AFTER MIDNIGHT
The girls on the TV ads for After Midnight Chat Line are shown by components: red lips speaking into the phone; long fingers clutching the sheets; milky smooth thighs parting slowly. A silky voiceover assures the customer that if he calls the number now, those same parts will be waiting for him. For Rika’s first shift, she dresses for the role—lipstick, kohl-rimmed eyes, a lacy lingerie set that she bought on discount. She puts the phone on speaker mode and lies sprawled across her bed, running the tips of her fingers along her inner thighs as the first call comes through.
“What’s your name?” she purrs. The caller tells her he wants to fuck her. “Tell me how,” she persists. He is going to fuck her. He is fucking her now. “You listen to me, bitch, I’m fucking you,” he commands, but there are no further instructions. He grunts and gasps, and then hangs up.
She’s waiting to talk to you . .. A flash of fine print at the bottom of the television screen explains the charges per minute. Special requests for specific girls are dealt with by the operator. Rika pictures the operator as a brusque woman sternly holding back thirsty men. She likes to think it’s a woman looking out for their interests, instead of the man who hired her over the phone, who asked her to moan and pant and talk dirty so he could see if she had what it took. Rika tries not to dwell on such wishes because they only make reality harder to accept. Take that first caller, for example. Rika wanted to sound the way the women in the ads looked—coy and seductive, as if she could draw him into a realm where they were lovers. But his hasty and urgent commands made it clear that this was a transaction, and it only went one way.
Many of the other calls are like that. At the end of her inaugural shift, Rika drinks a warm glass of water with lemon slices to soothe her voice. The cheap bra’s underwire is popping out and digging into her skin. She decides to save her makeup for occasions when she leaves the house.
Before working for the phone sex line, Rika danced in a bar. In a glittering sari and bridal jewelry, she swayed her hips and cast demure smiles at rheumy-eyed men perched like crows along a wire. I’m yours, I’m not yours. This was the tension that made customers return. The girls divided their shifts between dancing onstage and mingling with customers to encourage them to buy more drinks. The men were easy to please—all it took was a giggle or a toss of her hair. Management had strict rules against touching since the last police raid, but Rika and the other girls found that brushing the rustling fabric of their saris against a man’s fingers made those same fingers reach into their wallets.
Cell phones weren’t allowed during working hours. At the start of each shift, the dancers surrendered their phones to a big Ziploc bag. The men didn’t like seeing them on their phones because that broke the fantasy of these girls existing just for them. The illuminated screens were entire other worlds where these men didn’t belong. After closing one night, Rika and the other girls went to retrieve their phones and found the bag empty and one of the girls missing. She had sneaked away from the bar at some point and gotten into the manager’s office. The drawers on his desk were flung open, but when she couldn’t find any cash, she took their phones instead. Because the manager didn’t lose anything, he shrugged about the losses and told them he didn’t want to hear any complaints.
Rika and the other girls had to pay for their own replacement phones the next day. On the registration form, Rika put herself down as Miss although the other girls put themselves down as Mrs., choosing the names of the bar patrons or Bollywood actors as their husbands. The man at the counter glanced at the Miss on Rika’s form and looked as if he was going to ask if she was sure. She stared back, challenging him.
The phone calls started that night. Unknown numbers, different men. Rika couldn’t block them. They wanted to know if she was interested in making friends, and when she hung up, they called again, undeterred. Sometimes it seemed as if she was answering the phone in the middle of a conversation, where the men were already in the throes of passion and just needed Rika’s voice to finish the act. After three continuous nights of this, Rika marched back to the shop. “You sold my number, didn’t you?” she asked the man at the counter.
He shrugged, not bothering to deny it. Rika imagined slapping him hard across the face. He would bring a palm to his stinging cheek and regard her with newfound respect. This kind of thing only happened in movies though. In real life, Rika sensed the heat of anger from other men working in the shop—how dare she? Her father and her brothers were like this. If she spoke up against one, the others would emerge from shadowy corners of the household to silence her. This was what drove her to leave, to take her first chance to escape. The city gleamed with possibilities at first, but after the exhilaration of new beginnings wore off, Rika found herself still contending with sneering, leering men.
The calls continued. Rika began leaving her phone off at night after her evenings at the bar. She shared a cramped bedsit with three other dancers. Clothes spilled out of gaping suitcases; there was no space for a chest of drawers. Power outages were common in their part of Delhi. One night, when the lights blinked and vanished with a sigh, it was during Rika’s turn to charge her phone from the only working wall plug that all the roommates shared. Her battery was only at twelve percent. Rika couldn’t turn her phone off because she needed the alarm to wake her up for her next shift. But when she left it on, a man called over and over again until her battery was nearly flat. Finally, she picked up. “Listen you bastard,” she hissed. “What the hell do you want?”
