Kamikaze Lust Read online

  I leaned over and rubbed her arm. “Aunt Lorraine?”

  “Honey,” she opened her eyes and slowly moved her head to the side, turtlelike, as if her neck were a periscope. “Oh, and Milford, you made it! You don’t look a thing like I pictured.”

  “Most people tell me the opposite.”

  “So how was your trip?”

  “Fine.”

  “You took the D train?”

  “No, I have the car,” Kaminsky said. “There was hardly any traffic, I made it in less than an hour.”

  Within minutes, they were laughing and talking like old friends, obviously continuing one of the numerous telephone conversations they’d had in the past few weeks. They didn’t need me, and hardly noticed when I excused myself to go downstairs and check on Mom, who was sipping from a ceramic cup at the kitchen table with Hy stroking her arm and whispering to her as the coffee pot burped in the background. For the first time in a while, Mom looked settled. I suppose Hy soothed her, made her world more manageable, just as Kaminsky would do for Aunt Lorraine.

  I sat down on the steps next to the empty Baby Jane chair, trying to remember the last time I felt settled. Certainly not with Sam in Miami, and never with Ethan, and not even with Jeremy, my.… I never knew what to call him, my journalism professor at Brooklyn College. In the beginning he told me he’d been sent to guard me from the world, and thinking back to the night Dad sat on my bed to shield me from Neil, I felt comforted. Like I’d found home. As time went on I realized Jeremy was mostly protective of our secrecy so his friends and colleagues wouldn’t realize he was screwing a student. At least he’d phoned Columbia for me. All told, I traded my virginity for a scholarship to journalism school.

  I never missed him. Never missed any of them once they were gone. It was Alexis’ voice I heard next: Rachel, are you a lesbian? Again I ignored the question, tired as I was of these people battling for air-time in my mind.

  The front door clicked open and in walked Rowdy. His face was stubbled, and he wore a torn flight jacket over khaki pants a few sizes too big for him. I used to think he might be gay. Back when I was a teenager and he had a girlfriend, a hairdresser named Betty. Betty had auburn curls and thick fingers that dwarfed my hand when she took it in hers and, in her curbside drawl, said: “Hello, Rachel, darling.” After she and Rowdy broke up, Neil told me she used to be a man. “Sick fuck cuts it off and then she’s hot stuff, too good for our brother.” Neil laughed in that eerie way I never quite heard, but felt in the small of my back. “Serves him right the fucking faggot.” As far as I know that was the last relationship Rowdy ever had; nobody ever mentioned it.

  Rowdy leaned his elbow against the banister and shook a cigarette from a package crushed so badly I couldn’t recognize the brand. They were simply cigarettes: generics. He lit up and inhaled deeply, opening the screen door to toss the match outside. Cigarette smoke blended with the scent of wet leaves.

  “You like that asparagus in the can?” he said.

  “Sure.”

  “It’s on sale, three for two by Waldbaums. They let you take three at a time, but I go back to a different cashier.” He smiled as if he’d discovered a secret stash of gold, then pulled a few cans out of a paper bag. “Here, take a few with you.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  Rowdy sat down in the doorway, propping the screen door open with his right foot. His vinyl athletic shoes had no laces, his feet had grown too wide for them from the phlebitis, and his experimentation with the Baby Jane chair had left a huge raspberry on his left hand, like the ones he used to give me whenever we played Knuckles. The card game was a lot like Spit. “One, two, three, Go!” we screamed as our hands flipped quickly the diamonds, clubs, hearts, and spades and the higher number gobbled up the pile, winning that round. When the cards were gone and winner had taken all, the loser shuffled and whatever number was drawn was the number of times the winner got to scrape the deck over the loser’s knuckles. I never won.

  Odd, how the menacing forces of youth have a way of weeding themselves out in adulthood, Rowdy mutating from a teenager who’d ripped the skin from my knuckles to this off-kiltered man with the huge raspberry and swollen feet, who might be gay and had a hard time remembering anything that wasn’t written on a coupon insert. “Business sucks,” he said, and I was afraid of the business he was up to these days. “Used to be a guy could make a buck around here before the tree-lovers took down the recycling business. They don’t know all they’re helping is the mafia.”

