All Night Read Free

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.