"I'm telling you, the map says the hotel is that way," Susie insisted.
"And I'm telling you, it doesn't," Lenny fired back from the seat beside her.
"Alright, you two," Midge said, sitting up to lean forward as held up her hands, suddenly reminded of the times she had to wrangle Esther and Ethan on long car journeys. "We talked about this: Whoever is driving does the driving, and whoever isn't, reads the map."
"Fine," huffed Lenny.
"I suppose," Susie mumbled in concession.
"So Susie, you drive," Midge further instructed, "and Lenny, you read the map."
They were almost a week into the tour, and while it had gone relatively smoothly, directions and map reading had become something of a hot button issue between Lenny and Susie lest Midge play the role of mediator.
"I think I'm going to skip dinner," Midge told Lenny, flopping down on the hotel bed with relief when they were finally at their destination. "I just want to take a bath and get the airplane grime off me."
"You gotta eat," Lenny encouraged as he stood looking down at her. "We don't need to go out; this is a nice place," he continued glancing around the suite they were staying in, "I'm sure they have room service."
"Room service sounds pretty good right now," Midge agreed, her eyes closed. "I think I want…" She thought for a second. "Tomato soup and grilled cheese."
"I'm sure they can do that." Lenny smiled, amused at her simple request in a luxurious environment. "You take your bath and I'll sort out the room service."
"That sounds good," Midge said as she sat up and he bent down to kiss her. "You know, you're earning a lot of good husband brownie points right now."
"Yeah?"
"Mm-hmm," Midge agreed as he assisted her with the task of getting up from the bed. "You never know," she said, reaching out to trace a finger over his shirt buttons, "I might even feel energetic enough later to reward you with them, which could be extra fun with no little ears around to hear us. Well"—she scrunched up her face—"apart from Susie's."
Lenny laughed. "Go take your bath, I'll sort the food."
"What?" Midge asked him a while later, the weight of his gaze heavy on her as he watched her eat from the other side of the table, his own food barely touched. "Do I have tomato soup on my face?" she asked, swiping her hand self consciously over her chin.
"No, you do not," Lenny replied with a smile. "I was just thinking how lucky I am to be here, now, with you, like this." He shrugged as he smiled wryly, looking down at the table for a beat before making eye contact with Midge again. "About how different it all could have been."
Midge's sweet, sad smile said she felt it too.
"Some of those people at the meetings, when I was in rehab…the way their lives have ended up, the things they've lost…" He sighed and shook his head. "The people they've lost."
"It's scary," Midge confessed honestly.
Lenny nodded solidly before letting out a sharp huff of a breath. "I was also thinking"—he raised an eyebrow—"how cute you look like that," he added, shifting the mood in the room to something lighter.
"I'm in a hotel robe with no makeup, wet hair and I'm six months pregnant," she said with a small laugh of self deprecation.
"Exactly," Lenny agreed, standing up and going to her side of the table and leaning down to kiss her. "That's why you're so cute."
"Does he have to be at every show?" Susie asked Midge as they left her dressing room, motioning towards Lenny who was deep in conversation with the club's manager in the hallway.
"He's my husband," Midge scowled as they walked towards the backstage area behind the curtain, "so if he wants to be here, he can be here."
"Doesn't he get bored listening to the same thing every night?"
"No… Maybe. I don't know," Midge fumbled with a shrug.
"I'd ask him, if I were you," Susie offered. "You don't want him here bored off his tits every night just because he thinks he has to be."
"Thanks for the advice," Midge replied with an eye roll even if truthfully, she thought Susie had a point.
Susie nodded her head to indicate Lenny was coming. "I'll leave you to it."
"You good to go on?" he asked Midge as he walked up to, lighting his cigarette.
"Yep," Midge told him, stopping to consider her next words for a second before she spoke: "You know," she began uncomfortably, "you don't have to come to every show."
A flash of hurt came over his face, but he quickly covered it with humor. "Why? Am I making you nervous?" he said with a slightly unnatural grin.
