be funny, right? He must know what he’s doing, or he wouldn’t be on a poster in the lobby. They wouldn’t give him a microphone if he didn’t know how to use it. The audience is his before he takes the stage. It’s up to him to lose them. They want to laugh. They want to be friends. After that first laugh fades and he leads them into the second one, he knows that they will be.

  “Fucking brilliant.” Marcus nearly spills his beer because he’s leaning in so close. Music is playing in the background, and Marcus is yelling in his ear as if it’s much louder than it really is. Ten or so blocks from the Comedy Crib, sitting in an Irish pub with several French Canadians, all is right in the world. Marcus puts an arm around him and pats him on the back at the same time.

  Spence smiles and takes a long sip of his beer. He had a pretty good show, but Marcus is treating him as if it was the best thing he’s ever seen. A couple of hours and several drinks later, it’s all they’ve talked about. It’s the same set that got him into trouble at the Electric Pony, yet here almost got him elected mayor. He doesn’t think it was that great a set, really. It was fine, but not nearly the best he’s ever done. Still, Marcus loved it, and he’s the guy who signs the check at the end of the week.

  Spence laughs to himself. Last week I’m a spoiled baby, and this week I’m a star.

  He enjoyed the show, despite the fact that he felt the crowd was a bit more politically correct than he normally likes. It wasn’t the language they were hesitant with as much as the more controversial topics. He wonders if that’s part of the Canadian politeness he has always heard about. Maybe it extends into comedy as well.

  “When you did the bit about shitting your pants in the bar, I almost shit mine right there in the club,” Marcus says. It’s an odd and yet appropriate compliment.

  “I’m glad you enjoyed it,” Spence says. He takes a long gulp from his Canadian beer. He’s never had it before, but it’s yummy. He holds two fingers up to the bartender and orders another round.

  “This one’s on me,” Marcus says and tosses several coins down on the bar.

  Spence is thrown off whenever he sees people using Canadian currency. He had no idea they use one-dollar and two-dollar coins. Before today he never knew what a “loonie” or a “toonie” were. Now he has a stack of them in his pocket. It feels like he robbed a pirate ship.

  “You bought the last one,” he says to Marcus. “This one is on me.”

  “No way,” Marcus says.

  “I insist,” Spence says.

  “Okay, but I get the next round,” Marcus says.

  Spence can’t even believe there will be another round. He’s already nursing a nice buzz and can’t imagine having too many more drinks, yet everyone around him has been pounding shots and beers without a second thought. He’s always heard that the Irish know how to knock back the booze. At the moment he thinks the exact same thing about Canadians. It seems hard to believe that he’s only a day’s drive away from where he used to live. It might as well be Paris.

  “You know who this is?” Marcus is talking to a pair of gorgeous women who have sat next to them at the bar. “This guy here is the headliner this week at the Comedy Crib. He’s fucking hilarious, eh?”

  It’s the first time Spence has heard Marcus say “eh” at the end of a sentence. In fact, it’s the first time he’s heard anyone in Canada say “eh” at all, despite the fact that he has spoken with dozens of people all day. He wonders if it’s just something Marcus does when he drinks. Some people are mean drunks, and some are sloppy. Marcus apparently gets drunk and becomes a Canadian stereotype.

  “This guy is a star, eh?” Marcus says. There it is again.

  The girls smile politely but honestly couldn’t care less. Spence knows that, if he were them, he’d feel the same way. At the comedy club he’s a star; in this pub he’s just another half-drunken jackass. Marcus has no problem promoting him regardless. Maybe he thinks it will somehow help them both get laid. Or maybe he just wants to promote the show. Either way, it’s met with indifference by the two beauty pageant winners sitting next to them.

  “I can’t get over how hot all the women are in this city,” Spence says.

  Marcus shrugs. “They’re okay, sure.”

  “You’re spoiled. I was in Jersey yesterday. Trust me, these women are amazing.”

  “You saying the women in Jersey are ugly?” Marcus asks.

  “Just the ones with facial hair.”

  Marcus laughs and spits a little of his beer. “That bad, eh?”

  “No, but it’s not like here.” Spence shrugs and gives the room a once-over. “Even the homeless women are hot here.”

  Marcus laughs. “And bilingual.”

  “Shit, I didn’t even think about that.”

  “Yeah,” Marcus says, “they’ll ask you for spare change in French and then ask you again in English.”

