by Rae Meadows
“Jane!” Ember says. “We’ve missed you.”
She kisses my cheek and hands me a glass. I catch
what looks like envy shadow Ford’s face. Ralf smiles up at me through his shaggy bangs then goes back to concentrating on the board. Ford pulls me onto his lap.
“How’s the house going?” I ask.
“We put in the windows today,” he says.
Finishing the house means Ford will leave in a week.
I don’t ask whether Ember will be going with him. It doesn’t seem like she’ll be going back to waitressing in Moab anytime soon. From the way she flits around the kitchen, I can tell she’s been into the drugs again. She comes over and hugs me and puts her warm cheek next to mine. I drink.
“Are you working tomorrow?” Ember asks. “I am,” she says before I answer. “I hope you’re on. I want you to be the one who sends me out.”
“Jane,” Ralf says after moving his knight, “did you know that the Mormons are so well-ordered that they have three levels of heaven? The Celestial, Terrestrial, and Telestial Kingdoms.”
“So you’re saying I might have a shot?” I ask. “Even the mere-mortal nonbelievers have hope of getting into the lowest one, the Celestial Kingdom. I imagine it’s not so bad,” he says, downing the rest of his whiskey.
“It’s heaven at least,” I say.
“You’ll do all right,” Ralf says.
Ember plunks down a big bowl of warm popcorn on the table. We each take greedy handfuls. Ford moves his rook.
Ember situates herself on Ralf ’s lap as if she were a child, as if it were the most natural thing. He is surprised though clearly pleased to have been selected as her seat. The whiskey forms a thin warm layer around me.
“Okay, Jane,” Ember says, biting her lip. “Let’s play a game. For one minute—that’s sixty Mississippis—I dare you to stand there and show us your boobs.”
“What kind of game is that?” I ask.
Ford shifts underneath me in the chair. Ralf ’s mouth is open and he’s trying not to smile. Ember grins and throws a popcorn kernel at me. I am torn between panic and thrill. I take the stage.
It’s an odd feeling, all those eyes of anticipation on me. I’m somehow shamed even in my pre-nakedness. But I am also the one chosen and I don’t want to disappoint. I feel close to powerless in that spotlight, unable to break the contract. To fulfill their expectation, I must follow through. I stand in the middle of the linoleum-floored kitchen and, without a word, lift off my sweater, then my shirt, and watch them as they watch me in my bra. Ember smiles and counts. Ralf is beatific. Ford glances at my breasts—breasts he’s seen before—then looks up and holds my gaze. But the frosty air that slips through the illfitting windows gives me goose bumps and at once I lose my nerve.
“I can’t do it,” I say.
“Pussy,” Ember says.
“I know it shouldn’t be that big a deal. But…”
“It’s all right,” she says. “We still love you.”
I pull my shirt back on and ball up my sweater, tossing it into the corner. Instead of Ford’s lap, I opt for the floor. The stunt has left me feeling provoked.
“Ford,” I say, “I have a question.”
He takes a sip of his drink and crosses his arms to prepare himself.
“What do you really think about Ember being an escort?” I ask.
He drops his head briefly, resting his chin on his chest and pursing his lips. Although I know he is angry about the ambush, he keeps any evidence of it from his face. If anything, he looks a bit bewildered. He picks up a chess piece and taps it against the table.
“Interesting question,” Ember says. “I’m curious to hear the answer myself.”
The tone of the room has darkened but I fight the urge to lighten it. Ford has yet to utter a syllable.
“Maybe we should go to the movies,” Ralf says under his breath.
“What do I think of my girlfriend being an escort,” Ford says, leaning forward, only looking at me. “Well, Jane, if you must know, I’m not so comfortable with it. In fact I would rather she didn’t do it. Okay? There it is.”
I got what I wanted and now I want to give it back.
“Okay,” I say, having lost my swagger, “okay.”
Ember tries to restore some levity to the mood. “Okay, okay, okay. That’s enough of that.”
