AREA 47

SECTION 89:

COURTNEY, Chapter 12

Courtney angrily dragged herself down to Lancôme’s LA studio for some test shots.  Alex Lancôme had to be about the fattest fashion photographer around.  The guy was an obnoxious potty-mouth butterball, who claimed to be one of Byron Reed’s best friends from their college days at UCLA.

At first, Courty was worthless.  Angry, hostile, stiff.  A cardboard lady in a huff.  But then some whim of a fickle impulse flitted through her.

Zip it.  I’m here, and I’m going to have fun with it.  I would have done hourly headstands for this chance two years ago.  It’s too late, and it’s all wrong, but I’m going to have fun with it.  That overweight, slovenly filth on legs, I’ll show him what a real woman can do with a camera on her.  He may throw me out for too much spark!  But I’m going to kamikaze right into that camera lens!  I’m going to fog some film.

And fog some film she did!  Alex got all excited.  Instead of continuing the shooting, he stopped everything, and showed her the dotted line.

What do you call 5,000 lawyers chained together at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean?  A good beginning.

Before the ink could dry on the contract, Alex Lancôme demanded a new haircut for Courtney.  No appointment, just a phone call was enough, and they were across the city and inside Victoria Symond’s original hairstyling salon.  The Symond that has her name on products worldwide; everything from perfume to blue jeans, luggage to panty hose, women’s hair care products to men’s cowboy boots.

Victoria, herself, took them past the busy outer VIP clientele and staff, and into a private styling room.  Alex and Victoria were so casually intimate with each other; Courtney almost thought they were lovers.  Victoria, a stern, well-figured but almost masculine woman, turned Courtney’s head back and forth, examining her from all angles with a microscopic carelessness that was rather offensive.

Victoria told Alex that she was looking for a girl to launch her new style on, and did he mind if she used Courtney?  The opportunity was perfect: the cover of a new TPG Publication.  Alex shrugged, and told her fine as long as it was outrageously new, heavy emphasis on New.  He had with him Courtney’s contract.  He showed Courtney some of the fine print which specified that for six months Tomboy owned her head, including all haircut and style rights.  They could shave her completely bald, or Mohawk her with fuchsia hair color, day-glow green on the tips, with stilettos and stinkwood hanging from her ears.  She was morally obligated and legally restrained to acquiescence.

But there was not sufficient time remaining in the day to do the cut and style, so an appointment was made for the following day.  Courtney felt some trepidation over the upcoming hair loss, but she tried to remain philosophical.

Alex said, “Stop bitching, she’ll just trim your split ends a bit.”

“I don’t have any split ends!”

Alex replied by silently looking down at the crotch of her sleek and tight pants, and contemplating her spread-legged standing posture.

“Alex Lancôme, I swear, you could survive a plane crash——two hundred, three hundred dead people lying all over the wreck, torn up bloody bodies, burning bodies, somewhere under the rubble a child screaming in terminal agony——and the first female paramedic who puts a Band-Aid on your arm gets your groping hand up her skirt!”  Courty squeaked the last word.

The haircutting session the next day began early in the morning.  The mirror was too far away for Courtney to see what was happening without her glasses.  But tiny brown clumps of hair began to fall all around her smock and onto the expensively tiled floor.

Two hours.  Three hours.  Four Hours.  Five Hours Later!  Courtney was exhausted just sitting there.  Doesn’t anyone around here eat lunch?  Her hair was undergoing The Works.

Victoria was a relentless whirlwind, going at Courtney’s head from all sides.  No gossip, absolutely no small talk beyond a few minor obligatory social courtesies.  This suited Courtney, who composed and fixed into memory poetic metaphors for later use as modular literary gestures.  She wanted something to come of this abysmal waste of time.

Her head was swung back down and the hair shampooed, dyed, conditioned, micro-curled; she was tilted back up, her hair blown-dry, sprayed, clipped, rubbed with cornmeal, brushed, trimmed down some more, pulled . . . Courtney was beginning to feel stone washed.

