AREA 47

SECTION 89:

COURTNEY, Chapter 14

Courtney abandoned herself to Modeling.

As she shimmered into the velvet-draped, hushed maroon dining room of the Parfait, on the arm of the shorter, obese but formally attired Alex Lancôme, Courtney turned every male head in the place.

The maitre d’ lead on, to where the other three were already seated.

Courtney was a vision in black & white.  White low leather boots, white silk pants cut loose and baggy like harem bloomers, white silk shirt wafting in the breeze of her stride, and a white leather cape so short it came nowhere near her waist.  A big ultra-black shiny chain, tightly around that narrow waist, so thick it looked like heavy anchor-chain; in reality it was lightweight painted aluminum.  Two smaller black chains were attached to the belt-chain, each three inches long, each ending in a black metal handcuff.  The right handcuff dangled loose, open, so that Courtney would have one free hand and could hold Lancôme’s arm.

Her left wrist was handcuffed to her waist.

Around her neck, a smaller matching version of thick black chain, tight, worn as a choker.  Just above her left ankle, at the top of the boot, a third big black matching shiny chain.  Her hair style amped up the subliminally-sexual high-jinks.

The effect was so provocative that many of the men experienced semi-erections just looking at her.  Some of the more S&M inclined, harboring secret slave-girl fantasies, found themselves with uncomfortable, raging hard-ons that wouldn’t go away.

By the time Courtney and Alex had arrived at the dining table covered with heavy maroon linen, many of the female heads had also turned to stare.

Alex had insisted that they be a calculated twenty minutes late, and he had purposely chosen to meet for business during dinner.  He had chosen her clothes, using a descriptive term that Courtney found amusing: “In yo’ face!”

All of Alex’s maneuvering and psychological game-playing struck Courtney as overdone and too outrageous.  And holding a supposedly serious business meeting at night, at a restaurant?  It sounded like one of Mom’s fantasies of what she probably thought the fashion world was like: nobody ever having to do any work, just always flitting about trying to impress each other.

Courtney had at first grimaced, and then laughed at seeing the ‘accessories’ Lancôme intended for her to wear.  The fundamental problem was the male point of view.  (In the beginning, Goddess created Adam.  Then She looked at the prototype and said to Herself, “Now, We know We can do better than that.”  Then She created Eve.  Much better.)

Courtney had almost flat out refused to wear Alex’s outfit.  Lancôme had pouted.

But Courtney had then relented of her own accord.  Politically incorrect, sociologically demeaning——her aggressive friends in the feminist movement would burn her in effigy——it nevertheless was valid if considered as an exercise in modeling and a self-exploratory experiential action in the laboratory of the real world.

Where is the real me?  Where are my true limits, my absolute boundaries beyond which nothing can make me go?  Where is the unchangeable root of me that grows so deep and strong that the world cannot bend or break?

In Courtney’s blackest moments of self-doubt, she viewed her “career” as a writer as a flippant attempt to manufacture a meaningful life.  It seemed flippant because the impulse did not seem to flow from an inner well-spring of her character, but seemed more like a compulsion that went against all her natural inclinations.  Writing could be such torture.  She had talked about being a writer for more than a year before she actually wrote anything——had she talked herself into a neurosis?  And perhaps her “retreat into poetry” was a smokescreen to hide her ultimate fear: that she had nothing to say.  (Perhaps if she could say it beautifully enough, no one would notice that nothing had been said.)  Courtney was a World Class doubter, she could doubt with the best of them.  Anyway, she certainly had no urge to be understood by a large audience.  If anything, her literary urge had a prankish quality to it, a desire to give the world a swift kick in the rear!  But that was pixilated, not meaningful.

Her heart did not seem to live in the same body as her brain.  Her mind thought about attaining an individual position in the world; her emotions ached for her lost father to come back and take care of her, to wrap her in safe security.  She felt like a bundle of childish contradictions masquerading as an adult woman.  When she intellectually discounted all differences between the sexes, the physiological and the psychological, and aimed to be like a man, equal to a man, his rival; an emotional primal scream would howl out of her depths that she had sold her birthright, her feminine inheritance, and was denying her uniqueness.

