After three years of working as a phone sex operator, I shouldn’t have been surprised by
Allen’s request to role play as a Walmart greeter.

“Is that odd?” he asked sheepishly, my cackling laughter not helping the situation any. It wasn’t
odd—at least not by my standards, spending the late hours after clocking out of my office job
facilitating phone sex with strangers. But Allen’s idea of risqué etiquette was occasionally asking me to call him a “bad boy” and having me slap my leg to make a spanking noise. Role-playing was new territory for the single father of two and a step outside his usually lackluster tastes.

 

“Not at all,” I responded. My fingers danced across my desktop computer searching for details
on Walmart greeter’s clothing, slogans, and anything else I could use to make the experience more . . . authentic. Usually, I preferred doing my research beforehand, however, unexpected reconnaissance was one of the reasons I took my work calls in my husband’s home office instead of the bedroom.

 

“Last week, a client asked me to imitate his mother’s voice. That’s my standard of odd.”
Allen started laughing too, and I could hear his unease melt away as he did. He became my
Thursday night regular two years ago after his wife passed. We often spent the first half of our session sharing about how our daughters were enjoying school—his both at Truman and mine in first grade—or how his new position in sales was going. Due to his social anxiety, usually not well.

 

He sighed behind the phone screen. “I just . . . I met someone.”

Ah.

“A Walmart greeter, perhaps?” I teased.

Even through digital space, I could feel his blush. “Yes. Well, no. She told me she was a high
school teacher, but she works at Walmart on the weekends. She gave me her number.”

 

It was very Allen of him, confiding in me about his all too common troubles in love. Most of
my clients were like that—searching for some kind of connection even if it was just to hear a woman laugh at their joke. I regretted that, for people like Allen, talking to me was often the highlight of their week. Though it did make me feel more like a human being and less like a human fleshlight.

 

A faint knock pulled me away from our conversation. I turned towards the door to find my
husband carrying our daughter, Emma. Her pink and gold pajama set still fit loosely around her arms, but would hopefully allow the six-year-old to eventually grow into it.

 

She pointed at her open-mouthed grin, revealing a small space where a front tooth was missing.
My husband winked as I cheered silently, before closing the door so I could return to my late-night occupation while the two of them slept soundly upstairs. I had already been dabbling in phone sex work when I met him—it made for an interesting first date topic at least—and he had grown used to my second job taking up space in his office.

I pressed a button on my screen, lifting Allen off of mute. “Emma just lost her second tooth .”

“Already?” Allen noted. “She’ll be toothless before the year is up.”

I appreciated clients like Allen who actually respected my life outside of our twenty-minute
conversations. Some men just used my voice as a white noise machine while they came to their own climax. It made the job more difficult, certainly, but there weren't many other opportunities for a nine-to-five HR manager to find extra work.

We wrapped up the call around eight, Allen resonating with the Walmart greeter persona more
enthusiastically than I expected. I recorded a few notes for my files and mentioned my support of him asking “Suzie the Walmart Greeter” out for dinner. Maybe he could finally use all of the accumulating confidence from our weekly sessions into something more productive than a twenty-minute phone hook-up.

 

“Thank you, Lara,” Allen said as our last two minutes ticked past. “I appreciate your help.
Really.”

 

I smiled, hoping he could hear the gesture in my voice. “It’s my pleasure, Allen. Take care of
yourself.”

 

“How many calls do you have left tonight?”

 

“Hm,” I glanced over my calendar--a yellow Post-it note stuck to my husband’s monitor.

 

“Don’t know. I have a thirty-minute open calling block.”

 

“Ah. Then I’ll leave you to it. Don’t forget about Emma’s Tooth Fairy visit.”

 

With a final click the line went quiet, and I sat back watching the storm patter down on the
office’s singular window. Open calling meant calls would be directed to me as my service manager saw fit, usually one-timers or new customers to the company. I didn’t mind them--it’s how I met Allen after all--but it meant dealing with the stranger characters.

I reached over to the window and twisted the blinds open, watching the window’s screen
collect droplets like an elongated spider web. Wind flung the trees in our yard wildly and I
remembered the news reminding us to steer clear of high places in case of a tornado. The perfect night to stay inside and call a local phone sex operator for a quaint little quickie, I thought to myself.