Dazed, Courtney looked down at her lap and realized that she was holding a cardboard tray of her favorite food & drink, that Victoria was temporarily gone, and that it was time to eat.

Courtney ate grimly (Pepperoni Pizza and Pepsi), alone in the chair, her hair soaking in vitamin-E oil, copying down poetic phrases from memory onto the pizza box as a back-up.

It was a fast lunch that went unfinished.  Right away Victoria was back at it; humming with inexhaustible energy.  Seven hours.  Eight hours.  Nine Hours!  TEN HOURS!  Courty’s back hurt, her neck was stiff, her eyes fought to remain open.

“Ta-Da!” Victoria happily said, removing the white stained smock from Courtney’s shoulders.  “Why don’t you stand up and move about some.  We’re almost finished, you know.”

Courtney hazarded a trip over to the mirror for a close-up.

Strangles of goopy, lopsided . . . demented . . . hair.  An unfinished mess hanging off the left of her head.

Gawwd.  I don’t mind if she doesn’t finish me today, but she could at least have evened me out.  I don’t want to have to go home Like This!

The hair on her left side was long, wet and stringy.  It was nearly the same length as when she had sat down in the chair this morning.  The hair on her right side was hacked short to within an inch of her scalp.  Any South American with a machete could have given her this haircut in two seconds by grabbing a fist-full of her hair and going WHACK!

Wearily she sat back down, trying to keep her mouth shut.

I look like I was napping in the grass, and a gasoline powered lawn mower came along!

The Texas Chainsaw Massacrer could have done a better job!  My God!

Victoria began to comb out the hair, slowly air drying it.  Slowly, slowly, combing the short parts and daintily brushing the long conditioned strands.

With a growing, creeping dread, Courtney realized that this wasn’t the First Half, this was the Final Quarter; this was the last few seconds left in the game: Victoria was not going to cut anymore.

Courty’s glasses were brought to her.  The chair was swiveled around, and a hand mirror was brought up for her view.  She was afraid to look, but . . .

Her hair was a genuine work of art.  Not a disaster, but a Dare.  It was not symmetrical.  A cheap way to describe it would be to call it lopsided.  But Courtney realized that it was more than that.  Most of her hair was on her left side.  The style was macroscopically composed of three ovals, smoothly blending into each other: a neat oval of precision-trimmed hair on the left of her head, curving almost to her shoulder; a second oval, a curving bang-line falling over her forehead, went from high on the left to low curve on the right, and continued curving around the right of her head, half obscuring her ear; the third oval in back blended into the other two ovals so that from the back, the hair was cut and styled in the shape of an upside down teardrop, ‘falling’ up and to the right.

It made mere symmetry boring.  It was unexpected, and created tension in the observer, but it had a justice to it, an appropriateness.  It walked right along the narrow line that separated genius from foolishness, stood there on the safe side, one toe inching over the line; but it was so challenging, so just right.

Courtney laughed.  “I like it.”

“Good.”  Victoria Symond was not a woman of a great many words.  Her deeds and accomplishments spoke for her, overcompensating.

Courtney looked not at herself in the mirrors, but up at the other woman.  There was respect in her voice: “Pretty daring for you.”  It didn’t occur to Courtney that it would be daring to be the one wearing it; Courtney at once thought of what the media reaction would be, and of course no one would criticize the model——it would be the creator of the anomalous hair style who would catch the flak.

“Do you think so?”

“Well,” Courty said, “it’s what women are wearing on Mars and Neptune this season, but Earth women haven’t picked up on it yet.”

As an answer, Victoria Symond deliberately ran her fingers roughly through Courtney’s hair, completely messing the style up.  This took some doing because the style tended to fall naturally back into shape.  “Right here.”  She pointed, touching a spot on the top left of Courtney’s head.  She handed Courtney a hairbrush.  “Brush everything straight away from this point.  Straight!  Try it.”

Courtney did, and was surprised how easily her hair arranged itself.  “Well . . . it’s not quite the same.”

