Calling Out (2 page)

In the Premier lounge hangs a poster with a climber
gripping an impossibly sheer rock face. In bold script
beneath the image it says, “Strive for Excellence!” On the
wall of the bathroom in a scratched plastic frame is a list
titled “Reasons Not to Break the Law.” Number ten reads,
“Your self-esteem will suffer—who wants to be a whore!”
With that exclamation point I always read the last clause
as a cheer. Mohammed composed this list to keep his
young charges in line, to simplify the Byzantine maze of
regulations and codes to which Utah-style escort services
are subject. A few months ago he had to pay a fine for an
escort who encouraged an undercover officer to masturbate while he watched her. This was after he had her lick
chocolate from his inner thighs, which is perfectly legal.

Since I'm not from Utah, I volunteered to work this
shift so the other phone girls could spend Thanksgiving
with their families. I told my parents I wasn't coming
home to Ohio because I had to finish an important
project—they think I work at a small advertising
agency—but really I didn't want to have to face too many
questions about what I'm up to in Utah. My sister will be
there with her husband and in-laws, which stressed my
mom out enough that she didn't press for my attendance.

I used to love Thanksgiving, the consistency and
ritual of it, the forest green cloth napkins, the good silverware, the overdone turkey, my mom's earnest blessing,
our required pronouncements of the things we were
thankful for. But at some point my sister and I no longer
had much to say to each other, and my dad grew quiet,
and Thanksgiving became more of a duty than anything
else. Last year, my sister was with her husband's family, so
it was just the three of us. My mom didn't ask me to help
mash the potatoes or set the table. Instead we had dinner
at the country club.

Tonight the heater comes on only intermittently and
the cable is out altogether. I've been scraping ancient
Scotch tape remnants from the desk in between reading
sections of a month-old Sunday
New York Times
.

Mohammed rushes in to drop off some new invoice
sheets, chattering in Arabic on his cell phone with barely
a nod hello in my direction. He's in his fifties, his hair still
inky-black, and though he says he's 5'9", so am I, and he's
shorter than I am by at least two inches. He emerges from
his office a moment later and looks over my shoulder at
the night's meager phone log, then shakes his head, his
cinnamon complexion gone ashy.

“Who's working?” he asks.

“Um. Nikyla's on her way to Nephi. I haven't gotten a
hold of Mimi or Vivian. Or Miranda.”

“So who?”

“At the moment, no one. But Jezebel's on later.”

“No one?”

“No one,” I say, “but it's Thanksgiving. I don't think
that many people are going to call.”

“Oh you don't,” he says. “How am I supposed to run
a business where none of the employees show up to work?
They think they can just decide if they feel like working or
not? These kids have no work ethic.”

Mohammed also owns Saharan Sands, a Middle
Eastern restaurant run by his wife, and the Carpet Oasis,
an Oriental rug store, which flank the escort office. All of
his businesses are losing money, so he exists in perpetual
motion between the venues, on high alert for ways to turn
a profit. Last month he added a belly dancer to weekend
lunch and dinner hours at the restaurant. She doubles as
a phone girl. He is considering a neon sign for his alwaysempty rug store. He had a phone line installed here for
another venture, which we are told to answer by saying
“Creative Artists,” offering clowns, singing telegrams, and
practical jokes, presumably performed by the escorts. It
never rings. A French maid's costume and a musty bear
suit hang in a locker in the back room.

Mohammed pulls out his cell phone but then puts it
back in his jacket and begins to pace behind me. “You will
have to go out,” he says.

“What?”

“If someone calls and wants a date, you will have to go.”
“No way,” I say. “I've told you before. I don't do that.”
“You don't do what? It's not sex! We're a legal business! I contributed to the mayor's campaign!”

“Mohammed,” I say, “I only book the dates.”

“I cannot understand you,” he says, throwing his
hands up. “Making money is making money. It's a service,
like being a nurse or a babysitter or something like this.”
He rubs his temples with his eyes closed.

