by Rae Meadows
I hear the clang of a dropped tool and the whirring of something electrical. It’s tempting to venture back to see him in action, but I like to imagine the mad scientist at work. The couch is draped in a forest green bedsheet, which is tucked into the cushions, ash-spotted, and unevenly covering the yellow velour underneath. The room is like an old dorm room grown threadbare through twenty years of habitation. There is a tidiness in the way the magazines—Car & Driver, Rolling Stone—are piled neatly at the foot of the couch and every preserved animal has its own defined space. The vague, disagreeable pungence of formaldehyde lingers, mixed with old cigarettes and pine cleaner.
“I’ll show you later,” Ephraim says, as he comes back in, wiping his hands on a greasy towel. “The antlers are good. Real symmetrical.”
“Great,” I say.
“You look good,” he says. “Are you new?”
“Pretty new,” I say, deciding against reminding him I spoke with him on Thanksgiving. “Why do you ask?”
“I didn’t recognize your description.”
I’m expecting him to call me on its obvious stretches of the truth but he only seems pleased with himself that he was in the know.
“Have you always lived out here? In Nephi, I mean.”
Ephraim goes into the kitchen.
“Yeah. I grew up with my grandparents over in Jerusalem, east of here on the edge of the Uinta, but since there’s only fifty folks there, I’ve always said I’m from Nephi.”
He returns with a beer can in each hand and holds one out to me.
“I was going to move down to Richfield some years ago to a bigger shop but that would have been a mistake. I got over it.” Ephraim falls heavily into the couch beside me. “I need to be my own boss is the bottom line,” he says, looking around at his animal companions.
“It’s amazing work,” I say. “So real-looking.”
“Yep,” he says. “I know. I’m not trying to brag or anything but I’m pretty much a master of the art.”
“I can see you’re right,” I say, cracking open my Bud Light. “Shall we get the money out of the way?”
“Hah,” he says, shaking his head in exaggerated annoyance. “I should have known.” Ephraim sits up with one hand on his knee, tilts his head back, and downs his beer, finishing with a shake of his hair. “What’s the damage?” he asks, pulling a roll of bills from his jeans.
“Two hours. And then the travel fee. That comes to five hundred and forty.”
“You’ve got to be shitting me!” he says, as if he didn’t know, as if I might give him a special deal.
“You agreed to it over the phone.”
“Sheesh,” he says, shaking his head and counting out bills on his thigh. “Good thing it’s Christmas Eve and I’m feeling generous.” He hands me the money. “You can take off your coat. Throw it over the chair there. Want another beer?”
“No, not yet. Thanks.”
After calling in to Marisa—she doesn’t answer, so I act out the call in case he’s listening—I start asking Ephraim questions, sensing his overwhelming desire to be heard. He’s been percolating. With another beer, his words begin to flow, building to a sizable torrent.
“I didn’t ever know my parents. My mom died when I was three, then my father bolted. Who knows what happened to him. I hope the fucker’s dead. More likely down in Colorado City with ten wives. My grandfather kicked it when I was in high school and my grandma a few years back.”
“You must miss having people around, out here on your own,” I say resting my hand on his arm.
“Sometimes, I guess. I don’t really notice it when I’m working but at night it’s hard. I think most people think I don’t have much to say. But I do. You know?”
“Yeah,” I say.
He runs his fingers through his hair in rapid strokes and clears his throat to drown out the emotion.
“It’s not that there aren’t women,” he says.
I don’t ask him if there are any he doesn’t pay for.
“I think they can’t deal with my dedication to my work. They need too much attention.” He loops his arm around my shoulders as if we are teenagers at the movies. “Taxidermy is my calling. My grandfather did it and I knew it was for me by age six. I’ve developed my own unique techniques. I have one guy who sends me his salmon all the way from Alaska because he thinks no one else makes the heads look so alive.”
Ephraim’s glistening face leads me to believe he is working up to a bigger move in my direction.