Courtney recognized her best poetry as a very unselfconscious playful flow of phrase that danced against the forbidden.  She did not think about it, she somehow conjured herself into the proper mood, abandoned herself to the mood and just did it, the poetry just was, it just happened.  Playful seemed as essential to her inner nature as the impulse to tiptoe into the naughty.  Impossible combinations of words were the most joyful.  Her posing in front of the camera seemed to hold true to the same analogy: it was a mood thing; when she playfully abandoned herself to a kaleidoscope of shifting moods, and enacted them with her face and body everything seemed to fall into place.

And so, with breezy abandon, Courtney allowed herself to be handcuffed and brought to formal dinner in bondage.

Female Fashion?  Reinforce the degrading-to-women male-chauvinistic roles and images?  Buzzzzzzt!  Courty satirized them, held them up to ridicule.  She took the subliminal rude raunch and force-fed people’s eyes with it: Bend over, Bobby, here’s a swift kick to your brain!

On the surface, Courtney’s clothes made Alex Lancôme the main character and prime mover——they seemed to create and reveal the image of a girl who just lets things happen to her.

WRONG!  Courtney was dressed so aggressively submissive that she dominated the entire restaurant!

The younger woman at their table and the man (so handsome, he was probably a model, himself) stood to greet Alex and Courtney.  The older, heavily jeweled woman, did not.  Her look was purebred disapproval for Courtney and Alex.  In that order.

“Pomona,” Alex said, with a wide smile.  She just silently stared at him.

“Don’t mind the old battle-wagon,” Lancôme stage whispered into Courtney’s ear.  Then he introduced everyone, and they all sat down and adjusted to the new situation.  The new situation was the presence of Courtney-in-chains at the dinner table.

Courtney was having lots of fun with this one: Alex is the Toad-King, and I’m the Toad-King’s favorite concubine; if I’m a good little slave-girl he won’t tie me up and whip me, maybe he’ll just pass me around to his friends.  Gawwwwwd!

The younger woman, rather ugly, an intellectual with a cold manner and a man’s haircut; she was the representative from the Preferred Model Management Agency.  She was the one they were here to meet, and her voice was startlingly low in pitch, like a man’s voice.

The guy was apparently her date.  He was in a tuxedo that was possibly a size too small for him, judging from the bulging muscles that were apparent even through the fabric.  He was an animal.

The waiter was hovering; he launched into his intro-spiel of wines and appetizers.  But Alex Lancôme halted the proceedings by simply reaching over and unlocking Courtney’s left wrist.

With apparent consternation, the waiter began anew, actually stuttering a little over lines that he must have spoken thousands of times.

Courty suppressed wild laughter, and prematurely ordered: “Pizza!”

Alex preemptively ordered: “Courty, calm down.”

The young modeling rep, in her early thirties, from the beginning the focus of Lancôme’s wit and energy, cast quick glances of intense suspicion Courtney’s way.

The older, gaudy woman on Courtney’s right, wearing hundreds of thousands of dollars of jewelry (if they were real), was a brick wall of disapproval, between sharp, biting comments at the world in general and her contemporaries in the modeling business in particular.  She spoke in sentence fragments; evidently English was not her native language, though she seemed to follow it well enough.

The man between the other two women, opposite Courtney at the table, showed all the signs of being the love-struck horny All American Male.  His date was not the object of his new-found desire.

If I’m in chains, Courtney reasoned, it’s because they are necessary.  Without them, I must be too wild to handle.  Gawd.

Oh, no.  That monkey in the monkey suit is rubbing up against my leg on purpose!

“She too old to start,” the elderly Pomona said.

“Don’t give me that, Pomona,” Alex said.  “Christine Lafayette is 30 now.  She started at 29, and she immediately landed the biggest exclusive contract of all time.”

Ms. Joyce, the monkey’s master, dryly said: “Being General Lafayette’s daughter helped a trifle.  You know the French.”

Swiftly, they were inundated in appetizers, light wines, and for Alex, Wild Turkey on the rocks.  Courtney guessed that the others had been a calculated fifteen minutes late, and that Alex had out-calculated them by five minutes.

