AREA 47

SECTION 89:

COURTNEY, Chapter 16

First the man ignores her subtle hints.  Then he lays every other female within fifty miles.  Then he passes her over for promotion.  Passed over by Emily, A Frigging Gofer.

Red Carpet my ass, Kitty thought.  This bimbo gets skiffle-shit from me, Mr. Byron fuck you Reed.

“But can’t you just give him a message?” Courtney asked.

“I’m sorry, Ms. Ryan.  But I have my instructions.  Could you come back in about three hours?”

“Three hours?”

“I just can’t disturb him right now.”  She giggled.  “Harlot and he . . . I mean, you know, RHIP and all that.  Why they’ve been . . . Excuse me, I really shouldn’t say.”

Courtney smiled.  “Lady, I think you’ve been watching too many reruns of LA Raw and Memphis.  May I have a piece of paper, please?”

Kitty was miffed that she couldn’t get a reaction out of Courtney.  The girl was either plain stupid or just too cool.

She watched Courtney leave, and looked at the note that she was supposed to give to Byron Reed.

‘COURTNEY WAS HERE.’  Kitty crumpled the note.

She was a hell of a looker; really packed.  But what an unregenerate flake.  And her hairstyle!  Could she be an actress filming a new Sci-Fi movie?  Talk about full-tilt boogie.

Kitty quickly stood up and looked at her own hair in the wide mirrored edge of the 1992 BE Engineering Excellence Award.  She wrinkled her nose and lips in irritation.  Her own hairstyle looked so plain and nondescript.

Then, on impulse, Kitty dashed around her desk and ran out after the girl.  “I think I can sneak you in to see him, now!” she called out to Courtney.

Silently, Courtney turned around.  She walked back, close to the pink limo, and came back into SoundSync.

Courtney hated the outside of the SoundSync building.  The mirrored glass architecture was ice cold and hostile to humanity.

But inside it wasn’t so bad; there was a functional logic to the design, and some designers had gone to extra-trouble to balance the high-tech atmosphere with lots of Earth browns and creature comforts.  As she walked inside the inner hallway leading to Studio B, she had a strange feeling that actually made her neck tingle.  Something was wrong or different about this place.  Then she recognized what it was.

The quiet.  I can hear myself think.

There was absolutely no noise except the hushed sounds of rustling clothes as she and Kitty walked down the hallway.  The soundproofing was absolute.  Outside, jumbo jets flew overhead, and cars and trucks honked their way through the rough traffic.  Inside . . . nothing.  The temperature was cool, obviously efficiently air conditioned, but there was no background air-conditioning sound.

As they approached the thick door to Studio B, she could feel it before she could hear it.  The music on the other side of the door had to be very loud.

Kitty looked through the glass panel, and with obvious disappointment, her mood changed.  “Go right in,” she said curtly, and started walking back to the front.

“But . . .”  What a strange woman, Courtney thought.  And then in a flash, it hit upon her: she’s jealous of me.  Is she after Reed?  She must me.

She looked through the glass, and caught a glimpse of Byron Reed.  That was enough to motivate her to go inside.

The music assaulted her.  It was like stepping into a disco.  It was crisp, and uncomfortably loud.  She had to put her hands over her ears.

Wow!  She could feel the music with her whole body.

She loved the look of the gigantic high-tech room.  It looked like the elegant living room of a millionaire——with a two billion dollar stereo system in it.  The angles were all funny.  None of the walls were parallel.  Even the ceiling was slanted.

Courtney sat down on one of the couches, kept her hands over her ears, and watched.  It was funny the way everyone was dressed.  With all this expensive equipment, she expected the people to be dressed in suits and ties and dressy clothes; but faded blue jeans, tennies, and summer T-shirts seemed to be the dress code.  And she had expected all the men to have long hair, like Reed’s.  But he was the only man with long hair.  The two other guys both had super-short hair.

Reed was so intense in his native element.  He was just standing still, but it looked as though he was going to pounce, as if every ounce of his being was concentrating on the music.  Courtney found it difficult to look away, to take her eyes off him.  He was standing beside a shorter, energetic woman who was dancing in a way that was somehow vaguely familiar.

Quickly Courtney recognized the female voice coming over the monitors.  It was the unmistakable voice that could be heard worldwide on popular Top-40 radio stations, the voice of the ‘Horizontal Girl.’  Harlot really was here with Reed.  Courtney recognized her face from magazine pictures, and by the quirky way she was dancing, like the video of her Courtney had seen.  They were way across the room, together, listening to a take.

