Calling Out (24 page)

My cheek throbs hot where I was hit. Bruises have settled in around my wrists, angry and red with deepening
patches of purple. The doctor said superficial injuries. No
evidence of sexual trauma.

“I think I'm done for now,” Logan says, flipping
closed his notebook. “You should have stuck to the
phone,” he says to me.

I don't say anything in response. He shakes his head in
disgust before pulling the door shut behind him.

“Roxanne,” Mohammed says. “Come with me please.”

I follow him back into his sad little office.

“I am sorry that this happened to you,” he says. “But
I'm glad that you are fine. You are an adult. I think it's
best not to blow it out of proportion in front of the other
girls. They look up to you, you know. They will be
looking to you.”

He fills out a check to me for five hundred dollars.

“Take this for your trouble,” he says.

I forgive Mohammed his facile recompense because I
have to believe he doesn't know any better. But I need
something different.

“Can you tell me where Nikyla lives? She's not
answering her phone,” I say.

“Listen, everyone knows the risks,” he says. “It will
pass. It will go away. Do not cause a greater disturbance.”

“I need her address. You have it. It's a small request.
Considering.”

“I cannot give it to you,” he says, rubbing his forehead. “You know that it is not allowed. Just go home. Get
some sleep. You will feel better.” Mohammed looks tired
in his atypically rumpled suit.

I go to the dented drawer that I know holds his
shoddy personnel files and he makes no effort to stop me.
Each wrinkled application has a Polaroid stapled to it that
I have to use as a guide, since I don't know Nikyla's real
name. Face after face, girl after girl, the endless stream.
Hopeful eyes, sorrowful smiles, rouged cheeks, freckled
noses, scornful lips, blank faces. I recognize very few.
Toward the back I find a picture of a younger-looking
Nikyla, proud and sure, unsmiling, stapled to Diana
Nelson's application.

Mohammed stares out through the dusty blinds of his
small window.

I find the nondescript stucco apartment complex
behind Red Lobster and across the street from the Fred
Meyer Superstore. It's rundown, and plastic children's
toys litter the snow-spotted grounds and cracked sidewalk. I ring 2A.

“What,” a young male voice barks through the staticky intercom.

“Um, yeah, hi. Is Diana home? It's Roxanne.”

There is the sound of a background exchange and the
door buzzes open. I go up the stairs and down a scuffed
beige-walled hall. Nikyla's boyfriend, in a baseball hat,
opens the door and with a teenager's tiny head-flick
greeting, points into the living room where Nikyla is
slouched in sweatpants on the couch watching TV.

“I'm going out, baby,” he says to her, grabbing his
parka from the coat tree.

“Bring treats,” she calls as the door shuts.

“Hey,” I say quietly.

“Hey Rox. This is a surprise. What's up?”

“I had a crazy day,” I say.

“Is something wrong?”

“I had some trouble this morning on a date. I was
kind of attacked.”

Nikyla holds her hand to her mouth.

“But I got away,” I say. “I'm fine. I fought him off.”

“Oh my God,” she says, getting up to hug me. “Come
here and sit down.”

The room has little more than the TV and a couch,
peach wall-to-wall carpeting and a Monet poster tacked
above a stereo on the floor. The shades are all drawn and
thin light filters through the gaps.

I exhale heavily, feeling worn and used up. Nikyla
enfolds me in a knit throw.

“I am so sorry,” she says. “Shit, shit, shit. It was my
shift. It should have been me.”

“Don't say that, okay? It shouldn't have been anyone.”

She pulls me to her and rocks me against her chest.

“Are you okay?”

“I'm okay,” I say. “It was Sam Gomez from the 86ed
list.”

“Fucking motherfucker.”

“In a second he had me.”

“Oh, look at your wrists. That bastard. How'd you get
away?”

“Whacked him in the head with a clock radio.”

“Awesome,” she says.

“Nikyla—Diana—you shouldn't do this anymore. It's
not worth it.”

