Calling Out (12 page)

“Now isn't that better,” I say, attempting to embody
the character of my phone voice.

“Much,” he says. He crosses his arms across his chest
and grins like a boy caught in a bad lie. “Show me what
you got.”

I am unnerved by this but I try to let it slide. He is
becoming more of a type, a subset of maleness. I want to
be back in command. One by one, I lift a foot behind me,
arching, to slip off my shoes. Scott cocks his head like a
puppy. Like Ember, I lift my leg up against the side of the
table, slipping the fishnet stockings slowly down thigh
and calf and pointed toe. One, and then the other. The
curtains are open and in front of me is the southern
sprawl of the valley, its grid of lights grounding me for a
moment before I resume and toss my stockings on the
floor near my shoes.

“I knew you'd have nice legs,” Scott says. “Let's see
them.”

I arrange one leg in front of the other like a beauty
pageant contestant—hoping he doesn't scrutinize my
thighs—and slowly slide my dress up, the soft silk grazing
my legs, until it's just below my underwear.

“So you like to hunt and play golf?” I ask, realizing
how ridiculous I sound, standing there with my dress
pulled up to my waist. But Scott laughs and eases the
moment and I slowly take a turn on my imaginary catwalk.

“Uh huh,” he says, “Now lift it higher and show me
your ass.”

I bite my lip and do what he asks, then bend over,
making small rotations with my hips. This seems to be the
right thing. Scott gives a small whistle.

“I need some help with this,” I say, fiddling with the
zipper in back of my dress.

I'm surprised at my willingness to lose my dress
without even needing a nudge, but it seems like the
obvious next motion in the sequence. As I sit gingerly on
the edge of the bed, Scott unzips me. His large damp
palms push the straps of the dress down over my shoulders with a certainty that makes me anxious and I'm glad
to be turned away from him. His hands travel over my
back and I can only think “hot” and then I think for a
second, “not clean,” and when I eye the clock, I still have
thirty-five minutes left.

I try to get up but he holds me down for a moment
before he lets me go.

“Where are you going?” he asks.

“I just want to get out of this,” I say, drawing my
hands across the bodice of my dress, “so we can really
relax. Can I put on some music?”

“If you want,” he says. He seems peeved at my tactics,
but resigned.

I find a jazz station on the radio and let my dress fall,
stepping out of the heap when it ends up on the floor. My
instinct is to run into the bathroom but I close my eyes
and imagine myself a mysterious burlesque performer. I
start dancing, run my hands over my bra, my stomach, my
hips, and shake my hair across my back.

“Why don't you help me get out of this stuff,” Scott
says.

I had forgotten that his getting naked was part of the
bargain. I'm glad for the time it takes to undo the buttons
on his shirt; his breath on my chest is impatient. His nose
hairs need clipping and there is a fleck of something stuck
in his bottom teeth, which are now at eye level. I tell
myself that he is just a person, flawed and needy, good and
bad, deserving of compassion and affection. And that he
picked me, out of all the others in the world.

He smells like musky cologne and he gives off heat,
his skin only inches from mine. I touch his chest lightly
with both my hands, as if there were the chance of an electric shock. It's like petting an unfamiliar animal; alive,
pulsing, foreign. I'm glad he's not too hairy and maintains
the nicely shaped body of a once-physical man. This is not
so bad at all. This could be a drunken blind date that is
going too far. If only I were drunk. When I kneel next to
him, Scott slides down toward horizontal and closes his
hands around my wrists, pressing my hands firmly
against him. He has working hands, rough and blunt,
veined and strong, and I feel a flicker, not of attraction
but of nerves. I am now the animal—small, timid, and
rabbitlike vulnerable.

“You feel great,” I say. “So strong.”

My tone is wooden but he hears what he wants to hear.
I move my hands in languid circles and he eases his grip. I
wish he would close his eyes—it would make it easier for
me to perform—but he keeps them riveted on me.

