Names I Call My Sister

by Mary Castillo

  “Prostitute lawyers? That’s brilliant. And fitting! I mean, usually when you hire a lawyer, you end up getting screwed anyway.” Wyatt cracked up at his own joke.

  Marisol laughed, too, but quickly straightened up. “Sex work and prostitution aren’t synonymous, Wyatt. There’s stripping, online modeling. Even, I don’t know, phone sex.”

  “Like those are any better?” Wyatt laughed.

  “Hey, postgraduate work is expensive. These women can earn a lot more money stripping their way to an MBA than waiting tables at some chain restaurant for crappy tips. If it helps them to become highly productive members of society, I’m all for it.”

  Cristy’s inner alarm started to ping at about what seemed, ohhh, wind chime volume. Just a niggling nudge for her to listen closely. Not to worry, though, because Marisol had promised….

  “That’s bull! Name one professional who has done it.”

  “It’s not my place to name names. You know that.”

  He laughed. “That’s because you don’t have names to name. I can smell an Avila bluff a mile away.”

  “I’m not bluffing!”

  “Riiiiiight.” Wily Wyatt’s voice dripped with überskepticism. He knew precisely how to prod Marisol into a verbal battle with his arrogant banter—one of the reasons they were so popular with listeners. “Then answer this, yes or no. You’d honestly trust a lawyer or doctor if you knew she’d table-danced her way through college?”

  “Darn right I would. In fact—” Marisol cut herself off—a wholly uncharacteristic move.

  Cristy could almost hear her sister weighing her pros and cons, and in that split second her internal alarm volume cranked up to air raid siren level. She stood immobile, trans-fixed with the voices emanating from her sound system. Blood began to pound in her ears. Her sisterly psychic connection warned her to brace for the impending verbal train wreck before she even heard the whistle. “Uh-oh.”

  “What?” asked Lola.

  “Nothing.” Her sister never hesitated before a blurt. Never. There had to be a reason, and logic said…

  But, no. It couldn’t be, because Marisol had promised—

  “Give it up,” said Wyatt.

  “Well…” said Marisol.

  “No. I’m begging,” Cristy whispered, moving closer to the speaker on wobbly legs. “Don’t give anything up.”

  “What?”

  “Shhh!” She flapped her hand in Lola’s direction.

  “Come on,” Wyatt prompted in his well-honed cocky tone.

  “Never mind,” Marisol said.

  Cristy exhaled in relief.

  But Wyatt wouldn’t let it drop. “You can’t defend it, can you? I win this round. Just admit it, Avila. You’re wrong. I’m right. Ha! No one would trust a professional if they knew she’d tramped her way through school.”

  “Not only am I offended by your use of the word ‘tramped,’ but I happen to know you’re dead wrong,” was Marisol’s sharp retort. “And I have a great example.”

  Cristy inhaled sharply and braced herself.

  “Well, don’t keep Denver waiting.”

  “Yes! Keep them waiting!” Cristy shouted.

  Marisol released an audible breath. “Okay, so—”

  “No!”

  “—my sister won’t be thrilled that I broke a promise to her, but it’s for a noble cause.”

  “Damnit!” Cristy covered her face with hands that had gone morgue slab cold. “No, no, no, no!”

  “What the hell am I missing here?” Lola asked.

  Cristy heard the bewilderment in Lola’s question, but knew she didn’t have to answer. Lola, and the whole freakin’ world, would know her true deepest, darkest secret soon enough. She raised her eyes heavenward. “God? I know you’re swamped, but please be listening,” she said in a rush of words she knew were wasted. “I will never ask for anything again if you somehow stop Marisol from saying—”

  “My baby sister, Cristy—”

  “Shit!” She stomped.

  “—the highly successful owner of Simplicity in West Highlands—”

  “Shit, shit!”

  “—worked as a phone sex girl during grad school.”

  “What?” Wyatt blurted in half astonishment, half laughter.

  Marisol raised her voice and kept talking. “You asked, and I’m providing you with concrete proof that I am right and you are dead wrong. There is no question Cristy is a self-made business mogul, right?”

