Calling Out Read online

  One night, sometime during my fifth glass of chardonnay, I knew it was up to me to do something before bitterness enfolded me in its tough, dry shell. As I walked home from the bar, I passed downtown hipsters with their hipbones jutting above low jeans, their pricey sneakers not good for anything but hanging out. Their eyes flicked toward me as I went by but then quickly looked away. They didn’t see that I was just like them. A poser. But I did.

  I decided to purge my life. I gave away most of my possessions, packed my car, and moved far away from everything in an effort to give my unhappiness the slip.

  *

  It’s nine thirty when Nikyla calls from Nephi. The girls call in on a separate phone that I know to answer immediately, no matter what.

  “It’s Nikyla.”

  “Hi. You made it,” I say.

  “Yep.”

  “Are you safe?” I ask.

  If she answers yes it means she feels relatively safe and she can continue with the date. If she says no, I ask a few other yes/no questions like “Do you feel like you’re in danger?” and “Can you get to the door?” and then she puts the man on the phone so I can distract him, and she gets out fast. Saying no is serious business. It isn’t for being tired or grossed out or not in the mood to go through with the date.

  “Yes,” Nikyla answers.

  “Have you collected?”

  “Yes,” she says again. I can picture Nikyla, all done up in a snug mandarin silk dress, and I’m glad for Ephraim. “Okay. I’ll call you out in fifty,” I say. “Have fun,” I add, knowing Nikyla can handle Ephraim probably better than anyone.

  The phone rings again right away, but by the number

  I can tell it’s Manny, a.k.a. Juan, a.k.a. Sam Gomez. He’s on our 86ed list for writing bad checks, and even though we won’t send him an escort, he often calls just to try. It makes me slightly uneasy when one of the banned guys calls. My refusals incite frustration and anger, and I fear the day one of them decides to come in here to take what he wants. The office is unmarked and nondescript, and people have to be buzzed in. Its only window is covered by large-slatted venetian blinds, and it could pass for a dentist’s office were it not for the security camera poised above the door. But our address is no secret, and the camera has never been properly installed, so it’s a ruse at best. I know Mohammed won’t spend the money to have it repaired until something bad happens.

  *

  Jezebel comes in around ten and rescues me from Mohammed’s badgering. Blond with transparent blue eyes, she is eighteen but she could pass for thirteen—a big hit with clients who are looking for young. She’s smallboned and small-chested, and she’d seem almost elfin if not for her loud voice, brazen cheekiness, and very short, tight leather skirt. Like many of the girls, Jezebel grew up Mormon and she thought it would be funny to have a biblical pseudonym.

  In one hand she has a paper plate of turkey and pumpkin pie for me, and in the other she grasps the body of her new spaniel puppy, who is trying to bite her sleeve.

  “Albee is a much bigger pain than I thought he was going to be,” she says. “Can he stay here when I’m out?”

  Jezebel knows Mohammed would have a fit if he found a dog in the office, no animals being one of his strict policies, but she also knows that when it comes to the girls, I’m a pushover.

  “Sure,” I say, because I feel guilty that she had to leave dinner with her family to go out for me into the uncharted night. “As long as he doesn’t pee on the floor.”

  “He might, but not very much comes out,” she says. “Happy turkey day. Mom got started early on the vino. Pie’s pretty good, though.”

  I eat a slice of turkey with my fingers.

  “I’m sorry you have to go out on Thanksgiving,” I say.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Jezebel says. “I could use the money. The dent in my Blazer’s going to cost me five hundred bucks.”

  “Are you saving for school? You could probably still start in January,” I say with gentle prodding.

  Jezebel shrugs. She opens her compact and covers the small pimples on her forehead with matte beige powder. Albee wobbles off toward the tanning closet.

  Like almost everyone at Premier, Jezebel started escorting for just a few months to make some money and figure out the next step. Maybe junior college. Maybe modeling. But getting paid in a wad of cash has rendered those notions obsolete, despite my motherly advice. She bought a car. She buys new clothes and CDs. She moved into her own apartment, but she can’t save enough for rent. When bill collectors call looking for Jenna Smith, I tell them no one by that name works here.

