Calling Out (11 page)

And before I can get it back I say, “Good. You should be,” and hang up to answer
the other line.

“Hi, beautiful,” Scott says.

“Hi,” I say, “I'm glad it's you.” And I am. The boundaries are clear.

“In that case, I have a proposal,” he says.

“Would you like to see someone?” I ask weakly. “I can't today. But tomorrow
night I would. You and me. Almost like a real date.”

I'm sweating through my turtleneck. I know it won't get any easier than this
to jump in.

“Roxanne?”

“Okay,” I say.

There is silence.

“Really?” he asks.

“Yes,” I say. “Yes.”

At once I feel giddy and subversive and somehow important. I can take this route,
this risk. Because I dare myself. Because I can. I scribble out an escort application

and schedule my health exam appointment for tomorrow.

I still feel pretty manic when I leave work, so with my
excess energy I do things that I've been meaning to for
months: I go to the post office for stamps, get a new windshield wiper blade, replace the batteries in the smoke
detector, caulk the bathroom sink, refill the salt shaker.

The last of the daylight is filtering through the bare
walnut tree outside the kitchen window. And then I
remember one more thing I've been meaning to do since
I arrived in Utah. I get in the car and race the waning
light, driving east to the end of the 1,300-mile Mormon
Trail, where the pioneers first entered the Salt Lake Valley.
I pass the cabins of Old Deseret Village, where schoolchildren come for wagon rides and “visits” from costumed Mormon historical figures, and I continue up the
hill to the monument that marks Brigham Young's “This
is the place” proclamation.

Outside the wind bites, and it is quiet at the mouth of
the canyon. Atop a sixty-foot granite pedestal overlooking
the valley is a bronze figure of Brigham Young with his
giant finger outstretched, flanked by other church forefathers, a memorial of the struggle-and-triumph conceit so
integral to Mormon cultural myth.

A year ago, I stood on my rickety fire escape and
breathed in the dirty city air. I looked at the rusted bars
under my feet and wondered—if they gave way and I fell
three stories to the icy sidewalk, would I die? Would that
do it?

My fingers have gone stiff in the Utah cold, but my
head feels clear and clean.

Yes. Like a rosary bead I finger the word, revisit it. Yes
is a moment, a mix of calm and readiness.

The lights come on as I'm staring up at the pioneers,
as if someone saw me looking into the darkness. I laugh,
but I look around and I am alone.

I drive toward the valley lights and home.

Marisa is working the phone and she is unfazed when I call
and tell her that I want to be sent out. She doesn't ask why now, if I'm apprehensive,
what changed my mind. She either assumed I would do it eventually or has learned
to assume nothing. And I am thankful.

Apparently having patched things up from the night
before, Ford and Ember went to Wendover to play blackjack. I didn't tell them what I have decided to do; I cradle
the secret like a china doll. It is all mine.

I prepare myself for Marisa's call with a bath. I welcome the hottest water, willing myself to feel it against my
skin as I submerge. The bathroom is dark except for some
old candles I rounded up in an attempt to commemorate
the night. I shave slowly and deliberately all the way up
my thighs, bikini line and all, going over every inch with
multiple swipes of a new razor. I exfoliate my elbows. I sit
on the edge of the tub and paint my toenails poppy red. I
wonder if this is how a bride in an arranged marriage feels
before her wedding night. Except I still have the option of
saying no. But the phone rings, and I know I won't.

“Hi.” It's McCallister. “I can't believe you hung up on
me. Again.”

“I can't talk right now.”

“Why not?”

“I'm waiting for a call.”

“Why so cryptic?”

“It's a date.”

“A date?”

“Yeah.”

“With Ford?”

“Of course not.”

“Then with whom?”

“A setup. A blind date.”

“Wow. I guess I'm supposed to say good luck.”

“That would be the nice thing.”

“But if it works out, you'll never come back to New
York. So I won't.”

“Always the selfless one, aren't you, McCallister?”

“Just looking out for you.”

“This conversation will have to wait,” I say.

“Fine,” he says, and this time it's McCallister who
hangs up.

