Calling Out

by Rae Meadows

  “But you can’t tell him you’re being paid,” he says.

  I feel dirty and confused. Last night I had sex for money for no good reason.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I don’t understand.”

  “Make something up. I don’t know. Say you’re

  Doreen’s daughter’s friend.”

  “But—”

  “Say it’s some type of outreach. Church group. He won’t ask.”

  Although I’m curious about the reason behind this man’s request, in the end, it doesn’t really matter. I agree to the date. I have a job to do, and a growing list of things I don’t want to think about.

  Unable to stay disassociated from my life any longer, I reluctantly go home, shed my well-worn clothes onto the floor, and use all the hot water in a long, scalding shower. My skin smarts and reddens, and I scrub until it’s tender. I’m glad I can’t see myself in the steamed mirror. After I dry, I pull on jeans, a sweatshirt, and sneakers and tie my hair tightly in a ponytail. No lace underwear. No makeup. No perfume. I down three glasses of water and slide the mound of twenties from Ephraim under my pillow.

  I could really use breakfast—the meal of hope and things still to be done—but Ruth’s is dark when I pass by and I drive on toward my assignment, my stomach bitter and empty.

  The house is simple, rough-hewn and neat, like a prairie pioneer home might have looked. Instead of a doorbell there is a cowbell hanging from the porch eave, which I ring, awakening the whole quiet canyon. Silence returns. After a couple minutes, there is a shuffling sound and the door opens.

  The right side of the man’s face sags and his right hand curls like a hook. In his left hand he holds a pad of paper and pencil. He writes, “May I help you?” holding the pad up to face me.

  “Hi,” I say. “Merry Christmas. I’m Jane.” I don’t notice the slip until I see him write my real name.

  “Hello, Jane,” he writes. “I’m Virgil Samuelson.”

  I shake his proffered healthy hand and smile.

  “So. Um. I’m a friend of Doreen’s daughter from church? I thought I’d drop by and say hello. I don’t have any family in the area either.”

  Virgil squints and tilts his head, doubting my story yet pleased enough to have the company. He motions me inside with his good hand.

  A pronounced limp makes his movements slow and jerky, but there is something elegant in his manner too. He is kind and a shadow of subtle stateliness surrounds him. The home is spare with Shaker furniture and arts-andcrafts-style details in the woodwork and molding. There is a fire going in the living room and Beethoven on the record player. Virgil points to his teacup and then to me.

  “Yes. Thank you. That would be nice,” I say.

  After he returns with my tea, we sit in matching wingback chairs angled in toward the fire.

  “Are you from here?” I ask.

  He shakes his head “no.” I try to envision how his face must have looked before it fell.

  He writes, “Chicago. Came here after stroke.” “Why here?”

  My tone causes him to grunt a laugh.

  “Brother was here,” he scrawls.

  “I’m originally from a suburb of Cleveland. Before here, New York,” I say.

  He rolls his hand at me to elicit more.

  I talk and he listens, smiling now and then with one side of his mouth. I tell him this is the first Christmas I haven’t gone home, how Utah has been an adjustment, that I like his house. It is soothing to talk and he seems content to listen. I tell him about my parents, my sister, my childhood, my college years. Every time I pause to let him interject, he motions me onward, long ago having put down his pad. At a certain point I’m not even sure he’s listening as he stares at the flames, finishing his tea. By the time I get to why I moved to Utah, Virgil is fast asleep in his chair. I sit for a time as the fire dies down. My tea is cold. I watch him as he sleeps, his head lolling to the side, drool glistening on his downcast lip. I’m exhausted and hungry. It occurs to me that I could be close to being untethered. I’m living a life I barely recognize as my own.

  I make my way quietly to the kitchen, hoping to find something to appease my gnawing stomach. I prepare a small plateful of pepper crackers and aged cheddar, add a couple of gingerbread men on the side, and eat standing at the sink surveying the backyard. There is a curious small building on the property, a cross between a shed and a cottage. After a quick check on my still-sleeping host I slip out the back.