  “Right, but—”

  “But nothing. My kid sister is neither a tramp nor a slut. Hell, she barely dates, but that’s a whole different topic. And yet she launched that business of hers with well-earned phone sex money, and I’m damn proud of her for doing so. What do you think of that?”

  “Is that true?” Lola gasped just as Cristy yelled, “You bitch!” at the stereo speaker.

  “Is it? Is it true?”

  In the background Wyatt was hollering, “Bombshell! Bombshell! Bombshell! Folks, the phone lines are blowing up in the studio. Give us a call if you have a comment about today’s topic. Little Cristy Avila, one of Denver’s most successful up-and-coming business owners, was a phone sex girl. Now that’s the way to spice up your Monday morning commute. Cristy, if you’re out there, how about calling in and giving the listeners a little sample: 303–555-HOTT. Bucka-wow!”

  “I am going to kill her.” Cristy sank to the floor cross-legged. Her body thrummed with the kind of prickly adrenaline surge brought about by pure shock. “I can’t believe she did this! Again! She promised she wouldn’t ever tell a soul, Lo.” Cristy peered up at her friend with wide, round eyes. “How could she throw me under the bus like that?”

  “Shit on rye,” Lola said in a reverent tone as her lips spread into a smile. “It is true.”

  Chapter 2

  “She swore on her wardrobe that she wouldn’t discuss my life on her show anymore! And you know how the Material Girl loves her damn designer clothes.” Marisol was Blahnik to her Birkenstock. Couture vs. Comfort. Lhuillier as opposed to Levi’s. One day, Marisol called, all excited because she’d gotten a great deal on a new pair of “Choos.” Confused, Cristy’d thought her sister was saying “shoes” with some weird fake Spanish accent. No lie. That she and Marisol were even related boggled the mind. “It was a rule!”

  Lola cringed. “This might be stating the obvious, but your sister doesn’t strike me as much of a rule follower.”

  “I hate her.”

  “No, you don’t.

  “Yes, I do. I really, really do.” At least, she wanted to. The ramifications of Marisol’s blurt raced through Cristy’s head. She felt violated. She felt outed. She felt naked and ass up in front of the whole world. She could just imagine the fallout—

  A sick realization clutched her throat and shot ice down her spine. She jammed her spread fingers into the front of her hair. “Holy mother of—oh my God.”

  “What? What now?”

  “My parents. They know nothing about the phone sex job. I never told them. Obviously.”

  “Oops.”

  Cristy flopped back onto the floor and stared unseeing at the ceiling. “I’m fucked.”

  The hardwood floor creaked as Lola moved closer to peer down at her with a sympathetic grimace. “No, you aren’t. You’re a grown woman. Your parents can’t punish you for…damn, Cris. Sorry, but…phone sex? That’s what I’d call a secret worthy of a handmade postcard. How much does a gig like that pay?”

  Cristy pierced her with a droll stare. “Lola.”

  Lola held up both hands in surrender. “Okay, no questions. Not yet, at least. What were we talking about? Oh yeah, your parents. They’ll just have to understand.”

  “That’s not it. I was always the good daughter! I liked being the good daughter. I never wanted them to know.”

  Lola shrugged. “If you didn’t want them to know, you never should’ve told that sister of yours.”

  “It was an accident!”

  “Make your peace, hone
y. The cat’s out of the bag, what’s done is done, and every other cliché that means you can’t change what already happened. Besides, it doesn’t cancel out your ‘good daughter’ status anyway.”

  “It’s not like I loved the stupid job. But it paid great, and I could work from home while I studied.” She groaned, bonking the back of her head on the floor. The knitting needle securing her topknot poked her in the skull, so she yanked it out and threw it. “How else was I supposed to afford this place? Did they want me living in their basement like some social mutant until I saved up enough?”

  “Exactly.” Lola spread her arms wide. “See?”

  As if that were a decent argument. All she could see was her life swirling down the toilet.

  “Chin up, Cris. It’ll blow over.” She held her hand out to help Cristy up from the floor.

  Cristy accepted it, scrambling to her feet. “I’m so disowning her this time. Screw the free publicity. We don’t need it. Business is booming here. We couldn’t drive the customers away if we wanted to.” She froze.