“No, not quite, but close enough.  Don’t let it part here; that’s the difficult area because your hair naturally tries to fall into a part there.  Use a touch of Dep to avoid that, but only a touch, because the hair must fall straight and loose.”

“How did you get that effect before of layers?  I could swear there were three different layers in front.  And it didn’t seem to be quite so low over my eyes.”

“Very well, I’ll show you, but you mustn’t bother with it if there is even a chance that the hair will become overly-mussed.”  Victoria Symond meticulously demonstrated the subtle layering technique, a series of clockwise spirals.

Victoria then placed both hands on Courtney’s shoulders from behind, bowed her head, and prayed.  She did it quickly and unexpectedly, and Courtney was deeply moved.  “Dear Lord . . . If it is Thy Will, let the hearts and minds of enlightened women be open and receptive to this new style.  Amen.”

“Amen,” Courtney sincerely prayed.

|

Top of the new Pan Am Building, New York City.

Another copter touched down noisily, as the first hint of light began to kill off the night.

Clarence Van Patten shuffled over and shouted into Lancôme’s ear, “Twilight Zone: The Trial!”  Then he moped and walked away shaking his head.  Lancôme smiled.  The poor creative director was shitting his pants worrying about a helicopter disaster.  Big Town had flexed its muscles, and somehow arranged for direct cooperation from airline officials to help set up the background scenery; said scenery being two of their big twin-rotor helicopters hovering in the sky off the side of the building.

Courty was standing beside the porta-booth with Trisha, the stylist, eating breakfast.  Both women had scarves over their hair to protect the styles.  Trisha was a model herself, cute and bright, a strawberry blond who had found that she preferred the less stressful makeup and hair stylist work.  The porta-booth was tiny: 6 x 6 x 8 tall; five minutes to turn a canvas bag of tubes and opaque acoustic foam into a freestanding changing room close to the action.

Lancôme strolled over to get the girls organized.  Mark, Lancôme’s assistant, tagged along silently right behind, holding most of the photographic equipment: cameras slung over his shoulders and around his neck, more cameras, film, and equipment in a heavy bag.

“Let’s not talk about me getting too fat, until I’ve finished eating too much,” Courtney said.

Lancôme just smiled.  “We’re almost ready.”

“Is there life before breakfast?” Courtney asked cheerily, and then drowned the last of the snack with OJ.  She took off her glasses and turned, presenting her face to Trisha, who instantly went to work on it, grimly concentrating, touching it up.  Courtney held up a flawlessly manicured hand for Alex to see.  She waved the long red artificial nails.  “I can’t bite them anymore, Alex.  Super-glue and plaster of Paris all over my bitten down nail stubs.  I warn you, I may revert to childhood and start sucking my thumb.”

“Close your mouth,” Trisha ordered her, as she began the final application of lipstick.

Lancôme said, “My dear, if you feel the urge to do a little sucking, I shall feel honored to offer you one of my thumbs to suck.  Should you find the taste not to your liking, I have an alternate appendage to which you may apply your oral skills.”

“Gawwwwwd,” Trisha said.

Courtney said, “Mr. Lancôme, most people mature when they age, but I think you have just grown larger.”  Courtney firmed her mouth for the stylist.

“We’re also going to fix your teeth!” Lancôme said, fractionally insulted.

Trisha carefully removed Courtney’s scarf, revealing the awesomely unusual hairstyle.

Courtney turned, now free of Trisha’s final check.  “I like my teeth.”

“And I think an appointment with an optometrist for some contact lenses.”

Courtney looked at him coldly.  “What?  No gynecological examination?”

“Hum,” Alex Lancôme said seriously.  “I’ll have to check with our insurance.  Come on.”

Courtney followed right along after him, miffed that she was letting him get the better of her in this verbal exchange.

“All right,” Lancôme said, suddenly 100% business.  “Stand over there beside the rail.  Right there.  And for God sake, don’t do anything stupid.  Don’t touch the rail or get too close to it.  Open your jacket.  I want to see lots of the silver teddy.  The contrast is very sharp.  Don’t even listen to Van Patten.  Ignore him.  Whatever he says, just forget it.  Pay attention to me.  He will probably inherit Geyerman Publishing someday, but until he actually does, fuck him.”