The monkey, encouraged by Courtney’s nonchalance, her knowing smile & wink, became more bold in his footsie frolics up the side of Courtney’s calf.  Interestingly enough, he was simultaneously idly stroking Ms. Joyce’s bare arm with his forefinger.

“How old you, Dear?” the wrinkles with jewels asked.  “Two-three?”

The guess was so perfect that Courtney refused to acknowledge the accuracy.  “Two-six,” Courtney said, and then gobbled succulent zucchini.  The look on the witch’s face was reward enough, although Lancôme frowned at her lie.

“Twenty-six?” Ms. Joyce said.  “Alex, why are you wasting my time?”

“She’s twenty-three,” Alex said.  “I forgot to bring her gag.  Shall I send her off to fetch it?”

“Well, what’s all this about short-term unavailability?” Ms. Joyce asked.

“Tomboy has her under an exclusive contract for six months,” Alex said.  “But I’m sure——”

“How can I eat any food?” Courtney interrupted, in sudden horror, slamming down her fork.  “It all comes from living things!”

This brought a tiny silence of discomfort, and then monkey-chuckles.

“What you have here,” Ms. Joyce said, indicating Courtney, “is a sphinx without a secret.”

“Oh, you think so, do you?” Alex said, suddenly fired up and excited with an idea.  “Look around you, right now, and count how many people are watching Courty.  Right now.  Look around.”

Ms. Joyce’s facial expression made it clear that she was granting Alex a rare favor by obeying his simple suggestion.

It tickled Courtney to watch the enlightenment slowly dawn on the woman’s face.  Yes, Courtney could feel that many eyes were upon her; she could hear just a hint of whispering, and could sense that the hushed portion of it was about her.

It also tickled her that the shoe on the monkey’s foot was now edging gently between her knees, trying to snuggle open her thighs.

“Gift wrapping, Alex,” Ms. Joyce said, her voice extra low, dipping into the bass octaves.

“My strong point, I admit it.  Fashion is where I live and breath.  It’s where I score my points.  But, Joy, who else could carry it off?  Who else could wear some silly-assed sex toy that I picked up at Ralph’s Bondage Parlor, for God’s sake——and then waltz in here as confidently and self-possessed as if she were wearing diamond jewelry from Cartier?  Who else?”

“Could you pass the mushrooms, please?” Courtney asked.  She cleared a space in front of her, and placed her empty sizable bread plate there.  The mushrooms came around.

Courtney reached down suddenly and got a good hold on the shoe between her legs.  She pulled it right off.

She placed the man’s black patent leather shoe on the plate in front of her, and using the ladle to get a healthy supply of gravy, she anointed his shoe with mushrooms.

“Would you like seconds?” she asked him.

His eyes were bulging.

Since he didn’t reply, she shrugged and began to till the size tens with marinated mushrooms.

The monkey finally found his voice.  “Hey!  Stop that!”

“I don’t want you to go hungry, now,” Courtney said, being careful not to slop any of the thick fluid onto the table, but otherwise burying the shoe and filling it up.

No one was eating the mushrooms anyway.

Courtney had everyone’s attention at the table——and then some.  “Anything I find between my legs is mine,” she announced to them, meeting everyone’s eyes in turn for a second to make her point.  “Mine to do with what I will.”

Pomona began to laugh; it was a low, rolling cackle, with a twinkle of temporary affection for Courtney.  Ms. Joyce became sharply miffed at her billboard-ready date, who visibly shriveled several sizes in embarrassment and frustration.

Alex laughed with gusto, and demolished his first Wild Turkey.

One of the restaurant’s attendants began to place several serving stands around Courtney’s side of the table.  Courtney thought it was the dinner they had ordered.  But a tribe of waiters approached, bearing 12-dozen long-stemmed red roses in sterling silver containers on sterling silver trays.  Eleven of the dozens were placed around Courtney on the serving stands, the twelfth was placed on the table in front of Courtney.  The shoe was simultaneously removed as casually as any other uneaten entree.

Quickly Courtney said, “Would you please put that in a doggie bag for him?”

“Certainly,” one of them said.

