Kamikaze Lust (35 page)

“Go? What are you talking about, go? Come over here.” He waved his hand at me. “Come on, come on, sit down, stop being so neurotic.”

A pause, a slight sigh, then my words: “I am neurotic, if you don’t know that by now.…”

He smiled. We laughed.

I sat down in the leather armchair perpendicular to the couch and stared out the window. By day, you could see the mountains, by night it was a mysterious black mirror. The outline of my face shone amid the dancing candles. I could see his face, too. Veiled, the way it was meant to be seen. Only through a looking-glass or celluloid smoke screen did his image make any sense. I started to relax a bit. Kicked off my boots, grinning, making small talk.

He stood up. “Let me take a quick shower.”

“Now?”

“Yeah, I was just on the treadmill.”

He walked upstairs, leaving me alone on the black windows. Strangely rejected. Outside sounded the call of wild animals: fireflies, crickets, the coyote crowd, all making me feel more isolated, lonely. I fantasized fire engines and delivery trucks, the guy above me who moved his furniture after midnight, the smell of sandalwood that escaped from the apartment next door, Shade’s voice on my telephone. I lifted his cell phone and tried her again. She picked up on the first ring.

“Where are you, Slivowitz?”

“Las Vegas.” I tried to stay calm but hearing her set off the drill in my sternum. As if my heart were under construction.

“You’re with that creep?”

“Yeah, but I’m not having any fun.”

“Goddamn you! I’ve been going crazy worrying, how could you do that? Just get up and leave, I mean, that’s bullshit. Total bullshit.”

“What about Tina?”

“That was nothing, how many times do I have to tell you, Jesus! I just kissed her a little, that’s it. And don’t even try to turn this around when you’re out there doing whatever it is you’re doing.”

A few time-delayed seconds. Shade was breathing heavily, as if she could have been crying. “I’ve never been like that with anyone before,” I said. “I trusted you.”

“Oh, yeah, you busted me. I didn’t do anything.”

“Trust! I trusted you.” There was too much static. I stood up and paced to change the frequency. “Two days, Shade. I leave you for two days and she’s at your apartment.”

“So you run off to Las Vegas with a porn star!”

Her words, muffled through the wires, made me sound adventurous, so independent-film. I had to laugh.

“This is funny?” she said.

“I’m sorry, but you know those things you’d never imagine anyone saying to you?”

“Well, it’s true. You’re in Vegas and I’m here with your cat.”

“Oh my god, Freddy!”

“Now it’s, ‘Oh my god!’ You are so lucky I fell into an obsessive rage and went by your place, which by the way—”

“I know, I know.”

“Did you do that?”

“I guess, it’s all a blur, I can’t believe I forgot about Freddy. Do you think I’m a bad person?”

“No, just a colossal idiot sometimes,” her words tapered off into a few snorts. I imagined her picking through the remnants of smashed videotapes, feeding the cat. It seemed so everyday, so removed from the woman who’d run off to Las Vegas with a porn star, the Silver Ray reflection staring back at me from the window pane. I put my palm over her face.

“I’m coming back tomorrow,” I said.

“Oh. I hope your plane doesn’t crash.”

“Okay, forget it, I shouldn’t have called.”

“Look where you’re calling from!”

“It’s your fault I’m here,” I said. More static and stray wires; heavy breathing. Then came a click, and I thought I lost her. “Slivowitz?” she said.

“I can barely hear you!” I shouted above the cacophony in my ear. I thought she said she could kill me—or was it kiss me?—before the phone went dead.

“You’re going somewhere?” RR’s voice made me shriek. My pulse rushed. I had no idea how long he’d been there, what he’d heard. I turned around, sending his phone thumping into the carpet. He wore only jeans with the top button undone and was leering like the thirty-foot cowboy.

“Who were you talking to?” he moved toward me, but I couldn’t speak. I felt as if I were caught naked in the middle of a crowded casino, the way it happened in dreams. “Answer me!” he screamed, and I kept quiet, afraid of saying fuck you or fuck me, the pronouns were irrelevant at this point. The result was always the same: We fucked. The sick thing was as much as I wanted to kick him in the gut and run, I also wanted him to touch me, to finger me, to fuck me again.

He made it to the window and smiled. Such a blatant attempt at being sexy it was almost boyish. And he was cleanshaven, smooth, relaxed. “Who?” he said, taking a few strands of my hair in between his fingers. “Your brother?”