There was a pause, which lengthened into a long silence. The phone sounded a warning—five percent. Rika continued. “You want me to moan and whimper the minute I hear your voice? Go to hell.”
The man’s breathing became heavier, and Rika realized she was turning him on. Her phone bleeped again. She also noticed that this excited her. She reached into her pants and slipped her fingers in, surprised at how wet she was. “You want me to spread my legs and brush against your cock? I won’t do that. I’m not interested.” But she pictured it as she talked, and her fingers worked faster. “I’m not going to let you suck on my tits,” she said, gasping between words. The phone bleeped a final warning and then shut off just as she came.
After the third police raid on the nightclub in as many weeks, Rika thought about that call. She had seen the advertisements for the After Midnight Chat Line and wondered if she could be one of the girls on the other end. The girls on the ads intrigued Rika. Even though she knew they were just acting, she was mesmer ized by the way their chests heaved and their bright red mouths rounded with the vowels of desire.
It’s a paycheck, and this is the most important thing. Rika doesn’t know the exact source of her disappointment after each call, but it’s the same hollowness that haunted her when she first realized that the independent city life she craved was just a fantasy. Here, like anywhere, men are in charge.
One night, while Rika is settling in and getting ready for her shift, there is a knock on the apartment door. It is her roommate Vani. Vani is a lanky dancer with streaks of red henna dye in her long, wavy hair. She is one of the most popular girls at the bar because of the way she croons along with the songs from classic Hindi movies, her pitch matching the singers’ perfectly. The men sing back to her, off-key and riotous, convinced they are heroes.
“I thought you were going to be out for the evening,” Rika says as Vani breezes past her.
“I’ve had enough,” Vani says. “The police come around looking for bribes all the time. They’re threatening to shut the place down for a week now. I can’t go that long without pay.”
“A week?” Rika asks. Vani will lose half her month’s rent in that time.
“At least a week, they said. I just walked out of there tonight. The managers told us to stop attracting the wrong kinds of men, because that’s why the police keep targeting the bar. As if we’re the problem!”
Rika knows the management’s blaming tactics well. The first time the bar was raided, they rounded up the girls and scolded them for luring low-class clientele, arousing the authorities’ suspicion that it was a brothel. “If you behaved better, we wouldn’t have this problem,” the manager barked, pacing like a sergeant. Show less skin, show more skin—the problem was the same. They were expected to be the kind of women the men wanted to touch but could only admire. They were supposed to look like brides but dance like lovers.
“What are you going to do now?” Rika asks.
Vani locks eyes with her. “What have you been doing?”
Rika bites her lip. She hasn’t told her roommates much about her new job, only that she is working remotely. She supposes they figured out quickly enough that it isn’t a telemarketing job.
“I talk to men on the phone,” Rika says. “It’s like what we do at the pub—create an illusion for them.” But I want to be in the illusion too, she refrains from confiding, because of what Vani might think of her. “They hang up too quickly,” Rika says. “It’s just a transaction for them. At the pub, at least they stayed around—on the phone, it’s easy to end things at the press of a button.”
As Vani keeps a curious gaze on Rika, she feels self-conscious. Rika isn’t close to the other girls in the apartment, preferring to keep to herself. “Let me do one call,” Vani says. “I just want to try it out.” Rika obliges her because she doesn’t know what else to do. She doesn’t want any conflict with her roommates.
Vani makes herself comfortable on Rika’s bed. At midnight, the phone rings. She picks up and answers breathily. “Hello,” she says. A smile spreads across her face. “Oh, I remember you. Sure, what do you want me to do?” A giggle. “That’s very naughty. I’ll do it just for you though.” Vani is rubbing her thighs together, and her free hand is roaming over her own body.
“Tell me something,” Vani whispers into the phone. “Do you miss me when we’re not talking? Do you think of me?” A pause while she closes her eyes and listens to the response. Rika watches with interest. The men don’t usually have much more to say to her.
Vani continues. “Did you have a hard day today, baby? I know, you work so hard, don’t you? You work so hard for me. I’ve been here just thinking about what you do for me. Come here and take my clothes off, darling. I’m so ready for you. I’ve been waiting all day.”
Rika could only hear the caller’s voice as a murmur on the phone, but he is talking now, saying things that make Vani react with excitement.