  The door to the structure is unlocked. When I finally find the light switch, a deep ruby bulb turns on revealing what appears to be a darkroom. Pinned to a drying line is photograph upon photograph in black-and-white of an old enameled colander, with varying degrees of contrast and shadow, at slightly different angles, with light shooting though its holes like water from a showerhead. They are striking images, stark and dramatic. On the counter are boxes containing more pictures: an old work boot, a knife, an egg, a lamp, a dead bird, a rock, a plate, a window. Still life after still life. No people. Mesmerizing and lonely. I can’t stop staring. I consume them. I pull out boxes from all over the room for more. A tire, a doorknob, a tree stump, an artichoke, and then at the bottom of the last box, three photographs of the curled hand, clawlike and withered, with the slightest hint of blurred movement in the fingers.

  I wonder if these are his secret, if he has anyone in his life, what he did before the stroke, if there is any way that he is happy. I leave the mess I’ve made as it is.

  Inside, Virgil is still asleep.

  “Dear Virgil,” I write on his pad. “You take beautiful photographs. Merry Christmas. Jane.”

  chapter 19

  For days all I do is sleep. When I wake up, I take Tylenol PMs until I sleep again. I tell Mohammed I have a fever of 103. I wait for Ember to come back but she doesn’t. Even though I try not to, my thoughts return to my night with Ephraim again and again. I don’t know what to make of it. I don’t know what to make of me. I am eroding. When I finally crawl back into Premier to work the phones on New Year’s Eve, I say I’ve had some kind of terrible virus.

  Ford calls and tells me that Ember left him and Moab the day after Christmas. She said she felt too confined, too tied down. She said she needed to find her life on her own before she could latch onto someone else. Ford recognized her ill-tempered manner and fierce headaches as the beginnings of withdrawal, so when he woke up to find Ember foraging around in the dark for her car keys, it was not altogether unexpected. On the phone he sounds composed, almost fatalistic, but beneath it is a hollowness that comes from being left. I picture him as he calls from the gas station payphone, looking around at the purple sky and the dusty asphalt, feeling like he doesn’t understand the world at all.

  I’m pretty sure Ember is here in Salt Lake, it being the closest city she knows where to score. She’s been a noshow at Premier and Mohammed just shakes his head at yet another one to let him down.

  I check the parks first, Liberty and Pioneer, then drive by the coffee place at Ninth and Ninth, the eerie downtown mall, Temple Square—all the places I know she likes, looking for her beat-up Saab and those heat-emitting eyes. I fear that she is in trouble, but I also fear that she has discharged me along with Ford and it was that easy for her to let me go too. I catch what looks to be a familiar walk and the right kind of hair but as I drive nearer, the girl turns out to be a teenager with a baby strapped to her front.

  It’s only four o’clock but I follow a hunch to the Zephyr, figuring the bar is as good a place to find her as any and maybe I’ll have a beer to settle myself in the process. When my eyes adjust to the low lights, I see Ember perched on a stool at the end of the bar, her slight frame even slighter, her hands making frenetic gestures as she relays something to the bartender. At first I’m angry, then I check myself and remember how glad I am that she is not hurt or worse.

  “Hey,” I say, trying to sound casual.

  She turns and a trace of panic sparks her shadowed eyes.

  �
�Jane,” she says. “I’m so glad to see you.”

  My look betrays my skepticism.

  “No, I am. I mean, yeah, I was avoiding you a tiny bit. I didn’t want you to be disappointed or mad or whatever.” There’s dirt under her chewed fingernails. Her face twitches and highlights a vacancy I haven’t seen before. She slides from the stool and encircles my neck with her spindly arms.

  “I was worried,” I say into her smoky hair.

  “That’s not allowed,” she says. “And not necessary. Lord knows, I’m a big girl.”

  There is a new distance between us.

  “I bet Mohammed’s pretty pissed,” she says, getting me to laugh.

  “I talked to Ford,” I say.

  “It was best, you know. For me to end it with him.”

  But what about me, I want to ask.

  “Where are you staying?” I ask her instead.

  She shrugs. “Here and there. The past couple nights with my friend Steve downtown, just west of the tracks.”

