Calling Out (16 page)

Jezebel gets busted for indecent sexual contact. I
follow the police car to the city jail, and three hours later,
I hand over my credit card to pay her $500 fine.

“Hey,” I say. She walks to me, her jacket pulled tightly
across her chest.

“You can't tell on me, Rox. I'm already on Mohammed's
shit list. I need this job,” she says.

Her makeup is smeared beneath her eyes, making
them look sunken. Her usually blown-straight blond bob
is frizzed up like that of an unkempt doll. I take her arm
as we go out into the night.

“I won't,” I say. “Don't worry.”

It's 1:30 a.m. and downtown is quiet except for the
click of changing streetlights.

“I'll pay you back,” Jezebel says. “I swear.”

I know she won't but paying for her feels like I'm
doing a good deed.

“What's the big deal anyway? What's the difference?
The ending's the same; the guy gets off. It's a stupid law.
So what if it's for money? So what if it makes me a prostitute? It's not hurting anyone.”

Jezebel does what she's never done in front of me, she
starts to cry, erupting in sniffly, hiccup-y tears she angrily
tries to stop.

“He let me keep doing it. You saw him. That fuckhead.
He took our money back.”

“You should have asked him why his dick was so
small, if it was some kind of birth defect,” I say.

She giggles and wipes her eyes. I laugh too. I envy the
way Jezebel's emotions are so close to the surface; they
shift and bob from moment to moment like buoys on a
choppy sea.

“I didn't have a clue he was a cop,” she says.

We reach my car, where Albee has left drool and
smudges all over the inside, and he's peed on the backseat.

“Sorry, Rox,” Jezebel says. “Bad Albee. Bad dog.”

His wagging tail thumps against the door as he licks
her face. Jezebel turns on the radio to a pop station and
mouths all the words to the song. She dances with the
puppy's paws and joyously yells out the window at a
group of young guys crossing the street toward Club DV8.

When I drop her at her car, Jezebel hops out like a
sprite and waves back at me, and I wonder if it is just that
simple for her to move on, not to dwell, examine, or dissect the meaning of her actions. I have a feeling she will
fall asleep tonight as easily as any night. She dumps Albee
into the Blazer—its left front bumper is still smashed—
and she circles my car and peels out of the parking lot.

Just the thought of the polyester strip-o-gram outfit
makes me recoil, though my protests don't carry much
weight with Mohammed.

“The pants'll be too short. Complete floods,” I say.
“No one will be looking at the pants,” he says.
“It's a security guard's outfit, not a police uniform.”
“Pfft,” he says. “Oh, and I'll pay you after. It's a favor

for this guy who bought two rugs. A bachelor party or
some such thing for his friend.”

“At three o'clock in the afternoon?”

“Does it matter?” he asks, raising his palms toward the
ceiling.

Kendra snickers over at the desk, finishing off the last
of her McRib.

“Don't worry, Rox,” she says. “You'll actually
want
to
take it off.”

The pants are dark blue with flared cuffs that hover
way above the tops of my black pumps, and they have a
sharp perma-crease down the front. Their synthetic
roughness makes my legs itch. They're so tight on top I
have to lie flat on the floor to get the zipper up. The white
polyester uniform shirt is big and wide with dirty cuffs I
have to roll up, and a “security” patch on the sleeve in the
shape of a shield. The hat looks like a Greek fisherman's
hat, and all in all, I look like an asshole. I feel sick.

Kendra coughs on the powdered sugar of her mini
donuts when I appear from the back and I snatch the
Polaroid camera before her white-covered fingers can get
it. She attempts to repress her smile, but I break first into
teary laughter. I'm already distraught imagining the glare
of daylight and the public ogling, without even a hotel
room door against the outside world.

The building is in one of those flat, treeless business
parks with one tinted-windowed cluster indistinguishable
from the next and the occasional FedEx truck trying to
make a delivery when nothing has a number or a name. I
have to stop twice before finding a dead end and an
unmarked steel door that looks like the right one. Even
though it's December I'm sweating in my costume,
releasing the scent of must and the long-ago deodorant
and sweat of a nameless escort or security guard. I breathe
through my mouth and hope that no one notices.

