Ally Hughes Has Sex Sometimes

by Jules Moulin

  “Any advice?” Lizzie asked as she placed her bag on the bed.

  “Well,” Fishman said, turning back around, “some guys like action. Movement, dancing . . . Others like something more subdued.”

  “Subdued?”

  Fishman shrugged. “Stripping slowly. Pleasing yourself.”

  “Pleasing myself,” Lizzie said and smiled. “I love your euphemisms.”

  Fishman studied her. “You’re pretty smart, aren’t you, Jenny?”

  Lizzie paused. “No, not really.”

  “Anyway, some guys just want to talk.”

  “Okay,” she said. “I can talk.”

  Then he paused. “But not too much. Don’t talk too much.”

  Lizzie nodded, feigning interest. She was starting to wish she’d never asked.

  “It’s not intimate. Even if it feels like it is. Men love mystery.”

  “Who doesn’t?” Lizzie laughed.

  “Familiarity breeds contempt. Don’t you think?”

  “I guess. I don’t know. I’m twenty years old. What do I know?” She laughed again nervously.

  Fishman studied her. “Just don’t think you’re making friends. He doesn’t care about your dreams.”

  “No, of course.”

  “He doesn’t want to know your favorite food or the name of your pet. He wants to come. That’s what he wants. Nothing more.”

  Lizzie wondered if Fishman was stoned. She thought she could smell the faintest whiff of weed.

  He gazed past her and thought about it for the first time ever. No one had ever asked his advice. “Keep in mind,” he continued, riffing, “he’s having sex with himself. He’s somewhere out there, all alone . . . pretending, like, make-believe, to have sex with you . . . When you think about it, it’s pretty sad . . . when he could be—when he’s meant to be screwing an actual woman. It’s not like we pretend to eat. It’s not like we pretend to sleep. But we pretend to fuck ’cause we can?” He looked at Lizzie, his eyes glazed over. Then he snapped out of it. “Well, good luck,” he added brightly.

  “Thanks,” Lizzie said. She was amused but tried to hide it.

  Fishman then opened the door and slipped out. “And I’d lose the wig. I think you’re prettier as a blonde.”

  Lizzie looked surprised as he pulled the door shut, and a cold, clammy feeling settled in her stomach.

  —

  Minutes later, the screaming came. “No, no! Help!” the young woman screamed, loud and clear.

  Lizzie looked up from the CD player. She looked toward the wall to her right, toward the voice.

  “Help! Someone! Help!” The voice sounded anguished.

  Lizzie’s breath quickened and her eyes grew wide. Instinctively, she stepped toward the wall and pressed her ear against it.

  The woman cried out, “Call the police!”

  Lizzie beelined to the door and stepped out into the empty hall, where she could hear a man’s voice too, lower, berating the Screamer next door.

  She looked around. The hall was empty. No one was there? Or maybe, she thought, no one else heard or no one else cared?

  She crossed to the door as the pleas grew more and more intense. Tentative, she took the knob, turned it, and threw the door open wide.

  “What are you doing!” the Screamer screamed. At Lizzie. “Close the fucking door!” The naked Screamer, a tiny young thing, was perched on all fours, and the young man behind her, naked too, was gripping her ponytail, pretending to ride her hard from behind. He laughed.

  “I’m sorry!” Lizzie said and pulled the door shut. “Shit! Shit!” She stood alone in the middle of the hall, her heart racing. “Way to make friends. Way to make friends,” she said aloud to no one. She was mortified.

  The screaming wasn’t real. It was an act.

  —

  Across the East River, in Manhattan, on Thirty-Sixth and Ninth, Weather was standing on a makeshift stage at the Joel Fox Acting for Actors Studio.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Worthing. You’re not on my list of eligible men.” In her best British accent, she pretended to consult a clothbound book. “I am quite ready to enter your name, should your answer be what a truly affectionate mother requires.”

  “Lizzie?” called Ally, interrupting. She had opened the door and cast the light from out in the hall over the stage.

  “Excuse me!” cried Joel from somewhere in the dark.

  “Lizzie, are you there?” Ally yelled, interrupting again.

  “Excuse me, lady, this is a class!” Joel bellowed.

