Calling Out

MacAdam/Cage
155 Sansome Street, Suite 550
San Francisco, CA 94104
www.macadamcage.com

Copyright © 2006 by Rae Meadows

All rights reserved.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Meadows, Rae.
Calling out / by Rae Meadows.
22 chapters
ISBN 1-59692-165-X (alk. paper)
1. Young women—Utah--Salt Lake City—Fiction. 2. Escort services—Utah—Salt Lake City—Fiction. 3. Utah—Fiction.

“Come Rain or Come Shine” Music by Harold Arlen. Words by
Johnny Mercer. ©1946 (Renewed) Chappell & Co. All Rights
Reserved. Used by Permission.

Book and jacket design by Dorothy Carico Smith.

Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places,
and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are
used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons,
living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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The conformity we often glibly equate with mediocrity
isn’t something free spirits “transcend” as much as something they’re not quite up to.

My love and gratitude go to Alex Darrow, Jennifer Sey, Jane, Ron, Ronny, and Susannah Meadows, Darin Strauss,
Mark Sundeen, Elisabeth Weed, Kate Nitze and the whole incomparable MacAdam/Cage family, Jessica Darrow and
Mike Koehler, Peter, Kathy, and James Darrow, Meredith Bell, Lance McDaniel, Lynn Kilpatrick, Carolyn Frazier,
Jeff Roda, Christopher Sey, June Cohen, Tricia Tunstall, Anika Streitfeld, and the girls who inspired this book.

I am forever grateful for two life-changing teachers, Lewis Buzbee and David Kranes. I would also like to thank
Karen Brennan, Katie Coles, and my fellow writers of the MFA/PhD program at the University of Utah.

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Rae Meadows is a graduate of Stanford University and the MFA program at the University of Utah. Her short stories have appeared in Mississippi Review, Flyway, 580 Split, and Fine Print. She lives in Brooklyn, New York. Calling Out is her first novel.

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chapter 1
chapter 2
chapter 3
chapter 4
chapter 5
chapter 6
chapter 7
chapter 8
chapter 9
chapter 10
chapter 11
chapter 12
chapter 13
chapter 14
chapter 15
chapter 16
chapter 17
chapter 18
chapter 19
chapter 20
chapter 21
chapter 22
epilogue

It's the taxidermist. I can tell by my caller ID. His picture,
which he once gave to one of the girls, is taped to the wall
above my phone, between a photocopy of our business
license and the list of descriptions that Mohammed has
written to help sell the girls: “classy, mature, enthusiastic,
efervessent, exotic, curvie” —whatever adjective might get a caller going.

The taxidermist lives down in Nephi, a town named
for the righteous, fair-skinned leader of an ancient
Hebrew tribe who, the Book of Mormon claims, brought
his followers to America by boat in 600 B.C. But this
modern Nephi doesn't offer much more than windy,
lonely scrub hills. It's the sticks, even for Utah.

The taxidermist pays a $300 travel fee for a girl to
drive three hours there and three hours back. That's on
top of the $120 per hour he pays for the time she spends
with him, not including a usually good-sized tip.

In the photograph, his hands are on his hips and his
feet are apart, as if he's just quelled an uprising. He's
wearing a long denim coat with epaulettes and leather
lapels. His hair hangs just past his shoulders, frizzed and
bleached yellow with dark roots and lifted up and away
from his face by a breeze. He's thirtyish, with a gut, and I
can picture him in the cab of his pickup with the rigid legs
of a stuffed deer sticking up behind him. The hunter. The
craftsman. Sure of his manly role in the world. The photo
was posted as a joke but its continued display is evidence
of his mascotlike status among us.

His name is Ephraim and sending him an escort is a
lengthy process. He claims he doesn't like anyone who's
available, he gets surly about the last girl he saw, he haggles over the travel fee. But Ephraim in Nephi doesn't have
a wealth of romantic options, so eventually he'll say okay,
and sigh, as if he's doing everyone a favor by letting a girl
come to him. He treats all of us—the phone girls, the
escorts, probably even the woman at the drive-through
window—as if we conspire against him.

The escorts complain that he trumpets his skill as a
taxidermist, that he reeks of formaldehyde, that he
reminds every girl she is lucky to have been chosen. But
after paying out to the house and tipping the booker, the
girl takes home about $500 for just three hours of face
time, which makes even Ephraim worth the trip. Plus he
gives each of his female visitors the souvenir of a fox pelt,
which I find endearing.

The last time I talked to Ephraim, I pitched him Sunshine, one of our older girls, describing her as thirty,
blond, a class act. Actually she's in her early forties and,
though pleasant, not exactly cheerful, especially given her
ragged-edged smoker's voice. She is blond, though, and
that's usually all that matters. Booking an escort requires
a few bets to be hedged, a little confidence, and a glimpse
of insight into the mind-set of a man who calls an escort
service from the barren middle west of Utah. Ephraim is,
like most callers, nothing if not optimistic, and that night
the blond hair conjured enough sexiness for him to
imagine a fulfilling evening.

