Calling Out (5 page)

“A new applicant,” I say.

“I imagined them differently,” he says. “More vulnerable or something.”

“She's plenty vulnerable,” I say.

“You know what I mean.”

“Younger and prettier,” I say.

“Maybe that,” Ford says. “Are you the only one here?”

“Yeah. Mohammed's next door.”

“The puppy's in the car,” he says.

“Oh, God. I totally forgot. You can leave him with me. Jezebel should be here
soon.”

Ford picks up the binder and reads the list of girls' descriptions.

“Sorry I didn't ask you before about staying. I mean, for so long. And with
Ember. It all happened pretty fast,” he says.

There is knock on the outside door and I buzz it open. It's Nikyla. In jeans
and no makeup, her long hair down, she looks like the coed she should be.

“Hey, did you find my cell phone charger?” she asks, flipping her sunglasses
up onto her head.

“Nope,” I say.

“Hi,” she says to Ford, “I like your boots.”

In full thrift-store attire he looks a little like Jon Voight from
Midnight
Cowboy
. Ford smiles. Or more accurately, he beams.

“Thanks,” he says.

“Keep it together, Ford,” I say.

“See you tonight, Rox,” she says.

“Rox?” Ford says, eyebrows raised.

“Roxanne. My escort name.”

“Nice,” he says.

Nikyla gives Ford one last sideways smile and exits, sashaying out the door.
He tips a nonexistent hat in her direction.

My shift is almost over. Jezebel picked up Albee and I
am alone. I feed from a bag of Oreos Kendra has left and
paint my fingernails Vamp as McCallister tells me that he
thinks I'm sabotaging any chance at happiness. After our
last conversation, I thought maybe I wouldn't hear from
him for a while but I'm glad for the distraction. Back in
New York he's looking for a winter coat.

“Remember the hookers in Paris?” he asks.

McCallister and I went to Paris a couple years ago and
one day, wandering around at dusk, we came upon a strip
of older prostitutes in the doorways of rue St. Denis. They
were harshly made up, wrinkled and dyed, leaning with
bored detachment in between grimy garment-district
storefronts. Their age determined their designation to
that zone, like animals let out to pasture. Their eyes were
tired and lugubrious, as if they were mourning what they
had once been. I went back to look at them again and
again for the rest of the trip, feeling progressively worse
with each visit.

“I don't get your point,” I say.

“It's how you react to people around you. When
you're not feeling good, you take them on. You were in a
funk for the whole rest of that trip. And now you're clearly
depressed.”

“I'm not depressed,” I say dismissively.

He guffaws but lets it go. Our conversations occupy a
delicate space, as we tiptoe around the edge of intimacy.

“Hey, what do you think about orange for a down
jacket? Too flashy?” he asks.

I can hear him jostling with hangers.

“I think it's going to snow tonight,” I say, “and it's not
even December yet. I want it to snow. Snow is good.”

“You should come back, Jane.”

I wish this didn't permeate, and I'm angry with myself
that it does. His words melt into my skin like balm.

“That'll surely make me happy. It worked so well before.
Maybe I can hang out with you and Maria. That sounds
great.” I reach for another Oreo. “I wish I was one of those
people who forgets to eat, like my sister. Or that I would lose
my appetite when I was sad. Then at least I'd be thin.”

“A) you
are
thin, and B) you just admitted that you're
sad,” he says. “This one isn't so bad. It fits. Do you think
orange is too much? Should I play it safe with black?”

“Black is boring.”

“All I'm saying, Jane, is that not being happy is sort of
natural at times. It doesn't mean you should run off and
hide out in the Beehive State. That is not the antidote.”

“How do you know? It's not so bad here. There's
plenty of parking and everyone smiles. Rent is cheap. Not
everyone is cool and stylish. No roaches.” I sweep cookie
crumbs into a line with my finger.

I hear him ask someone the time.

“Jane? I better go. Call me if you get lonely,” McCallister says.

“Go with the orange one,” I say. Then, maddeningly,
my voice cracks at the end of saying “good-bye.”