“No.”

“Then who?”

“A friend, in New York.”

He tugged harder at my hair. “You called long-distance? On my phone? That’s gonna cost you, babe.”

“Send me the bill.”

“Why? Are you going somewhere?”

“Yes.”

“You’ve gotta be kidding.”

“I have to get back,” I said, lightly, but the levity was not appreciated. His eyes expanded like poker chips. He yanked me closer to him by my hair. All of the muscles in my body contracted. I was sick of his tyrannical play, tired of being a worthy supplicant. I tried to pull away, but he held my hair so tightly it burned my scalp. Still, I resisted even harder, working against him until I saw black dots, and together we pivoted sideways. He grabbed my arms, pinned me to the floor. “Fuck you!” I screamed, immediately wishing I hadn’t.

“Shut up!” He slapped the back of his hand across my face. The stinging reverberated in my nose, my mouth, my jaw, the back of my neck. Everywhere I looked was TV static. I was angry, but energized. Thinking I could fight him, daring him to try and mess with me.

He tightened the grip on my arms. “You think you’re at Club Med? That you can just take off, not even tell me?”

I didn’t answer. Turned my head sideways, feeling my hair drag against the carpet.

“After I bring you out here…look at me,” he turned my chin forward, started unbuttoning my shirt. At that moment, the fury on his face finally registered, so extreme it could have been a caricature. I wanted him off of me. “You proud of yourself now?”

“Let go of me.”

“You’re a prima donna cunt, like Alexis.”

“Get off!” I screamed, my feet kicking out furiously. His left hand bound my legs. He tugged at my zipper, pulled down my pants, and hurled me on my stomach, pushing my face into the carpet. It smelled like turpentine.

“Do you realize what I’ve done for you, Silver?” he said. “You were a virgin before me and you know it. And now you want to leave? I’m offended. But all right, let’s see how much you want out of here. Show me how badly you want it.”

“No!”

“Maybe you didn’t understand, I said show me!” He put one hand over mine and led my fingers to my clit. His body clamped on top of me. “Look how wet you are,” he said, and I was shamed by the evidence. “I should hold out, make you beg for it again.”

He took his hand away. I heard his buttons pop, felt him hard against my back. “But that wouldn’t be entirely fair, would it? Hmmm, let’s see….”

I felt a squirt of lube between my cheeks. How weird—

He entered me. Condomless. In my ass. I screamed so loud my ears popped. Thought I was going to die; wished for death, actually. Anything to stop the pain, the blood-sucking and desperate disaster-film fucking like
Sensurround,
where every touch feels like the end.

I looked up and saw us on the window, RR flailing on top of me, his face enraged and scornful. Mine was blank. He pushed my head down and my cheek scraped against the carpet. I swallowed a few strands of wool. You can take the pain, I told myself. Over and over again, I repeated it like a prayer:
Take the pain, take the pain….
The candles flickered low reminding me of the back room at The Rocking Horse. RR moved his hand down to mine and made me rub my clit. I flashed on Alexis.

“You’re getting wild, Silver,” RR grunted, rubbed harder with my fingers. “You should have threatened to leave from the beginning.”

I cried into the carpet so he wouldn’t hear me.
Take the pain, take the pain….

I gave up nothing real, just played along, because we were still in the game. That first night at the baccarat table I’d played hardest when I was most afraid of losing his money; this again was all a game, all performance. I was suddenly transposed, transported. Saw my own submission, felt alive in prostration. A scene so tired it was a genre. But we were no longer two consenting adults…just a couple of hollow bodies… blow-up dolls…Barbie and Ken in their mountainside hide-away… playing a scene from the all-new
Sensurround,
as if we’d found each other after a plane crash and amid the scrap metal and burning flesh and gorgeous orange flames we started fucking like the last two people in Jonestown.

I pretended he had a gun to my head, raising the stakes even further. I’d imagined my death a thousand times over. Just today speeding along the winding roads I’d seen it in a car wreck. My face through the dashboard, glass at my throat. I bit the inside of my cheek and concentrated on coming because those were his rules: me first. I had to come to win. Come for the pain to stop. Come and get the fuck out of there.

So I did.