  “Is Lizzie Hughes here? Lizzie? It’s Mom!”

  “Mrs. Hughes?” Onstage, Weather turned, squinting in the stage lights. She was wearing a floor-length pink satin gown, matching pink bonnet, and wire-rimmed glasses.

  “Weather?”

  “Hi.”

  “Hi, honey. We need to talk.”

  “Um, can it wait? I’m in the middle of—”

  “No,” Ally said, stepping inside. She looked into the dark. She couldn’t see Joel, but she knew he was there. “Mr. Fox? Sorry. It’s Allison Hughes. Lizzie’s mom. I’m sorry, but it’s an emergency. I need Weather for a minute or—”

  “Hurry!”

  “Thanks,” said Ally, leaving the room.

  Weather lifted her enormous hoop skirt, stepped off the stage, and followed Ally into the hall.

  —

  “Mrs. Hughes—”

  “We have a deal,” Ally interrupted. “If I call three times, she calls back. She hasn’t called. I’m worried sick.”

  “Mrs. Hughes,” Weather said again. “That guy in there, Joel Fox, calls on me, like, once a month. Not once a week like the girls with boobs and toothpick legs, the ballerinas, but once a month. If I’m lucky.”

  “I know about the porn,” Ally said.

  Weather’s face fell.

  “I need a number or an address. Lizzie is missing.”

  “I can’t. I’m sorry. Lizzie would kill me.”

  “I will kill you!” Ally drew close. “Do you understand how dangerous this is? How stupid this is? To get mixed up with these kinds of people?”

  Weather swallowed and drew on her courage. “Do you understand she’s manifesting her future? Do you understand that Lizzie is a warrior?”

  Ally squinted. “What are you saying?”

  “She’s Lara Croft.”

  “Who is that?”

  “You should be impressed. She has a plan.”

  “And what is the plan when someone holds a gun to her head or drugs her or abducts her?”

  “That’s not—part of it,” Weather said.

  “Camming is a gateway crime. Do you know what that is?”

  “Mrs. Hughes. I have to go back to—”

  “Where is she now? She should be here. Acting class, Wednesdays, four o’clock.”

  “You should know—she’s wearing a wig.”

  “That’s the plan? A wig is the plan?”

  The door opened and Joel popped out. “Are we done?”

  “No!” Ally snapped.

  He slipped back inside.

  Seething, she turned and faced the wall. She tipped her forehead against it and breathed. “Why was that actor naked in there?”

  In the studio, the six-foot-four actor playing Jack Worthing had, indeed, been standing next to Weather naked, his lanky pale penis resting on his thigh.

  “It’s the Fox method. It helps inhibition.”

  “Does it really?” Ally asked. She turned and studied the enormous holes in Weather’s ears, stretched by rings three inches wide.

  Odd, she thought. Why did this girl from Scarsdale, this girl with the face and smile of an angel, why did she look like a Kenyan Maasai? “Weather?” she said. “Was it your idea? This sex-cam thing?”

  “No
, Mrs. Hughes.”

  “Was it Lizzie’s?”

  “No.”

  “Then whose was it?”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  Ally nodded, turned around, and started downstairs. “I’m sorry he calls on you once a month! You’re beautiful, honey. Except for the way you torture your ears. Your acting is terrific. You’ve always had talent. Real talent. Pay no attention to Mr. Fox.”

  Weather stood there staring at Ally. She didn’t say a word.

  “Ask her to call her mother, please!” Ally sang with irony. “You know, the woman who fed her and changed her and paid for Duke.”

  “Mrs. Hughes!”

  Ally stopped and turned. “Yes?”

  “If you want to know, ask your boyfriend.”

  “My boyfriend? Who? I don’t have a—”

  “Ted?”

  “Okay,” said Ally, mystified.

  “It was his idea.”

  Ally’s gaze, fixed on Weather, shifted to the wall, to a poster for Hair. Weather blurred as laughter erupted from inside the room. She leaned in to listen, opened the door, and slipped back to class with a small wave.

  Ally, however, stood unmoving for more than a minute. Then she turned and went downstairs.

  Out on the sidewalk, she speed-dialed Ted.