The song was an ultra-sad ballad, a story of romantic heartbreak, but the chorus was pure Harlot.

I’M GOING TO NEED A MISSIONARY

BEFORE THIS NIGHT IS THROUGH

I’M GOING TO NEED A MISSIONARY

A MISSIONARY OR TWO

Rudi, the engineer manning the main mixing console, noticed Courtney behind him in the lounge area.  Rudi was a pair of Coke-bottle glasses peering out at her through smokestack cigarette smoke.

Reed got into an argument with Harlot, the instant the music ended, and the two of them walked into the small sound room over at the other end of the studio.  Courtney couldn’t hear the words, but she could see them through the glass.

“Hi.  Would you like some coffee?” Rudi asked her.

She smiled.  “Sure.  Thank you.”

Rudi flicked a long ash, and tilted his head: an order to his assistant.  Tom, the tape operator went to get it.

“Are you here to see Harlot?” Rudi asked.

“I’m here to see Reed.”

“Are you Courtney?”

“Guilty, as charged.”

“I’ll tell him you’re here.”  Rudi turned in his super-comfortable swivel chair to speak into his control mic that could communicate with the sound room.

“No, no,” Courtney quickly said.  “Let me surprise him.  Besides, this is all fascinating.”

Maximum nicotine inhale.  “Whatever you say.”

Tom handed her a cup of coffee in a Styrofoam cup.  The kid looked like he was in his teens.

Rudi and Tom told her their names.

“Do you always play it so loud?” Courtney asked.

Rudi chuckled, and stubbed out the cigarette.  “Harlot has about the hottest sound stage in the business.  She likes it loud.”

“Where’re all the musicians?”

“We’ve already mixed it down . . .”

He said something else, but Courtney missed it.  Through the large glass, Courtney saw Harlot put her arms up around Reed’s neck, and she was surprised by the intensity of her own reaction.  It was a stab of raw jealousy, a hot, eye-widening blast of heart throbbing energy.

Reed casually picked her arms off his shoulders, and continued talking to her, evidently trying to convince her of something.  He was completely unmoved by her gesture.

But Courtney was badly shaken.

My stars, I’m really hung up over this guy!  Another woman touches him, and I flip out.  I’m practically hyperventilating.  I am hyperventilating!

Tom handed Courtney a pair of special completely enclosed headphones.  “Here,” he said.  “You can put these on.  That way you can hear fine, and it won’t hurt your ears.  This is a volume control.”

The kid was staring at Courtney like she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen——or possibly it was her odd haircut.  It made her a little uncomfortable.  But she didn’t really have much awareness left over for him.  Reed had just about all of it.

Courtney licked her fingernails, and scratched her teeth along the edges of them.  She couldn’t bite them.  They were too pretty, and too hard; probably toxic too.

Reed walked out of the sound room, but again didn’t see Courtney.  He was looking inside at Harlot.

The music blasted away again, and Courtney quickly put the headphones on.  Harlot sang another take.

The music was hitting and vibrating Courtney’s body too strongly for her to judge it, but she did like the lyrics.  For a simple pop tune, the words were very moving.

At the end of Harlot’s live main vocal part, even before the music ended, Reed angrily slashed his neck.  Rudi killed the music, and gave Reed a thumbs up sign to let him know that the vocal take was on tape, clean & glitch free, in case he wanted to use it.

Rudi left Harlot’s microphone live, to hear her reaction to the take.

Reed entered the vocal room, with Harlot.

Courtney listened to their conversation.

“That’s it, that’s it!” Harlot shouted excitedly, actually springing up and down on her tiptoes.  “Wha’da’ya think?”

“I think it’s good enough to go Platinum,” Reed said.

“It fries my burgers.  I’m outta here.”

“But you can do better.”

“Oh, Reed.  Better?  Get with it, man.  I mean, enough is enough.  I been yellin’ all day for you.  My voice is shot!”

“Your voice is fine.  Anyway, I like your voice better when it’s a little ripped, when it’s just about to fall apart.”

“Fuck you.”

Reed was silent for a good five seconds.  But his body was not silent.  Courtney watched him lean slowly into her, his anger mounting like a gathering electrical thunder storm.  Courtney noticed that Harlot actually bent her body slightly back, cringing, even before he spoke.

“Harley, I’ll fucking bulk that tape before I let you murder this song.  This ain’t no dancing through the tulips, disco bullshit.  If you can’t feel something when you’re singing those words, I’ll fucking give the song to the first female mouth off the street!”

