Calling Out (7 page)

“Okay. I'll send her to that guy who wants them to
bark but doesn't make them do much else.”

“I don't want to hear about it,” he says, holding his
hands to his ears.“I'm not interested in those things. Why
don't you make yourself useful and clean up the bathroom
while the phone isn't ringing? I pay you good money.”

“Now that is definitely not in my job description,” I
say, going back to the crossword puzzle. “And you don't
pay me that much. The rest comes from the girls.”

Utah is cheap, but I'm still surprised at how easily I
have adjusted to living on a fraction of what I used to
make. My dad would be aghast that I no longer have a
401(k) or health insurance and that I actually have to
punch in on an old-fashioned time clock.

Mohammed looks up to the ceiling and mutters an
unintelligible plea. He straightens the old magazines on
his way out the door without even a hello to Diamond,
who brushes past him to the couch.

Diamond is twenty-one, petite but with D-cup breast
implants, dark bobbed hair, and sullen brown eyes she
lines in black. She got married a couple months ago and
left escorting with a ceremonious salute. I was rooting for
her. She got sporadic work as a fitness model, posing in a
bikini next to exercise equipment in the back-page ads of
muscle magazines, but the income hasn't been much.

“Hey,” she says to me.

“Hey,” I say, trying to sound chipper, “nice to see you.”

She looks at me with an accusing glance then clicks
on the TV. “Yeah, sure,” she says. She turns to
Montel
and
lights a cigarette. “Is Nikyla on a date? I was supposed to
meet her here.”

“Yeah. I sent her out again. She's with ‘Randy
Johnson' at the Marriott.”

“That lucky bitch,” she says. “I wonder what he'll buy
her. Last time he took me to Victoria's Secret and got me
this sexy little nightie. I wore it on my wedding night.”

“How's married life?” I ask, wanting to sound
cheerful.

“It's okay. It was good at first but we fight a lot.” Diamond dials one of the numbers etched on the lounge
phone and orders a small pepperoni pizza. “How about
you, Roxanne? Ever been married?”

“Not me.”

“Boyfriend?”

“No. Not since moving here.”

“I can't believe you left New York for this,” she says,
less wistful than disgusted.

“I needed a change,” I say.

Diamond gives a “whatever” shrug and turns back to
the TV.

I don't tell her that I left because I had started fantasizing about my own funeral. It was almost the same thing
as imagining my wedding—all the people from different
stages of my life in one place, all the focus on me. Old
boyfriends thinking about what might have been. McCallister in the front row. It's not that I actively wanted to kill
myself but I did like that view from above.

I started with small things like giving up vitamins and
vegetables, smoking alone, switching to nonlight cigarettes, not washing my hands after the subway, forgoing
my seat belt and driving fast, making out with someone in
a bar who had strep throat. But soon I had amassed a
lethal dose of Valium. I found it calming that the option
was there, that death was a possibility. I walked around
late at night by myself downtown through the empty,
fishy streets of Chinatown and across the Brooklyn
Bridge. I avoided the dwindling, few friends who I hadn't
yet shaken loose. I felt invisible, on the periphery of existence, heading toward negligible. On my bathroom
mirror I taped a fortune that read, “You can always find a
way out.”

But when I heard that a friend from college had hung
himself in an airport bathroom stall, the vertiginous wave
I felt made me flush the drugs. I wanted to be free of the
mess in which I found myself but not with such finality. I
wanted to be someone who would notice the color of
clouds or the tang of a Fuji apple—even if I never had
before. I wanted to feel things differently.

Three days later, I drove west.

me from taking the job, he was glad I was sticking
to the phones and I think he believed, when he was
through with me, that I'd been enlisted as a conspirator. I
keep his card in my wallet.

Though rattled by her session at the police station,
Megan is resolved to do what she set out to do. She swipes
at her eyes with the back of her hand, and it's as if she's won
a victory for a cause, for the betterment of the little guy. Evil
police. Good escorts. Mohammed would be proud.

“You made it,” I say to her.