One of the reasons I fell for McCallister was that he
was nothing like my father. It didn't take me long to figure
this out but there was some satisfaction in naming it. My
dad, providing he has his Scotch, can sit through pork
roast, mashed potatoes, and green beans, and on into
coffee without saying a word. But McCallister always has
something to say and this makes me feel safe. It was when
he couldn't get me to say much in return, after years of
coaxing, that he finally gave up. “Love,” he announced one
day, “is about taking that risk of losing control. And you,
Jane, will not take that risk. At least not with me.” He was
right, but I never believed that he was taking much of a
risk either. I listened. I nurtured. I made no demands. I
couldn't ask for what I didn't even know I wanted.
Besides, he'd already met Maria.

I blow on my nails to dry them but upon inspection
they are smudged and messy around the edges so, instead,
I scrape at the still-soft polish with a scissor blade. I slip,
and I slice my pinkie. While foraging in the bathroom for
a Band-Aid, the phone rings. I consider letting it go—
there are only a few minutes left until I punch out—but as
I peer around to my desk, I can see it's Scott.

Scott the contractor used to fall into the once-amonther category. He usually calls as he's driving up from
Provo to a building site when he has some time to kill. He
doesn't show up on anyone's 86ed list, which means he's
tolerable and not a bad tipper. Someone has penciled in on
the margin of his client sheet, “handsome & sexy,” and
another girl wrote, “cuuuuuuuute!!!!!! nice ass!!!!!” He's been
calling more frequently lately and he hasn't booked an escort
for two months. I'm beginning to think he's calling for me.

When I answer, he says, “Hi, beautiful.”

Despite myself—he's never seen me—I'm flattered,
and I speak to him with perked-up conviviality.

“Hey Scott. How are you?”

“Just fine,” he says. “Enjoying this gorgeous fall day.
Driving up from Happy Valley to check in on a job.
Anyone available who I might like?”

“You're in luck. I have this girl who you'll really like.
Have you seen Nikyla before?”

“Doesn't sound familiar. Why don't you describe her
for me,” he says.

I give him the standard rundown on Nikyla that
hooks everyone.

“I don't know,” he says, seeming distracted, “she
doesn't sound like my type.”

Nikyla is everyone's type.

“So what about you, Roxanne? Do you ever go out?”
he asks.

This is one of the perils of the job—phone-girl
intrigue—but from Scott it does feel more substantial.

“Now, now. None of that,” I say. I hope the tease in my
voice belies my blush. “You know I just work the phone.”

“You sure do. You have a great voice, you know. Sort
of FM-radio sultry,” he says.

“Thanks,” I say. “That's nice of you. Now how about
Nikyla? I think you two would have fun.”

“You do, huh?” Scott laughs. “She's a hair young for
my taste. You sound more like what I'd like.”

I fill in the letters of “handsome” on his information
sheet. Under “Client Description” is written in girlie
handwriting, “sandy hair, blue eyes, six feet.” I imagine he
has sun-squint creases around his eyes like McCallister.

“For all you know,” I say, “I could be sixty and weigh
three hundred pounds.”

“You and I both know that's not true, Roxanne.”

He says this in a way that is vaguely scolding, and
despite there being no uncovered windows in the office, I
have a fleeting sense of being watched.

“So maybe you'd like to see Nikyla?” I ask in a lastditch effort to book a date, feeling like the real Jane is
starting to show in my voice.

“Well,” he sighs. “Unfortunately I don't have all that
much time this afternoon. Unless you change your mind.
I'd blow off everything for you.”

I laugh, relieved, back safely entrenched behind the
façade.

“It was nice talking to you, Scott,” I say. I let my voice
meander.

“As always,” he says. “Hey, are you working tomorrow?”

I write “Yes!” on his client sheet.

“Let's just leave that as a surprise, shall we?”

Ford is working as part of a crew gutting a house north of
the LDS temple and on the first day he befriended Ralf, a Mormon ex-vending
machine supplier from Tooele, a town in the desert west of Salt Lake. They spent
the afternoon breaking out the windows of the house with pickaxes, then covering
them in plywood. But five minutes to shift end, Ralf tripped on a loop of copper
wire and landed with a shard of glass in his chin. Even though I'd rather be
in bed, Ford cajoles me into joining them—post-emergency room visit—at the Starlight
Lounge so I can meet both Ralf and Ember, whose face I haven't yet seen.