"No," Midge replied drolly before getting more serious. "And I love that you're here, I really do," she insisted, reaching out to touch his arm in a gesture of sincerity. "But it's pretty much the same material every night, it's got to be boring."
"Eh"—he shrugged, puffing on his cigarette—"what else am I gonna do?" he joked, the hurt gone from his eyes, before adding more earnestly: "Plus, I like watching you work. I like seeing all those people as captivated with you as I am."
Midge smiled warmly. "If you're sure..."
"I am very sure."
"Hey Midge," Susie said frantically as she tapped Midge on the shoulder, "time to go on."
"OK," Midge agreed, giving Lenny one last kiss. "Wish me luck."
"I would, but you don't need it."
Midge just smiled. "Tits up?" she asked, turning to Susie.
"Tits up," Susie concurred before Midge walked onto the stage to the sound of rapturous applause.
"As you might be able to tell," Midge began, grabbing hold of the microphone with one hand and gesturing to her stomach with the other, "my husband and I have been having sex."
The crowd laughed.
"But you know, you spend so long trying not to get pregnant, but then when you actually want to? Nothing. Nada. So let me tell you, for a while there, we were having a lot of sex. In fact, I swear I heard him mutter once, 'Tonight, again?' and I was like, 'Isn't that supposed to be my line?'"
Midge was rewarded with not only laughs but also a few claps.
"No, no, I'm kidding! In reality, he can't get enough of me," she said with a wink. "Also," she continued quieter before pressing her finger to her lips, "he's here tonight."
There was a chortle from the audience expressing their amusement, along with a few cheers at the fact Lenny Bruce was in the building.
"But you see, when you tell people you're pregnant the first thing they ask is, 'Oh, how far along are you?' or 'When are you due?', which seem like perfectly innocent questions until you think about them; then you see it, you see the wheels turning and the mental mathematics happening in people's minds. 'She must've got pregnant in February, it was definitely a drunken Valentine's mistake' or 'Oh, December, looks like somebody found a way to save on their heating bill during the cold winter nights'."
Midge took a pause for a few seconds for the laughter to dwindle.
"And of course you have to come to terms with the fact that these people are now picturing you having sex, they're picturing you naked, in flagrante. So then I'm wondering, what positions do they think we use? Do they imagine us with the lights on or off? Am I in reality living up to the outrageous sexual acrobatics they're imagining me doing?"
"It's awkward, you know, picturing your friends fucking, but it's nothing compared to your parents. Because I shared with my mother the fact that I was struggling to get pregnant." She paused for a beat. "I say shared," Midge added with a flourish, "but it was more like she interrogated it out of me with little more than some well timed noises of skepticism and disapproval in that special way mothers do - but boy, I did not like what she told me."
"She said she did not have time to think about 'the color scheme for the nursery' before my brother was born, although I 'did not come easily'. So now I'm forced to acknowledge the fact that my parents have actually had sex more than just the two times when my brother and I were conceived." She took a second to pop the microphone back into the stand. "Of course I know my parents must have sex - logically at least - but sometimes, it's just easier to consider turning Catholic so you can believe in the immaculate conception than it is to think about your own parents having sex."
The crowd laughed warmly. "You get it, right?" Midge responded animatedly, holding out her hands. "I can totally believe that those communion wafers are the literal body of Christ if it means not thinking about my parents naked. I mean, my parents - those two people - fucking? I don't think so. An angel coming down from the sky? Eh, I can see it."
The audience may have been in stitches, but it was the sound of Lenny's distinctive laugh coming from the wings that meant the most.
"They were really eating out of your hand tonight," Lenny commented to Midge when they got back to the hotel room. "It hasn't been that long, but it kinda made me miss playing shows."
"Oh yeah?"
"I said kinda. Right now, I am very happy writing and getting to spend more time with you and the kids, but…"—he shrugged—"maybe in the near future.""I might have to hold you to that," Midge told him. "The world needs more Lenny Bruce standup."
"Hmm," he considered. "You might be right, but less talk about me and more about you."