After a few rings of the industrial buzzer, I hear the
door click unlocked. I push it open and walk in to a fluorescent-lit, low-ceilinged office with gray nubbed carpet. At
an old metal desk, a sixty-something receptionist with
flame-colored hair, frosted lipstick, and drawn-on eyebrows looks at me in my getup and blinks, then brings her
glasses up to her eyes from a rhinestone chain around her
neck.

“Can I help you with something?” she asks.

I want to explain it to her but where would I begin? I
force a smile and try not to cry.

“I'm here to see Joe?”

I hold the CD player behind me with both hands, as
if this will make the whole thing seem more normal.

“In Receiving,” she says. “Straight back, make your
first right.” She crosses her arms across her shelflike
bosom and scowls.

I find the department where men mill around boxes
of circuits and electronic parts. It's clearly no bachelor
party. Off to the side is a card table with a coffeemaker
and boxes of store-bought cookies, and draped across the
front of it, a drooping banner reads, “Over the hill!” There
is now a film of sweat across my forehead. One of the guys
looks at me with a curious grin.

“Joe?” I ask.

No one hears me.

“Excuse me, is there a Joe here?” I ask, raising my
voice.

“Uh, I'm Joe,” a short guy with gray hair and safety
goggles says. “May I help you?”

I pull off my hat and let my tucked up hair fall out.

“Well,” I say, “I'm afraid you're under arrest.”

A few of the men laugh and clap, pushing a flustered
Joe in my direction. I walk toward him with a forced
swagger, my hands on my hips.

“Aren't you going to ask me what the charge is?” I ask.

He grimaces, attempting a smile.

“Because,” I say, “you are one very sexy birthday boy.”

“All right!” someone yells.

“Take it off!” yells another.

They move in, encircling us, and they press Joe down
into a plastic chair. He looks pained.

When I press Play, the thumping pop-rhythms of
Mariah Carey start in but it takes a few moments for me
to start moving—as if I'm in an anxiety dream where I've
been pushed out onstage and I can't remember my
lines—but then I look at the faces surrounding me, shiny,
expectant, and unsure of themselves behind the
machismo, and I don't want to disappoint them. Perform,
I think, give them what they want.

s his back slapped and hair ruffled as if he were a
groom-to-be.

Then I turn back to Joe, whose pleasure is my object.
He seems more at ease now and glad to see me. I straddle
him on the chair and remove the dime-store handcuffs
from the belt loop of my pants. I breathe close to his ear
and snap one of the cuffs on his wrist behind the chair—
he doesn't resist—and then the other. And while he's
cuffed, I sweep my bra-clad breast against his face before
I stand and resume my routine, much to the approval of
the others. The tight pants have left pink indentations
around my waist but no one seems to notice as I peel
them down as slowly as I can, bending over to get them
past my knees, trying to block out the thought of a bunch
of men inches from my butt in the unforgiving light.

When Mariah slips into a slow-jam number, I downshift into what I think is a more sultry act, slithering
around the cement-floored workroom in my bra, underwear, and high heels. I take one of the men's hands and he
ventures to dance with me, ignoring his mocking
coworkers, and for a moment allowing himself to be
chosen. I return to Joe, grazing my backside against the
back of his head, then spin around and put my foot up on
his knee and grind.

Strip-o-grams are supposed to stop here but these
guys are stuck in a bland office where I imagine they will
be doing the same thing for the rest of their lives. This
audience, seemingly so happy and outside themselves,
spurs me on. So again I straddle Joe, his wrists still cuffed
behind him, kiss his forehead, wink, unhook my bra and
slip out of it to the sound of an ovation. Topless, I wrap
my bra around Joe's neck and do a brief shimmy before
making the rounds from man to man. With a minute to
go, I pull down my underwear and step out of them, and
in just my heels, raise my arms in a triumphant “ta da!”
like a gymnast who just landed a dismount.

When the fervent applause dies down, I stop the CD
and scurry for my clothes. In the silence the lights seem
brighter and more revealing. The men murmur and pour
themselves coffee, with little idea of what to do now. I
throw on the big shirt and my underwear.