She says nothing for a beat, which I take to mean she
gets it but I haven't changed her mind.

“I'm not supposed to say anything yet, but I'm four
weeks along,” she says, touching her stomach. “I just
found out.”

“A baby?” I say.

She squeezes my hand.

“I think it's going to be a girl. I'm hoping. I'm named
after Princess Diana, so I thought it would be cool to call
my daughter Spencer. Spencer Brewster. That's Josh's last
name.”

“I like it,” I say. “It sounds like a movie-star name.”

“What's your real name anyway?” Nikyla asks.

“Jane,” I say, and for the first time all day, tears come.

“That fits you so much better,” she says.

After hearing what happened, Jezebel arrives with a
stack of videos and a huge bag from Taco Bell. Albee yips
and races around the room.

“First is
Save the Last Dance
,” Jezebel says, “then
Pretty
Woman
. Duh. Then we go get Twizzlers and come back
for the best movie of all time.”

“With the hottest guy ever,” Nikyla says.

“
Reality Bites
,” they say together.

“Oh, I got those pants for you,” Nikyla says to Jezebel.

“Remind me after the movie.”

“Sweet,” Jezebel says. “I'll pay you back after my next shift.”

I lean my head against the back of the couch and Albee climbs into my lap. I
feel like the brittle husk that has surrounded me has cracked open.

Jezebel pushes Play.

“I wish I had hit my uncle with a clock radio,” she says as she squeezes in
on my right, securing me between them.

Before Utah was a state, the LDS church proposed naming
the new territory Deseret, a term from the Book of
Mormon meaning “honeybee.” This struck Brigham
Young as an appropriate symbol of the Mormons'
industry and their belief of working for the good of the
collective whole. Although Congress named the state
Utah, after the Ute Indians of the region, Mormons continued to call their homeland the Kingdom of Deseret.
Today the beehive symbol is inscribed on everything from
highway signs to the official state seal of Utah, and to my
surprise, as I examine it closely for the first time, my
escort license.

It's been three days since my run-in with Sam Gomez.
I haven't been in to the office and I wonder how long it will
be before I get a call. I put my license back in my wallet,
turn out the light, and try to envision what this valley must
have looked like to those Mormon pioneers looking down
on it from the east. New and vast and strange.

Ten minutes later, just as I'm on the blurry edge of
sleep, the doorbell rings.

It's McCallister.

I'm shocked—deep down I thought his threat was all
talk and way too much of an effort. Something leaps in
me at the sight of him but then it ebbs as I place the
feeling as familiarity and nothing more. He looks shorter
than I remember him, thinner. Less. In my memory he has
a certain radiance that his presence lacks. It strikes me
that he's from a part of my life that no longer exists.

“Surprise,” he says, leaning against the doorway.

“I can't believe you,” I say.

“You look good, Jane. Exile suits you,” he says.

“Sure,” I say, looking down at the snowman-patterned
pajamas my mom sent me for Christmas.

“That temple is freaky looking. Like a sci-fi castle.”

“So let me guess. She dumped you.”

“She threw a snow globe at me that narrowly missed
my forehead,” he says. “Took a chunk out of the wall.”

“You always did like her flair for the dramatic,” I say.

“It's freezing out here. Aren't you going to ask me in?”
he asks.

I look at him, oblivious. He is unaware of so much.

“Come on. What is this? Do you want me to beg?”

I stand aside and hold open the door.

“Aren't you going to ask me how I've been?” I ask.

“Okay. How are you? What have you been up to?”

“Oh, I've been pretty good. I started having sex for
money,” I say. But now that I've said it I don't have the
energy to really say it, to make him understand. I pull my
pajama cuffs into my hands, over the yellowing bruises on
my wrists.

“What?” he laughs. “As if.” He drops his duffel bag,
and takes off his coat, already having moved on from the
thought.

“You don't know everything,” I say. But I'm glad he
doesn't bite. I hang his coat in the closet.