  —

  In Red Hook, in the pantry, Sasha stood over six feet tall, with white-blond hair, side-swept bangs, and naturally, beautifully bloated lips. She was trying to read the directions for the Keurig when Lizzie walked in. “Hello. Hi. How are you doing there in today?” She spoke with a Russian accent.

  Lizzie brightened. Hurray, she thought, the Pussy Riot fan! Finally! She said hi in Russian.

  Sasha turned around, delighted. “No! Tell me! Do you speak Russian?”

  “A little,” said Lizzie, again in Russian.

  “Oh! You must see this!” Sasha pointed to the Keurig. “Mr. Fishman, he buy this for us. Do you know to how use?”

  “No,” Lizzie said. “But I can help you . . . figure it out.” She strode to the counter to help.

  “Very wonderful,” Sasha said, peering closer at Lizzie’s hair. “Is fake?”

  Lizzie smiled. “I’m undercover, spying.”

  “No!” Sasha gaped. “Police?”

  “No!” Lizzie cried. “I have to model in secret, you know, because of my mom.” She plugged in the Keurig. “She’d kill me.”

  Sasha nodded. “Yes,” she said.

  The Screamer then entered. She now wore a pink robe and slippers. “Hey, stupid,” she said to Lizzie and flew to the fridge.

  Lizzie spun. “Stupid?” she said. “You called for help.” The Screamer laughed and opened the fridge. Lizzie seethed. “You screamed, ‘Help! Call the police!’”

  “It was fake,” said the Screamer, cracking open a Dr Pepper. “Fake rape. Everyone loves it.” She took a swig.

  “Well, it sounded real,” Lizzie said. “Sorry for trying to save your life.”

  “He doesn’t even penetrate,” the Screamer bragged. “He’s not even in. He’s not even hard.” She scowled at Lizzie and chucked the soda can into the trash. “Are you coming, Sasha? Tonight? Party?”

  “No,” Sasha said and turned to Lizzie. “I cannot pay for New York vodka.”

  The Screamer shrugged, grabbed some SunChips, and walked out the door.

  Sasha smiled. “We don’t have party for sixteen in Ukraine. We only have pie and clothesline.”

  “Oh.” Lizzie smiled. “Those two dummies should lock the door.”

  “No,” Sasha said, examining a K-Cup. “No one cannot lock nothing here.”

  —

  An hour later, after coffee and a nice long chat in broken English and broken Russian, Lizzie returned to her fake teen bedroom to call and report her news to Weather. “You’re kidding,” she said to herself aloud, fretfully searching through her bag.

  Had she left it on the bed? The desk? Where? Had she taken out her phone?

  Where was her phone?

  Then she stopped and gazed at the door, remembering what Sasha had said. She couldn’t have locked it if she wanted.

  Panicked, she turned her purse upside down and sorted through the items: Kleenex, Band-Aids, pen, shades; novel, headphones, flip-flops, Mace; sunscreen, lip gloss, tampon, Altoids . . .

  Her fingers flew as she tried to determine what was gone: her cell phone, house keys, clutch with cash, she decided in seconds; and, oddly, a new pack of Doublemint gum.

  She looked up, furious.

  —

  Across the East River and uptown, near Gramercy Park, Ally sat on the sidewalk and waited. She waited for calls: a call back from Lizzie, from Ted, from Cybil. She waited to hear from Del Frisco’s on Sixth, where Lizzie waitressed. She waited to hear from Lizzie’s friends Zoe, Miles, and E.

  Nobody called Ally back.

  “DO YOU HAVE TEQUILA?” Ally asked, sitting at the bar at Friar Tuck’s somewhere out on the Cape. She didn’t know where they were.

  “Yep, we do.” The bartender smiled. “Straight up?”

  “No, thanks, no. I never drink.” She ordered a frozen margarita instead, no salt, and cheese fries. She leaned on the bar, looked around, and chewed the nail of her pinky finger.

  She couldn’t see Jake anywhere.

  The main room and the two rooms off it were dimly lit and clouded with smoke. Three different jukeboxes blared different songs from three different rooms.

  Jefferson Airplane blasted from the closest, and when Ally turned toward the sound of the song, she found Jake sitting one stool away. “Don’t you want somebody to love? Don’t you need somebody to love?” He was singing along.

  Ally looked away and smiled.

