I'll Be Here All Week by Anderson Ward

with it this long. He looks over at Evan, who doesn’t look back at him, but just keeps looking out the window, sipping on his wine. At least the douche didn’t gloat.
    â€œAlright,” Spence concedes, “I’ll change my address. Maybe get a PO box. Have it sent to my parents or something.”
    â€œCool,” she says.
    â€œI’m off,” Spence says and makes his way to the door.
    â€œSo long,” Evan says and waves over his shoulder without looking at him.
    At the front of the condo, Beth puts her hand on his shoulder as she opens the door. “Christmas decorations, okay?” she asks.
    â€œSure.”
    She leans in the doorway for a second, looking around the breezeway. Spence tucks the picture frame under his arm and pulls out his car keys. He fumbles with the key ring for a minute and finally gets Beth’s house key loose. He hands it to her, and she puts it in her pocket.
    â€œYou okay?” she asks.
    â€œYeah, I’m fine,” he says. There’s a second where Beth starts to walk back into the condo, but she stays in the doorway instead. They smile politely at each other for a few seconds, and he shrugs.
    â€œYou need a girlfriend,” she says.
    â€œI’m okay in that department,” he says.
    â€œNo, I know you’re getting laid,” she gives him a tsk-tsk look and furrows her eyebrows, “I mean you need a girlfriend. A date. Someone else to talk to.”
    â€œI talk plenty. All I do is talk. I talk for a living,” he says.
    â€œYou know what I mean,” she says.
    He laughs. “Sure. That’s what every woman wants to date, right? A homeless, broke comedian.”
    â€œWomen love comedians. I did, remember?”
    â€œHow’d that work out for you?”
    â€œNot fair.”
    â€œSorry.”
    Spence sighs deeply and runs his free hand through his hair. He’s never understood Beth’s fascination with whether or not he’s dating. Part of him guesses that she feels a little bit guilty for replacing him with Evan so quickly after the divorce. He finds it odd that she always seems eager for him to find someone else to never be home with.
    â€œYou’re doing better than you were this time last year,” she says. “You’re still working. That says something about you, right?”
    â€œMy last gig was at a place in Oklahoma with a mechanical bull next to the stage.”
    Beth laughs. He cringes from it, but he knows just how ridiculous it must sound.
    â€œHey, you’re the one that wanted this life,” she says. “You could’ve stayed right here and waited tables or been a bartender or done all kinds of things to pay the rent. You chose to live on the road, remember?”
    She’s right. It really seemed like a good idea at the time. The idea of not having a day job and being able to make money doing only stand-up was tempting. When Rodney started finding him work, he said yes to every single job. That meant he was never in one place for very long. Next thing he knew, he was never home. Not long after that, he didn’t even have one.
    â€œYou’re the one who hated to be alone, remember?” he says.
    â€œAnd I always was.”
    He looks over her shoulder at Evan, back on the patio and scraping off the grill. “Not anymore,” he says. It’s a quick jab, but he knows it’s not fair. He would have done the same thing had he been her.
    At least now, he and Beth get along fairly well and speak to each other without losing their minds. The last two years they were married it was outright chaos. She was happy to see him getting so much work and then crying to him on the phone every night that he was never home. At first she was sad all the time. Then she got angry and the screaming kicked in. After a while, they argued when he was away and kept arguing when he was home. The fact that the divorce was so easy was hard to believe. That they