Standing in the middle of my living room, McCallister looks puzzled, young, despite his sun-creased eyes.
The overhead light is bright and unflattering.

“Where's all your stuff?” he asks. “I always pictured
you here with your old red couch and that weird painting
you had in your kitchen.”

“I left most of it on the sidewalk when I left. I got a lot
of this from the Mormon thrift store.”

McCallister looks decidedly out of place.

“I thought Ford's girlfriend was living with you,” he
says.

“She left. But when she was here she usually slept in
the bed with me.”

“Is there something you want to tell me?”

“What are you doing here anyway?” I ask.

“What do you think? I'm here to pick out some wives.”

I cross my arms.

“Of course I'm here to see you,” he says.

“I told you on the phone. There's nothing for you here.”
He stares.

“You can't stay,” I say.

“Oh come on, Jane.”

And for the first time, I feel sorry for him. He looks
bewildered in unfamiliar terrain.

From the hall closet I hand him a pillow and a
blanket.

“Sofa city, sweetheart,” I say. “We can talk in the
morning.”

My bedroom door has been closed for less than five
minutes—my head swamped with conflicting wants—
before McCallister knocks and pushes it open. I'm about
to say “no way” but I want the closeness and obfuscation
of body to body, with no threat, and no surprises.

And because I want to, I say, “Okay.”

I pull back the covers and he scampers in, looping me
in a spooning hug. In the dark, I know his body instantly.
He kisses my neck over and over. It feels like an apology
and I accept it.

I remember the smell of Ephraim's sheets and the
strawberry candle and the sound of his frantic grunts.
Sam Gomez's thick tongue in my mouth. No. I force my
mind blank but my body tenses.

“Is this okay?” McCallister says.

“Yes,” I say.

His hands know just where to go; they are confident
and deft but not groping or overbearing. I relax with his
touch and let myself feel good. I always loved how he took
charge. I close my eyes and feel his palms against my
breasts, my back, my stomach. Warm, solid, knowing. We
don't speak. The sex has the sad and sweet quality of one
long good-bye. And through it all, I know that he's no
longer what I need.

We lie side by side looking at the shadows of tree
branches on the ceiling. I know he senses that I have
retreated.

“I'm not angry at you anymore,” I say.

“I must be really good,” he says.

“I'm serious.”

“I know.”

“But I haven't changed my mind,” I say.

“I came here for you,” he says.

“No, you came here for you,” I say.

“We're good for each other, Jane.”

“Even you know that's not true.”

McCallister shakes his head.

“There's an oral tradition of the Utes,” I say. “Ghosts happen when people haven't
been buried properly.” “What are you talking about?”

“I think we're each other's ghost. We haven't buried each other, so we linger.
But I think that maybe it's time.”

He rolls away from me, and I don't do anything to
bring him back.

“This is it for me,” I say.

“You're the only person who makes me feel okay,” he
says.

“Tough shit,” I say.“Maybe it's time for me to feel okay.”

McCallister is speechless. He rubs his forehead and
then his whole face.

“What happened to you?” he asks. “I thought you'd be
happy. I thought it's what you wanted.”

I don't answer.

He throws off the comforter and grabs his T-shirt and
boxers from the floor. With his hand on the doorknob, he
stops and turns back to me.

“Jane?”

“Yeah?”

“Maybe if you come back to New York we could try
again?”

I am quiet and he pulls the door shut.

When I awake the next morning, McCallister is
rustling around in the other room. With one word, I
could change everything. If I said his name, he would
come back. But I choose not even to say good-bye. I close
my eyes. I hear him zip up his bag. I hear the door squeak
open and catch closed, and McCallister is gone.

On the way to the car, the day too warm for January
and the sun too strong for my mood, I know there is only
one place for me to go.

Five hours later I arrive in Moab, the red rock cliffs
aglow with the remnant sun. I find Ford half-submerged
under his shingled trailer, his boots scraping the parched
mud ground.

“Hello?”