The waiters were all beaming, but the others remained utterly silent.  The head waiter handed her the card, said, “For you, Courtney Ryan,” and withdrew.

Courtney thought: so that’s why Alex was careful to announce my name as well as his when we came in.  This must be some stunt of his.

But she opened the large card, and read.

FOR COURTNEY FOULKE RYAN:

YOU ARE THE SOMEDAY,

THAT WE ALL WAIT FOR TO HAPPEN.

YOU ARE THE REASON,

THAT MAKES OF MY SAD YESTERDAYS, PURE JOY TOMORROWS.

YOU ARE THE BEAUTY,

THAT CAPTURES MY HEART AT A SINGLE GLANCE.

YOU ARE THE LOVE,

THE PASSIONATE ACHE THAT TOUCHES FOREVER.

YOU ARE THE FIRE,

THAT NEVER BEFORE HAS BURNED ME.

YOU ARE THE ICE,

THAT MAKES ME BEG FOR MORE.

YOU ARE THE TRUTH,

THAT I ALWAYS KNEW BUT COULD NOT PROVE.

AND YOU ARE THE MEANING,

THAT I SEARCHED FOR, FOR SO LONG.

BYRON REED

It was deeply disturbing, and completely shattered Courtney’s rich, good feelings of playful exotic fun.  The impact of Reed’s serious and solemn declaration was awesome.  Less than a poem, but more than a promise, it was flawed and crude, but the flaws emphasized the emotion behind the words.

People were speaking to her, she had to respond, but she hadn’t a notion of what had been said.

She felt fluttery and light-headed.  For a moment she fantasized of herself in his arms, but the image was too savagely beautiful for her to hold, so she instantly threw it away.  But the thought of him came back.  Memory fragments of Reed, and daydream flickers merged in a tidal sea of internal feelings and visions.

Then, instead of emotionally disturbing, it was revealed to her as emotionally beautiful.  The event was actually ecstasy, so beautiful that she realized that tears were welling up in her eyes and streaming down her cheeks.

She mumbled excuses, and stumbled up, half-blind, to find the ladies room.

After wrong turns and two sets of directions, she found herself in the outer room of the ladies room, standing, staring at herself in the gigantic mirror, scarcely aware of the occasional other woman, coming or going.

She still had Reed’s card in her hand.  She ripped it up, tore it into tiny pieces, and with an animal noise of pain, threw the pieces in the waste receptacle.  Instantly, she regretted the decision, and wanted to reach in after them.  Why had she done that?  It didn’t make sense.  Nothing made sense.

She looked at herself.  All her features blurred slightly because of her nearsightedness; the blur lent a mysticism to them.

I should blush with embarrassment at wearing this stupid get up.  Am I blushing?  No.  God, I almost like it.  That’s sick.  What’s happening to me?  What is he doing to me?  Is this how it happens?  Damn, what is this, The Story Of 0 revisited?  I’m sexy, and I like it.  Sick, pornographic sexy, bondage sexy . . . this isn’t me!  It isn’t!

She slumped down in one of the chairs provided for make-up touch up work.

I’m trapped.  I’m trapped precisely because I like it.  I like this new life . . . I’m like the mushrooms.  No one was eating them, might as well pour them into someone’s shoe.

Somehow the thought that her life was irretrievably going to hell, was mildly comforting, and consolidated her ability to deal with the concrete present.  She actually smiled.  It was a sad smile, a calming smile.  She retouched her make-up some, and took a napkin from the stack on the ledge and wiped the shine from her forehead.  Her make-up was little more than a subtle lipstick glow and a hint of eye-liner.

Then Courtney was distracted by the texture of the napkin.  She felt it carefully, and tested a corner of it.  Amazing.

Vlad had a favorite magic trick where he used a special napkin as part of it.  But the magic stores had stopped stocking the special napkin, so had been unable to continue doing the trick.  Courtney had tried to find a replacement for him, but had never found one.

But here it was.  It felt identical.  Perfect.  She was sure it would work . . . well, almost sure . . . it would be better to test it, but she didn’t have any matches.

Well, that settled it.  She would just have to do the trick, here tonight——if the occasion offered, of course.