“Hi, beautiful,” he says softly as he puts his hand on
the side of my face, and vicelike, moves it until it cradles
my skull, and pulls my resistant head to his, his open
mouth waiting. The kiss feels flat and uncharged, his lips
chapped from dry Utah air and his tongue feral as he licks
my lips and gropes into my mouth. This is an experiment,
I try to convince myself, and it's really no worse than
kissing Rob Thurman in the ninth grade with his spitfilled mouth acrid from dip. At least Scott tastes like
toothpaste. At least he is not trying to get halfway down
my throat.

But as soon as the thought passes, his oral assault
becomes more frenzied and his tongue jabs straight back as
far as it can into my mouth. I try to hide a reflexive gag that
makes my eyes water. I pull away to regain some bearings.
“Hey, slow down there,” I say. “Let me change positions so I'm not all twisted around.”

“Yeah. Okay, yeah. You're right.” Scott's eyes are
heavy-lidded as he undoes his belt. “Take off my pants. I
want to feel you.”

This is entirely voluntary, I think, and I am choosing
to take off a stranger's pants even though I don't want
them to be off. I unbutton and unzip his chinos, my hand
alarmingly grazing his erection under his blue plaid
boxers. He lifts up so I can pull his pants off.

I don't have a lot of options left. I straddle him and his
mouth and hands are everywhere. It's almost acrobatic
trying to monitor what's going where. I wish the lights
were off but that might make it easier for him to transgress. He's about to unhook my bra, his breathing hard
and determined, but I grab his hands.

“No, baby. You know the rules.”

Without comment he drops the task and begins to
massage my buttocks with vigorous kneading. I gyrate on
his lap like I have seen the strippers do, simulating sex,
simulating everything. It's a curious thing to be acting out
these steps without any sparks urging me forward. It
doesn't feel bad exactly, but it feels impartial and distant.
I suck on his neck, wanting to give him a hickey as a
memento. He rubs my breasts through my bra as I roll
around on top of him.

“I want to see you touch yourself,” I say. “I want to
watch you.”

This is not legal for me to say, but I want to do this for
Scott because he's my first and I know he's not a cop. He
reaches inside his underwear, and as he watches me writhe
around the bed through half-closed eyes, he gulps and
moans. I smile and move faster.

The only time I have ever slept with someone I didn't
really know was the first night I met McCallister. We had
been set up by a friend of mine from work, and all I knew
of him was that he was tall, neurotic, strawberry blond,
and funny. We met at a dark and uncrowded little nook of
a bar with overstuffed booths that enveloped us in instant
intimacy. We discussed the merits of different breakfast
cereals, whether
Hud
was cooler than
The Hustler
, the
hotness quotient of various pop-star vixens. We drank, we
smoked, we laughed. It was easy and I liked him straight
away—his squint, his square-tipped fingers, his incessant
self-deprecation, his charming laugh. He had a sureness in
the way he asked me questions, held his beer, chatted with
the bartender, put his hand briefly on my back on the way
out the door, but he also had a childlike need for affirmation on things as small as the way he parted his hair. The
combination got me.

We walked the fifteen blocks to his apartment on the
pretense of watching a movie. I felt young and drunk and
sanguine. It was early June, before the unbearable, heavy
heat of the city in summer, and McCallister took my hand
with instinctive ease, as if we'd been dating for years. He
stopped for beer and cigarettes and M&Ms at the corner
store. We started to make out as soon as the elevator doors
closed.

It wasn't that I was overwhelmingly attracted to
McCallister. It's more that there wasn't anything wrong
with him—no embarrassing political remarks, no troubling tics, no evidence of trying too hard, no warning signals for possible land mines. He wasn't cheap, belligerent,
effeminate, overly earnest, loud, conservative, strident,
cynical, arrogant, or recently dumped. There were no
cringe moments. He made me laugh. He thought I was
smart. I liked his smell. He was a great kisser. One night
with McCallister, and I exhaled and settled in.

