Ally Hughes Has Sex Sometimes

by Jules Moulin

  Khakis, polo, no socks, tan, he looked as if he’d stepped off the Jitney, and maybe he had. “Pleased to meet you!” he called. “Thrilled!” He shook their hands. “Which one’s Jenny?”

  “Me,” said Lizzie. “This is Weather.”

  “Great,” said Fishman. “Ted’s like a brother. Teddy is great.”

  “Yes,” said Lizzie. “Yes, yes, he is.”

  —

  On the ninth floor, they walked through the polished, winding halls.

  “The building was built in 1901. It was a factory. Sugar, they say. A sugar mill.” Fishman led them past door after door, all of them shut. Music floated out into the hall. “You work the same studio. Room is yours, twenty-four-seven, except for one to three at night, when the cleaning crew comes. No charge.” He turned around and smiled.

  They both smiled back.

  Lizzie then heard the song “Putin Zassal” from inside a room. She recognized it. “Pussy Riot! The Russian group! Love!”

  Fishman frowned. “But Russian isn’t our brand. I’ll remind her.”

  “You have a brand?” Lizzie asked, curious. Ted hadn’t mentioned a brand.

  He explained:

  Six years before, he had personally funded a marketing study of “Global Internet Porn Habits.” The study broke web searches down by region, then by country, around the world.

  With the results, he and his partner decided to focus on Western Europe, specifically Belgium.

  Belgians, he said, the research said, trolled the web for American girls. So did the French. So they decided to sell them a type. “The models who work here have to look stateside.”

  “What does that mean?” Lizzie asked.

  “American college. Innocent but slutty. Fresh but willing.”

  The girls nodded. They understood.

  The sites, he explained, charged five bucks a minute, American dollars, for the live meetings. “Four hundred thousand clients a day,” Fishman bragged. “Our models are cut into the flat minute rate at fifty percent, plus tips. Fifty percent!” he said with a smile. “Some make four hundred bucks an hour.”

  He didn’t say more. He didn’t say he’d installed hidden cameras in every studio.

  Or that they’d recorded the sessions from start to finish, from four different angles, close-up and wide.

  The hundreds of hours of digital footage, naked footage, sliced and diced into ten-minute shorts, compiled, and sold worldwide as a series, this was his secret.

  He didn’t say that American Girls, volumes one, two, and three, had earned investors, including Ted, millions of dollars.

  Finally, Fishman had found success.

  Instead, he walked them into the pantry. “This is free to anyone working.” He opened the cabinets to show off boxes of candy, health bars, chips. A small table sat by the window with three midcentury chairs around it. “Soda in the fridge. We keep it pretty stocked. Microwave there.” He pointed to it and then turned. “Questions?”

  The girls shook their heads.

  —

  Down the hall, in the payroll office, Josh was typing as they entered. He was twenty-two and wore a black baseball cap backward. “That hag, before, pushed thirty, yo.” He didn’t see Lizzie and Weather in the doorway. “Rolls of fat ain’t curves, you old hag.”

  “That’s enough, Josh. We’ve got guests.” Fishman opened his leather briefcase and took out his phone. “I apologize for Josh. This way, ladies.”

  Surprised, Josh turned and looked at the girls as Fishman led them back into the hall.

  “I just need photos. Back, side, front,” Fishman said as they walked. “Again, please keep your underthings on.” He opened the door to an empty room and led them inside. “I’ll be out here. Knock when you’re ready.”

  In the room, the girls looked around. It was empty except for a folding chair.

  “What a jerk. That IT guy?” Lizzie said.

  “I thought he was cute.” Weather pulled off her tank top.

  “Wannabe Eminem bullshit. Please.”

  “This is fun.” Weather giggled and pulled down her shorts.

  “This is creepy,” Lizzie replied, lifting her tank top up and off. They piled their clothes onto the chair. Lizzie looked at the door. “Are we sure we want to do this?”

  “Why? What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t know. We’re naked here.”

  “What did you think? I have bathing suits that show more than this.”