“Reed, chill down, guy——”  Harlot put her hand on Reed’s neck, and tried to calm him.

He knocked her arm aside.  “Get your fucking hands off me!  Stop having so much fun with the chorus.  The meat of the song are the verses.  They’re supposed to hurt.  If you can’t hurt when you’re singing them, you’re just not woman enough to sing this song!”

“I own this song, motherfucker!  You can’t do——”

“Yeah, you got the lyrics.  So take a walk.  The music’s mine, and I’ll find better words.  And a better vocalist.  Rudi!  Erase tracks thirty-three through forty-seven!  That’s an order.  Do it now.”

The silence was electrifying.

Reed said, “You just haven’t got it, have you?  This song could give you a Grammy for Best Vocalist.  But you just haven’t got it, have you?  You never grew up, did you?  You’re still thinking like some dance club singer.”  Reed’s voice turned sarcastic.  “Five years from now, no one will remember who the hell you were.  Or they’ll go, oh yeah, ain’t she the one sang Love Wish?”

Courtney thought that Harlot would launch herself at Reed’s throat or try to gouge his eyes out.  But instead, she quickly turned her back on him, and covered her face with her hands.

Reed’s attitude changed so fast, it was like the flip of a switch.

He moved fast to her and spoke softly to her; soft, but with intensity, earnestness, and need.  “OK.  Use that.  That’s exactly how you’ve got to feel.  All busted up.  He destroyed you.  You gave it all to him, you loved him hopelessly, helplessly.  He fucked you.  Used you.  And threw you aside.  And laughed.”

Courtney realized that Harlot was crying.  Courtney was appalled by Reed’s ruthlessness.

“Think of it however it works for you.  Don’t stop crying.  He took your virginity, he took your innocence.  But you still love him.  You can’t help it.  You’re trying to forget him.  That’s what the chorus is all about.  It’s not fuck and be happy.  It’s desperation.  And forget the ‘missionary or two’ part.  Make it: ‘to forget about you.’”

Harlot turned around, wiping her wet cheeks.

Reed said, “Rudi, cue it up.  Harley . . .”  Reed detached the microphone from the stand, and handed it to her.  “. . . go for it.  Kill ’em.  Put ’em away.  Nuke ’em.  You can do it.”  He lifted the headphones out of her other hand, and put them over her ears.

The music hit.

Reed stayed silently in the sound room with her, while she sang it.

She was spectacular.

Even Courtney could sense that she was witnessing an event, that the singing was truly superlative.  Courtney’s whole body tingled.

Sadness dripped from Harlot’s aching voice like tears of love.  She clutched the mic as if it were a sacred object, the way a frightened, devastated little girl might hold her favorite doll.  And her voice was a little overextended, with just a hint of a ragged edge, like she had been crying for hours; this added to the emotional impact.

When she was finished with the vocal part, Rudi cut off the music abruptly, before it ended.

Reed said, “Five million album sales.  Minimum.”

For a moment, Harlot just looked at him blankly.  But then she flashed into hostility.

“Prick!” Harlot said.  Her voice was low and deadly.  “Cocksucker!”  She tore the phones off her head.  She looked suddenly intensely angry.  For long moments she just looked at Reed, fuming.

“What do you want?” Reed said.  “A formal apology?  Rudi!  Play it.  Here, Harley, I just made you several extra million dollars, but go ahead, hit me.”  He put his arms behind his back, and leaned a little forward, offering her his face for a whack.  He winced, and added, “You’re beautiful, Babe.  Nobody sings that good.  Nobody.  This song’s gonna go everywhere.  It’s gonna fucking bury America!”  He giggled.  Reed giggled.

“Promise?” she asked, still 50% suspicious, 50% hateful.

“I can guarantee you five million album sales.  Probably seven or ten, just on the strength of this song.  And we’ve already got four others that are strong enough to be released as singles.  Hell, there’s no limit to what this album could do, with the tour you’ve got scheduled to back it up.”

Instead of hitting him, Harlot screamed a three second loud blast, just for the release of making a loud noise, a primal scream at the universe.

Reed turned his head and saw Courtney through the glass.

Impulsively, Harlot jumped up, threw her arms around Reed, kissed him and then yelled: “Fan-fucking-tastic!”  And then she released him and started skipping around the room, swinging the $78,000 West-German microphone by its cable.  “Play it!  Play it!  Play it!  Play it!”

COURTNEY, Chapter 17
 

Copyright 2005 Area 47