  Jezebel sits on the desk, flashing me her zebra-print underwear from beneath her skirt. Mohammed has reprimanded her for dressing too much like a slut.

  “You must present yourself classy. Men don’t want someone arriving who looks like a hooker. Tell them,” he sometimes says to me. “Tell these girls what men are like.”

  His turning to me as an expert always makes me laugh. When I tell the girls that these men think they want sex but most really just want company, they usually say something like, “Yeah, whatever,” or, “They just want to get off,” which sends Mohammed’s eyes heavenward in exasperation.

  Jezebel eats a bite of pie from my plate, then a forkful of whipped cream.

  “I want to get my boobs done,” she says. “Miranda’s cost four grand. I’m going to start saving for them.”

  “Why would you want to do that?” I ask. “You look great as you are. Men don’t like fake ones, anyway.”

  “You say that but they don’t really know the difference. You give them the measurements and they pick by the numbers.”

  “That’s not true. They ask specifically for real ones. Remember Diamond’s? They were like rubber balls,” I say.

  “I’ll look more even,” she says, pushing her breasts up with her hands. “And if I try to do the acting thing, I need them to compete.”

  “Please don’t do anything until you’re in your twenties,” I say, as if I am so world-wise. But I’m not too worried because I’m pretty sure she won’t be able to save four thousand dollars.

  Jezebel was once on the Jenny Jones show as an out-ofcontrol teen. Now she meets men in motel rooms for money but she tells me her relationship with her mother is much better.

  Jezebel peers over my shoulder at the clipboard.

  “No lonely men on Thanksgiving?” she asks. “Albee, no!”

  She jumps from the desk. The puppy has chewed a hole in one of the leather loveseats.

  “Nikyla’s with the taxidermist,” I say.

  She snorts. “That guy is such a freak. I had to hang the fur he gave me out on the clothesline for a week to get that smell from it.”

  The fact that Jezebel once had to drive 170 miles to get naked for a strange taxidermist, and that I will send her out somewhere else to get naked again on this cold holiday night, suddenly gives me a hiccup of guilt. Something about her undisguisable youth and her unflinching approach to the world makes me more fearful for Jezebel than the others.

  “I gave it to my brother’s wife,” she says. “She put it on the wall above the fireplace. Maybe next time I see that guy I’ll bring the fur back for you so you don’t feel left out.”

  The rumor around the office is that Jezebel will have sex for extra money. I choose not to believe it. I don’t want to worry about her any more than I already do.

  “Hey. How come you don’t ever go out?” she asks. “You’d make more than on the phone, you know.”

  When you work here, it is understood that escorting is in no way in the same category as prostitution. We’re an entertainment company. A legal service. The girls have to believe it and outwardly I never waver.

  “You could do a bachelor party with me to start,” she says. “The guys are sometimes cute. The tips are good. It’d be fun.”

  I feel bad about thinking it but what I don’t say to Jezebel is that I’m not an escort because I’m not that desperate. Self-imposed ban
ishment is one thing, but taking off my clothes for money is quite another.

  “I’m too shy,” I tell her. “It’s not something I could ever do.” Looking down at my modest turtleneck sweater and corduroys, it’s probably not hard for her to believe.

  “Albee,” she says, “come here, baby. You pain in my ass.” She picks up the dog and puts him in my lap. “Well. The offer stands if you ever have a change of heart.”

  The phone rings and Jezebel’s an easy sell. She always is. She gets requested much more than other girls, which certainly supports the sex-off-the-books theory. But then again, she’s young, warm, and cute.

  “Don’t forget Nikyla. She’s probably getting the creeps right about now,” she says. “That guy likes to show and tell with the dead animals. He had me take his picture naked with a stuffed mountain lion like he was fucking it.”