But the feeling of erotic promise shrivels quickly in a
one-sided endeavor. Apparently Sunshine didn't know
what a taxidermist was when she agreed to head to Nephi.
She barreled into the office at five o'clock the following
morning, still mad after three hours on the road, insisting
she would never see that disgusting son-of-a-bitch again.
When she slammed the office door on her way out, I
couldn't help but imagine the slamming door of
Ephraim's workshop, and then the sound of the doleful
Nephi wind, as he found himself, once again, alone.

But the taxidermist always calls again. And tonight,
I'm almost glad he has. It's a rule that we don't let the men
know we have caller ID—this business is all about mystique, Mohammed tells us—so I pretend I don't know it's
him and I start from the beginning.

“Good evening, this is Roxanne. How may I help you?”

“It's Ephraim,” he says.

Like all regular callers, he assumes an air of entitlement. He expects me to know him and to show deference.
I'm supposed to ask if he's used our service in the last six
months and to recite the “Utah rules” so there are no misunderstandings. But I know this will make him angry, so
I don't. Most regulars shed all embarrassment, any hint of
shame—many become self-righteous. But there is something about Ephraim, a naked desperation in his voice he
can't fully conceal, that makes me want to cheer him up.

“Have you see Nikyla before?” I ask. There are four girls on the schedule,
but none of them has called in. “Sounds foreign,” Ephraim complains.

“It's just an exotic name. I think you'll really like her.” “I want real tits.
None of them fake ones. And not one of those kids, neither. They don't know
how to act,” he says. “She's twenty-four, 5'4", 110 pounds, 34D-24-34, long
black hair and green eyes. A stunning beauty. The most amazing breasts. Real
and full. You won't believe how luscious they are,” I say, “You'll think you're
dreaming.” The only thing I'm lying about is that Nikyla is barely nineteen,
but she is more mature and self-possessed than her age might suggest. Ephraim
takes the bait. I have to page Nikyla a few times before she calls me

back, but she agrees to see Ephraim because she likes me and because she wants
to get away from her boyfriend's mother who's going on and on about the Mormon
president's exalted General Conference address. Nikyla has never gone to see
the taxidermist but she laughs when I tell her who it is and says it's sort
of like winning a fuckedup lottery. Ephraim may be the butt of our jokes but
he is so heartbreakingly fallible we treat him with a certain gentleness. Because
I know what he looks like, the longing on the other end of the line is all the
more palpable. I imagine him answering the phone in his cold metal shed, surrounded
by glass eyes and mounted elk heads with their antlers not yet sewn into place.

“Hello, Ephraim, it's Roxanne from Premier,” I say. “Yeah,” he says.

“Nikyla is on her way.”

“Better be. I don't got all night.”

“Ephraim, sweetie,” I say, my voice a slow, aural smile that melts the border
between reality and fantasy, “You have a happy Thanksgiving.”

In the spring of 1846, Brigham Young set off for the Rockies
with 70 wagons carrying 143 men, 3 women, 2 children, a boat, a cannon, 93 horses,
55 mules, 17 dogs, and some chickens. I left Manhattan on a warm May day with
everything I owned either crammed into my old Subaru wagon or piled high on
top like the shell of a turtle, and I drove west on Highway 80 with little more
to direct me than an
Outside
magazine article about the high quality
of life in a city surrounded by mountains in the valley of the Great Salt Lake.
I had faith in the curative power of new geography. Brigham Young had stopped
his wagon train at the mouth of Emigration Canyon and said, “This is the place,”
and so would I.

There was the fetid lake smell but I grew used to it
soon enough. And the Mormon cultural oddities, like
excessive politeness and proud moral correctness and 3.2
beer, I found refreshingly quaint. Even the missionaries
were amiable when I lied and told them I was Jewish to
make them go away. Besides, no one knew me in Salt Lake
City and it was a long way from New York, which made it
as good a place as any.

My real name is Jane. I've lived in Utah for six
months. My landing here may seem random, but I like to
think that there was some sort of fatalistic breeze that
steered me to this place. Although I don't have a particular
sense that the land of Zion is where I'm supposed to be, I
do feel at ease here. The landscape hasn't yet been dulled
by the patina of disappointment.

Even phone girls need pseudonyms for safety and, I realize
now, to make a game of the whole thing. It took me a few times before I could
say “This is Roxanne” without laughing. Kendra did phone sex before working
here, so she is all seduction, all business. She holds a Benson & Hedges
100 between crimson, acrylic-nailed fingers and books more dates than anyone.
She says it's about foreplay. I see it more as straight sales. Bait and switch.
Leads and closing. Either way, it comes down to the fact that we're paid to
prey on men's desire and loneliness.

Most of our clientele are local and they've used us
before. But some are just in town for business.

“We are a legal escort agency,” I say in a low flirty
voice. “There is no sexual contact involved. I can send a
lovely young lady to see you, she can dance, do a little
striptease…”

I trail off to be suggestive, because other than sexual
contact, what an escort and client can do is limited only
by their own creativity. But with the out-of-towner I'm
usually met with the standard disbelief, the insistence on
how the “no sex” part can't possibly be true. I didn't
believe it either when I answered the classified ad for a
phone manager, but the job's legality did make it easier for
me to justify taking it. “Here at Premier,” Mohammed told
me then in his guttural Arabic accent, “we do things by
the book and with integrity.” And the Utah men keep
coming back.