“He's such a jerk,” she says. “Logan acts like I could
just go out and get another job or something, like I
haven't tried. It's not that easy. I was a receptionist at a
construction company down in Sandy but then I got laid
off and then Eric left and took everything. Even my
microwave.”

“So what do you think about tonight?” I ask. “In addition to the normal split, twenty of your take goes back to
the house until the license is paid off. I assume you want
to get started as soon as possible.”

Megan sits up tall to stretch out the flabby bulge of
her stomach. Her eyes are glassy with alarm. Only now
does it seem to hit her that she will have to get naked in
front of men. There is nothing left to take care of, no more
stalling. She looks to me for an answer to a question she
hasn't asked. Her tongue darts to her overlapping front
teeth as if for reassurance.

“I think you'll do just fine. It won't be as big a deal as
you think,” I say. “It'll feel good to start making some
money.” My pep talk sounds flat but it's enough.

“Yeah. Okay,” she says.

“It will get easier,” I say. “Like with anything. I'll start
you off with a regular so you'll know what to expect.
What's your name going to be?”

“I was thinking ‘Pamela.' Like Pamela Anderson,”
Megan laughs. “I'll try to pretend I look like her.”

“That's the spirit,” I say. “We'll call you tonight if we
can get you out. Seven-to-three shift. Make sure if you
wear a skirt to wear pantyhose. Mohammed is pretty
strict about it. Besides, it's cold out there.”

“Okay,” she says. “I'm ready.”

Two phone lines ring at once. Megan, now Pamela,
stands and hovers for a moment before turning to go. She
already walks a little differently, I think, with her shoulders back, shaking her hair for effect.

When Ember calls, sounding out of breath and giddy,
I immediately get caught up in the whirl of her energy.

“I heard about this place down on State Street where
it hasn't changed since the seventies,” she says. “The Tiki
Lounge. It's super old-school. You can get drinks in bright
colors with umbrellas.”

“I've passed that place, I think,” I say.

“So? Do you want to go?”

“Tonight?”

“Yeah, with me. Come on, it'll be fun.”

Driving south on State Street from downtown Salt Lake, seediness
and sprawl take root as the LDS temple shrinks in the rearview mirror. There
is a throwback quality to the used-car dealerships, the stand-alone Sears, and
the fastfood restaurants—including the country's first Kentucky Fried Chicken
franchise, with its script, light-bulbed sign. After Beehive Bail Bonds, South
State Street turns into a no-man's land of decay. In the gelid high desert twilight,
it glows in dirty orange and yellow.

Ford, Ralf, Ember, and I are in the beat-up Saab
Ember inherited from an old boyfriend, and as we take in
the view of our adopted city, we manically chew gum, tap
our feet, and chatter at each other. We blow our cigarette
smoke out the car windows into the cold, late-fall darkness. Ember supplies the cocaine, which I took with
remarkably little pause. I still feel let down that it isn't just
the two of us for the outing, but the drugs help.

“Hey, have any of you ever been arrested?” Ember
asks as she gnaws her thumbnail. She pulls the car around
a slow-moving pickup and speeds up.

“I got a minor in possession but I guess that doesn't
really count,” Ford says.

“I was caught shoplifting once,” I say to the car. “When
I was fourteen.” Although I have always been deeply
embarrassed by this, Ember makes me proud to offer it up.

That winter Saturday when I was fourteen, I took a
bus to a local ski area and skied all day by myself, working
on my form, taking riskier hills, skiing better than I ever
had. I was so proud of myself, so excited to tell my dad.
When I got home, I found him in his den, Scotch in hand,
watching the news. I ran in and announced that I hadn't
fallen all day.

“You must not have been trying that hard,” he said.

Without a word, I left. I was so angry I went to the mall
and stole a lip gloss and a pack of gum. Then, emboldened,
I walked into a department store and slipped a watch into
my bag. Just as I stepped out the door, a security guard
grabbed my arm. When my dad came to get me at the station—the police let me go with a warning about juvenile
hall—I couldn't look at him. He drove me home and to
this day has never mentioned it.

“I wouldn't tell the store people who I was,” I say, “so
they had the police come and take me to the station. And
then I cracked.”