  “I know. Okay, why am I freaking?”

  “Free snacks!”

  “Exactly. Everything’s covered. For now.”

  They laughed. Weather moved to the door and cracked it. “Ready,” she said.

  In the hall, Fishman was texting. He looked up at Weather, entered the room, and closed the door.

  For the next few minutes, the girls posed with pursed lips and sleepy eyes, and Fishman shot them with his iPhone—click, click, click. “Give me some sugar.” Front, side, and back. And that was that.

  That was the tryout.

  “Thank you,” he said. “My partner’s at home with a sick kid today. No camp. Let me text these and we’ll have an answer in five minutes. Thank you, girls.”

  “Thank you,” they said at the same time.

  “Jinx,” said Lizzie.

  Fishman smiled.

  —

  Back across the river and up north a bit, Ally bought a large iced coffee at La Follia on Third. Manhattan’s Third. It was three by then, but the sun was south and blocked by the building whose stoop she had borrowed.

  “Here’s the thing,” she began again, flooding Lizzie’s voice mail. “Say it’s not wrong. What you’re doing. For argument’s sake.” Her gaze floated across the street to Lizzie’s window, four stories above. Hydrangeas sat on the windowsill. “Get naked. No problem. Feel your power. Except that other people think it’s a problem. Other people think it’s wrong. Twenty years pass and you’re my age, and maybe you’re feeling less empowered. Work dries up. Acting, let’s say. Or you want to quit. Good-bye, acting! Hello, philanthropy! Hello, teaching! You apply for jobs, and somehow . . . This boss, that boss, they all know that you, Lizzie Hughes, Duke graduate, Juilliard graduate, hopefully, that you, in fact, were a sex worker once . . . That’s what they call them, by the way. Like table server or camp counselor or ice-cream scooper. Elizabeth Hughes: sex worker.” Ally took a breath and stopped. “Anyway,” she said and then continued. “They all reject you because of this job from when you were twenty. This phase. Photos, video, it doesn’t matter. It’s out there, on record. Forever.”

  A recorded voice then cut Ally off. “You have reached the maximum time.”

  “I have?” She looked at her phone, confused.

  “To send your message, press one,” the voice said.

  “Wait, one?” She pressed one.

  “To listen to your message, press two.”

  Ally pressed one four more times. “Send, send. I want to send.”

  “To rerecord, press three,” said the voice.

  “No, please, wait! I’m pressing one! I’m pressing one! This is important!”

  “For more options, press four. To cancel, press star.”

  Ally looked at her phone and pressed four. “More options, more options . . .”

  It didn’t work. “Sorry,” said the voice. “Please try again.”

  “But wait!”

  “Good-bye.”

  Somehow the message got through anyway.

  THEY TOOK HIS CHEVY and Jake drove. He headed south along I-95 in the afternoon sun.

  Ally rolled down the window and laid her head back. She slipped off her shoes and placed her bare feet on the glove box. “This is amazing!”

  “What?”

  “Not driving!”

  “What do y
ou mean?”

  “Riding in the passenger seat! It’s such a treat!”

  Jake smiled and looked at her. “Tell that to women in Saudi Arabia!”

  Ally smiled. “I always drive! I’m sick of it! I’m never not driving. This is like a dream . . .” She closed her eyes.

  The passenger seat felt like bliss after a decade of driving, driving, always driving.

  She relaxed into the leather seat, into the speed, feeling the motion of the car, feeling the sun and wind on her face as they sped along.

  What a fantastic feeling. How strange and wonderful, to ride in a car without the burden of actually driving it, without the stress of protecting Lizzie and Claire as she drove.

  Jake was taking her for a ride.

  She surrendered to it.

  He turned on the radio. The Sox were playing the Mariners again. But Wakefield had given up five whole runs before the fourth inning. Jake was upset. “Shit!” he said and pounded the steering wheel.

  Ally opened her eyes. “You okay?”

  He shook his head.

  She listened to the radio for a few minutes. “Men and baseball. Talk to me. What’s the obsession?”