  “Looks like you need a new line of work,” I said, remembering the fights he and Mom used to have over the hundreds of cans and bottles he’d collected from the streets, some bought at a cut rate from people more indigent than himself, the bottom of the bottom-feeders. He would clean and sort the stash, then return them to the supermarket for deposit money.

  “Funny you say it.” He dragged from his cigarette and craned his neck sideways to look at me. “Maybe you can help.”

  “Me?”

  “Yeah, you and your porno friends. I know a lot of people around who’d be interested in what they got. There’s only one store in the neighborhood that sells porno.”

  I stared at him thinking Alexis would be mortified. Her videos might occupy the same cosmic shelf space as Anal Beach Party or Come With The Wind, but she prided herself on getting them into feminist bookstores as well. She would not appreciate Rowdy peddling them on the street alongside the used appliances, old magazines, and grainy copies of Hollywood movies shot from the back row of a theater. But I couldn’t tell that to Rowdy. Why disappoint his fantasies of making his way, of becoming the person who always seemed to be skipping just a beat ahead?

  No matter how many times I convinced myself I was adopted, that I shared nothing with my brothers but the occasional meal and, when we were growing up, a bathroom, our kinetic links came in subtle moments, like the spot-light recognition of nostrils too large or a sunken earlobe. Like now.

  I wondered if Rowdy had ever felt settled; with Betty, perhaps? He stared at me dumbly, saliva pooling inside of his lower lip. He was about the same age as Alexis Calyx, yet he looked at least a decade older. I was suddenly frightened for him. “I guess I can talk to Alexis,” I told him, knowing that I wouldn’t.

  “Got to get something going, man,” he nodded.

  “I can’t promise anything.”

  He waved his hand dismissively as if he’d grown impatient with our conversation and lit another cigarette. I felt the wind creep up my spine. Night was descending on Bay Ridge.

  I was late to meet Alexis Calyx. Never in my life had I been so constantly running late. To arrive early was a journalist’s trick: you never knew what you might catch a person doing before they were expecting you. It could make for great color.

  Alexis waved me inside her office. There was a man sitting in one of the leopard skin chairs across from her desk. He turned his head, and I recognized him immediately. Despite the few gray twists in his dark brown hair, the fuller cheeks and deeper dimpling of his chin, Robbie Rod looked the same as I remembered him from Sensurround. All swarthy and seductive. And I couldn’t forget those eyes, the dark brown irises swimming in sad, luminous circles. In person, his eyes were even more inviting, if not downright humanizing. Eyes that made me wonder why he’d never pursued a legitimate acting career until I recalled his other stellar attribute, careful not to let my gaze wander where it shouldn’t.

  “This is Rachel Silver, my ghostwriter,” Alexis said.

  “Ah, the new scribbler,” he said and turned to Alexis. “This one looks like you, maybe she’ll last.”

  “This one?” I said, taking the empty seat next to him. He smelled clean, as if he’d just showered and shaved. “Okay, just how many were there?”

  Alexis, grimacing nervously, promised me the number wasn’t important, although I felt my balance shifting as this man jabbed at the precarious fulcrum of my employment. “Let’s see,” he counted on his fingers. “There was the star-fucke
r, the manic-depressive, the closet Christian…” As he spoke, I stared at his fingers—nails evenly filed, cuticles trimmed, a thin silver and turquoise ring on the fourth finger of his right hand, they seemed of a different class than the rest of his body, as if they should have accompanied a double-breasted suit instead of crisp black jeans and Italian loafers. The fingers of a banker or company president. Fingers that inspired trust. I always studied men’s fingers, even before I moved in with Sam and every night held his thin hand wondering how many vaginas it had explored that day. His fingers said he was a gynecologist right down to their chalky tips. One might have expected the same of a porn star, hands that betrayed his profession, but this man sitting next to me, this legend of the stroke houses, his fingers were elegant and omniscient. His pinkie sprang back to join the rest of its clan as he pinpricked Alexis. “We wouldn’t want to forget your sister,” he said. “Your own flesh and blood.”

  “You made your point,” Alexis said.