  It’s the first I’ve heard of Steve.

  “You’d like him. He’s funny. And he’s not afraid of just going. Taking off on an adventure.”

  “You can stay with me, you know, whenever you want,” I say. I know I sound desperate, like one of the johns wanting to appear blasé when really he would do anything to have her stay with him longer, not because she’s getting paid but because she wants to.

  “I know,” Ember says.

  She has already cut me loose.

  “I have this really great thing to tell you about,” she says with a sudden mood shift, rubbing her nose. “Steve has this gig coming up—he’s a drummer—in Spain and I think I’m going to go with him. Cool, right? Barcelona in the spring, dancing, tapas, bullfights. I’ve always wanted to go to Spain.”

  She so genuinely craves the renewal her fantasy offers that I want to swaddle her in a blanket and carry her home.

  “Hey,” she says sharply. “Don’t look at me like that. You of anyone know why I need to go. Don’t give me that shit.” I can’t tell if it’s bitterness or being strung out that gives her words their bite. “It’s not what you think. Sometimes it’s just better to change the scenery. Fresh start and all that.”

  I squeeze her in another hug. I want to get to her but I can’t.

  “Okay,” I say.

  “Yeah. Okay,” she says.

  “You know where to find me,” I say. “When you want.”

  “And you’ll know where to find me,” she says, having regained her footing.

  “I will?”

  “Running with the bulls.” Ember downs the rest of her beer and slams it on the bar.

  “Sweet Home Alabama” starts playing on the jukebox. “Come on,” she says, grabbing my hand. “Let’s dance.”

  I know that Ember is doing what she does but it makes me feel worse, like I could be anybody.

  “I have to go,” I say.

  She holds my eyes but I look away first.

  “Okay,” she says.

  She kisses my cheek and lets go of my hand.

  *

  Ember drives over to my apartment later that night to clear out the rest of her things. Not much is there, really, just some clothes, a sketch pad and some makeup. She looks so hungry standing there in my kitchen I make her scrambled eggs.

  We take our coffee out to the front stoop.

  “I’ll send you a postcard from the Costa Brava,” she says.

  “I’d like that,” I say.

  “I sure won’t miss winter,” Ember says. She can’t sit still, first shaking her foot then scratching at a rough patch on her elbow. “I’m going to go get my stuff and put it in the car. Be right back.”

  Of course she’s inside for longer than she needs to be, but I let it go. After she returns, she throws her bag into the front seat and leans against the car for a moment looking at me.

  “Hey, Jane,” she says, “watch this.”

  With legs straight and toes pointed, Ember cartwheels across the snowy lawn with true grace. I soak up that joyful image, to fend off the sadness that is sure to come. When she reaches me, she rocks dizzily on her feet, but then smiles.

  “Bravo,” I say.

  “And with that, Queen Jane, I leave you,” she announces, curtsying like a ballerina.

  It’s hard to even fake a smile. I stand and pull her to me, kissing each cheek and then her forehead with loud smacks. Then, as only Ember can do, she kisses me softly on the lips, I melt, and she’s gone.

  *

  I sleep fitfully and wake to a morning curiously warm and humid for the desert winter. By the time I reach the car, I’m sweating in my ill-chosen down jacket. The lake smell is heavy and sulfurous even way out here in the Avenues, and in my pre-coffee haze, it makes me woozy. When I get to the Coffee Garden, it dawns on me that it’s Saturday and I have the day off. But I go to work anyway if only to keep my ruminations at bay and to not be alone. As I arrive at the office, balancing cup and steering wheel in one hand, I spill coffee on my lap. I dump the rest out onto the sidewalk, melting a brown hole into a mound of already dirty slush.

  Diamond, Nikyla, and Jezebel are sprawled morosely on the couches watching Bugs Bunny.

  “Hey,” I say.

  “Hey,” the three say in unison.

  Nikyla pulls a few strands of her hair through her fingers looking at the split ends in the light and Jezebel bites her thumbnail. Diamond scrunches down lower in the couch.

  “Who died?” I ask.