I opt for a scarlet silk dress over a new black lace bra
and underwear. The silk is soft and warm against my skin.
I gloss my lips and spray expensive perfume I never use,
an old gift from McCallister, on each side of my neck. I
feel glamorous. I sing along with the soulful, plaintive
voice of Ray Charles—“I'm gonna love you, like no one's
loved you, come rain or come shine”—as I check out how
I look from various angles in the mirror. I turn off the
lights and have a cigarette by the glow of Christmas lights
dripping from the neighbors' houses, and blow smoke out
the window into the frosty darkness. Toward the end of
the second cigarette, Marisa calls.

“You're in luck. Scott requested you. He's at the
Monaco. Room 1023. Eight o'clock. Maybe you'll get room
service,” she says.

“Maybe,” I say. “He didn't want to do a public date?”

“You're not that lucky,” she says.

I feel like there should be more business to take care
of, something I'm supposed to ask. I grind out my cigarette and the ashtray tips, dumping ashes out onto the
carpet.

“Shit,” I say.

“Roxanne?”

“Yeah?”

“Are you okay?”

“I'm fine,” I say.

“Call me when you get there.”

It's a perfect, high-desert, early-winter night in Salt
Lake City—cloudless and brisk with a moon just shy of
full. The houses in the Avenues are warmly lit. The streets
are empty. Inside my thawing car, Bob Dylan is on the
classic rock station. I feel like a movie star.

I'm only about seven minutes from the Monaco so I
make a few loops around Temple Square. Mormon visitors
promenade around the block of Main Street that the church
purchased from the city to connect the square to the palatial
new conference center. Whole families hold hands. The contentment on their faces is enviable. Linked together in this
holy destination, they seem wanting of nothing.

Although it's Friday night, I easily find a parking spot
only a block from the hotel. I breathe deeply, exhaling
through my mouth, as I once learned in a yoga class. A
quick makeup check in the rearview mirror, a readjusting
of my pantyhose, an Altoid, a brief thought of McCallister,
gesticulating with chopsticks the night he said he didn't
think we should see each other anymore, and I'm off.

The Monaco is an anomaly for Salt Lake City, an
expensive boutique hotel with sharp angles and dramatic
lighting and a cozy wine bar right out of TriBeCa. It's the
first time I've ever been inside, and its un-Utah-ness lends
it a movie-set quality. Despite the chic environment, I feel
conspicuously harlotlike with my red lips and my red hem
peaking out from beneath my coat, even if no one seems
to notice me. I make it across the lobby without looking
up, grateful to be swallowed up by an empty elevator. If
it's not going to be a fake real date in public, I'm at least
glad it's here and not the Econolodge or the Dream Inn
out on North Temple. I press ten as I catch a glimpse of
myself in the chrome ceiling of the elevator.

At the door to room 1023, my knock is wimpy and
I'm just about to knock again when I see the door is not
clasped shut and a deeper version of the voice I recognize
says, “Come on in.”

I count to three, arrange my face in what feels like my
most confident, mature, knowing, sexy look—even
though I'm sweating and I have an odd urge to cross
myself—and I slowly push open the door.

The softly lit room is a sea of dark browns and black.
My heels sink deep into the plush carpet where I have
stopped just inside the door. Scott sits near the window,
his ankle crossed on his knee and his arms stretched out
around the back edge of the chair. He looks like an aging
ex-athlete, like a minor-league player who never got his
shot at the majors. He is not far off from what I expected
and this is both a relief and a letdown. His hair is, as his
client sheet said, ash-blond, a little receding in front, a
little too long in back. He is, if not altogether handsome,
attractive in a self-assured, masculine way.

I feel excited and I feel like I might throw up. From
moment to moment I feel the power shift from me to
Scott, back and forth. I can't decide who's winning. I
finger a button on my coat, unsure whether to proceed or
to wait for further instruction. I am at once myself and
someone altogether new. The curtains are pulled open
and the lights of the valley shimmer like so many stars. I
remember that I have to call my parents and tell them that
I'm not coming home for Christmas. I think about
whether Ember and Ford are gambling away money they
don't have, and whether Ember will leave with Ford. I tell
myself that meeting a man in a hotel room for money is
just another thing to try. My stomach growls. I roll my
shoulders back and smile a closed-lipped, enigmatic smile.

