by Rae Meadows
“Baby,” I say. “I want to watch you.”
He ignores me and crushes my breasts together, grinding himself against my stomach.
“Come on now,” I say.
He reaches for his pants and I hear the telltale sound of a condom wrapper. I try to move away but he has me pinned. Some of the guys like to ejaculate in a condom to keep the whole thing cleaner but I’m starting to sense he has something else in mind.
“You don’t want to break the rules,” I coo to him. I try to swallow my rising panic.
“Fuck the rules. What do you think I paid you for?” he says with a nasty smile. “That’s a lot of money to jack off. I could have stayed home and done it for free.”
His body covers mine and he’s squeezing my wrists, cutting off the blood to my hands. I can barely breathe. I consider giving in—it’s not like I haven’t done this before—to get it over with as quickly as possible.
I stop writhing and lay still as he rips down my underwear and wedges his knees between my legs.
“That’s right,” he says. “You be a good sport now.”
All at once the weight of his words strikes me as viscerally as if I were punched. I gasp for insufficient breath, infused with the dry burn of rage. The realization of the wrongness of the moment, the surfacing understanding that this is not what I want, breaks into focus with the clarity of pure will. I am remembering something I didn’t think I knew. This is not me. I am not this. My still, small voice says, “Save yourself, goddamn it.”
I start to fight and scream.
“Get off me!” I yell over and over.
I owe him nothing. I flail at him with any part of me I can get free. I butt him with my head. He lets go of one of my wrists and cracks the back of his hand across my cheek, but it only incites me further. I dig my heels into the mattress for leverage and with my free hand, grasp for anything. I can feel the venom of his fury, and I think if I stop moving, rape would be just the beginning.
Somehow I get the clock radio in my hand, and with newfound strength, bash a corner of it into his temple. And again and again with everything I have.
“Fuck,” he yells, shielding his head.
He is momentarily dazed enough for me to wriggle out from under him.
“Fucking whore,” he says, “my head. Jesus.”
He swings wildly at me but misses, collapsing back onto the bed as blood seeps into his eye. I scoop my heap of clothes in my arms and run out into the frozen afternoon, so high on survival I don’t even feel my nakedness or the icy asphalt on the soles of my feet.
chapter 20
Detective Logan, who interviewed me to get licensed, is writing in one of those old-fashioned reporter’s notebooks, leaning against the wall in the office. I sit in the middle of the love seat.
Mohammed lurks nearby with his arms crossed looking sullen and befuddled. Marisa is red-eyed from crying; she will be issued a misdemeanor for admitting she didn’t go through the correct screening procedures. I’m flushed and tired in the hot office, relieved, yet at the same time, secretly exhilarated. I have emerged with something new. I feel I could lift a car or run a marathon or faint at any minute. My hands shake.
“This shouldn’t be a surprise to any of you,” Logan says, as if addressing an audience. “It’s the nature of this business. You’re playing roulette. And I’ll tell you, even though we arrested this guy, I’m pretty sure nothing will ever come of it. No matter what kind of evidence we have against him, the bottom line is you’re an escort,” he says, pointing at me.
My cheek throbs hot where I was hit. Bruises have settled in around my wrists, angry and red with deepening patches of purple. The doctor said superficial injuries. No evidence of sexual trauma.
“I think I’m done for now,” Logan says, flipping closed his notebook. “You should have stuck to the phone,” he says to me.
I don’t say anything in response. He shakes his head in disgust before pulling the door shut behind him.
“Roxanne,” Mohammed says. “Come with me please.”
I follow him back into his sad little office.
“I am sorry that this happened to you,” he says. “But I’m glad that you are fine. You are an adult. I think it’s best not to blow it out of proportion in front of the other girls. They look up to you, you know. They will be looking to you.”
He fills out a check to me for five hundred dollars.
“Take this for your trouble,” he says.
I forgive Mohammed his facile recompense because I have to believe he doesn’t know any better. But I need something different.
“Can you tell me where Nikyla lives? She’s not answering her phone,” I say.
“Listen, everyone knows the risks,” he says. “It will pass. It will go away. Do not cause a greater disturbance.”
“I need her address. You have it. It’s a small request. Considering.”
“I cannot give it to you,” he says, rubbing his forehead. “You know that it is not allowed. Just go home. Get some sleep. You will feel better.” Mohammed looks tired in his atypically rumpled suit.
I go to the dented drawer that I know holds his shoddy personnel files and he makes no effort to stop me. Each wrinkled application has a Polaroid stapled to it that I have to use as a guide, since I don’t know Nikyla’s real name. Face after face, girl after girl, the endless stream. Hopeful eyes, sorrowful smiles, rouged cheeks, freckled noses, scornful lips, blank faces. I recognize very few. Toward the back I find a picture of a younger-looking Nikyla, proud and sure, unsmiling, stapled to Diana Nelson’s application.
Mohammed stares out through the dusty blinds of his small window.
*
I find the nondescript stucco apartment complex behind Red Lobster and across the street from the Fred Meyer Superstore. It’s rundown, and plastic children’s toys litter the snow-spotted grounds and cracked sidewalk. I ring 2A.