After a good five minutes of quality time with the rain’s patter, I finally heard the beeping of a
connecting call. I expected to hear the hoarse voice of my sixty-three-year-old manager crackle to life and give me a rundown of the client’s details--name, age, time paid. Instead, the stranger’s voice came through over a gust of wind from the other end.

“Hello?”

He sounded young, almost scared. Must have been a first-timer.

“Hi honey,” I cooed. I hoped flirting would relax him a bit. “My name’s Lara. What’s yours?”

​

Silence. Then static.

I could hear erratic car horns in the background beneath the layer of wind, but no rain. City
boy, if I had to guess. Probably six hundred miles from my suburban dwelling. He must have either been in St. Louis or St. Charles, where the storm had almost completely closed off traffic.

“I’m Jacob,” he finally answered.

Patiently, I waited for him to speak again only to be met with another lengthy conversation
with the wind. This was going to be a long night. “Nice to meet you, Jacob. Sorry, but I have to ask for legal purposes, just how old are you?”

His response came surprisingly quickly. And angrily. “I’m nineteen, and I know what you’re
going to say. That I’m too young to be doing something like this. That I don’t know if this is what I
want—”

“I wasn’t going to say that,” I needed to deescalate quickly; he seemed like the hanging up
type. “By nineteen, you’re plenty old to be making your own decisions. If this is what you want, I
won’t stop you.”

Another long pause followed. “You won’t?”

Why would I? The longer we talked, the more money I’d make. “It’s your call, honey. Tell me
what you want.”

“I . . .” he stumbled over his words, piecing something together in his mind. “I don’t know.”
I took a deep breath and repositioned myself in the office chair. Clearly, this was one of those
life talk sessions that often ended with me thinking I deserved a Ph.D. in psychology for my services.

But Jacob was the youngest caller I’d had in a long time, and I was never truly comfortable talking to teenagers.

​

“It’s okay not to know,” I treaded carefully. “Sometimes what we want just finds us. I didn’t
know I wanted this job until my friend recommended it to me.”

The wind was picking up on his end, muffling his words. “You get paid? I figured this was kind
of a volunteer-type thing.”

I hid my snort with a laugh. Of course, a teenager would assume everyone wanted to drop their
day job in exchange for a phone sex operator position. Were it not explicitly forbidden in my contract, I would have warned him I only make thirty cents per minute. “No, it’s a real job.”

“I guess that makes sense,” he said. “It must be a lot to handle.”

An odd response, but I shrugged it off. “Some days. Other days it can be the best part of my
week. As long as my mother never finds out!”

I expected the joke to finally diminish the choking smoke of discomfort between us, but his end
went quiet. The wind was still present but had turned into a faint whistle as if he had stepped out of its full wrath.

“She’s dead,” he said simply.

“Who is?”

“My mother.”

And there it was—the force that pushed over the first domino on Jacob’s journey into calling a
nine-hundred number at eight-thirty on a Thursday. Grief was a common trait in my regular clients, and I was no stranger to helping callers deal with it. Allen spent his entire first session sobbing after I called him “sweetheart” as his wife used to. As far as I was concerned, Jacob was off to a positive start.

I sighed deeply. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

​

“Yeah, me too,” he snapped. His rapid shifts into anger made more sense now; I needed to be
careful not to open any wounds.

“Would you like to talk, or would you like to be distracted?”

“What does that mean?”

“Usually people either call me because they want to talk,” I explained. “Or they call me
because talking is the last thing they want to do. I’m here for what you need, Jacob.”

I gave him a moment to catch his bearings and put the phone on mute, letting out an audible
groan. Calls like these took a toll, whether they unloaded their baggage on me or not. As he pondered his choices from the other end, I stood up and stretched my back knowing his answer, whatever he chose, would mean at least another twenty minutes to the call. I kept the stopwatch on my husband’s desktop running and wrote a note to remind my manager he extended beyond the first five minutes.

“She had lymphoma,” he said in answer. I took my seat again and made myself as comfortable
as one could get in an oversized desk chair. “She got diagnosed after I left for college. Thing is, she was expected to make a full recovery. So I didn’t go see her.”