  “What?”

  “Hurry, lock the back door.”

  “Why?”

  Cristy dashed to the front door and threw the dead bolt. She flipped the window sign to CLOSED, then yanked the curtains together behind it. “It’s Monday. You know the Mondragon sisters always come early on Mondays because their kids are in play group.”

  “Yeah. So, what does that have to do with the back—”

  “Just do it, Lola. Please.” Cristy stomped around the room snapping roman shades down over the tall windows. “We have an hour before we have to open, and I’m not up for earlybirds. Not today.” She needed sixty full minutes to somehow pull herself together.

  Once she’d battened down all the hatches, she sank into the bay window seat with a pained groan. “I’ll knock her on her ass next time I see her, I swear. This is war, Lola. It’s gonna get ugly as hell.”

  Lola’s eyes went round. “Right. How about I…um…go fix you a nice cup of tea,” Lola said as she reversed it out of the room. “Something calming. Chamomile, I think.”

  “Screw calm. Steep some arsenic tea,” Cristy hollered after her. “I’ll offer my sister a cup.”

  “Lord almighty,” she heard Lola mumble.

  Geez. Cristy jammed her arms crossed. Ranting wasn’t generally her style, but Marisol always brought out the worst in her. She could hardly blame Lola for wanting to bail. Releasing a sound midway between a sigh and a sob, she rested her head against the back cushion that nestled the side of the window seat. Why had she ever let down her guard with Marisol? Hadn’t she been burned enough already? The betrayal was crushing.

  Breathe, Cristy, she told herself. In…out. In…out.

  It wasn’t as though this was the first time Hurricane Marisol had stormed through her life, leaving a wide swath of devastation in her wake. One would think she’d be immune to it by now. In…out.

  But, really, who wouldn’t be embarrassed by the phone sex job announcement? What sane woman could become immune to having her private life exploited in front of the entire metro area, all for the sake of f-ing ratings? In…out.

  Okay, so maybe exploitation was too strong of a word. After all, according to their mother, Marisol meant well. Whatever. The entire blabbermouth Avila clan meant well, but big freakin’ whoop. They just didn’t get it, not a single one of them. Over the years, her boisterous, boundary-challenged familia’s good intentions had done a piss-poor job of making her feel any less mortified by their antics. Or less exposed when they shoved her into the spotlight she dreaded with every fiber of her being. Kind of like now.

  Inoutinoutinoutinoutinout.

  The flood of emotions carried her straight back to seventh grade, when Marisol had thrown the socially crippling, surprise “Welcome to Womanhood” party to celebrate Cristy’s first menstrual period. Oh yes, the festivities came complete with blood red balloons, a cake decorated like a big-ass Midol tablet, and boys from school on the guest list. Boys.

  That one had nearly killed her.

  Of course, Marisol was so out of touch, she’d never dreamed the WtW party would hurt or embarrass her. She’d been genuinely excited by this evidence that her hermanita was growing up, and figured Cristy would be, too. In other words, Marisol had meant well. The tragedy was that she’d felt the need to share.

  That horrific night had always ranked number one, by a wide margin, on her Most Humiliating Moments list. Until today.

  Screw deep breathing. She buried her face in her hands.

  Look, she’d long since accepted that she’d been dropped, tragically, into the wrong gene pool by some crack-smoking, half-blind stork. Obviously—because she was the only Avila who’d come equipped with the standard embarrassment gene. Which is why, at the ripe old age of five, she’d decided that her goal in life was to fade quietly into the background. God, how she’d tried. With Simplicity, she’d come thisdamnclose to succeeding.

  Freakin’ Marisol.

  Enough. She needed to face facts. Fading was impossible unless she extricated herself from the tell-all talons of her relatives, once and for all. Problem was…she couldn’t do it. No matter how much she wished she could right then.

  Because—damn it all—she loved them.

  All of them, even her big-mouthed, hag bitch of a sister.

  Despite the traumas of her adolescence, despite every embarrassing thing they’d ever done, despite the fact that she didn’t even date because the thought of bringing a guy to meet the Avilas gave her hives, she really did love her family. She’d tried to hate Marisol. Really, she had.