  “Right, she only lasted a week,” he said, turning to me. “Forget the sister.”

  I nodded okay. There was too much tension in the room for clever repartee. Besides, I couldn’t believe what he’d mapped out on his feelers: I was the fourth ghostwriter. Fifth if you included the sister.

  Alexis sighed as if she’d been through this performance one time too many. She raised her eyebrows at me. “Need I introduce the bastard sitting next to you?”

  “Robbie Rod,” I blurted, embarrassed by my own enthusiasm. I tried to cover by telling him I liked his work, which made me sound even more idiotic. My head played Shade’s voice: Nice going, Slivowitz. He probably thinks you’re a trueblue sycophant like the last ghostwriter, or another manic-depressive, a closet Christian—I had gone to the confession booth as a child—or just another lonely woman in New York besieged by biological clocks and beauty myths.

  “Thanks, but I’m not your guy,” Robbie Rod said. His face and his voice were equally flat, emotionless, and firm, as if he were a bodyguard or, more precisely, an actor playing a bodyguard. I sensed he was too cunning to spend his life protecting anybody but himself. “Poor boy put a semi to his head a couple years back,” he said. “Real catastrophe.”

  “Must be tough when the fan mail stops,” Alexis furrowed her brow at him.

  “Actually it was his ex-wife who did him in.”

  Alexis grunted as if this man’s presence had stalled her verbiage. That was a first. She grabbed a long, black raincoat from the rack behind her chair. “You ready?” she asked. I nodded.

  “Wait, where are you two going?” Robbie Rod or whomever he was now said.

  “Out.”

  He held out his palms. “Excuse me, but?”

  “What do you think, Rachel, shall we take the poor man to dinner?”

  They both stared at me. “Um…sure.”

  “All right, I’ll go along if you want, but I’m buying,” he said.

  “Oh, okay,” Alexis mocked his tough-guy posture, the way he threw his shoulders back to make them look bigger. I watched him stretch his arms into a worn leather jacket, looking normal enough for a dead icon.

  Outside, the streets were strangely quiet, blue with the tease of evening. I had the sensation of walking through a dream where the landscape looks familiar but isn’t, where people seem to speak your language but don’t. We floated a few blocks to a small Korean restaurant and were ushered to a table next to the front window. I was convinced our hostess had placed us there deliberately. To be seen. And these retired porn stars still cut a stunning duo, both so tall and well-designed, as if they’d been eugenically cultured with a flair. Around them I felt short and dumpy.

  Another stylish couple at the next table kept looking over at us and whispering to each other. Probably they recognized one or both of my celebrated companions. Maybe they knew enough industry scuttlebutt to wonder what business had brought these two together tonight. If Alexis were wooing her famous ex-husband for a movie. Or could there be a reconciliation brewing? And was I one of their lawyers? The kid sister? A new talent ripe for the plucking? Whatever their confidential murmurs, I liked seeing myself through the eyes of these strangers. They knew nothing about me, except that based on the company I kept, I must be hip, liberated, and maybe even a bit kinky.

  Three large bottles of beer arrived at our table, curtailing visions of my own kinkiness, but not before I’d resolved to buy myself a leather object that couldn’t be found in a department store. Alexis smiled at the waiter. Robbie Rod looked bored. The three of us were silent as the waiter filled each of our glasses, leaving enough space on top for three zealous bursts of foam.

  “I’m still pissed about this Claire thing,” said Robbie Rod, his tone a melange of anger and exasperation, his pose pure gadfly. I watched his fingers curl around the stem of his beer glass.

  “And it’s still none of your business,” Alexis said. “You’re the one who bowed out.”

  “My money’s in this thing.”

  “No strings, remember?”

  “It’s not even like she’s headlining anymore.”

  “She’s an artist.”

  “Says who?”

  “Everyone. She gets grants all the time.”

  “For screaming obscenities in a refurbished bath house; what a racket,” he said so calmly I wondered if he had a pulse. “This is why I hate New York, everybody’s an artist. You take a shit in public, and as long as you serve wine, it’s art.”

  I couldn’t help laughing, which incurred a malevolent side-glance from Alexis. But he was right, this woman didn’t sound like an artist.