She springs from Ralf ’s lap, and with her back to us, she chops cocaine on the counter. I can’t look at Ford. My face burns. Ember snorts everything without offering it to anyone else.
“Hey, you guys,” Ralf says, “let’s do something else. Come on.”
“Let’s just forget it,” I say. “I’m going to go to bed.” I stand and carry glasses to the sink.
“Bed?” Ember asks, rubbing her nostrils. “I’m not the least bit tired. Come on. We’re going out. I need to be at the Zephyr at midnight.”
I assume this means Ember has to meet the dealer she has befriended, thus her sniffing up all of her supply. She squeezes my shoulder before turning to pull Ralf and Ford by the hands out of their seats. They wrap themselves in their coats and scarves, and Ember is the first one out the door.
“Ford,” I say, grabbing his forearm, “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I did that.”
“I have some ideas about why,” he says, “but it’s okay. It should have been said long before tonight.”
He puts his hand around the back of my neck and I welcome the briefest sense of rootedness. And then he’s gone.
After they leave, I don’t go to bed. Instead I drive farther up into the Avenues to Smith’s, the bright grocery mecca that I find as consoling as my morning coffee. The wide-aisled, expansive grocery stores of Utah, where space and bounty are as limitless as the geniality of the clean-cut checkout clerks, make for ideal places to hide. The pipedin soft-rock songs are so poignant that I sometimes sing along, misty-eyed, and don’t want to be anywhere else.
I stand in front of a wall of glass-fronted freezers in the interminable ice cream section. It’s late and I am alone. I wonder how many other women have stood here, desperate for comfort, hoping to find solace in what they know is bad for them and ultimately unfulfilling. I pull down a carton of double-fudge brownie, take a plastic spoon from the deli counter, and start in before the mere half-mile drive home is over.
I haven’t even taken off my coat when I notice white dust on the counter. I wipe my finger across the surface to consolidate the remains, then press my fingertip on the tiny mound and rub it on my gums. The drug hits surprisingly fast and sharp, and I eat the rest of the ice cream without even tasting it, without even noticing it going down, with only a vague satisfaction of indulging an urge.
I lick the sticky, chocolate edge of the sweaty carton, replace the lid, and bury it deep in the trash, under the eggshells and coffee grounds. As I crawl into bed feeling sick, I have the dark sensation of having reached a new depth of solitude.
*
The office is stuffy and quiet, a strip of afternoon sun showing dusty through a broken blind slat. I answer the phone.
“How may I help you?”
“Jane.”
“McCallister.”
“Do you think it’s true that organization springs from anxiety?”
“Um, it’s possible, I guess. This state is a pretty good example. The perfectly tidy streets and tidy patriarchies and tidy rules for living. But there’s mess lurking underneath. I read that the majority of murders in Utah are husbands killing wives.”
“Maybe because they have so many extras,” he says. “McCallister.”
“Just a joke.”
“What brings this up?”
“Maria has become obsessed with neatness. She can’t make coffee if there is anything in the sink. She can’t sleep if there’s a sock on the floor. But I know she’s just anxious about what happens when we move in together.” “Are you worried?”
“Yeah. Maybe.”
And before I can get it back I say, “Good
. You should be,” and hang up to answer the other line.
“Hi, beautiful,” Scott says.
“Hi,” I say, “I’m glad it’s you.” And I am. The boundaries are clear.
“In that case, I have a proposal,” he says.
“Would you like to see someone?” I ask weakly. “I can’t today. But tomorrow night I would. You and me. Almost like a real date.”
I’m sweating through my turtleneck. I know it won’t get any easier than this to jump in.
“Roxanne?”
“Okay,” I say.
There is silence.
“Really?” he asks.
“Yes,” I say. “Yes.”
At once I feel giddy and subversive and somehow important. I can take this route, this risk. Because I dare myself. Because I can. I scribble out an escort application
and schedule my health exam appointment for tomorrow.
*
I still feel pretty manic when I leave work, so with my excess energy I do things that I’ve been meaning to for months: I go to the post office for stamps, get a new windshield wiper blade, replace the batteries in the smoke detector, caulk the bathroom sink, refill the salt shaker.
