I'll Be Here All Week

by Anderson Ward

  Then she slaps him hard across the other side.

  15

  An hour later, Spence is wishing that Marcy or whatever her name is had poisoned him to death. After listening to everything he put Sam through, he isn’t sure that even he would want to be around him at the moment. So it wouldn’t surprise him if she pushed him out of the car and back onto the median where the ambulance found him hours earlier.

  The hospital called Sam since she was the woman who appeared most often in his cell phone call history. Since it was the middle of the night and since it was a hospital calling, she knew that her being married to Spence was the only way they would tell her anything. But they had nothing much to tell at the time except that he was still alive and unconscious. Sam drove five hours through the night to be there, not knowing until she got to the hospital what the hell was going on.

  Spence told her everything as best he could. He tried to make the relationship with Marcy sound as innocent as possible, especially considering he still wasn’t sure what that relationship even was. He was certain now that her name wasn’t Marcy and that odds were good he’d never see her again. Still, the story made him look like a complete and utter jackass, even though it was he who wound up beaten up. He figured this was the first time Sam has seen him as such an asshole. He really had hoped it would never happen at all, let alone like this. For the past hour, she hasn’t smiled at him once.

  “I had no idea they would call you,” he says and touches her right hand, which rests on the gearshift of her car. Sitting in her Honda in the hotel parking lot, Spence feels the cold leather seat beneath him sending a chill up his bare back. Still in nothing but the hospital gown, he suddenly doesn’t love the cool breeze so much anymore.

  “I know,” Sam says, looking straight ahead. She has barely looked at him for a while now. “You said that, and I understand.”

  “It does mean the world to me that you came down here, you know.”

  “I know.”

  Spence looks out the passenger window at the hotel and wishes he were inside, curled up on the bed, sleeping off the past twenty-four hours and forgetting them. “I can only tell you I’m sorry so many times before it starts to sound pathetic.”

  “I don’t want you to apologize,” she says. “I’m not mad at you. You didn’t do anything wrong. You don’t owe me anything.”

  “Sure I do.”

  “Why?” She turns and looks at him, but he’s still looking out the other window. “We’ve never said this is anything more than it is, right? ‘One day at a time’? I don’t have any right to expect anything else from you. Not now.”

  She’s right, but Spence knows she doesn’t really mean it. As casual as they said the relationship was and as easygoing as Sam pretended to be, she wouldn’t have driven to Syracuse if that was really the case. And Spence knows he wouldn’t feel as guilty as he does right now if she was just a port in the storm. “Yeah, but this was stupid,” he says.

  “Yes, it was.”

  “I mean, I wasn’t trying to sleep with her or anything like that.”

  “That doesn’t exactly make me feel better, you know?”

  Spence wants to look at her, but he keeps looking out the window instead. Syracuse is beautiful this time of year. Any other day, under any other circumstances, he’d be going for a walk in whatever park he could find. He wishes they were in Toronto, walking down Yonge Street together and holding hands. He doubts she’ll ever do that with him again.

  “For future reference,” Sam says after what seems like five minutes but is only about thirty seconds, “people tell women all the time not to take drinks from strangers. You might do well to take the same advice.”

  “Point taken,” Spence says. He turns his head and looks at her. She doesn’t look so sad anymore. Her eyes aren’t puffy, and she isn’t crying. But there’s something behind her glasses that makes him feel so guilty and awful. It’s not anger. She hasn’t raised her voice once. But the disappointed look she gives Spence feels worse than the bruises and scrapes down his face.

  “You should probably take a shower,” she says. “It’ll make you feel better.”

  “You’re probably right,” he says and opens the car door. At first, he wonders if Sam is going to stay in her car and drive away the minute he steps out. He breathes a sigh of relief when she gets out of the car and starts to follow him into the hotel.

  The breeze runs up his legs, and Spence is suddenly aware of the fact that his bare ass is pretty much exposed to the world. It’s another situation he thinks would be comical if not for the fact that he’s so depressed and feeling completely ashamed.

  “I’m not going to be able to keep doing this,” Sam says quietly, a few steps behind him. Spence doesn’t look back at her, and he hears her perfectly fine.

  “I know,” he says. “But I don’t know what else to tell you.”

  “I would never give you an ultimatum.”

  But you kind of are, Spence thinks.

  “I know you wouldn’t,” he says. He stops walking and turns to look at her. “But I don’t know what to tell you, and I don’t know what else to do. In a perfect world, I could quit my job and go find another one. But I can’t do that.”

  “I wouldn’t ask you to,” she says. “This is what you were doing when I met you. I don’t have some right to ask you to change your career for me. It’s been a great four months or so, but we’re not married. We don’t live together. You don’t owe me a career change.”

  Spence wonders who she is trying to convince. “And I don’t think you’re asking me to make one.”

  “But I won’t do this again.” She points to the ground with both of her index fingers. “If this is what you’re used to, I hope you know I won’t be a part of it.”

  “You think this is typical for me?”

  “I don’t know,” she says and then catches herself. “No. But I can tell you that it will never be typical for me. I love being with you, and you mean a lot to me. But this isn’t a life I can live. And it can only go on for so long.”