“Roxanne is a nice name,” he says.
“Thank you.”
“Do you want me to show you around the place?”
“Thought you’d never ask.”
Ephraim points back to where the bedroom is but leads me instead into his workshop, awash in the greenish tinge of fluorescent light and the ghostly hush of lifelessness. There is a chemical tang to the air. White plastic animal heads, grouped by species, line the walls. He pulls out one of the drawers of what looks like a metal card catalog and glass eyeballs knock together as benignly as marbles.
“These are imported from Germany,” he says, holding one up in his fingers. “They’re for cats. Not the big wild ones but house cats. For old ladies mostly.”
I imagine the other escorts who have been here— Jezebel bored and giggling, and Nikyla trying to be nice despite finding it disturbing—as Ephraim points out the different pelts drying on the line.
“Check this out,” he says, motioning to a back table.
An enormous deer head looks up to the ceiling, its giant, spiked branches of antlers wrapped in plastic.
“Wow,” I say.
“I know, right? I bet this white tail was closing in on seven years old.”
“Do you ever do work for museums?” I ask.
Ephraim is so pleased with my question he can’t hide his smile as he bounces on his heels.
“I did an exhibit a couple years ago for the Salt Lake zoo. Refurbishing this monkey diorama they have there. That was cool. I like to go up there sometimes to visit it. I did some good tail work on those guys.”
I sit on a metal stool as he continues around the studio: noses for any animal in plastic and rubber, the drainage sink, scalpels, a whole drawer full of needles in various sizes, nylon thread, cotton batting for stuffing that he orders from furniture upholstering wholesalers because he says it looks more realistic under the skin than what his suppliers in the trade offer. He pets a half-stuffed raccoon whose body is frozen in an inquisitive pose, as if it’s just about to peer into a window.
“Can I watch you work?” I ask.
And from his sad smile I know that my request is the nicest thing he has heard in a long while, edging into intimate territory that has always been his solitary and passionate pursuit.
“Uh, yeah. Sure,” he says. “It’s pretty neat stuff. This guy here,” he says, massaging the back fur of the raccoon, “used to scavenge in Mr. Moses’s garbage cans, so he finally took him out with a baby .22. See this bare spot in the fur right here? I filled it in with some rubber molding and now I’m going to graft fur onto it. There. See? You’d never know, would you?”
I smile and shake my head “no.”
“I already picked out his eyes, so I paint some adhesive around the rims, push them through some, adjust, and voilà.”
The wind finds the small space between the window and its frame, blowing through in cold wisps that seek out my exposed neck. I let my hair down to combat the chill.
“The head is probably the best part. You squeeze the skull form into the face skin from below—when it’s a good fit, it pops right into place—move it around so the eyes and nose sit right, and then you’re ready to sew. Don’t get the wrong idea, though. I’ve worked on this one for hours already. Even the ears and whiskers required some refurbishing.”
The gusts outside make a cooing sound as they whoosh by the house.
“Are you cold?” he asks.
I nod.
Ephraim reaches into a trunk and pulls
out a large dark furry hide.
“A black bear. Back when it was still legal to kill them. That’ll warm you right up.”
A beastly essence still clings to the skin and I have to breathe through my mouth when he drapes it around my shoulders.
“Don’t worry, he’s been dead for about ten years.”
I’m not sure what he thinks I might be worried about but I let it go. He places the raccoon upside down in a padded chamois-covered vice and threads a large curved needle like the kind used for quilting. His hands work in graceful tandem with delicate precision, his stitches as even as those of a seasoned seamstress.
“This is one of the secrets,” he says. “Most people rush through this part. But the whole point is to leave no mark.”
“You have nice hands,” I say.
Ephraim stops sewing and looks up at me, suddenly self-conscious and momentarily out of his element.
“Yeah?” he asks, his face pink.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
He stitches quickly now, up the throat, and with some intricate maneuver with the needle at the underside of the neck, Ephraim closes it up and snips the thread.