The last of the daylight is filtering through the bare walnut tree outside the kitchen window. And then I remember one more thing I’ve been meaning to do since I arrived in Utah. I get in the car and race the waning light, driving east to the end of the 1,300-mile Mormon Trail, where the pioneers first entered the Salt Lake Valley. I pass the cabins of Old Deseret Village, where schoolchildren come for wagon rides and “visits” from costumed Mormon historical figures, and I continue up the hill to the monument that marks Brigham Young’s “This is the place” proclamation.
Outside the wind bites, and it is quiet at the mouth of the canyon. Atop a sixty-foot granite pedestal overlooking the valley is a bronze figure of Brigham Young with his giant finger outstretched, flanked by other church forefathers, a memorial of the struggle-and-triumph conceit so integral to Mormon cultural myth.
A year ago, I stood on my rickety fire escape and breathed in the dirty city air. I looked at the rusted bars under my feet and wondered—if they gave way and I fell three stories to the icy sidewalk, would I die? Would that do it?
My fingers have gone stiff in the Utah cold, but my head feels clear and clean.
Yes. Like a rosary bead I finger the word, revisit it. Yes is a moment, a mix of calm and readiness.
The lights come on as I’m staring up at the pioneers, as if someone saw me looking into the darkness. I laugh, but I look around and I am alone.
I drive toward the valley lights and home.
chapter 9
Marisa is working the phone and she is unfazed when I call and tell her that I want to be sent out. She doesn’t ask why now, if I’m apprehensive, what changed my mind. She either assumed I would do it eventually or has learned to assume nothing. And I am thankful.
Apparently having patched things up from the night before, Ford and Ember went to Wendover to play blackjack. I didn’t tell them what I have decided to do; I cradle the secret like a china doll. It is all mine.
I prepare myself for Marisa’s call with a bath. I welcome the hottest water, willing myself to feel it against my skin as I submerge. The bathroom is dark except for some old candles I rounded up in an attempt to commemorate the night. I shave slowly and deliberately all the way up my thighs, bikini line and all, going over every inch with multiple swipes of a new razor. I exfoliate my elbows. I sit on the edge of the tub and paint my toenails poppy red. I wonder if this is how a bride in an arranged marriage feels before her wedding night. Except I still have the option of saying no. But the phone rings, and I know I won’t.
“Hi.” It’s McCallister. “I can’t believe you hung up on me. Again.”
“I can’t talk right now.”
“Why not?”
“I’m waiting for a call.”
“Why so cryptic?”
“It’s a date.”
“A date?”
“Yeah.”
“With Ford?”
“Of course not.”
“Then with whom?”
“A setup. A blind date.”
“Wow. I guess I’m supposed to say good luck.”
“That would be the nice thing.”
“But if it works out, you’ll never come back to New York. So I won’t.”
“Always the selfless one, aren’t you, McCallister?”
“Just looking out for you.”
“This conversation will have to wait,” I say.
“Fine,” he says, and this time it’s McCallister who hangs up.
I opt for a scarlet silk dress over a new black lace bra and underwear. The silk is soft and warm against my skin. I gloss my lips and spray expensive perfume I never use, an old gift from McCallister, on each side of my neck. I feel glamorous. I sing along with the soulful, plaintive voice of Ray Charles—“I’m gonna love you, like no one’s loved you, come rain or come shine”—as I check out how I look from various angles in the mirror. I turn off the lights and have a cigarette by the glow of Christmas lights dripping from the neighbors’ houses, and blow smoke out the window into the frosty darkness. Toward the end of the second cigarette, Marisa calls.
“You’re in luck. Scott requested you. He’s at the Monaco. Room 1023. Eight o’clock. Maybe you’ll get room service,” she says.
“Maybe,” I say. “He didn’t want to do a public date?”
“You’re not that lucky,” she says.
I feel like there should be more business to take care of, something I’m supposed to ask. I grind out my cigarette and the ashtray tips, dumping ashes out onto the carpet.
