I'll Be Here All Week Read Online Free PDF Page A

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.
    â€œNot 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.”
    â€œWhat’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.
    â€œI heard you say GD, ” Billy says.
    â€œI did?”
    Billy nods.
    â€œI didn’t realize I said it again,” Spence lies.
    â€œI got what you were doing.”
    â€œJust 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.
    â€œEver since we started doing comedy here on weekends, people started calling and bitching about shit. It’s always something,” Billy says.
    â€œHow many complaints do you normally get?”
    â€œI dunno,” Billy says. “Maybe six calls a week. Sometimes more. Sometimes less.”
    â€œThere 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.”
    â€œThat hundred people laugh and go home. The six or seven call me on the phone and bitch me out for an hour.”
    â€œYou can’t please everybody.”
    Billy snorts and shrugs his shoulders and makes a sound that might be an agreement or might be gas.
    â€œDid you see the movie Transformers ?” Spence asks.
    â€œSure.”
    â€œDid you like it?”
    â€œDidn’t care, really.”
    â€œMillions 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.”
    â€œI 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.
    â€œDo 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