Ralf is attractive in a dirty Mormon kind of way. His
shaggy light hair is in a shelf cut, a sort of John Denver,
late-seventies style that half covers his ears. He looks at
home just sitting here.

“Where's Ember?” I ask.

“She went to see some friend of hers in town for the
night. You'll meet her soon, though,” Ford says. “I promise.”

I haven't yet told him they can stay but I know I could
never tell him no.

The vinyl of the booth squeaks as Ralf scoots in to
make room for me. When I sit, it feels as though roots take
hold, and I sink into weariness beneath the murmuring
heat pouring down from the vent above our table. Ford, his
hands red-roughed and dirt-stained, slides his beer to me.

Although we are the same age, Ralf seems younger
because Ford announces that he was a virgin until he was
twenty-five, and also because his green eyes are so light
they are almost gray, and so eager they glisten like those of
a boy who has just seen his first centerfold. Ralf did his
mission in Amsterdam. Although he drinks and smokes,
he still believes.

“Ford tells me you came here from the big city,” he
says.“Why'd you leave?”

Ford leans across the table. “I'd like to hear this too.”

“Because my chronic dissatisfaction made me feel
middle-aged,” I say, drinking three full gulps of Ford's
Corona.

Ralf smiles and nods and drums his thumbs against
his beer bottle. His chin is covered in a large bandage that
looks like a flesh-colored beard. There is a darkened blood
smear on the collar of his work shirt.

When I got out of college, I imagined myself as a
Peace Corps volunteer, or a writer, or an environmental
activist, or a teacher, or, for a brief phase, a midwife. But
when it came down to it, I lacked passion and I was a
wimp. I moved to New York because my friends did, took
a job at an ad agency because it was available, spent a lot
of time in bars talking about books and pop culture
because that's what people did in Manhattan. I blundered
through my twenties.

“It's that thing where no one can talk about anything
really without irony,” Ford says, near drunk. “I'm glad you
got out of there, Jane.”

“Pretty soon whole years passed and other people
were figuring out what they were going to be when they
grew up and I was still pretending I didn't have to. When
really, I was becoming a loser,” I say.

“Hey,” Ford says quietly, “take it easy. Don't be so hard
on yourself.” A sheen on his expansive forehead catches
the low-wattage yellow light of the bar's tavern lamps.
“You should have hung out more with me out here.
Drowning your sorrows in Gram Parsons,” he says.

Ralf is still nodding and then wiggles his chin to get at
the itch of his newly sewn wound. “Nothing wrong with
Gram Parsons,” he says. “I'd like to propose a toast. To
Utah.”

“Here, here.” Ford says. “You took a long detour to get
here, Jane, but I'm glad you made it.”

“Aw, Ford. You old softie.”

Ralf wears a broad, contented smile as he sits amidst
his new friends, and he orders us another round. Ruddiness
blooms in his cheeks. He licks his bee-stung bottom lip.

“So, Jane,” he says. “I hear you work for a brothel.”
“Not quite,” I say.

“I know, I know. Tell me some stuff about it.”
“What do you want to know?” I ask.

“Ford here says it's legal. But I don't know how that
can be true,” he says.

“There is this sheet of paper that we give all new
escorts that lists what they can and can't do within the
law.” I lower my voice as not to attract the ears of the university students at the next table. “Can't do: sex, hand
jobs, blow jobs, any touching of sexual areas, give a massage, allow or encourage masturbation.”

“What? That last one seems for the birds,” Ralf says,
slapping his palms on the table. “Isn't that the whole
point?”

“Can do,” I say, “Kiss, cuddle, caress, tease, strip, take
a shower, nibble on his ears, give a bubble bath, tell sexy
stories, play with his nipples, sexy poses, spank, get a massage, model lingerie, talk dirty, role-play, tickle, talk about
fantasies, lick chocolate off him, kiss his thighs, put on
baby oil, moan and groan, tell secrets, tell jokes, dance,
kiss his neck, lick his nipples, have your toes sucked, and
anything else not on the can't-do list.”