“Shit,” I say.
“Roxanne?”
“Yeah?”
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I say.
“Call me when you get there.”
It’s a perfect, high-desert, early-winter night in Salt Lake City—cloudless and brisk with a moon just shy of full. The houses in the Avenues are warmly lit. The streets are empty. Inside my thawing car, Bob Dylan is on the classic rock station. I feel like a movie star.
I’m only about seven minutes from the Monaco so I make a few loops around Temple Square. Mormon visitors promenade around the block of Main Street that the church purchased from the city to connect the square to the palatial new conference center. Whole families hold hands. The contentment on their faces is enviable. Linked together in this holy destination, they seem wanting of nothing.
Although it’s Friday night, I easily find a parking spot only a block from the hotel. I breathe deeply, exhaling through my mouth, as I once learned in a yoga class. A quick makeup check in the rearview mirror, a readjusting of my pantyhose, an Altoid, a brief thought of McCallister, gesticulating with chopsticks the night he said he didn’t think we should see each other anymore, and I’m off.
The Monaco is an anomaly for Salt Lake City, an expensive boutique hotel with sharp angles and dramatic lighting and a cozy wine bar right out of TriBeCa. It’s the first time I’ve ever been inside, and its un-Utah-ness lends it a movie-set quality. Despite the chic environment, I feel conspicuously harlotlike with my red lips and my red hem peaking out from beneath my coat, even if no one seems to notice me. I make it across the lobby without looking up, grateful to be swallowed up by an empty elevator. If it’s not going to be a fake real date in public, I’m at least glad it’s here and not the Econolodge or the Dream Inn out on North Temple. I press ten as I catch a glimpse of myself in the chrome ceiling of the elevator.
At the door to room 1023, my knock is wimpy and I’m just about to knock again when I see the door is not clasped shut and a deeper version of the voice I recognize says, “Come on in.”
I count to three, arrange my face in what feels like my most confident, mature, knowing, sexy look—even though I’m sweating and I have an odd urge to cross myself—and I slowly push open the door.
T
he softly lit room is a sea of dark browns and black. My heels sink deep into the plush carpet where I have stopped just inside the door. Scott sits near the window, his ankle crossed on his knee and his arms stretched out around the back edge of the chair. He looks like an aging ex-athlete, like a minor-league player who never got his shot at the majors. He is not far off from what I expected and this is both a relief and a letdown. His hair is, as his client sheet said, ash-blond, a little receding in front, a little too long in back. He is, if not altogether handsome, attractive in a self-assured, masculine way.
I feel excited and I feel like I might throw up. From moment to moment I feel the power shift from me to Scott, back and forth. I can’t decide who’s winning. I finger a button on my coat, unsure whether to proceed or to wait for further instruction. I am at once myself and someone altogether new. The curtains are pulled open and the lights of the valley shimmer like so many stars. I remember that I have to call my parents and tell them that I’m not coming home for Christmas. I think about whether Ember and Ford are gambling away money they don’t have, and whether Ember will leave with Ford. I tell myself that meeting a man in a hotel room for money is just another thing to try. My stomach growls. I roll my shoulders back and smile a closed-lipped, enigmatic smile.
There is a cockiness in the way Scott tilts his head and sizes me up. For a full minute he looks at me and grins as I stand there in the entrance. I’m getting paid not to turn away.
“Hi, beautiful,” he says. “It’s nice to see you.”
*
“Are you safe?” Marisa asks.
“Yes,” I say into the phone. My face burns as I stand by the bed. Scott hasn’t moved.
“Have you collected?”
“Yes.”
I’m still clutching the bank-new bills. When he pulled the crisp stack from his wallet, I couldn’t bring myself to count it. I stuff the money in my coat pocket.
“Okay, Roxanne, good luck. I’ll call you out in fifty.”
“Bye,” I say, wanting to keep her on the line, wanting to run for the door, wanting to be in the front row at the movies with a large popcorn and McCallister on a rainy Saturday afternoon.