  Spence realizes that she isn’t just talking about his drinking habits. Until right this moment, he thought she was upset at him for being poisoned, or for partying too hard, or for Marcy. Right at this moment he realizes that she’s talking about all of it. She doesn’t like any part of this.

  “It’s not always like this,” Spence says. “I’m just in a slump right now.”

  “I see that,” she says, “but you’re not doing any of us a favor if you just keep going through the motions and then trying to take a break from it every four to six weeks and then just jumping back headfirst into it all over again. This is the first time you’ve gotten drugged and thrown in the hospital. But it’s not the first bender you’ve been on, is it?”

  Spence doesn’t say anything because she’s right. He used to spend his nights writing and trying to come up with new material. Sometimes he’d just sit and watch TV and relax with a glass of wine. Too many nights over the past two years have been about trying to get drunk or laid or both. The fading highlights in his hair and biker boots suddenly make him feel a bit like a desperate old man trying to look half his age and failing.

  “This isn’t typical,” he says again. “And I’m always happy when I’m with you. I hope you know that.”

  “But I can’t be the only thing that makes you happy. Especially not when I hardly ever get to see you.”

  “I will come visit more often. I’ll rearrange my schedule.”

  “It’s not about that,” she says. “I’m not interested in being an army wife. But that’s not even the worst of it. I’m really not interested in seeing you miserable or watching you let yourself get beaten up. And I’m not talking about your face.”

  Spence winces. He wonders how bad his face actually looks. He wonders how crazy it must look to people walking through the hotel parking lot or looking out their windows. A woman in glasses is yelling at a beaten man in a hospital gown and black boots. He imagin
es someone, somewhere is laughing or, at the very least, really curious.

  “You need to take a look at how much crap you can take before it’s not worth taking anymore,” Sam says and reaches over and takes his hand. Her hands are always so soft.

  “I think you were right,” he says and his throat hurts, “when you said that I have a cubicle I move from city to city. I just feel like I’m in the middle of a rut.”

  “Well, you’re not going to get out of it by just living it and reliving it and waiting for a change. And not with this Rodney guy you keep talking about. Especially not if he keeps ripping you off like you say he is.”

  Spence grimaces and feels the pain in his face shoot down his neck. He forgot about Rodney. He forgot about Doane College and the overpayment and the lying. He was going to spend today reading Rodney the riot act and trying to get to the bottom of things. Now he’s suddenly trying to figure out if he should check himself into a psychiatric clinic.

  “You need to figure out what you want, babe,” Sam says and lightly gives him a strange, sad smile.

  He’s never discussed the future with Sam. He’s always been afraid to because he didn’t want to lose her. Through the past few months, with all he’s been through, she’s been the one constant in his life that has made him feel a shred of happiness. But the word love hasn’t really come up, even if it has been danced around a bit. And he doesn’t even know if she can even think about getting really serious with him. He doesn’t even live in Canada. He doesn’t even know if he can live in Canada. How can he get serious with Sam if he doesn’t even know if it’s legal? And how long could she possibly put up with him? The fact that she drove through the night to get him out of the hospital baffles him.

  “I want to be with you,” Spence says. “But I’m not sure how to make that happen just yet.”

  Sam shrugs her shoulders. “I don’t have any answers.”

  “What do you want?” Spence asks.

  “I want you, too,” she says. “But I’m not going to wait years to get you. And I don’t want the stress of what you deal with. I would never put up with it at my job, and I work at the Gap, for Chrissakes.”

  Spence laughs, which oddly hurts his face more than when he frowns.

  “And I gotta be honest with you, guy, but only because you asked,” Sam says. “I want a little honesty and a lot of monogamy.”

  Spence stops smiling and feels the clean side of his face suddenly getting red. He always wondered if Sam suspected that there were still other women. Realizing she probably knew it all along makes him feel very tiny.

  “I haven’t been with anyone else,” he says. It’s true, but he’s hardly been a saint.

  She looks up at him, narrows her eyes, and starts to speak. Then she stops herself and doesn’t say anything else. Instead, she exhales deeply and takes his hand and leads him into the hotel. They walk in the front door and up to the registration desk. Spence is surprised when the hotel clerk doesn’t even blink when he steps up to the counter in nothing but his hospital gown.

  “Can I help you?” the clerk says as if it’s completely natural to see a man covered in bruises standing almost naked in the lobby.

  “I was in room two forty-two,” Spence says, “but I obviously have misplaced my key.” This makes Sam laugh.

  “I see,” the clerk says. “Do you have any ID?”

  “Oddly enough, I do.”

  Spence reaches into the plastic bag and takes out his driver’s license. The clerk looks it up and down, examines the bruise-free man in the photo, and compares it with the beaten slob standing in front of him. After he feels satisfied, he hands Spence back the ID.

  “Let me get you another key, sir,” the clerk says and begins to program a new plastic key card in front of them. Sam stands a few feet behind Spence, covering his exposed behind from the stares of people walking through the lobby. “And there’s a message for you here.”