“What,” a young male voice barks through the staticky intercom.
“Um, yeah, hi. Is Diana home? It’s Roxanne.”
There is the sound of a background exchange and the door buzzes open. I go up the stairs and down a scuffed beige-walled hall. Nikyla’s boyfriend, in a baseball hat, opens the door and with a teenager’s tiny head-flick greeting, points into the living room where Nikyla is slouched in sweatpants on the couch watching TV.
“I’m going out, baby,” he says to her, grabbing his parka from the coat tree.
“Bring treats,” she calls as the door shuts.
“Hey,” I say quietly.
“Hey Rox. This is a surprise. What’s up?”
“I had a crazy day,” I say.
“Is something wrong?”
“I had some trouble this morning on a date. I was kind of attacked.”
Nikyla holds her hand to her mouth.
“But I got away,” I say. “I’m fine. I fought him off.”
“Oh my God,” she says, getting up to hug me. “Come here and sit down.”
The room has little more than the TV and a couch, peach wall-to-wall carpeting and a Monet poster tacked above a stereo on the floor. The shades are all drawn and thin light filters through the gaps.
I exhale heavily, feeling worn and used up. Nikyla enfolds me in a knit throw.
“I am so sorry,” she says. “Shit, shit, shit. It was my shift. It should have been me.”
“Don’t say that, okay? It shouldn’t have been anyone.”
She pulls me to her and rocks me against her chest.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m okay,” I say. “It was Sam Gomez from the 86ed list.”
“Fucking motherfucker.”
“In a second he had me.”
“Oh, look at your wrists. That bastard. How’d you get away?”
“Whacked him in the head with a clock radio.”
“Awesome,” she says.
“Nikyla—Diana—you shouldn’t do this anymore. It’s not worth it.”
She says nothing for a be
at, which I take to mean she gets it but I haven’t changed her mind.
“I’m not supposed to say anything yet, but I’m four weeks along,” she says, touching her stomach. “I just found out.”
“A baby?” I say.
She squeezes my hand.
“I think it’s going to be a girl. I’m hoping. I’m named after Princess Diana, so I thought it would be cool to call my daughter Spencer. Spencer Brewster. That’s Josh’s last name.”
“I like it,” I say. “It sounds like a movie-star name.”
“What’s your real name anyway?” Nikyla asks.
“Jane,” I say, and for the first time all day, tears come.
“That fits you so much better,” she says.
*
After hearing what happened, Jezebel arrives with a stack of videos and a huge bag from Taco Bell. Albee yips and races around the room.
“First is Save the Last Dance,” Jezebel says, “then Pretty Woman. Duh. Then we go get Twizzlers and come back for the best movie of all time.”
“With the hottest guy ever,” Nikyla says.
“Reality Bites,” they say together.
“Oh, I got those pants for you,” Nikyla says to Jezebel.
“Remind me after the movie.”
“Sweet,” Jezebel says. “I’ll pay you back after my next shift.”
I lean my head against the back of the couch and Albee climbs into my lap. I feel like the brittle husk that has surrounded me has cracked open.
Jezebel pushes Play.
“I wish I had hit my uncle with a clock radio,” she says as she squeezes in on my right, securing me between them.
chapter 21
Before Utah was a state, the LDS church proposed naming the new territory Deseret, a term from the Book of Mormon meaning “honeybee.” This struck Brigham Young as an appropriate symbol of the Mormons’ industry and their belief of working for the good of the collective whole. Although Congress named the state Utah, after the Ute Indians of the region, Mormons continued to call their homeland the Kingdom of Deseret. Today the beehive symbol is inscribed on everything from highway signs to the official state seal of Utah, and to my surprise, as I examine it closely for the first time, my escort license.
It’s been three days since my run-in with Sam Gomez. I haven’t been in to the office and I wonder how long it will be before I get a call. I put my license back in my wallet, turn out the light, and try to envision what this valley must have looked like to those Mormon pioneers looking down on it from the east. New and vast and strange.
Ten minutes later, just as I’m on the blurry edge of sleep, the doorbell rings.
It’s McCallister.
I’m shocked—deep down I thought his threat was all talk and way too much of an effort. Something leaps in me at the sight of him but then it ebbs as I place the feeling as familiarity and nothing more. He looks shorter than I remember him, thinner. Less. In my memory he has a certain radiance that his presence lacks. It strikes me that he’s from a part of my life that no longer exists.
“Surprise,” he says, leaning against the doorway.
“I can’t believe you,” I say.
“You look good, Jane. Exile suits you,” he says.
“Sure,” I say, looking down at the snowman-patterned pajamas my mom sent me for Christmas.
“That temple is freaky looking. Like a sci-fi castle.”
“So let me guess. She dumped you.”
“She threw a snow globe at me that narrowly missed my forehead,” he says. “Took a chunk out of the wall.”
“You always did like her flair for the dramatic,” I say.
“It’s freezing out here. Aren’t you going to ask me in?” he asks.
I look at him, oblivious. He is unaware of so much.
“Come on. What is this? Do you want me to beg?”
