All Night Read Free Page A

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 towardsme. 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?
    “What are you doing Saturday night at the Rats’ Nest?” she says. “To honour Peter? What’s the plan?”
    “It’s improv comedy,” I say. “We just say the first thing that comes into our heads. Even better if it’s funny. There is no plan.”
    “So you and the third guy, what’s-his-name, Jeremy. You haven’t talked about how to