All Night (2 page)

“It’s all right,” I say. “I wasn’t trying to force you or anything. I’m sorry if I made you think that.”

“No teeth loose?” She kisses me now. Lightly. “I just don’t think we should make love tonight.”

“No,” I say. “Of course not.” I lie back down. I could try to hold her again but I turn my back instead. I just stay quiet.

“We need to think about Peter,” she says. “We have to honour him. His death has to change things for us, doesn’t it? Life is showing us something here. Everything we know could be pulled out from under us. It’s a wake-up call.”

I press my cheek into the pillow.

“I don’t think we should go to sleep tonight,” Jess says. “You have to get up early anyway. What’s the point? We should stay up and really talk about things.”

She turns on the light.

“You mean about Peter?” I ask finally.

“About life! What we want from it. What we’re doing here. Where we’re going. How we feel! You start.”

My face still stings from her slap. The words spill out of me. “Okay. How I feel: I’m starving. But I don’t want to ruin my breakfast. So I’m here with you. My beautiful girlfriend. Tired but not sleeping. A bit beaten up. And we’re not making love. You’re in your mother’s pajamas anyway. Some things a man can overcome ...”

“Is that it?” she says.

“Pretty well.”

“Okay,” she says. She rolls over.

We are on a wire high above a black pit. I know this. I know. But the words keep tumbling out. “What happened to staying up all night? To honouring Peter with our blazing honesty?”

She does not open her eyes. “Just go to sleep. Dream about Karla.” She seems to harden in front of me, becomes as still as glass.

“What do you mean, ‘Dream about Karla?’ ”

“You know what I mean.”

I shake my head slowly. “I talked to many people tonight, not just Karla. I didn’t eat enough, so now I’m starving. Why do we never have any food in this house?”

Jess leaps out of bed. She pulls a blanket to the small, sagging chair in the corner and sits very
still. “This is not a house. And we don’t have any food because it’s eighteen blocks to the grocery store. You don’t help, so I just buy what I can carry. And what we can afford, which is not a lot. And you talked to Karla for half an hour. Which I don’t mind at all. I mind the way you were looking at her.”

This apartment is freezing. Of course I help with the shopping. Sometimes.

I pull the rest of the blankets around me. All right. The fight has started. But, I think, one problem at a time. I say, “How was I looking at her?”

She makes a funny, love-struck face.

I say, “I don’t even know how to do that with my face. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“You used to look at me like that,” she says.

I can’t help it, I blow out until my lips flap. “All right. Hold on. It’s late, we’re both worn out. We will never, ever, take a bus out of town to a funeral again. Or dress up for one in costumes. I forgive you, you forgive me. Forget about staying up. Erase everything. Come to bed and go to sleep.” I turn out the light. “Good night!”

Jess does not move. “Wow. Now I’m more worried than ever about Karla.”

I toss and turn in the bed. “Oh, for God’s sake! Why are you doing this?”

She does not move.

“Stop looking at me!” I cry.

She keeps staring.

“This whole thing hit Karla hard,” I say. “She needed to talk to somebody. You know we used to go to school together.”

Jess pulls at her hair. “She and Peter broke up two years ago. She’s had eight boyfriends since. She just wanted to see how beautiful she would look in black. And you were there like some white knight.”

I slump into the pillow. “Jess ...”

“She’s gorgeous! She’s needy! She collects men like prize ribbons and then throws them away.”

I can’t stand it. I drag my own blankets out of bed and kneel beside her. “I am not anybody’s prize ribbon!”

“Well, I should hope not.”

I hold both her hands. Hers are chilly now, mine warm. “I don’t think we’re honouring Peter by fighting over Karla. She means nothing to me. She’s
my
ribbon. Here, I’m pulling her off and throwing her away. Be gone!” I pretend to pull a
ribbon off my chest and wave my arms to make it disappear in the shadows.

“You really are a goof.” At last, a hint of a smile from her. “What are you doing?”

“I’m giving you my love-struck look.” I lean in for a kiss. I am owed at least one.

She nudges my shoulder. “Shut up!” But she giggles, too, at last. We kiss slowly. Warm lips now, as well. We both have warm lips. Finally.

But then she pulls away.

“My turn,” she says.