  “You think he’s funny?” Alexis turned to me.

  I shrugged, smiled weakly.

  “As if that’s not the easiest criticism…ugh,” Alexis sighed. I stared at the bubbles in my beer glass. Appetizers of crab salad and oily spring rolls arrived at our table, but nobody touched them. I wished they would put a fork in the conversation and settle into the meal.

  “She can’t act,” he said.

  “Who cares? She’s French,” Alexis said as if that made all the difference. I thought of French kisses, French ticklers, French cuffs…the Moulin-Rougue and Catherine Deneuve. She had him there: being French was sexy.

  “So you got a frog performance artist in a porn film, what a coup.” He lifted a spring roll with his thumb and forefinger and dropped it on his plate, wincing, “Ah, mother!”

  Alexis dipped her chopsticks into the crab salad. I reached for a spring roll with my fork and started eating immediately. Though thankful for the activity, I was careful not to eat too much or too fast. A woman of normal appetite, I imagined him noting, no sado-masochistic relationships with food.

  “If you’ve got problems with my actors, make your own damn movie,” Alexis said.

  “How can I when you’re sucking up all my funding?”

  “It’s not my fault you gave up,” she said, and they were back in the ring. My temples pounded, the back of my neck felt like a rubber band, stretching. As much as I was embarrassed watching Alexis thrown on the defensive, I couldn’t help being fascinated by this man who stood up to her. My allegiances had become more tenuous. I was fourth, after all—fifth if you included the sister.

  As their argument progressed, I learned that Claire Blue was one of the attractive brunettes from X-posure. Alexis loved her; Robbie Rod hated her. It had something to do with the last time they’d worked together. He did fixate on the word bitch, just as much as he harped about being the one who’d hooked up the financing for One in the Hand, Two in the Bush. Alexis’ chin dropped. She said he and his people were minimally involved. He begged to differ. And like that, they continued.

  Luckily, I had to concentrate on rolling strips of beef and onions and beans and peppers into a big leaf of Romaine lettuce without making too much of a mess. When my attempts became futile, but no more than theirs, I ordered another beer, which slackened the rubber band in my neck. I listened to the two of them, mesmerized by their voices,
captivated by the exaggerated wrinkling and cracking of these faces, whose hostile stares belied two people who might actually like each other. I wondered how often they spoke on the telephone, if he stayed in her apartment when he was in town, if they still had sex

  By the time the busboy cleared our plates, the stylish couple at the next table, and most of the people in the restaurant for that matter, had disappeared. The waiter brought us three decafs. Alexis tapped his arm, “Do you have anything boozy? Something sweet?”

  “Rice wine,” he said.

  “Oh no, you know, Sambuca? Goldschlager?”

  “Rice wine.”

  “Peppermint Schnapps…no? Okay, a glass of rice wine, please,” she smiled politely, then excused herself to go to ladies room, leaving me alone with Robbie Rod just when the conversation seemed to be returning to familiar ground. I took the soiled paper napkin from my lap and started shredding it on the tabletop.

  “She’s got no business sense,” this man sitting across from me shrugged, his face lifeless and incomprehensible. I thought of Rowdy talking earlier about business, how his cheeks had dropped as if they’d lost their muscle, how his eyes had tinted with sorrow. I started feeling sentimental and hated myself, then I hated this man with his cool confidence, his big business and big dick.

  “You think I’m an asshole,” he said.

  “No,” I said seriously, as if I were being questioned for jury selection. He nodded his head back and forth, smiled. I leaned my chin against my fist. “Not really.”

  He sucked his tongue against his teeth and nodded. “I’m just a pragmatist. Alexis may think recognition from a bunch of cellophane skins makes her an artist, but I know better; the only art in this world is making money.”

  “Jesus, you’re more cynical than I am.”

  “My guess is you’re no cynic at all, Silver.”

  “What? What did you call me?” I was stunned. In his eyes, I saw myself writhing in the mirror. Not Silver Ray, but the slightly overweight, hips-too-big, tits-too-small Rachel Silver, exposed. The back of my neck felt hot, and I got a warm whiff of my pussy.