Van Patten was at that very moment shouting for everyone to get into their places, and Courtney’s assigned place was nowhere near where Lancôme had just indicated for her to go.

Lancôme touched her arm to keep her from moving off.  “You’re in this outfit because it gives the best contrast for the cover shot.  We probably won’t get it here, but we’ll go for it.”

“What’re you doing!” Van Patten shouted at the two of them.  “What’re you doing!  Courty, get over there!  Now!  Alex!  The sun just popped!”

“I see it.  And look where it is.”

“Huh?” Van Patten said.  “Get into position!  I’ll radio the copters.”

“Courty,” Alex said calmly.  “Go on.”  He pointed.  She moved close to the edge, as the first helicopter dropped down out of the sky in the distance a thousand meters to the East.

“Courty!” Van Patten shouted.  He could barely be heard through the pumping of the helicopter.

“Clarence,” Alex Lancôme said, loudly but patiently.  “We can’t use the tower.  The sun’s on the left edge of the skyscraper over there.  Bring the copters around the other side, and have them hover level with us.  Don’t even try to slip them in between these two buildings, or this really will be Twilight Zone: The Trial!”

“Shit!  Oh, shit!”  Van Patten ran frantically toward the radio man with the transceiver.

Lancôme reached his hand behind him.  “I’ll take the Leica now.”

Mark handed the correct camera to him almost before it was asked for.  Doing shit-work for Lancôme on these occasional odd assignments was a more valuable learning experience than his whole three years taking Photography at NYCC had been.

Courty was already mood shifting.  Lancôme moved in to take advantage.

When Tyne Peck Geyerman had first informed him that Courtney was going to seriously test for the Tomboy cover-girl position, Lancôme had exploded with expletives: ‘No!  She’s a snide, fucked up bitch——that glue-sniffing cunt——I can’t work with her!’  But it had taken only a couple of hours under the lights to change his mind.

Lancôme liked working with Courty.  She spoiled him.  She did all the work for him.  Usually, he had to coax and guide models, talk them through a job, cajole them and direct them.  But Courty seemed to know what to do just by putting the clothes on.

Twenty-four exposures in the first minute, and Lancôme had two-dozen different looks and stances; the body language was strong enough on at least half of them to use.  He had genius captured, emulsified.

“That’s IT!” Lancôme shouted.  “Costume change.  Go!  Go!  We don’t have much time!”

Courtney immediately started running for the clothes booth, already shrugging out of her coat.

“Help me change, please,” she asked Trisha, and both girls disappeared into the structure.

Inside the booth, Courtney slipped out of her clothes.  Trisha helped with the toughish fringed black cotton pants.  They would have been decidedly macho if not for the icy silver teddy lingerie that Courtney wore instead of a blouse.

“I feel like Rosemary Burke, or Harlot,” Courtney said, referring to the underwear that she was wearing as outerwear.  Already, she was out of the pants, and was slinking out of the straps of the teddy.  The Tomboy image was supposed to be city-wise but soft; ultra-feminine, dangerous even, but at the same time, vulnerable.  Courtney wondered about that.  Vulnerable?  Indecent, maybe.

“That’s nonsense,” Trisha said.  “Harlot is all style, but no class.  These clothes are very classy.  Please slow down a little, Courty.  We want a fast pace, but don’t overwork yourself.  Save yourself for the camera.”

Deftly, as easily and effortlessly as peeling a banana, Trisha shed Courty of her clothes, and then fitted her into the next set.

In the small moment when Courtney was completely nude except for jewelry, both women locked eyes.  Courtney unconsciously covered her breasts and her pubic area with her arms.

“I’m jealous,” Trisha said simply, with a micro-pause to emphasize the compliment that somehow seemed stiffly formal.  But the glancing look down Courtney’s figure was strong and piercing enough to actually make Courtney blush.

