Calling Out (6 page)

“Tell jokes?” This item on the list makes Ford laugh so
hard he's silent and tears leak from his eyes.

“But no hugging,” I say, “because a girl might press
her breasts into a client, and in the eyes of Utah law, this
evil far exceeds that of her having to explore the nether
region of a stranger's hot and hairy inner thighs.”

“That is so gross,” Ralf says. He looks as if he just
found out there's no tooth fairy. “So you, like, set up these
rendezvous-es?”

“Yeah.” I fish around in my wallet and pull out the
laminated card: “Salt Lake City Sexually Oriented Business Employee, Outcall.”

“Nice picture,” Ralf says.

“So, Jane,” Ford says, “maybe you should do it.”

“What?”

“That. Try it out.”

“Be an escort?”

“Yeah. Be an escort.”

I laugh. “Are you serious?”

“Yeah, why not? It's legal,” he says. “I assume you don't
have a moral issue with it.”

Ford's challenge irks me. Ralf stares first at Ford, then
at me.

“Maybe it seems slightly degrading?”

“I don't know, does it? I mean is it that different from
getting compensated for a bad blind date? Or being a
therapist of sorts? Who's to say you wouldn't find it kind
of satisfying. You go for the needy ones.”

“You're drunk,” I say.

“You'd be popular if you did it, though,” Ralf says.

My eyes are dry and I don't have the energy to
respond to either of them.

“I'm going to go,” I say. “It's been a long few days.”

Outside it's a bone-chilling night; the desert sky is
vast and clear. My old car creaks and coughs like a codger
with emphysema until the engine catches.

When I arrive at the office the next day, Mohammed is
already there trying to fix the perpetually running toilet.

“Did you bring toilet paper?” I ask.

“I'll bring some over from the restaurant. I can't get
this stupid thing to stop,” he says.

“You could call a plumber.”

“Hah. That's so American. Plumbers just rip you off.
I can fix this. You people don't know what hard work is.”

“Yeah, tell that to the girls who have to kiss some
creepy old guy who's taken out his teeth.”

Mohammed emerges from the bathroom wiping his
hands with a paper towel, the sleeves of his silk suit rolled
up to his elbows. He has the jittery diligence of someone
who has somewhere else to be.

“You always think I should feel sorry for them. Like I
force them to do what they do,” he says. “It's good money.
It beats working three times as many hours at
McDonald's, doesn't it? Or being a hooker? They're not
walking State Street to get picked up by crazies and murderers. It's good money. It's legal. I file taxes.”

I think that something about our ongoing antagonism helps settle any ethical dilemmas Mohammed has.
And it makes me feel better too.

“But maybe if they didn't have the option, they'd go
to school or something,” I say.

“You are a dreamer,” Mohammed says. “You see how
it all works—the way these girls like the money, why they
choose to do it—but you still make believe it can be different. It is a masquerade.” He rattles off something in
Arabic and rolls down his sleeves. “Did you know I was
going to be a doctor? I was accepted at the medical school
at the University of Bologna. My father liked the idea. I
might have been a good doctor, no?” His cell phone rings.

“Someday you'll tell me how you ended up here,” I say.

“Okay, okay. I'll be right over,” he says into the phone
before flipping it closed. To me he says, “Before I forget,
you have to go on a recruiting trip to American Bush.”

“No way, Mohammed.”

“I told you it was part of the job when I hired you. Just
have a few drinks. Give out cards to the pretty dancers.”

“There is no way I am doing that,” I say, mortified by
the notion of being a public escorting emissary.

“Tell them they'll make more money working here.
Wear something classy like a suit. Twenty-five-dollar
finder's fee for each one. It's a good deal for you.”

I shake my head as he scuttles out the door.

The sound of rustled silk and rattled window blinds
resonates until the soft insistence of the ticking wall clock
reasserts itself on the room. It is noon but in the darkened
office, with the candle ablaze on the counter, it could be
the middle of the night.