  She sprays perfume, fluffs her hair with her fingers, and smiles, giving me a dirty grind with her narrow hips as a farewell salute. I can barely muster a smile back. This gesture makes her look like a six-year-old imitating something she’s seen a teenager do, not knowing what it means. I’m nostalgic for the kid she must have been, or maybe still is.

  She answers her ringing cell phone—her mother— with rolled-eyed annoyance.

  “No. I can’t. Oh come on. Yeah, well fuck you too,” she says into the phone.

  Jezebel waves at me as she slams the door and leaves me alone again.

  *

  Every time I call an escort out at the end of a date, I have a moment of worry until I hear her voice. Nikyla takes four rings to answer but sounds normal and upbeat. Ephraim will stave off another night alone with help from a vivacious teenager who is saving up for night-school business classes.

  Unlike with Jezebel, I don’t worry about Nikyla getting stuck in this lifestyle for long because escorting really is just part of the larger plan. She doesn’t get sidetracked by spending to make herself feel better. She just got a job at a clothing store in the mall so she won’t have to declare her escort earnings on her taxes, and she wants to have a baby as soon as her boyfriend gets promoted to manager at Circuit City. I told her she should try living somewhere outside of Utah where maybe she wouldn’t feel the need to start having kids so young. She just smiled when I said this, feeling sorry for me because I am thirty and single and childless.

  “Having babies is what human beings are supposed to do,” she said. “It’s our nature. Really Rox, it’s all about getting more love.”

  I couldn’t argue with that.

  With Nikyla on the road for another three hours, I have no girls on call. If Mohammed knew, he’d hop up and down like Rumpelstiltskin. I should just pack up and go home, but getting no answer at an escort agency on Thanksgiving is probably worse for a sad guy than a recorded voice saying no one is available. And it’s not like I have somewhere better to be. So I embark upon some improvement projects for the office, starting with scrubbing the puppy-urine spots from the carpet.

  Over the months I’ve been here, I’ve come to view this softly seedy office with affection. With the closed blinds and the dim lamplight, it always looks like it’s dusk. I light the electric-purple jasmine candle on the counter, then straighten the dog-eared fashion magazines on the goldand-glass coffee table. A dusty plastic spider plant is lodged in the corner next to the TV. After I wipe its leaves shiny, it makes a nice addition to my desk. I sink into one of the black leather loveseats and look at the pictures of “Fall on the Hudson River” on the front of the Times travel section.

  We hadn’t been dating long the first time McCallister took me up to his hometown in the Hudson Valley. We played hooky on an October Tuesday and left the city behind. The day was luminous, and in a borrowed car outside our usual turf, we were smiley and shy, laughing at everything. I told him that when I was young my mom used to say to me and my sister with reverent breathiness on particularly brilliant blue-skied afternoons, “Remember this day, girls!” I imitated her with exaggerated flourish to undermine the sincerity of the sentiment, but savoring the day was exactly what I wanted to do. I felt full and solid, and humbled by possibility. Now I wonder if being happy with someone is really just stringing enough of these shiny moments together.

  Three and a half years of stilted commitment later, McCallister declared an end to our relationship, citing, as he put it, our pathological disconnectedness. I feigned agreement and acceptance, even as inwardly I was devastated, and even as he started dating an actress named Maria a week later. We still talk, but the distance and my rule that I never call him make it feel like a safe arrangement. He likes to call and tell me what I’m missing in New York. He feels some kind of duty to convince me to move back though I’m not sure what for since he insists it’s not for him.

  The phone rings, and as I reach for it I knock over the candle, singeing a black spot on the carpet even larger than the one Albee left. The caller ID reads, “Penitentiary.” I hesitate. Sometimes when it’s not busy I’ll answer these calls and proceed as if they are potential clients. It’s not a lot, but it’s what I can offer. Tonight I appreciate the diversion, so I answer and describe Nikyla and Jezebel and Mimi and Vivian and Miranda in glowing detail. Albee wrestles with a purple satin pillow he found under the couch.