“Feel it,” he says. “Run your finger along here.”
Ephraim guides my finger with his hand along the almost invisible seam.
“Massage the fur so it moves over the stitches like this.”
He demonstrates, I follow, and then his hand covers mine. The fur is rougher than I expected.
“What now?” I ask.
“I’ll spray it tomorrow with this superfine-mist oil treatment, mount him, and he’ll be ready to go.”
“No, I mean, what now?” I try to be seductive but my voice sounds too tinny.
“Oh,” he says, pulling away, rubbing his palms together. “Okay then.”
He points his head toward the hall and lifts his eyebrows in question. I hop off the stool and follow him into the house.
His bedroom is small and spare except for the giant floor-to-ceiling photographic mountain scene covering one wall.
“Pretty badass, huh? I put that up last year. It comes in large sheets like wallpaper. I’ve seen this one that’s a view of the Grand Canyon. I might change it up.”
Both of us stand stiffly in the middle of the room.
“Maybe we could light some candles in here,” I say, spying one next to the bed.
He jumps into action, pulling an array of fruity drugstore candles from his dresser drawer.
“Much better,” he says as he lights them. I turn off the overhead light.
I’m glad there are no animals in here to watch us.
“Why don’t we sit on the bed,” I say.
I think Ephraim is relieved to be told what to do. He sits gingerly on the edge of the bed and I run my hand down his back. He closes his eyes and surrenders a deep, pent-up breath.
“There,” I say.
My hand travels onto his neck, slowly rubbing, venturing up into his hair and down across his collarbone. I kick off my shoes and move behind him to work with two hands, slowly kneading, one inch at a time. His breath catches and I realize that he’s crying.
“Baby, what’s wrong?” I say softly near his ear, hugging him from behind.
Ephraim forces a stop to the tears with a few emphatic breaths.
“Roxanne. This is just so…nice.”
I brush his hair behind his ear.
“Ephraim, would you like to kiss me?”
He turns to me and nods, looking like a plaintive boy with a skinned knee.
*
Ephraim is earnest and aggressive and incredibly appreciative all at the same time. He yanks off my clothes then stops for a look of grateful rapture at the sight of my skin. Still in his jeans, he humps my leg and squeezes my breasts as if they’re made of Silly Putty.
“Slow,” I say. “We’re in no hurry.”
He stops, rises up to look at me, but then he’s at it again, tugging at my bra without knowing how to get it unhooked. I do it for him because it’s Christmas Eve, because he’s a fine taxidermist, and because, I realize, I don’t care that much one way or the other.
“Roxanne, would you mind if I took my pants off?” he asks in a polite, quiet voice.
“I wouldn’t mind, Ephraim. I’ll help,” I say.
And in trembling candlelight, with the flash of his needy eyes as he kisses my stomach, I calculate that his desire to have me is, at that moment, greater than my desire not to be had. I’m weary. I tell myself that it will mean more to him to have sex with me than it will for me not to.
And so I guide him to me.
After a few minutes of flailing about, Ephraim looks down in exasperation at his only semi-erect penis. Even in the stingy light of the room, I see shame in his eyes. He flips me around beneath him so that I am face-down on the bed, and I’m flooded with the sour bodily smell of dirty sheets. I squelch a gag and he thrusts himself against me with singular intent. When he shifts on top of me, I can manage only shallow breaths, each tinged with the smell of his ripe sweat. I resign myself to the disaster that barrels toward me.
He is rough. It hurts. But I don’t resist. I feel like it’s easier just to get it over with, get to the other side. I tune out his grunts and his slick, heaving body. I close my eyes and remove myself. I teeter on the verge of emotional vertigo but concentrate on the promise of release. I wait for the aftermath of calm.