  “This isn’t baseball.”

  “It’s not?”

  “This is the Sox.”

  “Uh . . . but the Sox are a baseball team, right?”

  “Yes, but . . . it’s not about baseball. It’s not about winning or salary caps. It’s not about ’roid rage or designated hitters or any of that . . .”

  “Then what’s it about?”

  “Hope.”

  “Hope?” Ally said, finding him more charming than ever.

  Jake glanced at her and explained. “This is a team . . . This is a town that loses and loses. Every year. Every year, we come close and lose. Like, it’s who we are.” He looked ahead at the highway again. “Boston can’t win. It’s what people think. We lose ’cause we’re cursed. The curse of the Bambino. But we’re not.” He glanced at Ally. “We know we’re not. We know that someday the Sox will win the Series again. And when they do, after waiting so long, it’ll be amazing because we waited. Because we were patient. Because we hoped and believed we could.” He turned up the volume.

  Ally considered his words.

  What was he saying?

  If the Red Sox could do it, shake off their curse, if the Sox could do it, then anyone could.

  She thought of Claire, and how Claire had said, “No good man will marry you now.” She looked up at the Baltic blue sky and hovering clouds. “No good man will want you now. Not with a child.”

  Claire was wrong, Ally decided then and there. She thought about the Sox and studied the weeds that pushed through the divider that split the highway north and south. The flat white faces of Queen Anne’s lace claiming the right to bloom, to reach, despite the interstate’s treachery.

  No good man? What was Jake?

  The Sox could win. The Sox would win.

  —

  At the Tin Soldier on the south side of Mystic, she talked the shopkeeper down. “Thirty-four ninety-nine?” she complained.

  “I can’t let him go for less than that,” Francis, the owner, said to Ally. He was eighty. “Look at the detail.” He held up the tiny tin soldier. “Gaitered trousers. Button shoes. A land pattern musket.”

  Ally turned and looked at Jake. She turned back to Francis. “I don’t know if Hale saw combat. Did he?”

  “They all kept muskets,” Francis griped, irritated. “It was a ground war. Don’t you know about a ground war?”

  “No,” Ally said. She thought he was sweet. “Okay. He can be Hale. I’ll take Hale and George Washington, and the Sixth Regiment British sets. All four.”

  “And the furniture,” Jake added.

  “And the tavern furniture, please,” Ally said, nodding. “Please.”

  “Fine.” Francis turned to the glass cabinet. He unlocked it, plucked George Washington from the shelf, and reached for the boxed sets of British soldiers. “The Washington’s thirty-four ninety-nine too.”

  “Fine,” Ally said, even though it wasn’t. She knew she’d regret spending so much.

  Francis then left and headed to the front to ring them up. Ally followed, but Jake caught her arm, pulled her back, and kissed her. “Well done,” he said.

  She smiled.

  “Old men like that—they make me—make me—want to be bad. I can’t explain it. He makes me want to commit a crime.” Ally smiled. The store was empty. No one would see them kissing in the back, in the dark, surrounded by creepy antique toys.

  It had been years since Ally’d kissed in public. Even in any kind of private public.

  Suddenly they were pressed against each other, kissing and groping. Jake backed Ally against the glass case and lifted her dress around his waist. Under her sundress, fully covered, he pulled down his zipper and took himself out, erect and ready. He found Ally’s panties, yanked them aside, and entered her, lifting her up off the floor.

  “Here? Here?” Ally whispered, thrilled and surprised. “What are you doing?”

  “You,” he said.

  And he did.

  —

  An hour later at a picnic table restaurant, they lapped up bowls of New England clam chowder. As Ally ate, she studied Jake. She thought of him, selling cocaine. Behind bars. What was it about taking risks, about being bad, that made a woman feel so good? Fear? Adrenaline? She felt so alive. That simple soup, the silky clams, the bacon and potatoes, the massive amounts of slimy cooked onion—it all tasted better, she thought, in that moment, than any soup in the whole world. The sea air smelled fresh. The birds sang. People laughed. It was the prettiest day of the year and Mystic was the most charming town.

