The Downside of Redemption
Reed Magazine
The Downside of Redemption
“I’ve reached that point in my life where it’s become absolutely necessary to become a hooker.”
“Excuse me?” Paul, my husband who hates the restaurant we’re in, asks from behind the Daily Times.
The waitress clears her throat.
“They have such perfect timing, don’t they,” Paul says, more to her than to me.
"A hooker, Paul,” I say to him, and to the waitress I nod at my cup, indicating I’ll take more coffee.
“I wasn’t aware,” he says, folding down but not closing the paper, “that there was such a thing.”
“You’re not aware of hookers?” I ask.
“No, June,” he says and sighs, “I wasn’t aware that there was a time when it became absolutely necessary to become one.”
“I’m not talking about being a whore,” I interject, “I’d only be in it for the money. I don’t imagine the sex would be very good.”
Paul opens his mouth to comment, but my brother, Michael, joins us at the table before Paul can get the words past his lips.
“So what’s up,” Michael asks, raising his hand at the waitress—signaling for a drink.
“Your sister is a whore,” Paul states and flips the paper barricade back in front of his face.
“What?” Michael asks toward the paper, hand frozen in the air.
“A hooker,” I say to correct Paul.
“What?” Michael raises his voice, looking back and forth from me to Paul’s paper—hand still in the air.
“I’m not one yet,” I say to calm him down.
“Yet.” Comes the sarcastic repeat from behind the news.
Michael lowers his hand.
“What the hell is this about?” he asks.
The waitress returns now with our drinks. Coffee for me and a whiskey sour for Michael that he didn’t even have to order. Michael winks at her and she blushes ever so slightly.
“Anyway, June,” Paul says, finished with the paper now and folding it annoying back into shape, “don’t you think it’s a little cold to become a hooker. It’s the dead of winter for crying out loud.”
“Is this a joke?” Michael asks, lifting, but not sipping from his drink.
“This is what you’re worried about?” I ask pointedly, “the weather?”
“Well, for Christ’s sake, June, I don’t think you’re serious.”
“So this is a joke?” Michael asks again, sipping now, then setting the drink back on its coaster.
“Of course it’s a joke, moron,” Paul aims his words at Michael, “what rational person would become a hooker?”
“Dude,” Michael says, “I’m not a moron.”
“Oh really,” Paul says, “can you tell me one thing that you know about current events that doesn’t have to do with boob jobs and sports scores.”
Michael looks around as if to find a comeback on the walls.
“That’s what I thought,” Paul says and reaches for his wallet, “I’ll be paying the bill now Michael, so if there’s anything else you want to mooch, now would be the time to inconspicuously place your order.”
Michael gives Paul the finger and opens up one of the menus on the table. Paul huffs, but waits to pull out his wallet until Michael places his order.
“Give me the ten piece wings,” he says to the waitress who has been hovering since Michael showed up, “make ‘em hot and also the Pounder Burger with Swiss and another one of these.” He finishes by pointing at his drink.
The waitress leaves before I can ask her to get me a whiskey sour as well.
“I’m going back to work, June,” Paul states as he stands, “I really do hate this place.”
Paul drops some money on the table, not waiting for the check, tucks his paper under his arm and wipes his coat as if to clean away even the smells of this low class establishment he has come to out of obligation.
Michael moves around to take Paul’s empty chair.
“What’s up with him,” Michael asks? “And what’s this about you being a hooker?”
“I don’t know,” I say, “I’m just spitballing.”
***
“Do you think this would attract men?” I ask, holding up a leather skirt, or some sort of scarf that’s intent is to be a skirt.
The salesclerk nods approval and I tuck the article under my arm.
I stroll around the display of half shirts and backless tops looking for something to match.
“It’s a little cold for that,” an old lady says from behind a distant rack, “it’s the dead of winter, you know.”
I smile and say “I know.” And wonder what this old lady is doing in a store called Sweet Tarts.
I select a top and make my purchase. I think this may be a bad idea.But I’m all out of ideas and this seems like the next logical step. I don’t need the money, but I need the distraction—so a part time job seems appealing. I applied for salesclerk jobs which I didn’t get because, get this, I didn’t have any experience. It’s not brain surgery I told them, but that didn’t seem to help. I applied for waitressing positions, again it was “sorry, but we’re looking for a girl with experience.”
Daycare: “Sorry, but it really does help if you’ve had experience.”
Secretarial jobs: “Oh, you’ve never worked in an office? We’re looking for someone with experience.”
So it’s come down to hooker, because, dammit, I’m experienced. And it’s good, you know, because I can set my own hours and wages. There’s no uniform and no boss. I’ve had enough of being “Paul’s Wife” and living Paul’s life. And secretly I know I’m not serious. I won’t really put this outfit on and walk the streets of small town suburbia asking people’s husbands and fathers if they’re looking for a date. But I like to think that I would. That I could put on some short little number and walk out in the cold with no one to back me up but me. I like to imagine that I could withstand the wind, that I could brave the blizzarding cold. That I wouldn’t give up and go in.
* * *
Back at home in my regular t-shirt and gray sweats, I get a phone call from Paul stating that he’s going to be late and not to bother with dinner. I wish he would “bother” to call me before I had already spent an hour cooking. So I Tupper-ware everything into the fridge, noticing the other containers of missed dinners that litter the shelves, the side compartments, every available space. I’ve given up on cleaning them out. I’m waiting for the damn thing to be full, like it’s going to prove a point to someone other than myself.
It’s impossible to prove a point to someone who doesn’t even care that you’ve got one to prove.