With a sly smile, she took an extra napkin and strolled back to her table.

The last dozen of the red roses had found their way to the center of the table, and the monkey-man seemed to be doing his best to hide behind them, which was fine with Courtney.

The food arrived, and Ms. Joyce fired question after question directly at Courtney.

“Tell me, Courtney——”

“Courty——”

“Now, young woman, I am the vice president and operations manager of Preferred, which has branches worldwide, and is . . .”

Blah, blah, blah, Courtney thought, actually so bored she couldn’t concentrate on what the woman was saying.  Courtney checked.  “Forgive me if I’m not envious.”

A short pause.  “What are your life’s goals, Courty?”

“Trying to live my life.  It’s never been done before, you know.”

A longer pause.  “Have you lead an unusual life, Courty?”

“Ever since birth, yes.”

A clearing of throat, an uneasy glance around the table.  “Hum.  Tell me in thirty words or less——”

“Words can never express what words can never express!  May I explain in thirty numbers or less?”

“She’s a flake, Alex!” Ms. Joyce said.  “She’ll fold to the first drug or bad boyfriend.”

Courtney objected: “From time to time I’m reliable!”

Alex said, “Courty: Flake Off.”

Courtney became prim, demure, and circumspect, on command.  Gawwwwd.

“Alex,” Ms. Joyce said, “she’s impossible.”

“She’s the look of the decade, Joy.”

“Her look is too strong, Alex.”

“Tooth,” Pomona said.

“And her teeth,” Ms. Joyce said.  “Let’s see her teeth again.  Show us your teeth, Dear.”

Courtney was in the ‘Flake Off’ mode, so she looked at Alex for guidance.  He gently shook his head, and brought out a pack of photographs, which he handed to Ms. Joyce.

“She twinkles,” Alex said.  “She’s a $5,000-a-day runway girl.”

“Tinkles?” Pomona asked, possibly in self-parody.

But Ms. Joyce was interested despite her better judgment, and scarcely heard her.

“A runway girl who never smiles?” Ms. Joyce asked.

Alex withdrew three carefully culled shots from an inner pocket of his jacket.  He handed them over.

“Alex!” Ms. Joyce said.

“Merely to demonstrate that the smile is occasionally useful as is.  But she doesn’t need to smile.  Hers is not a drop-dead beauty like Alexandria or Julie Dayton, but a more subtle sensuality that draws your eye to her over and over.  Look, Joy, I’m just offering her to you first, as a favor, because I respect you.”

“Oh, now you’re doing me a favor!”

“What are friends for?” Alex asked happily.

The dignified Ms. Joyce rummaged through the photographs again.  She stopped.  “These were all taken in one shoot.”

“Yes.  Yes, yes!” Alex enthused.  He lowered his voice, and spoke with secret conspiracy.  He signaled her, and leaned forward to get closer to Ms. Joyce.  Lancôme and Joyce bent their heads together, and spoke privately, softly.  “This cunt could ruin the industry.  I mean, shit, it’s just too fucking easy.  She just puts on the clothes and runs with it.  I don’t tell her what to do, she fuckin’ tells me.  Every fuckin’ lens out there is gonna call for her again.  Serious shit though, Joy, I don’t want that cocksucker Kramer to get a hold of her.  I’d really rather that you took care of her.”

“You are serious about this girl.”

He winked.

“Loved the flowers.”  She chuckled, a deceptive laugh that almost didn’t sound like a laugh.  “A promotional ploy, correct?”

“Well . . . actually not.  The flowers are from Byron Reed.”

“Who is he?”

“A record producer on the West Coast.  He’s the Reed of Krane-&-Reed.”

“Krane-&-Reed?”

“He produces Harlot.”

“Oh.  But she’s not your girl?  She belongs to this Reed?”

“Well . . . I don’t exactly think that she belongs to anybody.”

Joyce and Lancôme looked at each other meaningfully.  They were both thinking the same thought: that she was bait for a bad boyfriend; or in industry lingo, BBB.  They both had seen too many girls come up too fast, only to get linked up somehow with a disastrous lover who would utterly destroy the girl’s career, if not ruin her self-respect and her life.