  “They speak two languages and they’re unemployed?” Spence asks. “Hell, I’m an idiot and even I could get a job at Starbucks.”

  Marcus laughs again and take
s a gulp from his beer so big that it runs down the corners of his mouth. The girls sitting next to them vacate their barstools and smile politely on the way out. In their place, two equally beautiful women come and sit down. Both tall and both with short hair, the new ladies smile and nod hello as they take their seats.

  Spence has always had such a thing for women with short hair and glasses. The woman sitting next to him has both, and he can’t help but smile. Her dark blond hair sits just above her ears. Her horn-rimmed glasses would look nerdy on most people, but she’s beautiful. She’s taller than he normally goes for, but everything else is just his style. It’s only a matter of minutes before he talks to her. The only question now is how many he will wait before he does. He counts the sips of his beer as if each one is part of a countdown to a missile launch.

  One sip, she laughs with her friend.

  I’ve never been to Canada before. How about showing me around?

  A second sip, she twirls the straw in her glass and nods her head.

  That’s a stupid line. Don’t say that to her.

  A third sip, she looks right at him.

  “You’re staring.” She turns to him and speaks. “So you might as well introduce yourself.”

  Spence feels the hairs on the back of his neck stand up and realizes that he indeed had his eyes locked right on her face the entire time. He searches for a clock on the wall behind her, hoping he can use that as an excuse for what he was looking at. A person with a funny hat nearby, the Bee Gees sitting in the corner, anything. No such luck.

  “Was I staring?” he says.

  “For a few minutes, yeah. I figured you were trying to think of what to say,” she says.

  He’s caught and he knows it. Now his only chance is to be charming or get up and leave. Marcus is singing along with a song on the radio and appears to be on cloud nine. Both of their beers are half full. He’s not going anywhere.

  “I have this way of getting tongue-tied when I see beautiful women,” he says.

  “But with me you just use bullshit?” she says.

  “I . . .” he tries to say. He waits for something clever to pop out of his mouth, but it never does. It’s embarrassing. He gets paid to be quicker than this.

  “You’re going to have to drop the cheesy lines if you wanna talk to me, okay?” she says and stirs her drink with her straw.

  “Cheesy lines?” he asks. “I was being serious.”

  “Mm-hmm.” She nods slowly.

  “Really,” he says. “People don’t tell you that you’re beautiful?”

  She sighs, and he knows that he’s lost her. There will be no rendezvous in Paris, and they’ll never frolic together on the beach. He’s ready for her to turn away when she swivels on the barstool and faces him.

  “I saw you earlier,” she says.

  “At my show?” he says.

  “Here,” she says, “for the past hour.”

  “Oh yeah?” He’s almost embarrassed. It’s a common comedian pickup tactic to try and drop your profession in order to impress women. Unless the woman in question has already seen you perform, the tactic normally has the effect of making you look like a douche. This time is no exception.

  “Yeah, and you’re going to have to cut the act if you wanna sit here and talk to me,” she says.

  “Act?” he asks. “I was acting?”

  “Yeah, you and your friend,” she says.

  “How so?”

  “Telling jokes, talking to girls, giving everyone the finger guns.”

  “I have never given anyone the finger guns in my life,” he lies.

  She laughs. It’s not a pretty or seductive chuckle like some women have. It’s actually kind of nerdy. It belts out of her almost like she’s coming up for air after swimming underwater. It would normally be off-putting but, on her, it’s adorable. It doesn’t fit her look whatsoever, which only makes him even more attracted to her.

  “Yes, you have,” she says. “You were doing it right here.” She mimics making a gun with her hand and pulling an imaginary trigger.

  Over her shoulder, Spence sees her friend watching the entire exchange. To his relief, the friend is smiling. In these kind of situations he just never knows. Sometimes the friend is a willing participant and sometimes the friend is a buzzkill. Sometimes he’s so busy trying to fend off a girl’s bodyguard BFF that he can’t get a word in edgewise. Maybe it’s a Canadian thing, but the friend is being, well, friendly.

  “I think you have me confused with someone else,” he lies again. “I’m not a finger gun kinda guy.”

  She looks back at her friend. The friend says, “She’s right. You were doing it for the past hour.”

  Checkmate, Spence thinks.

  “You win,” he says, and throws up his hands in surrender.

  She smirks and takes a sip of her drink. It’s some concoction he’s never seen before that he finds out later is called a Caesar. He wonders when Bloody Marys got replaced with this thing. He’d never even heard of Clamato juice before arriving in Canada.