Jess pauses. A look in her eyes. She has been thinking about what she wants to say for a long time. Maybe all the time I thought she was asleep on the bus. Or longer.

“I feel as if there’s never enough money,” she says. “Not for food, not for clothes. Not for good makeup. Or an actual hair style. There isn’t enough money for a decent place to live. Think of it: natural light from proper windows! A garden with a rose bush!”

I reach for her hand again but she clenches her fist.

“I’m an actor, but I can’t afford voice classes,” she says. “But that’s not the real problem. The real problem is, there’s never going to be enough money. You have a part-time job stacking chairs. I’m just a restaurant hostess. It’s hourly wage crap. I could put up with being poor if we were getting somewhere. But we’re not. You do comedy for no pay. After three years of theatre school, the only acting work I get is being an extra in crowd scenes. Peter was just like us, spinning his wheels. Now he’s dead. I don’t want that to happen to me.”

I wait a moment for her to calm down. “You’ve already had voice classes,” I say.

Jess throws up her hands. “I need more! I need acting for the camera. I need stage movement. I’m years away from being really good. And to get there, I need help. To get help, I need money.”

I try to hold her again. It was warmer, much warmer in bed. “You’re a lot better than you know. When you perform in a show, I can’t keep my eyes off you. And I’m not the only one.”

She pushes me away. “You’re just thinking about after the show.” She takes all the blankets with her and settles back into bed. I am alone out here in the cold in my T-shirt and boxer shorts.

“I didn’t tell you about the other e-mail I got,” I say. “My comedy team is on for Saturday at the Rats’ Nest.”

“The Rats’ Nest?”

I squirm into bed beside her again. “It’s a really cool new place. Very hip. Everyone wants to play at the Rats’ Nest now. But we won’t have Peter on the team, of course.”

“Because Peter is dead. Will they pay you?”

I pause. “A beer each.”

“You wouldn’t want to miss that,” she says. “Just because your partner and friend is dead. You know what this reminds me of? The elephants!”

“Not the elephants,” I moan. A year ago we watched a special on elephants on National Geographic TV. Since then the elephant story has showed up in every argument we have had.

Jess begins to shuffle around the room. She swings her arms together like a trunk. “There they are, the mothers. And the little orphan elephant is trapped in the mud hole.”

“Shut up!” I say. But of course I watch her. Performing, she has an extra glow.

“All the female elephants pull that orphan out and adopt him! But what are the males doing? They’re off at the water hole, the big bulls. And poor Grampa elephant is trying to get in, to take a sip. But they won’t let him! He’s old and weak. He stands in the heat for hours until—”

Jess falls back on the bed. She twitches, lies still. Then she gets up. “And all the bulls run around Grampa. They trumpet: what a great elephant he used to be! But did they lift a trunk to save him?”

I pull her under the covers again. “Enough of you and your elephants,” I say. “I sat on a bus for hours in the cold in the wrong clothes to mourn my friend. Doing our act at the Rats’ Nest is another way of honouring him. And besides, people from the Second City club might be there. You never know who will hire us next.”

“To pay you what?” Jess asks. “French fries?”

I rub my empty belly. “French fries would be good right now. I would kill to get a basket of french fries right now.”

She rubs my skinny belly, too. Warm, warm hand. “Let’s not kill anybody, okay?”

“It’s just a figure of speech,” I say.

Something flits across the floor. Jess sits up. “Oh damn! I saw one! I saw one!” She squirms on the bed. I peer into the gloom. “Do you see it?” she asks. “Do you see it?”

There it is—a cockroach! I grab a shoe and hammer along the floor. There and ... there! I chase it, hammering.

“Is it dead?”

I blow roach guts off the shoe. “You wouldn’t happen to have any french fries, would you?”

When I get back to bed Jess holds me close. “My hero! I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’m just ... I shouldn’t have talked you into wearing that tuxedo. Overdressing was stupid. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“You were thinking of your father,” I say. “His tux is just a little big on me.”

“We should have shown more respect. Now Peter’s family thinks we’re just clowns or something. As if we thought it was Halloween.”

I stroke her hair. It’s going to be all right. “Peter loved Halloween. And Peter loved you. He really did.”

“I know,” she says.

