AREA 47

SECTION 89:

COURTNEY, Chapter 17

“I’d like to get you pregnant,” Reed said.

Courtney stood there, inside his office, uneasily.  Behind her, the door was closed.

“Sit down, sit down.  Here, sit on my lap!”  He threw himself down on the couch, and held out his arms for her.

She remained standing.  She felt frustrated.  The newness of the experience and the observations and the events had overloaded her inputs.  “There are things I want to say, but I’m not sure I can say them right.”

Reed said, “I want to go back and listen to that so bad!  But I’m afraid to go listen.  I mean, I’ll be in there all afternoon and night, just listening to it over and over.  We got something in the can, there, BOY!”  He sighed.  “I’m sorry, get it together, she wants to say something, put on your ears, Reed.”

Quickly she said, “I think all the wrong things attract me to you.  I think it’s superficial infatuation.  And I think you’re a cold-blooded calculating, inhuman machine.”

“What?”  He shook his head.  “Ouch.”

“I saw what you did to Harlot.  You were so ruthless, Reed.  So cruel.  And all you were after was a song.  A silly song, a pop song.  You hurt her for that, you made her cry just . . . You planned it!  It’s unforgivable; it’s cruel, Reed.  You are cruel, Reed.”

“I don’t understand you,” he said quietly.

“You don’t understand me?”

“What did I plan?”

“Hurting her.  Making her cry to get her in the mood to sing the way you wanted.”

“Oh, Jesus Christ, give me a break, will you?  It just happened.  I didn’t plan anything.  She’s a good singer, but she’s a nut.  She’s a flake.  She drives me crazy!  She comes in here . . . doesn’t even prepare.  I mean, she had two or three weeks to work on that song.  She had the lyrics for months, and I gave her the melody line and the music last month.  Hell, she didn’t even know the words until she’d done it ten or fifteen times.  The first take she does that’s even half-way decent, she wants to call it quits.  OK, so I got pissed off.  Tough.  I care about the music, about the art.  I don’t know why she starts crying.  I was just trying to back her down and get her back to the microphone for another shot at it.  Hell, when she starts crying . . . I mean, it’s perfect!  You’ve got to use it!  She’s crying, that’s the time to sing the song.”

Silence.

“You’re very persuasive,” Courty said.

“Yes, I am,” he admitted.  He stood up.  “Let’s test it.”  He walked around her, opened a drawer to his desk, and pulled out a small black container.

For Courtney, the size & shape, the way Reed held it, the way he approached her, was an ominous portent.

When he gently took her right hand, molded the fingers and palm out flat to receive the gift, and then placed the box in her hand, she knew she was in for it.

Reed said, “I’ve never been very good at the traditional stuff.  So, if I blow it, you just back me up, and we’ll do it again.”

He was close, his eyes looking deeply down into hers, his hand still touching her hand, underneath where he had deposited the gift.

She made no move.  She made no sound.  The sweetness of the pleasure was counterbalanced by the stab of dread.

He opened the box for her.

Her breath caught, and her lips trembled.

It was a diamond solitaire ring.  A huge, keenly bright, circular sparkle, in a bed of black.

“Will you marry me?” Reed asked, his voice hushed.

She opened her mouth to say yes, or no.

Reed bent forward, ever so slowly.

He kissed her so softly on the cheek, that it was the faintest brush of flesh.

Then he kissed her mouth; a chaste kiss.  But she melted, became weak, realized that her arms went around him, were holding him, pulling him to her.

Holding him was savagely sweet, painfully sweet.  She freed herself and backed a step away from him.  She held the container out closely, and looked at it again.

Softly, gently, ever so slowly, and lovingly, he took the ring out and eased it onto her proper finger.  The moment made her tingle with pleasure.

“It’s so big,” she said, stupefied by the experience, stunned pleasurably into inactivity, indecision, at the very moment when decision was most urgently called for.

“I gave——”  He had to clear his throat.  “I gave it a lot of thought.  It’s not so much that I can’t afford a bigger stone, but it’s just that when they get any bigger than four carats, they don’t look like engagement rings to me.  Also, larger ones aren’t really practical to wear everyday.”

She just looked at it.  The white, crystalline purity of it; it seemed impossibly brilliant.  Gigantic.  It was a ROCK!  On the hand of someone else.  Someone else’s long, beautiful, unbitten nails.

“Will you wear it?”

“I seem to be,” she said, objectively watching herself.

She marveled that it seemed to belong on her hand.  “It fits.”

“Your mother gave me one of your rings that you sometimes wear on that finger.”

She was momentarily incensed, but then charmed by that.

“When?” she asked, smiling and shaking her head.  “It’s a conspiracy!”  Mom knew all along.

“Will you sit on my lap now?”  His eyes lit up hopefully, like a little boy’s.

“We have a problem,” she said, deliberately stepping back away from him.  “You’ve done me a great favor.  And I want to return the favor.  I am obligated to you.  But I don’t want anything that develops between us, personally or romantically——or, yes, sexually——well, I don’t want it to be tinged or influenced by any sense of obligation . . . I’m not saying this very good . . .”