“I can't believe you're trying to bully me,” I say. I took
this job to do something different than what I knew—but
not
that
different.

“If it's such a bad thing then why do you work here,
huh?” But his tone betrays his resignation and he breathes
out with a weary sigh.

“I'll try calling the girls again,” I say.

Mohammed crosses his arms and scowls. His beeper
goes off and he scurries out, leaving behind a trail of
peppery cologne.

During my last year in New York I felt bad most of the time,
seesawing between hollow numbness and a spiritgnawing despair. It all appeared
to be fine—I had a job as a successful copywriter, an underpriced rent for a
sunny sublet, a screenwriter boyfriend. But I could barely haul myself up off
the couch, my limbs as heavy as sodden sponges, my days increasingly enslaved
by downcast ruminations about my lack of worth. I cried at TV commercials. I
picked my fingers until they bled. Over that year, it became harder to ignore
that, at a certain point, what I did every day defined who I was.

I'd thought that I would opt for grand experience
over a regular paycheck. But I never could quite figure out
what that majorly meaningful thing I should be doing
was, and all of a sudden I was thirty and I'd become something that I wouldn't have imagined—I was regular.
Change had happened without my consent. I stopped
returning well-meaning phone calls from friends. I
watched my relationship with McCallister grind down to
pulp. And when he finally broke up with me, I took selfpitying pride in the totality of my failure.

One night,
sometime during my fifth glass of
chardonnay, I knew it was up to me to do something
before bitterness enfolded me in its tough, dry shell. As I
walked home from the bar, I passed downtown hipsters
with their hipbones jutting above low jeans, their pricey
sneakers not good for anything but hanging out. Their
eyes flicked toward me as I went by but then quickly
looked away. They didn't see that I was just like them. A
poser. But I did.

I decided to purge my life. I gave away most of my possessions, packed my car,
and moved far away from everything in an effort to give my unhappiness the slip.

It's nine thirty when Nikyla calls from Nephi. The girls
call in on a separate phone that I know to answer immediately, no matter what.

“It's Nikyla.”

“Hi. You made it,” I say.

“Yep.”

“Are you safe?” I ask.

If she answers yes it means she feels relatively safe and she can continue with
the date. If she says no, I ask a few other yes/no questions like “Do you feel
like you're in danger?” and “Can you get to the door?” and then she puts the
man on the phone so I can distract him, and she gets out fast. Saying no is
serious business. It isn't for being tired or grossed out or not in the mood
to go through with the date.

“Yes,” Nikyla answers.

“Have you collected?”

“Yes,” she says again. I can picture Nikyla, all done up in a snug mandarin
silk dress, and I'm glad for Ephraim. “Okay. I'll call you out in fifty,”
I say. “Have fun,” I add, knowing Nikyla can handle Ephraim probably better
than anyone.

The phone rings again right away, but by the number

I can tell it's Manny, a.k.a. Juan, a.k.a. Sam Gomez. He's on our 86ed list
for writing bad checks, and even though we won't send him an escort, he often
calls just to try. It makes me slightly uneasy when one of the banned guys
calls. My refusals incite frustration and anger, and I fear the day one of
them decides to come in here to take what he wants. The office is unmarked
and nondescript, and people have to be buzzed in. Its only window is covered
by large-slatted venetian blinds, and it could pass for a dentist's office
were it not for the security camera poised above the door. But our address
is no secret, and the camera has never been properly installed, so it's a
ruse at best. I know Mohammed won't spend the money to have it repaired until
something bad happens.

Jezebel comes in around ten and rescues me from Mohammed's
badgering. Blond with transparent blue eyes, she is eighteen but she could pass
for thirteen—a big hit with clients who are looking for young. She's smallboned
and small-chested, and she'd seem almost elfin if not for her loud voice, brazen
cheekiness, and very short, tight leather skirt. Like many of the girls, Jezebel
grew up Mormon and she thought it would be funny to have a biblical pseudonym.