  “A message for me?” Spence asks.

  “Yes, a woman called and left a message to give to you.”

  The hairs on the back of Spence’s neck stand up as the clerk hands a slip of paper across the counter to him, along with the new key card. The clerk looks over at Sam, back at Spence, and then raises his eyebrow. Spence takes the key card and unfolds the message. He feels his stomach churning as he reads it:

  HOPE YOU HAD AS MUCH FUN AS I DID—MARCY

  Spence groans as he folds the paper back up and steps away from the front desk. Sam gives him a quizzical look, and he hands her the slip of paper. She rolls her eyes and makes a disgusted look as she balls it up and throws it in a nearby trash can. They don’t speak again as they walk across the lobby, into the elevator, and up to Spence’s hotel room.

  “I’m gonna jump in the shower,” Spence says as he tosses his plastic bag of belongings onto the hotel bed. “I think you were right, and it might make me feel better.”

  “Okay,” Sam says, sounding distant again.

  “I think maybe I could use a drink.” Spence smiles broadly, hoping she will get that he’s only joking. She doesn’t laugh, but offers a small, forced grin. She walks across the room and looks out the window, into the parking lot. Spence watches her for a second as she stares outside. “You okay?”

  “I’m fine,” Sam lies, and Spence can easily see it.

  “What is it?”

  “Did you really not sleep with that woman?”

  Spence sighs. “No, I didn’t. I wasn’t even trying to. I had no idea she was going to drug me.”

  “Not last night,” she says. “Before. At some other point. Did you sleep with this woman and then never call her again or something? Was she a one-night stand you forgot about?”

  Spence stands there for a second, thinking of what to say, and finally decides that there is no reason not to go with the truth. After all, she said she wanted honesty.

  “I don’t know,” he says. “I don’t think so. But I won’t lie to you. I really don’t remember.”

  “Okay,” she says and looks back out the window.

  “Look, there was a time—”

  “You don’t owe me an explanation.” She raises her hand without turning around to look at him. That’s the end of it.

  Spence walks into the bathroom, shuts the door, and looks in the mirror. The florescent lights make the bruises and cuts look even worse, and he suddenly wants to cry. Nothing comes, and he just stands there instead, wincing at himself in the mirror and wondering how long it will be before his face heals. He tears off the hospital gown and looks at a body that is five years older than he’s been telling everyone for years. He steps into the shower and lets the hot water wash the dirt and dried blood and shame out of his hair.

  Forty-two, he thinks to himself. When did that happen?

  After stepping out of the shower, Spence towels off and thinks of Sam in the next room. He wonders if she has makeup she can put on his face to make it look better. Or maybe younger. He wonders if she realizes how old he is. He wonders if she’ll care when she finds out. He doesn’t remember if he ever told her or if it has ever come up. He knows she is younger than he is, but doesn’t know how much. He wonders if she’ll freak out when he tells her, but figures he might as well keep the honesty going now that he’s on a roll.

  “I guess I should tell you,” he says as he steps out of the bathroom, drying his hair with a towel. “I’m almost forty-two years old. There, I said it.”

  But when he looks out from behind the towel, he sees that Sam isn’t there anymore.

  16

  “I’ve decided that I’m going to let you be my new agent,” he says to Jamie while lying on his hotel bed. He kicked the comforter to the floor, which is usually the first thing he does when he gets into the room. Those things are hardly ever cleaned, and God knows what has been sleeping on them. He is lying on top of the sheets with his head propped up with all six of the pillows he was given.

  “Yeah?” he asks. “Does this mean I can quit being an underpaid ope
ning act?”

  “Hardly.” He laughs. His cell phone feels hot against his face, but he doesn’t care. It’s nice to hear a familiar voice. For the past ten days, he’s felt like the loneliest person on the planet.

  “Can I at least buy a car with the extra income?” Jamie asks.

  “Not a chance.”

  “Shit, man. How about a scooter?”

  “Now you’re thinking,” he says and looks around the room. This Holiday Inn in Des Moines is nicer than the Starlight Motel was in Crete, Nebraska, but not much. He likes Best Westerns the most. They always give him plenty of pillows, and the comforters feel clean.

  “Why am I making this career change?” Jamie asks and knocks Spence out of his deep thoughts about important things like pillows.

  “Think I’m a bit underpaid,” Spence says.

  “Join the club, my man,” Jamie says. “Ain’t that part of the gig?”

  “It’s worse than that,” he says. “I think I’m actually paid pretty well. I’m just not seeing it. I think I’m being robbed.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What happened?” Jamie asks. Spence tells him the story of the overpayment and how it’s quite possible this sort of thing has been going on for a while, maybe even for years.

  “Shit,” Jamie says. “You really think so?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Damn.” Jamie grunts. “I work for Rodney, too, man. You think he’s skimming off the top of my cash?”

  “What’d you get paid for Toledo?” Spence asks.

  “Five hundred.”

  “Nah, that’s standard feature act pay. You’re getting scale.” Spence switches the phone to his other ear. “He negotiates more for me because I’m a headliner with some TV credits.”