I stand aside and hold open the door.
“Aren’t you going to ask me how I’ve been?” I ask.
“Okay. How are you? What have you been up to?”
“Oh, I’ve been pretty good. I started having sex for money,” I say. But now that I’ve said it I don’t have the energy to really say it, to make him understand. I pull my pajama cuffs into my hands, over the yellowing bruises on my wrists.
“What?” he laughs. “As if.” He drops his duffel bag, and takes off his coat, already having moved on from the thought.
“You don’t know everything,” I say. But I’m glad he doesn’t bite. I hang his coat in the closet.
Standing in the middle of my living room, McCallister looks puzzled, young, despite his sun-creased eyes. The overhead light is bright and unflattering.
“Where’s all your stuff?” he asks. “I always pictured you here with your old red couch and that weird painting you had in your kitchen.”
“I left most of it on the sidewalk when I left. I got a lot of this from the Mormon thrift store.”
McCallister looks decidedly out of place.
“I thought Ford’s girlfriend was living with you,” he says.
“She left. But when she was here she usually slept in the bed with me.”
“Is there something you want to tell me?”
“What are you doing here anyway?” I ask.
“What do you think? I’m here to pick out some wives.”
I cross my arms.
“Of course I’m here to see you,” he says.
“I told you on the phone. There’s nothing for you here.” He stares.
“You can’t stay,” I say.
“Oh come on, Jane.”
And for the first time, I feel sorry for him. He looks bewildered in unfamiliar terrain.
From the hall closet I hand him a pillow and a blanket.
“Sofa city, sweetheart,” I say. “We can talk in the morning.”
My bedroom door has been closed for less than five minutes—my head swamped with conflicting wants— before McCallister knocks and pushes it open. I’m about to say “no way” but I want the closeness and obfuscation of body to body, with no threat, and no surprises.
And because I want to, I say, “Okay.”
I pull back the covers and he scampers in, looping me in a spooning hug. In the dark, I know his body instantly. He kisses my neck over and over. It feels like an apology and I accept it.
I remember the smell of Ephraim’s sheets and the strawberry candle and the sound of his frantic grunts. Sam Gomez’s thick tongue in my mouth. No. I force my mind blank but my body tenses.
“Is this okay?” McCallister says.
“Yes,” I say.
His hands know just where to go; they are confident and deft but not groping or overbearing. I relax with his touch and let myself feel good. I always loved how he took charge. I close my eyes and feel his palms against my breasts, my back, my stomach. Warm, solid, knowing. We don’t speak. The sex has the sad and sweet quality of one long good-bye. And through it all, I know that he’s no longer what I need.
*
We lie side by side looking at the shadows of tree branches on the ceiling. I know he senses that I have retreated.
“I’m not angry at you anymore,” I say.
“I must be really good,” he says.
“I’m serious.”
“I know.”
“But I haven’t changed my mind,” I say.
“I came here for you,” he says.
“No, you came here for you,” I say.
“We’re good for each other, Jane.”
“Even you know that’s not true.”
McCallister shakes his head.
“There’s an oral tradition of the Utes,” I say. “Ghosts happen when people haven’t been buried properly.” “What are you talking about?”
“I think we’re each other’s ghost. We haven’t buried each other, so we linger. But I think that maybe it’s time.”
He rolls away from me, and I don’t do anything to bring him back.
“This is it for me,” I say.
“Tough shit,” I say.“Maybe it’s time for me to feel okay.”
McCallister is speechless. He rubs his forehead and then his whole face.
“What happened to you?” he asks. “I thought you’d be happy. I thought it’s what you wanted.”
I don’t answer.
He throws off the comforter and grabs his T-shirt and boxers from the floor. With his hand on the doorknob, he stops and turns back to me.
“Jane?”
“Yeah?”
“Maybe if you come back to New York we could try again?”
I am quiet and he pulls the door shut.
When I awake the next morning, McCallister is rustling around in the other room. With one word, I could change everything. If I said his name, he would come back. But I choose not even to say good-bye. I close my eyes. I hear him zip up his bag. I hear the door squeak open and catch closed, and McCallister is gone.
*
On the way to the car, the day too warm for January and the sun too strong for my mood, I know there is only one place for me to go.
Five hours later I arrive in Moab, the red rock cliffs aglow with the remnant sun. I find Ford half-submerged under his shingled trailer, his boots scraping the parched mud ground.
“Hello?”
He shimmies himself out from under, and dirtsmeared and hair askew, leans against the cinder-block foundation.
“Well, well, well,” he says, pushing his hair from his eyes with his wrist. “Welcome to Moab.”
He holds up his greasy hands and I pull him to his feet.
“Why don’t I fix us dinner and you can tell me all about it,” he says.
He takes my hand and I follow.
*
As Ford serves up the rice and beans, I tell him about my night with Sam Gomez.
“Oh, Jane,” he says.
“I’d gotten really complacent about the danger. I started to think I really was doing a good thing.”
He comes around the little table and takes a seat next to me.
“He told me to be a good sport,” I say. Ford winces but then we start to laugh despite ourselves.