“He wasn’t just carrying a torch for you. His torch was like a ... a flame-thrower!”

Why did I say that? She shakes my hand away. “Shut up.”

I have started, so I keep going. “If he hadn’t died, he would have been all over you. He was just waiting for me to exit the scene.”

“He was not.”

So much for talking truths! I should just shut up. And yet I can’t. “He tried to kiss you that night at the thing,” I say. “At that swimming party.”

“He was drunk.”

“Peter was never really drunk in his whole life. As soon as he saw you, he knew what he wanted.”

Jess pulls a pillow over her head. “Can’t we just go to sleep?”

So that’s the way it is! I move closer. “What, and not honour Peter? It was your idea. You’re the one who wanted to talk about things.”

“Important things. The changes we need to make.”

“What changes? We are on a path. I need to do my act at the Rats’ Nest because the Second City club might be next. You need to check your messages. A gig might have come up for you.”

She hits me with a pillow. Feeble, a glancing blow. “Nothing has come up for me.”

“I know I joke around a lot,” I say, “but this I truly believe: the world can change in a day. Are you ready for it? That’s the big question here.”

“I’m
not
ready for it,” Jess says. “I need more voice classes. We’re out of money. I can’t even afford to get my picture taken. A proper head shot. By a real photographer. How are we going to have kids?”

Kids? Is that what our fight is about? “We’ll, um, raise them in a shoe box, to start,” I say. “We’ll get deals at the Goodwill store. We can pay for everything they need on credit and then get new cards.”

“Very funny,” she says. “You’re just a scream.”

But I’m not laughing. Can’t she see that? “Do you really want a guy in a suit who rents his soul to some company?”

“If his sperm is good and he can pay the bills.”

What? Why is she saying such things? “Maybe ten years from now we might be ready for kids. What’s the rush? I thought you didn’t want to be hemmed in.”

Jess gets up and begins pacing. She has heavy feet for someone so small. “I feel trapped and poor. I don’t feel as if I have ten years to spend on a risky career. We just got the warning shot. Go to sleep tonight, tomorrow might not happen.”

She shivers, even in her mother’s thick pajamas. “It’s freezing in here!” she cries.

She picks up the phone.

“You are not calling our landlord,” I say.

“You’re right,” Jess replies. “I’m not. You are! Tell him he might find two blue corpses first thing in the morning.”

She carries the phone to me in bed. It’s the middle of the bloody night.

“I’m not calling!”

“No, you’re not calling,” she says. “And you’re not getting a good job. You’re waiting for me. You want me to get some office job that will pay for you ...”

“No.”

She’s still waving the phone at me. “We have to do something!”

“Start by checking your e-mail,” I say. “Some film director might be looking for you!”

She punches in our landlord’s number and holds the phone out for me.

“I’m not taking it!” I fall out of bed trying to get away.

“Yes you are!” Are we doing this? I scramble in the cold, she chases me with the phone. We go around and over the bed. She grabs my leg and pins me down. I hate wrestling with her. She’s tiny and too good! And if, somehow, I win, she pretends to be just a girl, anyway.

On my back, on the floor, I finally take the phone. “It’s the machine,” I say.

“Well, leave a message!” Her hair is falling in my face. I could just sort of help her move towards
me. I think of her at the reception in her dress, on the bus with her eyes closed.

Even when we are pulling apart, I feel as if we are moving together.

On the phone I say, “Hello, Mr. Stewart. It’s, ah, Gregor Luft.” I change my voice because Jess is listening. “We’re, ah, close to the North Pole now, sir. But the weather is closing in. Jess has left me here. She’s making a dash for it. I’m worried about her gear.” I hold the phone away for a moment and make wind noises. “Not sure how much longer we can hold out here without heat, Mr. Stewart. Please call our families if you get this message. You might find us dead in the morning.”

Jess grabs the phone. “Mr. Stewart, Gregor is just kidding. Well, not really. It is freezing in here. The heater has died again. Please, fix it! Thank you.” She hangs up and throws the phone down. “Nothing is serious for you,” she says. “Everything is a big joke.”

“That’s not true,” I say. Why can’t she see what that was? Not a big joke, a bridge of jokes. A way to be in this world. A way across a cold, dark river.

Why can’t she see what I am about? Who I am?