I wash the dishes and wipe off the counters. I put spices back on the shelf and toss scraps into the trash. And all the while I’m thinking about that skirt and that tight little shirt. So I think—what the hell. I’ll just put it on. Wear it around the house. It will be funny. Not pathetic in any way.
I go into the bedroom and approach the shopping bag like it’s a bomb. I slide my hand into the plastic without looking and retrieve the shirt. I’m relieved. The shirt is the lesser of the two evils. The shirt will just make me a hussy. It’s the skirt that really makes the whore.
I remove my upper clothing, bra and all, and squeeze into the hot pink, sequined half top. My breast spill over the top just like any good hussy’s would. I want to look in the mirror, but I can’t bring myself to do it just yet.
I sneak my hand back into the bag and carefully pull out the tiny piece of snakeskin printed leather. I inch out of the gray sweats and into something much less comfortable.
What would Paul think if he saw me in this? He’d roll his eyes.
“Take that ridiculous thing off, June,” I voice his words out loud.
I don’t take it off.
There. Now with new courage I realize I need shoes. How could I have forgotten the shoes?
“Maybe I have something that will do,” I say aloud and begin to rummage through the closet. And there, way in the back, on Paul’s side, I find a pair of black spiked heels.
“Ah ha,” I say and sit on the floor to put them on. They’re a bit too tight. And I wonder why these too little, unfamiliar shoes are in my closet, way at the back on Paul’s side.
So, I’m ready. The look is complete.
And I think—I should have something to drink. A woman wearing clothes likes this must need a drink.
***
So here we are, me and my outfit, sipping our fifth whiskey sour and thinking that maybe we should go for a drive. Just tool around town. See who’s out and about. Surely my outfit and I can make a buck or two, show Paul that we can fend for ourselves.
So we walk out the front door, drink in hand and head for the Grand Am. One of us drops the drink on the lawn, but we let it slide. We back into the mailbox on the way out of the driveway, but that’s ok, we hated that mailbox anyway.
On the way into town we pass Mrs. Cutler and wave at her, but she just shakes her snow shovel at us and yells something about the wrong side of the street. We decide to park the car in the City Hall parking lot, but somehow it gets parked on the front lawn instead. We figure it’s late and all those windbags are gone home anyway, so we just leave it there.
My outfit and I decide to go over to Bud and Joe’s. It’s the only bar in town except for the two seater at the Lion’s Den, but that’s not the same thing. We get in there and adjust our eyes to the low light and heavy smoke haze. Now certainly there will be someone in here who would like to buy a lady and her skimpy outfit a drink.
We take a seat at the bar and wait. We’ve never been in this place and now we see why. What a hole. There are three or four wobbly tables scattered around the room. Each table is already littered with beer bottles, dirty glasses of melting ice, and the elbows of drunks propping themselves up to continue their conversations. Cigarette butts and bits of food cover the floor. One cigarette is still burning.
There seems to be about five of the same guy at one table or it may be that they are all wearing a similar uniform. Who knows?
“You seem a bit out of sorts, ma’am,” the lone man at the end of the bar says to us.
“We’re fine,” I say and he looks past my shoulder, glancing around.
“We?” he asks.
“That’s right,” I answer, “look, are you going to buy us a drink or not?”
We keep slipping off the barstool.
“You bring a friend?” he asks and he seems like he’s intrigued by this.
“No,” I answer, and burp, “did you?”
“You want me to get one,” he asks, “because if that’s what you’re looking for.”
He doesn’t finish the sentence, but it’s one of those that doesn’t need finishing.
“You gotta pay us, you know,” I say, “and where’s our drink.”
“I’m going to have to see who ‘we’ is first.” This man who really can’t afford to be all that picky is saying, but I’ve stopped listening to him.
Obviously he’s not going to buy us a drink so we’re moving on.
“Oh, god,” a familiar man’s voice says and for a second I think it’s Paul. But it isn’t, it’s Michael.
“June?” he asks, positioning himself in front of me to keep the prying eyes off, “what in God’s name are you doing?”
“Michael?” I ask and fall off the barstool.
I stand, and one ankle buckles over in the too tight, not mine, black spiked heels.
Michael holds me steady.
“Hey,” I say to him, “what are you doing in here? This place is a hole.”
And then I realize that I’m in a bar, dressed like a hooker, and things get this clarity that I wish they didn’t have.
“Did you bring a coat,” Michael is asking, “it’s freezing out, June. Why are you dressed like this?”
“I’ve become a hooker,” I say and hang my head.
People are looking at us and I’m not sure what to do about that.
“You’re not a hooker, June,” Michael says, takes off his coat and hands it to me.
“I might as well be,” I say, struggling to get my arms into the sleeves.
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“I think it’s a little late for that,” I reply.
“Let’s go home, June.” Michael leads me out into the cold. “You’ll sober up, put your real clothes back on and this will just be some crazy thing you did one night.”
“That we keep to ourselves?”
“Absolutely,” Michael says.
I nod and think how I’ll refer back to all this in my mind as the night I showed Paul what I was made of—not that he’ll ever know. It takes a lot of courage to do something this stupid. Maybe the night I showed myself is more like it. I start to feel better even as my head starts to pound. Maybe I’ve been too hard on myself, too hard on Paul. Maybe these black heels fit me after all.
Michael is asking me where I parked and looking around for the car. He finally gets his own keys when I’m not able to offer an answer. He’s telling me that we’ll just take his car and that he’ll sleep at my place and get my car later, but I’m not hearing any of that. All I hear is a another familiar voice and a woman laughing.
As Michael helps me into his car, placing his hand on my head as he ducks me in, like I’m a criminal, I see Paul and some woman who probably looks good in black spiked heals and it finally hits me just how cold it is.