“Mmm,” she moans. “Oh, I need you. Yes, yes. You’re making me so wet. Don’t go just yet. Wait. Wait.” She gasps and groans, writhing around on Rika’s bed, her eyes squeezed shut. When the call finally ends, Vani’s cheeks are flushed. She opens her eyes and hands the phone back to Rika.
“Make him forget he’s a customer,” Vani advises, wiping the sheen of sweat from her brow.
“I’ve tried that,” Rika says. “They’re not interested in me like that.” They must hear her disillusionment—the dull edges of her voice, the flatness of her moans. Vani threw herself into the experience, but Rika is unable to create a convincing fantasy.
But then Rika thinks about the caller she scolded during the blackout. Who was he, that she was so aroused when she scolded him? Probably the man in the cell phone shop who had sold her number or the manager at the phone sex line who wanted her picture. He was the man who came to the bar and smashed a glass on the floor once and complained Rika had an attitude problem because she wouldn’t kiss him. He was the manager who made her sweep up the glass, who didn’t want to hear her side of the story. He is the police, the catcallers on the street. She is so helpless with rage sometimes that she can feel the heat of it simmering beneath her skin.
“Try it,” Vani says. “Close your eyes and think about your lover. Doesn’t matter that he doesn’t exist. Why do you think we all used actors’ surnames when we registered those replacement phones?” Why didn’t you? She doesn’t ask, but the question hangs between them and remains unanswered.
The phone screen lights up, signaling a new call, so Vani slips out of the room. Rika answers with the same breathy greeting that Vani used, and she smiles as if the caller’s voice genuinely brings her joy. “Has it been a long day?” Her voice drips with honey.
“A very long day, baby,” the caller replies. He has one of those gravelly voices that will either descend into deep groans or rise to whimpers at the peak of his ecstasy.
“I can help you relax, then,” Rika says. “Do you want a massage?”
“Yeah,” he says.
“I’ll give you a good massage,” she murmurs. “I’ll give myself a massage too, okay, baby?”
“Okay,” he says. His voice perks up a little bit. This is turning him on. Rika tries to get into the fantasy as well. She pictures him tall, with broad shoulders and a kind smile, but the image doesn’t remain long. “Let me start with a back rub for you.” She lets out a soft moan to indicate that she is touching herself as well. “Does that feel good?”
“You sound good,” he says. “Do that again. Do that while I put my cock into your mouth.”
Rika moans. The sound comes from deep within, edging her into the realm of fantasy. Her thin pallet with threadbare sheets is now a sprawling four-poster bed, covered in royal-silk sheets and plump pillows. She is lying back, her arms spread wide like wings as the man lowers his face between her legs. His tongue tickles and teases her while she writhes with pleasure. Over the phone, she can hear his breathing getting heavier.
“What are you doing now?” he whispers.
“I’m letting you get on top of me,” Rika says. But in her mind, she is raising her hips to let him taste her. The room around her dissolves farther into the vast, luxurious space of her fantasies. Deeper and deeper he goes, until he disappears and she is only aware of her delicious wetness. It doesn’t matter what the man looks like because he is irrelevant. He is only there to keep that electricity fizzing through her nerves. Outside, the constant puttering and shrieking of traffic gives way to a silence in which Rika can only hear her quickening heartbeat. She slips a hand into her pants and her fingertips circle her clit, making new pulses of pleasure with each round. She moans into the phone as if she’s enjoying the caller’s commands, but her own teasing is all she really feels. Her slick fingers work faster, stroking and pressing, bringing her to a climax that she expresses in a loud, unapologetic gasp that echoes down the phone line. The caller grunts his own finish a few seconds later.
Rika doesn’t even hear what she says to him after that, but she knows it keeps him going. For the rest of her shift, she calls to mind all the men who have expected her servitude and silence. One by one, they line up in the room she has constructed. They kneel politely before her, and on her command, they give her what she is owed. Men use the tips of their tongues to make her gasp and cry out. Their lips savor the heat between her legs. When has Rika ever felt such control over her own pleasure? She tries to think of a scene in her real life that compares to this fantasy, but none measures up. Every time she has been approached or touched by a man, she’s felt like a conquest. Now here are all the men, obliging her as if it is their duty.
Rika is reluctant to open her eyes once the call is over. She murmurs her good-byes to the caller, who lets out a satisfied grunt and then hangs up. Her eyes flutter open and she fully expects to be thrown back to reality, but something has changed. She is in her room again, but that fresh excitement from her first days in the city has returned. It glimmers at the edges of her vision and brings a note of joy to her voice that the next caller believes is reserved just for him.