When Scott is finished, I reach over him and click off
the radio. An intensified silence follows and I'm aware of
the creak of the mattress, the sound of my breathing, the
drip in the shower, a police siren. The room has surrendered itself to calm. I help Scott wipe off his stomach with
a wet washcloth; I feel like I'm playing nurse, generously
administering to a patient. However false the moment is,
I feel a closeness, even though the moment is more foreign than any before it. I slide under the covers and Scott
rubs my arm, back and forth with soft strokes as I lie on
his chest. He tells me about the first time he went deer
hunting with his dad and how connected he felt to everything. He says that he is almost embarrassed sometimes
about how much he likes his job, being in charge and
building things. He wonders how he came to be a man of
thirty-seven when he still feels the same as he did in high
school. I am paid to be the listener and the giver, to have
no needs of my own.

The ring of the phone is jarring intruder. I rise from
the bed to answer it, grabbing my dress from the floor
along the way.

And now there is no pretext of half-truth or excuse,
no quiet resentment, no need to pretend it was something
it wasn't. Scott tips me $50 on top of the $120. I wonder
whether he will want to see me another time or if in our
pseudo-consummation he discovered everything he
wanted to know. I have a feeling he will never call again.

“That was fun,” he says.“You can stay and hang out if
you want. I mean, I don't know. Get some food. Watch a
movie. I have this place for the night. Just casual, you
know?”

“I have to get going,” I say. “But thanks. It was nice to
meet you. Maybe I'll see you again sometime.”

I pull my coat over my unzipped dress, and all at once
can't get my shoes on fast enough.

“Roxanne?”

“Yeah?” I ask, barely disguising my haste.

“I know this was work and everything. But if you ever
want to play some golf, grab a drink or something.” He
knows the answer even while he asks. I admire his optimism. He looks away and searches for the remote control.

“Oh, um. Scott. Thanks. But…”

“No, totally. Just wanted to, you know, put it out there.”

He clicks on the TV and stares at the History
Channel, appearing to be captivated by Winston
Churchill.

“Okay, then. Bye. I'll see you,” I say, “around.”

I head for the door in a trot.

A man in a gray cashmere sweater holds the elevator
door for me when he sees me coming.

“Thanks,” I say, attempting to straighten my undone
dress and get oxygen to my brain.

“You're welcome,” he says, with the slightest of smiles.

We watch the lights of descending floors. I sniffle but
I don't care enough to scrounge for a tissue in my purse.
I'm afraid to think about anything, in case this man can
sense the nature of my thoughts. I concentrate on my fingernails and clench the inside of my cheek with my teeth.

“On your way out?” he asks, as we stop on the fifth
floor. No one gets on.

“Not exactly,” I say.

From the side of his face I'd guess he was forty. He's
well-groomed with a fading tan.

“I'm in from San Diego,” he says. “For work. Do you
know where I might go for a drink around here?”

Because he only glances at me when he asks this, and
because he doesn't have a coat with him as if he had
planned on going out, and because of something about
the way he clamps his lips together as if to cover a sure-ofhimself grin, it crosses my mind that he thinks I am a
prostitute. And for this I want to ask him what he's really
asking, to humiliate him, to make him feel small.

“I don't know,” I say instead. “I'm afraid you're on
your own.”

When the doors open to the lobby, I step out in front
of him without looking back. I just need to make it to the
car, count the steps, breathe deeply, focus on the pattern
of the marble floor, but as soon as the cold air hits my
face, a tear escapes in a loose, warm rivulet down my
cheek.

“Watch that sidewalk there, ma'am,” the doorman
says. “Someone fell already. The ice is invisible.”

I wonder if he knows.

“Thanks,” I say. “Good night.”

“Good night, dear,” he says.

It occurs to me that I might see this man again and
again, different nights, different dresses. He will watch me
get older. Fantasize about me. Pity me.

But by the time I make it to the car, I have conquered
the need to cry. I did it. The heater blows hard and dry,
and I realize I'm starving. I drive to 700 South and the
fast-food strip, pull into the drive-through at Dunkin'
Donuts and order a half dozen assorted. I drive east up
the hill toward the university, turning at random on quiet
streets until most of the donuts are gone, and then I
wend my way back to the Avenues and my apartment.
Through the window I can see Ember curled up on
Ford's lap in the dancing blue light of the TV, and Ralf
asleep near their feet.