Jezebel blows in, puppy in hand, her skirt slit up to
her underwear. She plops the dog in my lap and looks
over my shoulder at the night's escort list.

“Please push me. Please, please, please? I need cash.
Rent is late again. I swear, I just paid it. I don't know how
it could be due already.”

“I'll do my damnedest,” I say, holding up my fingers
in the scout's-honor position. “How's Albee?”

“I don't know what to do about him. I'm hoping my
brother will take him. They already have two kids anyway,
what's a dog?”

Albee clamps his teeth on my watch and I can feel his
incisors against my wrist. Jezebel has disappeared into the
tanning closet. I call back to her that tanning will give her
wrinkles but she ignores me and the hum of the old UV
lamp makes me think I'm getting my own dose of carcinogenic radiation without any of the benefits. Albee
starts to pee on my leg, and before I can deposit him on
the floor, the phone rings. I trade the puppy for the phone
and answer without looking at the number.

“Hello, this is Roxanne. How may I help you?” I blot
the warm blotch of urine on my thigh with a wad of tissues, my voice not revealing my perturbed scowl.

“Hey, beautiful. I thought you might be in. How are
you today?”

Scott's intimate manner catches me off guard.

“Hi there. I'm fine, thank you. Would you like to see a
lady today?”

“You know who I want to see. I was wondering if you
like to golf. We could shoot off to the driving range and
hit a few balls. Then some dinner. What do you say?”

“That sounds lovely. Now I do have Jezebel today,” I
say.

“I'm driving up from Provo right now. I could be there
in forty minutes. Come on. A late-lunch-break date.”

I hope I sound cooler than I feel. I like this despite its
eeriness.

“Thanks, baby, but you know I can't,” I say. “Besides, I
don't know how to golf.” The other line rings. “Scott, hold
for just a moment.”

I pick up and McCallister asks, “Did I ever tell you
about the time when I went home to live with my mom
after I came back from Aspen? I had no money, no job,
nothing to do. It was really snowy upstate that winter. I
wore this bright red one-piece pajama suit every day for
four months. You know the kind with the butt flap? I slept
in it, then got up and did a bong hit, layered on snow
clothes and shoveled obsessively. I even shoveled out the
neighbors' cars. Then I'd go inside, transfer to the couch,
my mom would make me nachos and hot chocolate, and
we'd play Scrabble.”

I see that Scott has finally tired of waiting on hold and
has hung up.

“Jesus, McCallister. You must have been in bad
shape,” I say.

“Are you kidding? That was the best time of my life.”

I hear him exhale cigarette smoke.

“Feeling nostalgic?”

“I wish I understood why I was happy then.”
“You had no worries and you had limitless timewasting activities.”

“Yeah,” he says, sounding flat and melancholy.

“So when's she moving in?” I ask.

“Couple weeks.”

Sounds of calamitous New York City intrude through
his cell phone.

“What are you doing?” I ask.

“Going to my shrink.”

“Do you tell him you call me?” I ask.

“Maybe,” he says. “Sometimes.”

“Do you tell what's-her-face?”

“No. She wouldn't understand.”

“No, I bet she wouldn't.”

“How are the whores?” he asks.

“Fine,” I say. “It's a slow day.”

“How are you, Jane?”

“Fine.”

“Fine?” he asks.

“Fine,” I say.

“I think you're being aggressively distant.”

“I think it might snow today,” I say.

I went to a therapist for a few months a couple years
ago at McCallister's urging, or more as a condition of our
continued involvement. She was an older woman who
worked out of her Upper East Side apartment, with
soothing cream-colored carpeting, soft beige walls, and a
Lithuanian doorman who used to give me a solemn smile
and a slight bow because he knew who I was going to see.

I brought up my father's drinking often because I
knew she liked me to talk about it. My dad is all about
control and his alcohol consumption is no exception.
Scotch on the rocks, his glass perpetually filled. When my
dad drinks, he becomes even more reserved.

“Absent while present,” the therapist said, nodding.