I focus on a Christmas twenty-three years ago when my sister and I got a new sled. It was orange plastic with a yellow rope and grooved runners for speed. Behind our house, the gently sloping yard was our designated hill. It was a nice easy ride, fun the first few times, but soon dull. The boys next door were racing down their cleared ravine and shooting across the iced-over pond at its base. We were prohibited from joining them, which was fine for my sister, but the boys’ exhilarating whoops proved too tempting for me. I don’t remember much of my ride but I can’t forget holding on for life, with the icy air making my eyes water, and then sliding to shore and looking up, and seeing my father appear at the top of the hill.
With an angry grip on my upper arm, he led me back to the house, where I received a stinging succession of spankings, and then I cried and cried—not for the pain, but for the injustice. He punished me for the danger. For an accident that never happened. I remember his woodsy smell of Scotch and the patchy antiseptic overlay of Listerine.
*
When I open my eyes, I’m met with the sight of Ephraim’s unruly hair and postcoital blush. He shyly covers his lower half with the sheet, minding our separation on the bed.
“So. I suppose I got to pay some extra for that,” he says. “There isn’t exactly a pay scale,” I say, sitting up. “Can I get you anything?” he asks.
“No thanks,” I say. I don’t want to be here another minute.
He bites the tip of his finger, camouflaging a smile, which I take to mean he enjoyed it enough for the both of us.
“I don’t suppose you’d like to do this again sometimes. I mean, not for money.”
“Thanks…but I don’t think so.”
“I guess Nephi is kind of far from Salt Lake.”
From the small digital clock by the bed, I can see that our two hours have almost elapsed. I search around the sheets for my underwear.
“Well. I best be on my way,” I say pulling them on.
He turns his crestfallen face away, sits up, and grabs his jeans from the floor.
“Put your hand out,” he says.
I lose count of the bills.
“Don’t spend it all in one place,” he says, his shell of bravado again intact.
His semen pools in my underwear.
“Say, how come you do this, anyway? You seem like a nice girl,” he says.
I put on my skirt and wrinkled blouse.
“Does one preclude the other?” I ask.
“What?”
“Nothing. I’m just doing it for now.”
“Well, drive safe.�
��
“Okay. Merry Christmas.”
“Yeah, it is, isn’t it?” He sighs. “Oh wait a second. I have something for you.”
He jogs down the hall toward his workshop. I hear the sounds of a door and drawers and indecision. I’d almost forgotten about the fox pelt. But when he returns, he’s holding a majestic silver fox mounted on a block of shined walnut.
“I want you to have this,” he says.
And with that, I take the gift, hugging it to my chest, and greet the freezing darkness of Christmas morning. I heave the fox out the window somewhere near Spring Lake.
*
I nod off twice on the drive back from Nephi, the second time narrowly missing the guardrail and an indeterminate drop-off outside of American Fork. I cross into Salt Lake City and I’m too exhausted to go home and think about my choices and the money in my pocket, so I go straight to the office instead. The sound of my slammed car door punctuates the still, predawn alley and my heels clack against the frozen sidewalk. I let myself in and lock the door behind me.
Someone has left the Christmas tree lights on, blinking with false gaiety. The cold air is stale with smoke and perfume, and I pull the heat lever all the way to the right. I unplug the lights, leaving total darkness, and I sit there motionless. My underwear is crusty and I am sore. The only sound is the tired heater churning out the dry hot air.
chapter 18
The phone wakes me at ten a.m. My face is stuck to the leather cushion and my legs are hanging over the armrest. Sweat has gathered between my breasts and my mouth is cottony, my lips cracked. It’s so hot I’m disoriented and I throw my coat off and stagger to the heater. Ninety-five degrees. I drink rust-tinged water straight from the bathroom tap. I hear the phone ringing again as I begin to regain my equilibrium.
I half expect McCallister or Ford, or Ephraim even, but it’s a man calling from Miami, his voice rushed and sheepish, stained with something I pinpoint as guilt, wanting to pay for an escort to keep his great-uncle company for an hour or two on Christmas. Emigration Canyon. Will pay in advance with a credit card, including a hundred-dollar tip.