In one hand she has a paper plate of turkey and
pumpkin pie for me, and in the other she grasps the body
of her new spaniel puppy, who is trying to bite her sleeve.

“Albee is a much bigger pain than I thought he was
going to be,” she says. “Can he stay here when I'm out?”

Jezebel knows Mohammed would have a fit if he
found a dog in the office, no animals being one of his
strict policies, but she also knows that when it comes to
the girls, I'm a pushover.

“Sure,” I say, because I feel guilty that she had to leave
dinner with her family to go out for me into the
uncharted night. “As long as he doesn't pee on the floor.”

“He might, but not very much comes out,” she says.
“Happy turkey day. Mom got started early on the vino.
Pie's pretty good, though.”

I eat a slice of turkey with my fingers.

“I'm sorry you have to go out on Thanksgiving,” I say.

“Don't worry about it,” Jezebel says. “I could use the
money. The dent in my Blazer's going to cost me five hundred bucks.”

“Are you saving for school? You could probably still
start in January,” I say with gentle prodding.

Jezebel shrugs. She opens her compact and covers the
small pimples on her forehead with matte beige powder.
Albee wobbles off toward the tanning closet.

Like almost everyone at Premier, Jezebel started
escorting for just a few months to make some money and
figure out the next step. Maybe junior college. Maybe
modeling. But getting paid in a wad of cash has rendered
those notions obsolete, despite my motherly advice. She
bought a car. She buys new clothes and CDs. She moved
into her own apartment, but she can't save enough for
rent. When bill collectors call looking for Jenna Smith, I
tell them no one by that name works here.

Jezebel sits on the desk, flashing me her zebra-print
underwear from beneath her skirt. Mohammed has reprimanded her for dressing too much like a slut.

“You must present yourself classy. Men don't want
someone arriving who looks like a hooker. Tell them,” he
sometimes says to me. “Tell these girls what men are like.”

His turning to me as an expert always makes me
laugh. When I tell the girls that these men think they want
sex but most really just want company, they usually say
something like, “Yeah, whatever,” or, “They just want to
get off,” which sends Mohammed's eyes heavenward in
exasperation.

Jezebel eats a bite of pie from my plate, then a forkful
of whipped cream.

“I want to get my boobs done,” she says. “Miranda's
cost four grand. I'm going to start saving for them.”

“Why would you want to do that?” I ask. “You look
great as you are. Men don't like fake ones, anyway.”

“You say that but they don't really know the difference. You give them the measurements and they pick by
the numbers.”

“That's not true. They ask specifically for real ones.
Remember Diamond's? They were like rubber balls,” I say.

“I'll look more even,” she says, pushing her breasts up
with her hands. “And if I try to do the acting thing, I need
them to compete.”

“Please don't do anything until you're in your twenties,” I say, as if I am so world-wise. But I'm not too worried because I'm pretty sure she won't be able to save four
thousand dollars.

Jezebel was once on the
Jenny Jones
show as an out-ofcontrol teen. Now she meets men in motel rooms for
money but she tells me her relationship with her mother
is much better.

Jezebel peers over my shoulder at the clipboard.

“No lonely men on Thanksgiving?” she asks. “Albee,
no!”

She jumps from the desk. The puppy has chewed a
hole in one of the leather loveseats.

“Nikyla's with the taxidermist,” I say.

She snorts. “That guy is such a freak. I had to hang the
fur he gave me out on the clothesline for a week to get that
smell from it.”

The fact that Jezebel once had to drive 170 miles to
get naked for a strange taxidermist, and that I will send
her out somewhere else to get naked again on this cold
holiday night, suddenly gives me a hiccup of guilt. Something about her undisguisable youth and her unflinching
approach to the world makes me more fearful for Jezebel
than the others.

“I gave it to my brother's wife,” she says. “She put it on
the wall above the fireplace. Maybe next time I see that guy
I'll bring the fur back for you so you don't feel left out.”

The rumor around the office is that Jezebel will have
sex for extra money. I choose not to believe it. I don't want
to worry about her any more than I already do.