Embarrassed, and almost offended, Courtney said, “Some parts of me are so private that even I have no knowledge of them.”

“I believe you.”  Trisha helped Courty with the ultra-tiny buttons of the black silk teddy with lavish lace.  She was hyper-efficient, but cold, almost hostile toward Courty.  “Who cut your hair?”

“Victoria Symond.  I’m sort of a test case, I think.”

The girl raised an eyebrow and grimaced severely: D-.

“I’d like to be your friend, Trisha.”

On went the leather skirt.  “Take the earrings off, and the bracelet.”  Trisha consulted a chart, and removed a numbered baggie from a small case on the floor that held the accessories Courtney was to wear with her new outfit.

A moment later, the accessories were exchanged as well.  The entire costume change had gone faster than anything Courtney had ever done in her life.  The other girl was already holding the foam door open for her.

Courtney asked, “What do they call Lancôme?  Does he have a handle?”

Trisha just stared at her impatiently, as she jostled the foam.

“He doesn’t have a nickname?” Courtney asked.

“Focus Pocus,” Trisha said, with the faintest smile.

“Well, I like that!”  Courtney felt that minor smile to be a victory in her battle to win the woman over as an ally.

Courty charged out to attack the camera anew.

Her thoughts whirled as she quick-stepped back to the field of action.

There was no comparison whatsoever between this and Courtney’s prior experience with low-level Editorial Modeling.  Courtney knew she had a pretty face, but to have the Red Carpet rolled out for her like this was overwhelming.  It was one thing to think that she had to earn it herself to deserve it, to feel that this was not her proper destiny, and that it would distract and deflect her from her chosen career as a writer.  But the hard hot blast of it!  How can you say NO?  It would be like declining to accept the grand prize lottery.  What can you say——someone else turned in my ticket?

No, it was not that simple.

Already, in the past few months, she had determined that she was going to have to find a job that made some money——for her own self-respect and sanity, if not because she actually needed one to support herself; and a job related to writing, she had vetoed.  Better to wage-slave at something unrelated to her true passion.  That way, it could never infect her pure enthusiasm for the written word; she would not have to prostitute her talents by writing ad copy or doing editorial work.

In a curious way, Courtney thought, this new experience was almost exactly what she really needed at this point in her life.  It was an opportunity to achieve economic freedom, which would one day enable her to devote herself to her writing unrestricted by the daily demands of supporting herself; but even more important, it was an experiment to test her true feelings in action, a challenge to the modeling world, daring it to corrupt her.  Doing this would be a Reality Check.

The shouting match between Van Patten and Lancôme brought her reverie back to the here and now.

As the creative director, Van Patten was the boss.  But Alex Lancôme ignored or countermanded every one of his orders.  Courtney found herself loyal to Lancôme.

“But it’s not the outfit!” Van Patten yelled, while Lancôme pointed to where he wanted Courtney to go.

“The light is fine for these outfits now!” Lancôme yelled back.  “And if I see the chance for the cover shot I’ll go for it.  Lay off, will ya?”

Courty started posing, and Lancôme started photographing, while Van Patten continued arguing, and the helicopters continued pounding away.  “Alex, damn it!  We’re not achieving any of our objectives!  You’re not even aiming into the sun now!”

“With that murky piece of shit over there?” Alex said.  “Screw it!  Just keep your helicopters lined up right where they are.  Courty!  That’s it!  Go!  Go!  Get into the next one.”

“Am I modeling, or changing?” Courtney shouted as she ran for the black booth to change.

Six minutes later, she was back.  This time she was above board, above the waist, with her ribbed-cotton tank top and denim jacket.  But down below she was border town nasty: see-through long lace skirt with short lace petticoat, speckled nylons & high heels; jewelry adapted from the American Indians.

“Give her a cigarette!” Lancôme shouted, and Courtney found herself mood shifting with a smoldering one in her mouth.