It's not that I thought she didn't know what she was
talking about. I just dreaded going because I began to fear
that all this overanalyzing of a comfortable life was a silly
indulgence. Besides, I was always defending my involvement with McCallister, to the point that I conspired
against her at all angles. So I quit. I told her I was moving
to Seattle and then I stayed away from the Upper East Side
as much as possible.

I meet Ember for the first time as she's coming out of my
bathroom in one of my towels. She has a slight, angular frame, wavy dark hair,
and hazel eyes that are never still. When I compliment her on her coloring,
she tells me she's half Dutch, half Polynesian and pulls me over to the couch
by my wrist.

“You're not from Utah, I take it,” I say.

“Milwaukee,” she answers. “The ghetto. I was the only
white girl in my junior high. My mom's a drunk. I shared
a room with my four brothers.”

Ember wears her scrappy childhood as an emblem of
her exoticism and toughness. I know Ford must have been
smitten as soon as she told him of her origins. Although
he has talked up her beauty, I am still taken with how
pretty she is. She seems an altogether different species
than I am. When I talk to her, it's as if she emits warmth
that settles only on me.

Ford arrives just as Ember says, “Thanks for letting us
stay with you. It's so cool of you.”

I look at Ford but he just shrugs. I'm too tired to make
it a thing and Ember's enthusiasm makes a month seem
not that long.

“You're welcome,” I say.

Ember wraps her smooth arms around my neck. The
towel falls to her waist but she doesn't seem to care. Ford
mouths “thank you” to me over her shoulder.

Ember disentangles herself from me and then sees
Ford in the doorway. I leave them to their groping reunion.

Nikyla and Jezebel are in the lounge when I arrive at work.
Nikyla is figuring out her week's earnings on a calculator and Jezebel is curling
her eyelashes while flipping through an old
Cosmopolitan
that has been
on the coffee table since I first came in to apply.

“Men are like Slinkies,” Jezebel says. “It's fun to watch
them fall down.”

Nikyla smiles and shakes her head. “You'll get tired of
all the running around one day when you find the right
one. Hey, Roxanne.”

“Hi, girls,” I say.

Kendra is talking to a client on the phone, purring
with sex, surrounded by Doritos, Pepsi, and cotton candy,
and she waves with one long French-manicured finger.

“Diamond is out at the airport Hilton,” Kendra says
when she hangs up, gathering up her snacks. “You can call
her out in ten.”

“Diamond? I thought she quit,” I say.

“She did. But she needs to get a root canal and her
husband's unemployed.”

I take Kendra's warm seat, and when the phone rings,
I quickly book Nikyla with an old-timer who lives out near
the zoo. He may be her biggest fan. She says they catch up
for a while, he tells her about his grandkids, then all she
has to do is take off her bra and it gets him every time.

The late afternoon lull has left me sleepy. I'm making
halfhearted progress on a crossword puzzle when the
phone rings.

“I was thinking about a new idea for a script.”
“Hi, McCallister,” I say.

“It's a high school movie about a gay quarterback.”
“What happened to the last one?”

“It sucks. I can't finish it. Nothing's working.”
“I've heard this before.”

“Hey Jane?” he asks.

I hear the telltale Jaguar-door slam of Mohammed.
“Got to go. The boss has arrived.”

Mohammed has a four-pack of toilet paper in one

hand and a bouquet of pink carnations in the other. “For me?” I ask. “You shouldn't
have.”

“We have to make things more nice around here. I was thinking about some classical
music. Perhaps Chopin.” Mohammed rummages around in the back for something to
put the flowers in. “We are a professional establishment,” he says, returning
with a cloudy glass vase and handing it and the flowers to me.

“Next time,” I say, “maybe not pink and not carnations.” I fill the vase in the grungy bathroom sink.

“They were on special at Albertsons. A beggar cannot
be a chooser.”

“Why don't you bring over one of your rugs? That
would spice things up in here,” I say.

“A rug here? Those are works of art,” he says, offended,
rearranging the carnations. He opens the safe and separates the different credit card slips. “Send that new one out
tonight.”