His body froze on top of me, and he pulled away. I lifted my head, looked down. In the dim light I saw streaks of blood on his white carpet. I shuddered, fearing he’d torn me apart, but felt the familiar grind in my stomach. I knew then what these last lachrymose days had been about. Why all the helplessness, the hopelessness, the cravings for sweet and salt so deep there wasn’t enough junk food at 7-11 to satisfy them?

RR caught me eyeing the stains and sneered. I was afraid he might hit me again or worse. But he just lifted me and carried me upstairs. I was too weak to protest. He sat me down on the toilet and stuck his hand in the shower, testing the hot and cold before gently guiding me inside, alone. I turned down the cold and scorched my limbs, my face, my torso to rid every trace of him. Healing myself, cleansing myself until my skin blotched pink and a surreal coat of steam covered the bathroom.

I stepped out of the shower, my stomach buckling with period pains. I folded up a hand towel and stuck it in between my legs, almost thankful I didn’t have a tampon. I wanted to feel the blood dripping from my body, an assurance the trip was over. You don’t get your period when you’re living on porn-star time. I wrapped another towel around my body and said:
You’re almost home, Slivowitz; you can do this.

When I came out of the bathroom, he was sitting on the bed in a pair of briefs. I picked up my sweats from the floor and stepped into them, then dug a T-shirt out of my garment bag.

“You don’t really want to leave, I mean, it’s just getting good,” he said.

I turned around, and he seemed almost serene, the anger banged out of his face. He looked old, more washed-up than ever. He motioned for me to come to bed. I sunk inside and let him hug me, though every touch of his fingers was like a cattle prod, every slush of water beneath me a vise grip. “You’re a wild lay, Silver,” he said, summoning the anger I’d left temporarily in the bathroom. “You want the stakes higher and higher.”

I forced a smile and kept my head against his stomach, waiting. It was easier than fighting, easier than protesting:
Actually, it wasn’t good for me, despite all physical evidence to the contrary.
During those long minutes before he nodded off, I became certain it hadn’t been the game or the stakes, but only my desire to get back to New York and leave Silver Ray behind that had made me come.

When he finally turned over, I tip-toed downstairs. Amid the last burning embers I gathered my clothes from the floor, checking my jeans for Vera’s keys. They were still there.

Stepping out of my sweats, the bloody towel slipped to the carpet. Another stain. As far as I was concerned I couldn’t stain him enough. I picked up the towel and rubbed it against the white walls, feeling vindicated with every abstract streak. Until the ink ran dry, and I knew I had to be more concrete. I stuck two fingers inside me, wet them with day-one red. In the middle of his living room, as big as I could, I wrote: EAT ME.

I almost fell to the floor laughing, wondering what level of rage his face would register when he saw my mark. But I had to get out of there. I went to the kitchen, stuffed a few paper towels in between my legs, and was out the door, my heart beating so loudly it echoed through the decaying canyons.

I climbed into Vera’s car and snapped the safety belt across my body. Again, a sign I was leaving his time zone; in movies seat belts were optional. Like condoms. I turned the key, listening as the ignition roared regally in the yellow-blue air, twilight’s happy twin. Soon it would be daylight. Full of heat and gore and everyday people. Tourists were more trogloditic, by day creeping back to their hotel rooms to sleep off the monotonous nights of make-believe.

A few minutes outside of Boulder City, I caught the first sight of dawn. It was a battered sunrise, with rays smooth and strong fighting through the fog. I sped across the empty desert roads. Heading into the sun; going home.

A HANDBOOK FOR LIFE AND DEATH

The second I stepped from the fluorescent tunnel at La Guardia Airport, I saw Shade leaning against a row of green chairs. I closed my eyes, afraid I might be hallucinating, yet upon opening them she was still there, smiling in her way that sized the world down to manageable. I felt my body stiffen, the features of my face freeze as if cemented. “How did you know what airline?” I said. “What plane?”

“You forget what a good reporter I am.”

She put her arms around me, and I hugged back so tightly, I thought we might collapse. It was the first time in my life I could understand my mother’s lying down on the floor of this very airport almost a decade ago. Nothing else mattered.

Shade linked her arm through mine and led me outside. It was a damp night, much colder than Las Vegas. I tried to zip up the thermal sweatshirt Vera had given me, but my hands shook. I buried them deep in my pockets and with my elbow pulled Shade’s body closer to mine.