  “What about you, Roxanne? You sound real nice,” the caller says.

  I smile and feel my lonesomeness fade just a bit.

  “Sure. I go out,” I say. “I don’t know if I’m your type, though.”

  “I bet you are. Why don’t you describe what you look like?”

  I don’t tell him that my body is long and reedy, my eyes amber-brown, my hair walnut-colored and just past my shoulders, my skin as pale as parchment. Instead I peer down at the model on the cover of Glamour.

  “I’m twenty-two. 115 pounds. About 5’6”, with honey-blond hair—”

  “Is it long?”

  “Long and silky. Down to the curve of my back,” I say, “and I have green eyes—”

  “I bet you have some cute freckles across the bridge of your nose.”

  “How’d you know that?”

  He laughs.

  “I’m a 36-24-36 with full, real breasts.”

  “Oh,” he sighs. “I’ll take you.”

  “What would you like me to wear tonight?” “A short little skirt with some of those fishnet stockings. I bet you have a pair of legs on you.” He whistles softly. “And wear some real sexy high spiked heels.”

  “I think that can be arranged,” I say. “What else?”

  “Tell me what your tits are like,” he says, his breathing getting heavy, his voice louder and forceful.

  I weigh the option to continue, seduced by his urgency and my own longing to lose myself. But then a voice in my head says, “Who are you?” I know it’s time to cut this short. Even I recognize that keeping the charade going would be a momentary salve at best, one that would make me feel worse in the end.

  “You have yourself a good night,” I say, keeping the purr in my voice.

  “What? Oh come on. We’re just getting started.”

  “I’m sorry, baby. I have to go now,” I say.

  I hear him say “Wait,” as I hang up.

  And I’m alone again. The heater creaks and whistles as it pumps dry, hot air into the room.

  It is three a.m. and I’m gritty-eyed and worn out. I have two hours to go. I don’t want to think about anything, especially myself. I restock the invoices. I clean lint from the pen drawer. I copy over Mohammed’s escort schedule for the week so it’s legible. But the heater clicks off, leaving cold, early-morning silence, and I realize that I’ve forgotten something.

  “Albee?” I call.

  I stop to listen for him but the office is quiet. West of town, the Union Pacific sounds its horn and I wait a second before looking for the puppy. I close my eyes and feel the rumbling.

  chapter 3

  Nikyla, still amazingly peppy at the end of the night, returns from her date with the taxidermis
t and throws a silver fox pelt at me with a scream as if it were alive. She is not, as I had imagined, in a Chinese silk dress, but instead she’s done up nicely in black velvet pants and a charcoal sweater, her cleavage barely beckoning from the V neckline. Not even yet twenty, Nikyla seems to have it much more together than I do. She counts out money for the house with purpose and focus and then gives me two twenty-dollar bills.

  “That’s too much,” I say. “Take half back.”

  “Stop. He tipped big,” she says, pulling her long black hair into a ponytail.

  She applies a sheer lip gloss—her boyfriend always waits up for her—and then waves as she trots for the door without reporting anything from the date.

  Sometimes the escorts volunteer details, but part of the decorum around here is that we don’t press for information that isn’t offered. My relationship with the girls overrides my curiosity for salacious tidbits. They will talk about the fetishists because they find the strange obsessions funny and nonthreatening, and because, I assume, satisfying these men doesn’t seem degrading in a way that pleasing the average john, with all his universally base urges, might.

  Mark Benson calls once every other month to request an escort with long hair. He is the prize date whom the booker grants to a favorite girl because he pays $120 to brush an escort’s hair for an hour, with all her clothes on and without her having to say a word. While she sits on the bed, he runs the hairbrush softly from the top of her head down through her hair with a hypnotic rhythm. Then there is Stephen Newhouse, who sits in his Corvette while an escort in a miniskirt walks back and forth in front of the car in a grocery store parking lot. And Vernal Shepherd, who takes his escort to the mall so she can model clothes for him, which he then buys for her.