His voice started pitching itself up. “But those fucking doctors were wrong. When I went home,
she was already dying. We didn’t have enough time. I couldn’t--we didn’t have enough time.”

My chest tightened. “I’m so sorry, Jacob.”

“I thought things couldn’t get worse.” His breathing was short now and everything tumbled out
from him in a fluid stream. “But she left me alone with my father, who’s . . . well, he’s just a gigantic piece of shit. When I came out to him, he had the balls to ask me what ‘turned me gay?’ Can you believe it?

“He didn’t even hold a funeral. He just cremated her and told everyone ‘we should just get on
with our lives.’ And I kept telling myself it was only temporary, and I would go back to school in the fall, but . . . he refused to pay my tuition. He said it was time for me to stop dicking around and get a job and studying music isn’t practical and he called me a . . . a . . .”

I could hear the wind slowly growing louder again as if he went back into the part of the city
where it was the strongest.

“I got a call from my university today. If I don’t pay the semester fees by tomorrow, they’re
going to kick me out. The one thing I had left is just gone. Everything’s gone.”

A choked sound came from his end of the phone and I knew he was crying. Sobbing even. I
imagined him somewhere on the city sidewalk, wearing clothes too thin to be out in a storm and
clutching to his phone for dear life. As if somehow, he could feel my warmth from hundreds of miles away. An image of him aimlessly walking the streets and choking on his own misery entered my mind.

“She was my best friend,” he wailed. “She was my mommy.”

With effort, I swallowed my own tears. I imagined my little Emma walking through some
unnamed city, cold and alone and crying on the phone with some stranger because I wasn’t there to comfort her. Struggling off the urge to run into her room and sleep with her cradled in my arms, I grabbed one of the tissues in the box on the desk to compose myself.

“You still there?” Jacob’s voice was still warped from emotion, but I could just barely make him out.

I took a deep breath. “Yes Jacob, I’m still here.”

“Good,” he choked out. The wind picked up again. “Hey . . . Lara was it? I think I could use
that distraction right about now.”

As much as I wanted to help Jacob, I was nowhere near calm enough to perform my sensual
duties with him—or anyone else for the night. My next phone call would be straight to my manager asking her to cancel my next open calling block. I needed a break and a warm blanket and to hug my daughter until my arms grew tired.

​

But I knew Jacob couldn’t be left alone, not now. Not like this.

“Listen Jacob,” I said calmly. “You paid for this time, so I’m not going to tell you how to spend
it. But I think you should try calling a hotline. I have their number on my phone if you’d like it.”
His sobs stopped almost instantaneously, and all I heard was the weather’s soft echoing.
Fearing he might take a turn for the worse, I quickly explained. “It’s not that I don’t want to help
you—I do. I really do. But I don’t know if I’m the right person to talk you off a ledge, Jacob.”

Silence.

I looked down at my phone screen, checking to make sure he hadn’t hung up. He hadn’t—but
he also refused to say anything more. When I couldn’t even make out his breathing, I prepped myself to hang up and call the cops. Maybe an ambulance.

“What do you mean I paid for this?”

My racing heart halted for a moment, flustered. “You . . . when you gave my manager your
credit card. You paid for a twenty-minute extension and you still have—”

“What manager? I didn’t give anyone my credit card.”

Confused, I started shaking my head trying to figure out his words. Of course he had to have
given his card information to my manager—she wouldn’t have dialed him through otherwise. Only my regulars had my extension. The only other way to get my work phone was to call the nine hundred number listed on the website—

Oh dear God.

While keeping Jeremy on the line, I quickly swiped through my contacts to where all the
emergency numbers were listed. My manager made me type them in on the first day, just in case you get any creeps she explained. But I also put in another emergency number after my first session with Allen, just in case.

​

There it was. The suicide hotline number. And just as I expected, there were only two digits
separating it from my work extension—the first and last.

“Jacob,” I asked quietly. “Why did you call me tonight?”

I expected his usual bout of silence to follow, but Jacob responded easily. And oddly calm. “I
thought you might be able to help. I thought you could stop me.”

