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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.
    â€œI 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.”
    â€œThat’s what I told them.”
    â€œNext time, let me tell them. That’s my job.”
    â€œNo shit.”
    â€œWhatever,” Rodney says. “They’re probably going to quit having comedians anyway. They say they aren’t making any money at it.”
    â€œMe 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.
    â€œWhere you headed now?” Rodney asks.
    â€œYour backyard. I’ll be there in a few days.”
    â€œAlright. Bring me some headshots.”
    â€œSure,” Spence says.
    â€œI told you Rockford is closed, right?”
    â€œYeah. Get me a date in Cleveland, okay?”
    â€œI’ll see what I can do,” Rodney says and hangs up.
    Spence tosses his cell phone onto the front seat of his car and lets out a long sigh. He runs his hands through his already messy hair and slaps his hand on the roof of his car, feeling the slight sting on his palm and hearing the hollow thunk when his hand hits the metal.
    â€œDamn it,” he says to no one, but loud enough for anyone within a quarter mile to hear. A decade in, and the business never gets easier. Every shining moment onstage is met with a humbling dressing down offstage. Every standing ovation comes with a bar tab. Every night in the arms of a beautiful woman is rewarded with an angry wake-up call from his agent.
    The only agent that will have me, he thinks, and feels that familiar throbbing start on the side of his forehead.
    It’s true about Rodney. There was a time when Spence could have left him and signed on with someone else. Someone who might have gotten him slightly better pay in slightly worse venues. Too many burned bridges later, and it seems that Rodney is the wife he doesn’t remember marrying. Like it or not, they’re stuck with each other, come death or The Tonight Show.
    After a minute of staring at his worn-out shoes, the gravel on the ground, and his car with too many miles on it, he slips into the driver’s seat and shuts the door. He tunes his satellite radio to some talk show. The host is talking about how high taxes are and how everyone without money is lazy and poor because they have no skills. Spence chuckles to himself, rolls down the window, and heads out.
    Good-bye, Enid, Oklahoma, he thinks. Another city checked off his map. Places he never thought he’d visit have now become footnotes on his résumé. On his way out of town, he pulls into the parking lot of the Electric Pony and empties the bottle of urine all over the front door.

3
    New Jersey sucks. He’s never liked it, doesn’t like going back to it, and really tries to avoid it as much as possible. All of this makes it harder for him to believe that he lived here for over a decade. He doesn’t like the people any more than he likes the traffic, but the traffic makes him hate the people even more. That vicious circle goes around in his head until he feels like driving his car into a tollbooth—of which Jersey has hundreds—just like the one he’s sitting at right now.
    Spence smiles at the toll collector who looks