  He finished the song, the entire song, and the bartender brought out Ally’s food. Then Jake slipped to the stool next to hers. “Something about cheese fries and booze,” he said. “Once you get going, it’s hard to stop.” He was speaking in a thick New York accent. He reached out his hand. “Carl. Yastrzemski. Nice to meet you. Folks call me Yaz. I’m a Major League player. Baseball.”

  Ally focused on the TV. “Hi,” she said, ignoring his hand, playing hard to get.

  “I didn’t catch your name.”

  “Didn’t throw it.”

  “What’s your name, pretty?”

  Ally tried to think of one. “Um,” she said. “Margaret Thatcher?”

  “You don’t know your name?”

  “This is so weird,” she said as herself.

  Jake looked around. “What’s weird, doll?”

  “This,” she said. “I can be anyone? Anyone at all? Sappho? Or Esther? Or Joan of Arc?”

  “Ally.”

  “What?” She leaned in and whispered. “I thought we were doing a doctor and nurse, or something like that. But if you get to be a baseball player, then I want to be—I don’t know—a queen. Elizabeth the First.” She sat up straight. “Elizabeth. Hello.”

  He reached out his hand. “Nice to meet you, Elizabeth.”

  “The First.” She held out her hand, permitting him to kiss it. Jake took her hand and kissed it gently. “Otherwise known as the Virgin Queen. Although that’s ironic.”

  “What do you do, Elizabeth the First?”

  “I rule England and Ireland.”

  “That fun?”

  “Yes. I live in a palace, fight wars, and take lovers half my age.” She sipped her margarita.

  “Wow. Cool. You here alone?”

  “I’m waiting for someone. A duke.” She pretended to look for her duke. “You alone, Yaz?”

  “I’m with my team.” Jake pointed to a group of guys hovering around the pool table. “I’m number eight. Seven Gold Gloves. Triple Crown.”

  “I’m sure that’s impressive, but I don’t know
baseball. Only hammer throwing.”

  “Can I steal a fry?” Jake asked, smelling her cheese fries.

  “No. I don’t share food. Germs and diseases. You know, the plague. Smallpox. Not good.”

  Jake nodded. “Right,” he said. “We shouldn’t swap spit. At least not yet. You married?”

  “No. Only lovers.”

  “Kids?”

  “No,” Ally said. She then changed her mind. “Wait, no. I do have a child. I have a daughter.” She didn’t want to leave Lizzie out, even out of her fantasy life. She took a fry and leaned in. Softly she said, “This isn’t working. I’m not turned on.”

  “Why don’t you choose someone sexy?” he whispered.

  “Can we start again?”

  “Let’s start again.”

  She slid the fries in front of him. “Eat.” Jake grabbed a couple of fries and smiled. “Are you still Yaz?”

  “I’m sticking with Yaz.”

  She picked up her glass and guzzled the drink. Jake watched as she set the glass down and raised her hand to alert the barkeep for another. “I want to be a groupie,” she said. “The kind of girl who preys on stars. Give you myself—in every way—in exchange for—I don’t know—your attention and bragging rights. I can brag I slept with Yaz. Cool? The truly consensual trade. Sex to impress. The ‘I had sex with a supermodel’ thing. But in reverse. The ‘I can bring this guy down to his knees—Monica Lewinsky and Bill’ thing.”

  Jake nodded. “Good. That’s hot.”

  LIZZIE BARRELED INTO FISHMAN’S office. “Someone stole my stuff!” she announced.

  Josh and Fishman sat focused, working. They both looked up and turned around.

  “You’re kidding,” said Fishman. He seemed alarmed but not alarmed enough.

  “I went to the pantry, and when I came back my stuff was gone.”

  “You haven’t signed in and you needed a break?” Josh asked.

  “I was hungry,” said Lizzie. She looked at Fishman. “Someone went into my purse in my room.” She then looked at Josh, who was staring right at her, pointedly chewing a green piece of gum.

  “What’s missing?” Fishman asked and stood from his desk.

  “My wallet, my keys, and my phone,” Lizzie said.

  “I’m sorry. It’s a problem. I should have warned you.” He opened a drawer. “We haven’t caught her, but we have a Russian short on cash.”