  Oh, and Jake was the sexiest man alive.

  —

  After they ate, they strolled by a park, hand in hand, and decided to fit in some batting practice.

  Jake swung his duffel bag out of the trunk, gave Ally a bat, took a glove for himself.

  They threw and caught and kissed for an hour. Jake taught Ally his curve-slider grip and Ally hit a double that nearly took his head off.

  —

  “I know what we should do,” he said, driving back. “Tonight. I have a great idea.”

  “Tonight?” Ally said. “What about my— I have papers.”

  He looked at her and smiled. “Have you ever role-played?”

  “Role-played? No. Wait, what do you mean?”

  “Pretended you were someone else during sex?”

  Ally rolled her eyes. “My sex life has been pretty—tame.”

  He glanced at her. “I took this theater class. Last semester. Acting. It was cool. Want to try it? Role-play?”

  “I don’t think so,” Ally said, but she was intrigued.

  “Great,” he said, pretending to ignore her. “Here’s my idea: We drive somewhere. Somewhere far. Farther out. New Hampshire. The Cape. We find a bar. Get some beers—”

  “No, wait. We can’t both drink. One of us has to drive.”

  “Okay, you, then. I’ll drive. You get the beers. And I pretend to be someone else and you pretend to be someone else, and we meet again for the first time.”

  “That sounds weird.”

  “We pretend to be strangers. I pick you up.”

  “But what’s the point?”

  “There is no point. It’s fun. Remember fun? It’s this thing you can have that makes you feel good?”

  “No, I don’t think I remember,” she said, pretending to try to remember.

  “I can be the jail guard. You can be the bait. I can be the doctor. You can be the nurse. You can be the doctor. I can be the patient. I can be the pimp, you can be the—”

  Ally interrupted. “Yuck. That’s not fun.”

  “Whatever. You choose.”<
br />
  Ally looked at him. “I don’t know. I hate to keep saying this, but I have so—so much to do.”

  “You get to step out of your life for a minute. You get to be someone else.”

  “Okay, but I like my life. I like who I am.”

  “Okay,” he said. “It was just an idea.” Jake was silent, eyes fixed ahead. “I can’t give you a plane ticket, Ally, or send you a car.”

  Ally turned. “Jake, please. I was kidding.”

  “I can’t give you Europe or five-star hotels.”

  “Please—”

  “But I can . . . give you a break. A little vacation from your life.”

  Ally considered this. He was so kind, and he was right. She needed a break. “You have,” she said. “This has been wonderful.” Then, at the bottom of her bag at her feet, her phone rang. She scrambled for it, pulling it out, thinking of Lizzie. “Meer,” she said, seeing the number.

  “Don’t pick it up.”

  “I won’t,” she said. “Why is she calling me on the weekend?”

  —

  The trees along I-95 bloomed with pale green, late-spring leaves. Millions of them filled in the nothingness, the emptiness of winter between the branches, creating shade for the summer to come.

  Ally, too, felt as if she was waking up after a chill, a hibernation.

  Or was it hiding? Had she been hiding?

  Jake placed his hand on top of her leg, palming her thigh again, stretching his fingers out and around it. He looked upset. The end of school maybe, Ally thought. All that uncertainty. All the change.

  She laced her fingers through his fingers and couldn’t resist his calloused hands; his strong hands and heavy limbs, coarse hair; his broad back and chiseled waist; the path behind his ear, along the side of his neck. His clavicle. The way his eyes lit up when he smiled. The way he blushed. His massive muscle groups, so unfamiliar and irresistible . . .

  And so she agreed and they remained on I-95 and drove right past the Providence exits.

  They circled the city and headed east toward Route 25, toward Cape Cod, as the sun set.

  “HONEY, IT’S JUST, CHOICES matter,” Ally said, still on the stoop. “What can I say? That’s my point. It seems like nothing, I’m sure, to you now—but our choices, they’re like dominoes. All set up against each other. One goes down, the next goes down . . .”