As an artist and a poet laboring alone in a quiet room with her meaningful quest and her typewriter, her role was to save the world from lung cancer and male chauvinism; but as a fashion model windblown by early-morning helicopters, her job here was to give full rein to the playful child in her mind, and give full reign to her essential inner flashing soul, to project a rainbow variety of spirited emotional images with her face and body, without any intellectual self-editing.

Who will I be, these ten seconds?

Courty had never smoked in her life.  Cancer sticks.  Death in a tube.  Look tough today, and meet your maker tomorrow.  But she swaggered the white cigarette around in her mouth like a decade-long chain-smoker.

I’m queen-bitch!  I’m hard as nails, right in your face!

Break.

I’m startled!  You snuck up on me!  Poor little me; you frightened me!

Click.

Yeah, but you could have told it better.  That was such a good story but you blew the punch line.  Try again, Daddy-O.

Shift.

What?  You want me to What??  Just what kind of a girl do you think I am!

Zap!  She inhaled the smoke, because she was so caught up in the prop.  And she exploded with coughing.

Poo on you!  Poo on you, you boogie-man!

Then they lost the use of the helicopters.

Ears, Courty thought.  Ears.  I can hear again.

Lancôme didn’t seem to mind, he was still going strong, pushing Courtney through costume change after costume change.  Finally, she was back pretending to smoke a cigarette again because Lancôme liked the prop.  About thirty people were watching them, roped off by Lancôme’s assistant.

Van Patten was sulking on the sidelines, after a vow to ruin Lancôme in the business.  Far off, another helicopter was coming in for a real landing.

Lancôme handed off his camera to Mark, and then swiftly walked up to Courtney.  “Turn around,” he said.

“Huh?” she said, doing so, but not understanding.

Lancôme walked around between her and the rail.  In the distance, Courtney could see and hear the helicopter.  It had been a far off silent point, but now it was twin rotors of pumping noise, getting louder.

“Here,” Lancôme said.  “Hold your coat out like this, and bend over.”

She didn’t understand what he wanted, but she bent over toward him, and with her hands she held the edges of her coat out to the sides.  She still had the cigarette in her right hand.

What’s he trying to hide, she wondered.

Quickly, he reached forward, grasped her belt on her pants with one hand and took a fist-full of teddy with his left hand, grasping it just between and below her breasts.  With a sharp tug, he yanked it upward.

The crotch of the one-piece teddy pulled painfully right into her vagina!  Courtney was too startled to be outraged.

Lancôme then bunched the slack he had achieved, and tried to tuck it underneath each breast, digging his fingers into her flesh in a manner as objectively detached as the family doctor, but as crudely as a fish-handler in the marketplace.

Instantly, she was too outraged to be offended!

“Oh, hell,” Lancôme said, discovering that Courty’s 34B boobies were too pert and firm for what he wanted.  He quickly pulled some kind of clip from one of his pockets, reached around Courty with both his hands inside her coat, and clipped the rear of the teddy, to pull the material tight up against her breasts.  Again he grasped her boobies, trying to mold the material to her curves, but as he did this, he kept turning around, to see where the helicopter was, actually paying more attention to the approaching helicopter than to her!  That made her too offended to be angry!

“I resent being treated like the sort of girl I really am!” Courty shouted at him.

But he ignored her retort, patted her on her cheek, and waddled back, fast, to his cameras.

As the helicopter came overhead, shredding her eardrums and blowing hell out of her hair, she slowly turned to Lancôme.  She inserted the cigarette back into her mouth; it was now a short butt, seconds away from the filter, the smoke almost completely dispersed by the strong wind.  She stood defiantly, but her facial expression sent a private message of contempt for Alex Lancôme.

He captured that on film.

He also got the next second, when she discarded the ciggy and ruefully admitted with a twitch of a smile, that she didn’t really hate him all that much.  It was like a sunrise of her own: a dawn, an admission of a secret illogical affection for the schmuck.

Alex Lancôme stopped taking pictures.

He kissed his Minolta 9000, and cradled it as lovingly as he would his own firstborn.

COURTNEY, Chapter 13
 

Copyright 2005 Area 47