“Happy Birthday,” I say to Joe.

“Thanks. Um. Yeah. Can you unlock me now?” he
asks, his voice pleading; sweat bubbles glisten above his
lip.

“Oh, sorry,” I say, fumbling to find the key.

“Thanks,” he says, when his wrists are freed. “That
was something.”

It is quiet except for the buzz of the lights overhead. I
have my bra and pants in one hand, the CD player in the
other.

“Oh, wait,” one of the guys says, going for his wallet.
The others follow suit. Even though I want to run, I don't
want to make my exit any more awkward. They hand me
all sorts of bills, not even looking at the denominations,
just wanting things to get back to normal as soon as possible. I wave with my full hands, and race past the disgusted receptionist to the cold safety of my car. I have $64
in my hand. When my breathing slows, I pull on sweatpants and smoke half a cigarette. It's 3:45.

I drive to Smith's in the Avenues to stroll the aisles,
collect myself, and spend my tip. I have the fever-cheek
feeling of having hiked all day in a blizzard, the glimmer
of having done something dangerous and emerging
unscathed. The high lingers.

Spotty snow flurries have begun by the time I pull
into the grocery store parking lot. Still reeling, I realize
there is something that I have wanted to ask McCallister
and I finally have the nerve. I pull over next to the pay
phone.

“What are you doing?” I ask.

“Jane? Uh, walking. I just left my shrink's office. What
are you doing?”

“Standing in the snow calling you.”

“You never call me. Are you okay?”

“Yeah I am, actually.”

“You sound weird to me lately.”

“I want to ask you something.”

“Okay.”

“Would you have broken up with me if you hadn't
had met Maria?”

“Jane.”

A boy in a red Smith's apron pushes a caterpillar of
grocery carts past me and waves, glancing quickly at my
spiked-heels-and-sweats outfit.

“Hello?” I ask.

“I'm here.” McCallister sighs and I know he is running
his free hand through his hair. I hear cabs honk in a
furious tag-team rhythm. “Why are you asking this? It's
been months and months. Does it really matter?”
“Yes, it matters,” I say. “It matters to me.”

“We would have broken up eventually. You know that.
Or we would have split up and gotten back together for
years and then where would we have been?”

“So the answer is no?”

“Yes. No is the answer.”

“Okay then,” I say. “I guess I just needed to know.”

“Okay.”

“So did Maria paint your walls red yet?”

“No. That's on hold. I mean, the whole thing.”

“The whole Maria thing?”

“Yeah. The moving-in part. We're going to wait. See
how things go.”

The news registers as a shallow sort of win for me.

“I'm sorry, I guess,” I say.

“Maybe I'll have to come to Utah and pick up a
couple of young wives. Bring them back to my harem.”

“I'll keep my eye out for some good candidates,” I say.

“Jane, it's not like I don't miss you,” he says.

It's a week before Christmas and Ford, Ember, Ralf, and I
drive into snow-buried Little Cottonwood Canyon, past
the skier-dotted slopes of Solitude, and on to Silver Lake.
The one general store out this way is closed for the season,
as is the ranger office. Other than a father trying to teach
his young daughter how to skate on a cleared square of ice
at the far edge, the lake is tranquil and deserted. It's Ford's
last day in Salt Lake. The mood is not quite somber, but
there is a sense of waiting, of purposely good behavior, of
wanting to honor the occasion. We tread lightly in our
talk, avoiding the unspoken and unresolved. Our plan is
to hike up into the woods to Summer Lake and have a
picnic and relish a fragile peace. I'm guessing that with all
the gear in our backpacks—sleeping bags, a tarp, a
camping stove, bottles of whiskey, wine, and water, blankets, cigarettes, steaks, plates, and utensils—we're not
going to make it that far.

Silver Lake has been frozen over for months now, and
it's under two feet of snow. A swollen, dark cloud hovers
directly over the peak behind the lake but there are also
patches of sun. Ember, who today seems uncharacteristically sober and clear-eyed, points silently toward a pair of
moose on the far bank, their hooves buried in snow. The
air is so sharp and fresh it hurts at the tail end of a big
breath, but so invigorating I can't get enough.