Alex added: “So stick in an Out Clause, I don’t care.  She’ll sign it.  I just want her with you, Joy.”

A finger aimed down and touched the top photograph.  “How do I know she can do it again?” Ms. Joyce asked.  “How do I know it wasn’t a fluke?”

Alex Lancôme leaned back in his chair and put away his fourth Wild Turkey.  A slow, easy smile evolved on his face.  “Courty . . . Flake On.”

Courtney broke fourth wall, and spoke to an imaginary audience beside the table.  “What’s that, like, ‘OK now be funny?’  Right.”  She faced the people at the table again, and decided Pomona was the best target.  “Pomona, what is your home country?”

“Yugoslavia.”

“Ahhh,” Courtney said.  The answer was too good to be true.  She improvised.  “Do you recall the US space shuttle disaster that happened way back in the Eighties?”

“A little,” Pomona allowed.

“Well, Yugoslavia had its own space disaster last year.  Did you hear of it?”

“No.”  A no of suspicion and boredom.

“The disaster was that they achieved unprecedented success!  Not only did they get off the ground, but the Yugoslavs actually launched several astronauts into orbit!”

The Yugo-eyes eyes flinted with distrust and hostility.

“Now, of course, in Yugoslavia——Belgrade, actually——they do it a little differently than we do it here in the US.  Sexually, they prefer the woman superior position, whereas here, in the States we generally prefer the numerical position.  But not only do they couple the different stages together differently in Yugoslavia, but they launch them differently as well.”  She separated the two-ply special napkin she had liberated from the ladies room into two micro-thin halves and rolled one half into a cylinder about an inch in diameter; it would not maintain its shape, so she faked it; she put three folds into it until it was a triangular vertical column of the same size.

Courtney stood up.  “May I have a match from the audience?”

Alex Lancôme produced a book of matches.

“From the audience!” Courtney said, refusing the matches.

Ms. Joyce snapped her fingers, and the dead-silent one-shoed dude grimly offered Courtney his lighter.

“You understand, of course, that the Yugoslavian Space Agency uses a solid fuel propellant, and that this here is liquid butane; but this should serve to give you the general idea of their launch method.”

She flicked the gold lighter with the huge, phony solitaire diamond on its side, and on the second try it flamed on.  Courty lit the top of the unusual napkin, carefully touching flame to each edge of the triangle so that it would burn down evenly.

Looking around to be sure that she wasn’t boring anyone (she wasn’t, fire invariably catches everyone’s attention; even the uneasy busboy at an adjacent table, filling up people’s water glasses, was a wide-eyed, spell-bound member of Courtney’s audience), Courtney continued.  “Please note the Yugoslavic launch method, and how it differs from that at Cape Canaveral.”  She was speaking loudly now, too loudly; the kind of flamboyant loud, replete with arm gestures, that attracts the attention of the entire restaurant.

“Jesus Christ,” Lancôme muttered under his breath.

“No!” Courtney said.  “The Yugoslavs do not use blasphemous oaths nor take sacred names in vain to get off the ground!  Nor do they use the traditional launch method of lighting a fire under the rocket to get it off the ground.  No, they just Torch The Sucker!”

Courtney hadn’t thought to place the napkin on a plate because she was assuming that the trick would work, and if it worked a launch platform would be unnecessary.

But the head busboy saw the flame lick down lower and lower to the expensive linen covering the table, and he leaped forward with the water jug in his hand.  He approached the table at a run, and attempted to douse the offending flame.

But just as he upended his jug and splashed the table, the hot air draft created by the flame achieved it’s strongest up-blast, and the dwindling weight of the burning napkin became light enough to lift off.

It sailed up majestically, barely missing the busboy flood, and arcing high over the table, while Courtney’s spread arms and shouting voice enthused over the great Yugoslavian success!

And to Courtney’s right, an old, old woman, bitter in her autumn years, became magically for a few moments a young happy child, clapping her hands with joyous abandon.

An instant later, the restaurant erupted with spontaneous applause, as the Yugonauts wafted lightly on the breeze, still high in the air, flickering with glowing lightweight embers.

COURTNEY, Chapter 15
 

Copyright 2005 Area 47