Ember smiles at me in the rearview mirror.

“Jane. I never knew,” Ford says, turning around to
look at me.

Next to me, Ralf is moving to the beat of a silent song.
Ember reaches back and hits his knee, and he shakes his
head “no” while he continues with the rhythm.

“I have a felony record,” Ember says. “In Wisconsin. I
was pulled over and the cop made me stand outside in the
snow on the side of the road and do those drunk-driving
tests. It was so cold and he was pervy, so when he walked
back to his cruiser, I packed a snowball and hurled it at
him. It beaned him in the back of the head and knocked
his hat off. He pulled his gun,” Ember says. She sniffs and
zooms through the yellow light.

“Wow,” I say.

“That's pretty impressive,” Ralf says to me.

Her defiance is dizzying. Now I know Ford is in love.

“Hey, you guys,” I say, with newfound gameness. “I
have an idea. Let's keep driving. There's a strip club where
I'm supposed to pass out some cards for work. It'll be fun.”

Ember laughs and honks her horn in a short-longshort succession.

“A man goes into a doctor's office,” Ralf says, apropos
of nothing, “and the whole left side of his body is gone. He
says, ‘What's my prognosis, Doc?' and the doctor answers,
‘You're all right.'”

Ford laughs all the way to American Bush.

The club is a squat, shiny black building; the neon
pink cat on the sign winks on and off. Inside, the airconditioning is on despite the season, and the smell is a
combination of cigars, a smoke machine, and orangeblossom perfume. It's still early in the night so there's a
booth free right up near the stage and we slide in. I look
up at a topless woman whose implants bulge out at the
sides as she dances in high patent leather pumps. Ralf 's
eye twitches at the sight of her spherical breasts. Ford
sees only Ember, who waves a dollar bill at the dancer
above us.

“What do we have to do here again?” Ember asks.
“Recruit?”

“Hand out some cards. Tell them they can make more
money in the entertainment field,” I say, handing a small
stack of wrinkled mauve Premier business cards to her.

Ralf turns from the breasts to me, his mouth open as
if asking a question.

“You don't have to talk to anyone,” I say to him,
“You're off the hook.”

He relaxes in a slump in the booth and turns to the
college basketball on one of the many TVs perched above
the bar.

The dancer, a young Asian woman with waist-length
ebony hair is now on the floor. She spreads her legs in our
direction and pulls over her G-string, her pubic hair
shaved close in a narrow strip, and I think that escorting
may be better than this after all, since only one other
person shares an escort's humiliation.

“So maybe I should do this escorting thing,” Ember
says. “It must pay pretty decently. It doesn't seem that
hard.” Her nose is red and running and her hands dance
on the table in staccato as she talks. She looks from me to
Ford and back. “Well?”

Ford keeps his eyes on Ember.

“Maybe you could look a while longer for something
else,” he says.

I feel for him. Despite his liberal espousals, Ford has
never been that much of a free-liver.

“Maybe I could,” she says.

“You can come visit me at the office,” I say, “and see if
it still seems interesting. I'll introduce you to Mohammed.”

I can't look at Ford.

“Cool,” she says.

She and Ford are in a silent standoff until he melts
and touches her forehead with his. Then she's off and
running with the Premier cards in hand and the buzz of
an adventure. Ford watches her with softness and awe.

“You've got yourself quite a firecracker,” I say.

He squints at me over his beer and drains the bottle.

“Yeah,” he says, and he lets it go at that.

Ember seems to befriend everyone in the club, bartenders, dancers, and customers. I hear her laugh from
some dark corner and watch her dance to the music
blaring from the stage. It's smoky and dark, and above us
onstage three women jiggle around with half-interested
expressions, spinning around the smudged, shiny poles.

There is a dull, tight thread of irritation in my head
leftover from the drugs. Although I have done cocaine
before, once at a New Year's Eve party in New York a
couple years ago, it isn't something I consider a casual
indulgence, a mere lark. But tonight with Ember I dove
right in. She went ahead and cut four lines without even
giving us an option, because she'd just assumed we were
with her. I liked that feeling, and going along seemed natural and fun and daring.