Kamikaze Lust (15 page)

“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-fucker, 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.

“Isn’t that the way journalists do it?” he said. “Last names only.”