Kamikaze Lust by Lauren Sanders Page A

own protection. These are legal questions, not moral. For me the only morality is seeing that each patient gets the death he or she wants. Within that framework if one wishes to take a stand—go on television for instance—so much the better. But it doesn’t often happen that way, the logistics alone take months, and, sadly, the segment of the population I’m dealing with doesn’t usually have that kind of time.”
    I stared at him, this little man with his gaunt cheeks and white-gray hair with whom Aunt Lorraine felt kindred because his parents, like her father, had perished in Nazi-occupied Poland. They were survivors long before the word was usurped by talk-show shrinks and twelve-step programs.
    “She wants to see you.” My eyes welled and my head grew heavier. Looking up, I saw my leather jacket still stretching from frond contact. Noticing it seemed stupid, insignificant, of a different world than Kaminsky and me. I turned back to him, and although I’d expected the twisted glint of a mad scientist, he actually looked sad. As if his face had absorbed my aura.
    “I will see her then,” he said, and I felt soothed momentarily in his presence. A comfort akin to getting your period after a two-week pregnancy scare, but comfort nonetheless. These days I took whatever I could get.
    I breathed deeply, swallowed back a tear as Kaminsky and I matched our filofaxes for a date. Before leaving, I asked if I could buy a copy of the Docudeath tape. He handed me a video in a plain white jacket. “Take it,” he said. “It’s a little bit longer than the ones we’re selling.”
    “The director’s cut?”
    “Rachel,” he put a hand on my shoulder, and I felt a rumbling inside my chest. “You have more strength than you’re aware of, you’ll see.”
    I couldn’t hold back the tears this time. Kaminsky sat me down again, took my hand. “It’s okay, this is all very normal.”
    “I’m sorry,” I hiccuped.
    “No apologies.” He handed me a tissue, and I blew. Already, I feared needing him too much. I wanted to thank him for his kindness, then tell him I’d made a mistake and would never see him again. But I could only cry incessant streams of tears until the little buggers robbed every ounce of fluid from my body. Through it all, Kaminsky stayed calm.

    Outside, I wiped a few crispy leaves from the window of my jeep. Last week’s heat wave was a vague memory, repressed by chilly winds and dipping thermometers. Fall in New York had officially begun.
    I climbed inside, turned the rear-view mirror toward me. Using a tissue I found on the dashboard, I scraped the lines of mascara from my face. I didn’t look that bad. My eyes and cheekbones and mouth all appeared softer than they had in weeks. But I didn’t trust my reflection. I blanketed my cheeks and nose with a fresh layer of beige cover-up, and reapplied slightly gothic proportions of black mascara. The engine grumbled to a start, and I was off to meet Alexis Calyx.
    At first, the voice on her answering machine had unnerved me. It was so strong and passionate, like a Patti Smith song. Nothing 900-number about it. I hung up twice before finally mustering the courage to leave a message. She picked up as I was talking, which meant she knew it was me who’d hung up before, and therefore had probably surmised I was nervous or a person of strange telephone habits. Not a good start. Now, having just spent an hour discussing Aunt Lorraine’s death-bed wish, I was even more unsettled about meeting the porn star. From death to sex in less than thirty minutes. I suppose I was luckier than those who’d gone the other way, people who died accidentally from auto-erotic asphyxiation. Nelson Rockefeller.
    I downshifted into the lunchtime gridlock that was Broadway, thinking: what am I doing? Writing a porn star’s life was no job for a journalist. Aunt Lorraine would be horrified, and she was the one who’d introduced me to the profession. We used to sit in the