There is a cockiness in the way Scott tilts his head and
sizes me up. For a full minute he looks at me and grins as
I stand there in the entrance. I'm getting paid not to turn
away.

“Hi, beautiful,” he says. “It's nice to see you.”

“Are you safe?” Marisa asks.

“Yes,” I say into the phone. My face burns as I stand by
the bed. Scott hasn't moved.

“Have you collected?”

“Yes.”

I'm still clutching the bank-new bills. When he pulled
the crisp stack from his wallet, I couldn't bring myself to
count it. I stuff the money in my coat pocket.

“Okay, Roxanne, good luck. I'll call you out in fifty.”

“Bye,” I say, wanting to keep her on the line, wanting
to run for the door, wanting to be in the front row at the
movies with a large popcorn and McCallister on a rainy
Saturday afternoon.

“So. Why don't you take off your coat and stay a
while?”

Scott has uncrossed his legs and now leans forward
with his elbows on his knees, his fingers laced between
them. A nervous tightness around his mouth makes his
smile stiff and unnatural.

“Okay. Sure.”

In the past few minutes my confidence has seeped
out. I think that the polite thing for him to do would be
to help me out of my coat, but he is as still as marble. All
right then. I shake my shoulders until my coat slips down
my arms. I know the effect would be better if I let it fall to
the floor in a romantic cascade, but I'm starting to feel like
I don't owe him anything so I place it first on the bed,
then reconsider and move it to a chair. I lift my hair off my
neck to feel some coolness and I try to resettle the composure that I know my face has lost.

“That's better,” Scott says. “What I want to know is
why you put me off for so long, anyway. The chemistry
was so clear on the phone.”

There is a hole in his ear from an old piercing and his
fingernails are bitten. I look from detail to detail for
insight or distraction. Not knowing what to do next to
ease the awkwardness, I fall to my knees and untie his
shoes, slowly working each socked foot from his barely
worn oxfords. He has dressed up for me. He blinks his
baby-long lashes in a quizzical flurry, as if going for the
feet was more intimate than an escort is allowed to be; too
forward, too fast.

“Are you married?” I ask, rubbing the arch of his foot.

“Me? Are you kidding? Why would I be calling you
all?”

“You wouldn't be the first,” I say, taking the heel of his
other foot in my hand. “Girlfriend?”

“Oh, that feels nice. Girlfriend? No. Not at the
moment,” he says, letting his head rest against the back of
the chair. “We broke up a few months ago. She wanted to
get married. Mormons think they're spinsters if they're
not married by thirty. I don't even think I was in love.”

“Have you ever been in love?” I ask.

I'm stalling. Scott now seems more like a country
singer than he does an athlete. I pull off his socks just to
have something to do. His feet are white and clammy but
not as gross as they could be.

“Yeah, I guess. I'm not some sort of freak or anything,” he says, running his fingers through the side wing
of his hair.

“Of course you're not,” I say.

I lean back on my hands and look at him, wondering
whether he is scrutinizing me—if he sees the pimple on
the top of my forehead, the freckles on my nose, the wrinkles at the corners of my eyes—or if he sees me at all.
Maybe he just sees what he imagined me to be from the
phone. My thoughts descend from “He is a lucky bastard”
to “I hope I'm not a letdown.”

“Wouldn't you be more comfortable over there?” I
ask, pointing my eyes toward the bed.

Scott clears his throat and looks down for a moment
as if to think it over. His smile is catlike when he looks up
again. I wonder how much time has been used up but I
don't dare glance at the clock.

“I just might be,” he says.

I shift back on my heels and he hops up from his seat.
I hold out my hand in the direction of the bed like a game
show model displaying the showcase prize. He sits first
with his feet on the floor but then scowls, swiveling
around to lean against the headboard, crossing his legs
straight out in front on the bed. I have an urge to settle in
next to him and see what movies are on. Instead I push
him gently forward to stuff the pillows behind his back.