Suddenly, the sound of wind from his end seemed louder than it had ever been before. I
remembered the way it kept cutting in and out, like he had moved himself to and from its most vicious strength. A chill began creeping up my spine as I wrestled with what I should do. Tell him the truth?

Call the real hotline? The police?

“Lara?” he asked quietly. I had to make a decision—no matter how foolish it might have
seemed.

“Jacob, I need you to listen to me,” I kept my voice firm. Like talking down one of my
less-than polite clients. “You dialed the wrong number. I’m not someone who can help you.”

His voice came out shallow. “What?”

“This isn’t the suicide hotline. I’m not . . . qualified to help you.”

The wind answered me back and I prayed my suspicions were wrong. He could just be caught
in the storm. It didn’t mean he was going to jump. I really hoped he wasn’t going to jump.
And then, he started laughing. The laughing wasn’t joyous—it didn’t even sound like laughter.
There was only disbelief where there should have been humor, giving him an almost deranged sound.

“Wow, and you had to listen to my lunatic ravings for almost twenty minutes,” he wheezed.
My skin prickled at his tone. “I am so sorry. I shouldn’t have put you through this. I’ll leave you
alone—”

“No Jacob, wait. I can help. I can get you help—”

​

“It’s okay, Lara.” Something in his voice told me he’d made a decision. I didn’t like the sound
of it. “Honestly, I just wanted to hurt my dad as bad as he hurt me. I’ll be okay. Thank you for
listening.”

I protested one last time before the phone went dead.

Something frantic and foreign took over my body. I tried redialing—straight to voicemail. I
tried calling the suicide hotline and explaining the situation, but they said they couldn’t do anything if they didn’t know where he was, how to contact him. The police said the same.
But I couldn’t just do nothing—not when I knew. Scrambling over the keys, I typed Jacob’s
phone number into a search engine. No results. I searched the obituaries in the city areas for any kin named Jacob. Still nothing.

By the time I had called every hotline and scavenged every possible avenue, I was standing
alone in my husband’s office. I was sweating, breathing heavily, and was only just starting to feel the stream of tears escaping from my eyes. All I could think about was how I shouldn’t have hung up on him. I should’ve kept talking to him. I should have made sure he got helped. I should have helped.

But I didn’t know how. And now, I didn’t even know what happened to him.

Sinking to the floor, I forced myself to keep breathing through the regret constricting my throat.
I watched the stopwatch on my husband’s desktop tick by until it had been ten minutes since my last words with Jacob. Fifteen. Twenty. No matter how many times my mind willed my legs to move, I remained crouched on the office floor and let the cold air creep in from the window.

 

Finally, I managed to lift myself from the floor and slowly ambled my way out. As I found my
way up the stairs to the bedroom, I listened to the rain pound harder against the windowsills. I couldn’t hear the wind anymore. Using the wall as my support, I made my way into the long hallway separating the master bedroom from my daughter’s. And stopped.

​

I could only imagine the sorry sight of myself, ragged and sweating and distraught from the
entire evening. Nevertheless, I snuck towards the glowing beams from Emma’s nightlight peeking out from beneath the door. I silently cracked it open.

She was tangled in a mess of blue, sparkly blankets and white furry pillows with her sleeping
face tilted towards me. I was reminded of her sleeping face when she was still a baby; she still couldn’t stop her mouth from falling open as she dreamed. I crept over the mix of Legos and Polly Pockets on her floor before sitting on the edge of her bed, watching her sleep.
Maybe she heard me—or maybe daughters had just as much a sense about their mothers’
well-being as mothers did about them. But Emma slowly blinked herself out of sleep and sat up in her bed, her tired gaze finding me in the half-darkness.

“Mommy?” she questioned. “Why are you crying?”

In answer, I simply lifted her up from the bed and into my arms. She locked her hands behind
my head as I silently cried into her hair, smelling her fruity shampoo and drowning myself in the
familiar. I started whispering apologies to her—or maybe they were to him. Maybe they were to his mother. By the end, I didn’t know if I was apologizing to someone else or myself.

 

But the tighter I held onto her, the dimmer and dimmer the image in my mind of Jacob on a
bridge became. I knew by the time I opened my eyes it would be gone entirely