  “Diamond slept at my house because her husband is a dick,” Nikyla says pointing next to her. “And Jezebel’s car broke down this morning and it’s going to cost eight hundred dollars to fix. And she has her period.”

  “Being a girl totally sucks,” Jezebel says.

  “And I feel like I’m going to puke,” Nikyla says.

  “I’ll work for one of you if you want,” I say.

  Jezebel raises her eyebrow at me. “That’s weird. If I didn’t so need the money,” she says.

  Diamond stands and stretches with a loud yawn. “I’m not that generous. I’m outta here. We’ll see if the asshole’s in a better mood. Later girls.”

  I squeeze myself in the warm space Diamond left between Jezebel and Nikyla.

  “Do you mean it, Rox?” Nikyla asks.

  “Yeah,” I say. “Go home. Feel better.”

  “That’s so cool. I owe you,” she says.

  “No you don’t,” I say. “You’d do the same for me.”

  “Jezebel,” Marisa says from the desk, “Jason Butler wants to see you at the Dream Inn.”

  “Cheap bastard,” she says.

  *

  There was a time around the age of ten that I became obsessed with the vulnerability of my parents. My aunt had just died of cancer, and a neighbor had just been killed in a car accident. I didn’t worry about what could happen to me, but I would lie awake fearing all the bad things that could happen to my mom and dad and how dependent on them I was. I obsessed about the practical day-to-day things—Who would pick me up from school? Who would take my temperature? How would I cook dinner? I knew my teenaged sister would just move in with her friends and leave me to fend for myself.

  I asked God to please just let my parents live until I was twenty, because then I’d be an adult and I’d be able to manage. And when I made this deal, I was relieved. But then one afternoon, I mentioned to my mom that I would be an adult in exactly ten years.

  “If only it were that easy,” she said. “I wish there were some magic number. Unfortunately some people, no matter how old they get, never become adults.”

  Her disillusioning words wedged into my memory like a splinter, gestating unease. The thought has stuck with me that maybe I never quite made it, never crossed the threshold. I missed what everyone else around me seemed to get. I was a bluffer. Destined to be on the outside, going through the motions, pretending.

  *

  I am awakened by Marisa—I fell asleep during a show about sh
arks—to go see “Ricky Martin” at the Motel 6 on North Temple out toward the airport. After a quick gargle with the community mouthwash, I’m off.

  When the guy opens the door, all he has on is a bedsheet wrapped low around his waist. He’s tall and lean, with ropy, muscled arms, olive skin, and a menacing-looking pointed goatee. He stands there with an idiotic grin.

  “Ricky?” I ask, and he laughs and pulls me into the room.

  “Aren’t you something,” he says. “Let’s see your little tits.” He grabs my chest through my sweater.

  “Whoa there,” I say, pulling away. “Why don’t we get the money out of the way first.”

  While he fishes in his wallet, I catch a glimpse of his license.The name, Sam Gomez, I recognize from our 86ed list. But I’m not alarmed. I’m pretty sure he’s on it for bad checks.

  “Cash only,” I say.

  “Yeah, yeah,” he says, counting out twenties. “There’s extra in there for you.”

  “Thanks,” I say, shoving two hundred dollars into my pocket.

  As I call in to Marisa, I watch as he reclines on the bed and greedily sucks down a cigarette.

  “Are you safe?” she asks.

  “Yeah,” I say.

  “Have you collected?”

  “Yep,” I say, patting my pocket.

  “Get your cute ass over here,” he says as he snuffs out his cigarette.

  I put my game face on, take off my coat, and pull my sweater over my head. My breasts in my hands, I move my hips in small circles.

  “Yeah. I could tell you liked to party. Get those off now,” he says, pointing to my jeans.

  I strip down to my bra and underwear and straddle him on the bed. He is naked. I touch my cold feet to his thighs to warm them. We start to kiss and he smells like beer and aftershave. His tongue is rough, groping as far into my mouth as he can. With one hand on my neck he forces me down on my back with the whole of his body. There is sweat on his forehead and his penis is hard against my hip.

  His forcefulness is sudden and startling. I try to diffuse it.