  It just hadn’t worked.

  With a long, morose sigh, all her fight melted into something gooey and useless, like defeat. Resignation. Loss of will. And sitting here wasn’t going to change a damned thing. Cristy stood. She might as well bury herself in work and denial, Just like usual. She scuffed her way into the back room as Lola emerged from the kitchen holding a steaming mug.

  Unshed tears stung Cristy’s eyes. “I can’t believe she outed me like that, Lola.”

  For a moment the two women stood across from each other just staring. “It might not be as bad as you think,” Lola finally said in an uncertain tone, but beneath her zillion freckles, her face had gone ghostly white.

  “Hello, former phone sex girl?” Cristy aimed both thumbs at herself.

  “Well…but…yeah. Okay, I guess it’s sort of bad. But…she didn’t mean to upset you, I’m sure.”

  “She never means to upset me. That’s not the point. People will look at me differently, Lo. My parents, customers.”

  “I don’t look at you any differently. Frankly, I think it’s an interesting facet of your past that I wish I knew more about. A lot more.” Her money-green eyes widened and she held the mug out toward Cristy.

  Ignoring Lola’s not-so-subtle hint, Cristy waved away the mug. “I don’t want to be interesting. I’d rather be invisible.”

  “I know, hon. I know.” With a sigh, Lola set the steaming tea on an unopened box. “Look,” she said. “Marisol loves you.”

  Cristy barked out a pained laugh. “Yeah. She loves me her way. She has no concept of what love would mean to me.” She clenched her fists. “She might just love me to death if she doesn’t stop humiliating me in public.”

  “No one has ever died of embarrassment.”

  “Great. I’ll be the first mortification death on record. More fame—just my luck.” Cristy reared back and punched her fist through the tape line of another box of yarn.

  Lola yelped. “Cut it out, before you break your wrist.”

  “It’s just yarn.” Unfazed, she tore the box flaps up. “You know, on second thought, a coffin sounds pretty good. At least I’d be away from it all, surrounded by peace and quiet.”

  “Stop talking like that. It’s just her job,” Lola said, starting in on a box of her own, albeit with less violence.

  “Yeah, well her job sucks.”

  “It might suck,
but she’s damn good at it. Besides, people get it. They do. Listeners probably won’t even believe what she said is true. And, if they do, well…I’m sure you’re not the first sibling of a DJ who has been embarrassed in public.”

  “Is that supposed to cheer me up?” Cristy hurled a skein of variegated red mohair. It hit Lola’s shoulder and deflected left, but she caught it.

  “I guess it’s just supposed to be the truth.” Lola tossed the yarn in the air and palmed it again.

  Cristy lifted the tea and sipped, considering her friend’s words. Lola was right, of course. But the truth did not set her free. Marisol, with her big mouth and no shame, was the quintessential radio shock jock, which is why she and Wily Wyatt dominated the Denver radio market. Thanks to the Godzilla-sized photos of the pair decorating billboards, buses, and bar walls, Mari couldn’t even go to Wal-Mart without someone recognizing her. That sounded like pure, undiluted hell to Cristy, but her sister ate it up.

  The stupid radio show was popular because people loved to revel in the misfortunes of others, to squirm over someone else’s embarrassment, and the evil duo served that shit up like homemade cherry pie. But why did it always have to be her freakin’ pie?

  Like a snap, her anger reignited. She pounded the side of her fist against her thigh. “That bitch! Maybe I’ll sue her.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. She’s your sister.”

  “All the more reason. A big dollar lawsuit might be just what it takes to shake her into realizing I mean it when I say my private life doesn’t belong on her radio show.”

  “It might turn out to be nothing. I mean, not everyone listens to the Marisol and Wily Wyatt show.”

  As if to directly dispute Lola’s words, the wall phone started ringing, as did her cell from inside her purse. Cristy hesitated a moment, then silently chastised herself. She had a business to run, for God’s sake. Lifting the shop’s handset, she infused as much enthusiasm into her tone as possible. “Simplicity, this is Cristy.”

  “Hot damn,” came the strange man’s oily words. “It is you.”

  Her knuckles whitened on the receiver. “Who is this?”