"Oh if you insist," Midge joked, adopting a false modesty. "Susie thinks the crowds on this tour have been different because we pulled them in on the back of that album we put out a few months ago." She turned her back to Lenny in a silent request for him to unzip her dress. "It reached wider because Columbia distributed it, so they come to the shows knowing what to expect."
"I think Susie might be right," Lenny agreed as he slipped the dress from her shoulders. The newly exposed skin being more of a temptation that he could stand, he pressed a lingering kiss to her shoulder.
"Mm-hmm," Midge hummed, shimming her dress further down before she stepped out of it and turned to him. "Now, about those brownie points you earned earlier…" she said as she leaned in to kiss him.
"I am very happy to redeem them," Lenny confirmed with a grin as they moved to the bed, leaving more clothing shed in their wake.
Sometime later, both of them pleasantly satiated - the warmth running through Lenny's veins better than any artificial high he had ever experienced - Midge lay with her head on Lenny's chest. His arm stayed wrapped comfortingly around her as his fingers stroked lazy circles on her back.
"You were right," he mumbled into her hair, closing his eyes. "I can't get enough of you."
She lifted her head and turned to look at him. "You paid attention."
"To you?" He leant in and kissed her. "Always," he whispered before they both drifted into an easy slumber.
When Midge awoke a few hours later, it was to the increasingly familiar sound of typewriter keys banging, along with the already familiar scent of cigarette smoke in the air. Opening her eyes slowly, she saw Lenny, cigarette in his mouth and typing away.
"Morning," she muttered croakily.
"Hey," he said, turning to her with a smile. "Did I wake you?" he added with a frown.
"No," Midge insisted, "besides, I like waking up to the sound of the keys clicking away."
Lenny smiled, walking over to sit next to her on the edge of the bed. "That's good because when the baby comes, you might have to put up with it on a more regular basis."
The fact that their apartment only had four bedrooms was something they hadn't considered in as much detail as they probably should have given the baby's impending arrival. As it was, Kitty and Esther happily shared a room (Kitty had always wanted a sister, so she was thrilled to bunk in with Esther who seemed to hero worship her), while Ethan had his own. While Lenny really didn't want to lose his study, he knew it was neither fair nor practical to expect a boy soon entering his teenage years to share with a baby that would soon become a toddler.
But Lenny loved his study. On the odd occasion where the words would dry up, he found being in that space in front of the typewriter was somehow exactly what he needed to set his head in the right space for writing.
"I'm not crazy about having to give up my study, but this one," he touched Midge's belly, "will definitely be worth it."
Midge pondered for a minute. "We could move, I suppose, to a bigger place. Even taking your study out of the equation, Kitty may love Esther, but she's going to be a teenager soon and she'll want her own space."
"You really want to move?" Lenny asked with true surprise, Midge always seeming so settled that the idea never even crossed his mind.
"Well, I don't know if I want the stress of moving right now, but if it'll be better, I think we should think about it; maybe after the baby is born and everything has settled down."
"Yeah, it's something to think about," Lenny agreed, the cogs in his brain silently turning as he began to think two steps ahead.
"Morning Susie," Midge greeted her brightly as she sat next to Lenny in the hotel restaurant, breakfast already in front of them.
"Yeah, mornin'," Susie grumbled in return as she sat down at the table, yawning before lighting a cigarette.
"Sleep well?" Midge asked before taking a bite of her scrambled eggs.
"I was sleeping well until I got woke up by you two"—she nodded her head towards Midge and Lenny—"on the other side of the wall, screwing like a pair of cats in heat. I though married people were supposed to hate sex! And for such an expensive hotel, the walls in this place are really fucking thin."
"I'm sorry," Midge said, barely containing her amusement as Lenny was unable to hide his.
"Hmm," Susie said, disgruntled. "Just remember to keep the fucking noise down in future."
"Literally," Lenny quipped, earning a snigger from Midge but a less than amused glare from Susie.
"No, you're right," Midge agreed, looking at Susie. "We will be more considerate in future."
"Yeah, I'm sure I got a pair of ear plugs I can lend you," Lenny told Susie with a sly smile.
Susie however, looked anything but amused.