  “So if you wanna sit and talk,” she says, “you’ll have to drop the act.”

  “Well, I’m a comedian,” he says, like an idiot.

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “How?”

  “Because your friend has been telling everyone in the bar all night long,” she says.

  He’s embarrassed and wants to smack Marcus, but Marcus is already on the other side of the bar, talking to the BFF. Marcus would probably be a good wingman if he weren’t such an obnoxious drunk. As luck would have it, the friend is patient and mildly amused. Either that or she’s also a terrible drunk. Either way, it’s helpful.

  “He’s the manager of the comedy club,” he says, and nods toward Marcus.

  “Yeah, he’s been saying that all night, too,” she says.

  “Really?”

  “He gave out his business cards when you were in the washroom earlier,” she tells him.

  Spence laughs and shakes his head. So much for trying to be charming. He’ll be lucky if he just manages to leave not looking like a complete jackass.

  “My point is that I’m not intentionally funny,” he says. “It just comes naturally.”

  She rolls her eyes. He gives her a toothy smile, to which she gives him a halfhearted laugh.

  “Well, drop the funny and just be you,” she says. “I’d like to talk to you. But just you; not some act. Can you do that? Can you just be you?”

  “I am being me,” he says.

  “ ‘You’ is this awkward?”

  “Often, yeah”

  “Then we’ll get along fine,” she says, and extends her hand. “I’m Sam. That’s Claudia.”

  Behind her, Claudia waves and goes back to nodding her head and humoring Marcus. How they’ve hit it off so quickly is anyone’s guess, but Marcus is doing great. There are no sparks flying, but at least they’re keeping busy. Claudia smiling and nodding is much better than her tossing a drink in Marcus’s face and storming out.

  “Sam as in ‘Samantha’?” he asks his dream girl as he shakes her hand.

  “Very good,” she says.

  He can’t remember the last time he talked to a woman after a show without bullshitting his way through it. Normally it’s easy. Women who want to sleep with the comedian often seek out the comedian. It normally doesn’t require much effort on his part. The hard work is already done onstage. Once he’s made a woman in the audience laugh for an hour, the rest is cake. Meeting a girl in a bar who has never seen his show before is a different story. He hasn’t tried this approach in years. He’s not even sure if he likes it.

  His first thought is to find a way out of the pub and back to the hotel. His second thought is just to say “what the hell.” Maybe it’s the booze that makes him stick around. She’s not the first clever, attractive girl he’s ever talked to. The fact that she doesn’t seem to care what he thinks might be part of her appeal. There was a time when he loved this sort of challenge.

  “
From the States?” she asks.

  “How did you know?”

  “You act like it,” she says, “and you have an accent.”

  “An accent?” Spence asks. He has never been told this before. Years of growing up in Maryland and he never heard it. Years of living in New Jersey and he never heard it. He has never heard it on the road, either, even when he was in the middle of the sticks, talking to rednecks.

  “It’s an American accent,” she says. “You said sorry earlier, and I knew it. You pronounced it saw-ree.”

  “That’s right,” he says. “How do you say it?”

  She smiles and says it. It comes out sore-ee. It sounds like Marcus’s drunken voice, which makes him laugh almost as nerdily as she did earlier.

  “You’re saying it all wrong,” he says.

  “Ah, and that’s how you act American,” she says.

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. You think that you Americans invented everything.”

  “Didn’t we?”

  “How about penicillin?”

  “No thanks, I’ve got a beer.”

  “We invented penicillin,” she says.

  “I’m pretty sure that was the Dutch,” he says.

  “Canadians.”

  “Really?”

  She nods. “And the zipper, and the pacemaker, and basketball.”

  “I use one of those things all the time.”

  “And we invented the snowblower,” she says.

  “That doesn’t impress me,” he says. “I would expect something like that to come from Canada. It snows ten months out of the year up here.”

  “Hey,” she says defensively, “nine months out of the year.”

  “Oh, sorry.” He pronounces it sore-ee.

  “Credit where credit is due,” she says.

  “Well, I can now say I had a history lesson in Canada.”

  “There’s more where that came from,” she says.

  “A fountain of useless knowledge, are you?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Let me guess,” he says, “your father was an encyclopedia salesman.”

  She shrugs. “Insurance, encyclopedias, heroin. Whatever.”