“You don’t want to screw me, just because I introduced you to Tyne Peck Geyerman.”

“It’s more complex than that.  Not just the sex, but everything.  A relationship can’t be based on a trade imbalance.  That’s what we’ve got here.  I owe you.  I need to balance the books somehow.  Only then can we become involved.”

“Listen, I’m going to sit down.  And I’m going to take your hand and pull you into my lap.  OK?  Here goes.”

He did exactly that.

“What happened to your hair?”  He stroked his fingers through what was left of it.

“My stylist asked me if I wanted the special haircut that was half-off, and I misunderstood her.  I said yes.”

“Well, it is half-off.”  He continued the gentle hair-massage.

“Do you hate it?”

Reed didn’t say anything for a short time.  “It’s on your head, therefore it is unconditionally good.  But it will take some getting used to.  I should probably get mine cut.  Long hair used to be radical.  Then it was hip.  Now it’s considered passé.  It’s out of fashion.  Only old hippies who never grew up still have long hair.  And Reed.  Nobody who’s Anybody wears their hair long anymore, unless they’re female.”

“You’re Somebody,” Courtney objected.

“Well, that’s kind of you, but let’s get back to that crap about the trade imbalance again.  I don’t get it.”

She liked being held by him.  Far too much.  “I can’t think when you’re holding me.”

“Good.”  But he did stop playing with her hair.

She tried to concentrate, but she couldn’t focus.  She felt all warm and mushy; her brain was a swirling mist.  “You have an unfair advantage upon me.”

“Wrong.  Do you know how much I want to make love to you right now?”

“But I have to get this straight,” she objected.

“Believe me, you’ve got it straight!”  He pulled her back closer and more fondly into his arms.  “Listen, Courty.  Just listen for a minute.  I want you.  I want you more than I think I’ve ever wanted anything.  Or anyone.  You’re just perfect!  When you talk about things like trade imbalances . . . all I know is that I’m just doing whatever I can think of to make you mine . . . I want you.”  His voice was husky.  “Sure, I’m trying to make myself valuable to you.  But it’s not like I’m trying to buy you.  You’re too valuable for that.”

“Don’t you ever say a wrong word?” she asked.  Goodness, he said all the right things that melted her mind into sentimental love sludge, and then spun out all her thoughts gossamer thin: sticky & gooey cotton candy.  She looked wonderingly at the ring on her finger, unable to say any of the things she felt needed to be said.

He gave her a gentle love-squeeze, and hummed with contentment.  “You’re a perplexer.  Maybe that’s what I love so much about you.  OOPS, I blew it.  I just remembered——I was supposed to get down on my knees.  All right.  Take it off, let’s do it again.  Come on, take it off.”

“No!” she said, as his fingers tried to wrest the ring from her finger.  And it was a major shock.  It was the point of decision, right there, the fulcrum.  She really and truly wanted the ring to remain there; she did want to marry him (however illogical and crazy it might be, considering how little she knew about him).

He chuckled, and held her with contentment.

“Mmmmmmm,” he said.  “Alex tells me you’re going to be rich, so I won’t bore you with a long financial disclosure.  But I do have some money.  The worst thing you should know about me——”

“Good grief!  Money!”

Her voice was so sarcastic that he had to reply to it.  “Well, money is important.  If you’re going to marry me, you have a right to know what you’re getting into.  Don’t you think so?”

“Of course, of course.  But it’s so . . .”

“Unromantic.”

“How much money do you have?”

“Do you want the inflated paper value, or the——”

“Oh, the inflated paper, definitely.”

He considered.  “About $17 million dollars.”

“Yes, yes,” she said impatiently, “but how much do I get when I divorce you?”

He chuckled.  “Probably about nine-tenths of whatever’s left after paying your lawyers and my lawyers.  Maybe we should work out a legal agreement now, to save all the legal fees and make sure you get the maximum.  Suppose we agree to an $8 million dollar alimony, paid over a ten year period?”

“Eight million?  That’s outrageous!  A mere pittance!  The deal’s off!  Tell me about your work.”

“What do you want to know?”

“It’s not so much . . . that I want to know anything specific . . . I just want to hear you talk about your work.”

“Oh, I remember what I wanted to warn you about me.  I’m a workaholic, Courty.  I mean, I’m way gone.  Obsessive, compulsive——”

“Is that why I divorced you?  Because I never got to see you?”

“No, it must have been something else, because pick any day of the week, and it will be forever more, Courtyday; and for twenty-four hours a week, I’ll completely shut off all music, all everything——and you can hold the string that’s attached to the ring in my nose.  The rest of the week, I admit, you may have to make snatching grabs at the string as I fleetingly run by from one project to the next.”

After a moment she said, “Talk to me about your work.”

“The most exciting thing is that I’ve made a real breakthrough in my compositional skills.  I mean, I’ve got some stuff in the can.  Pheew!  It’s father-rapin’ strong!  It’ll blow the wax right out of your ears!  Just you wait!  Missionary——we’re going to rush it right out as a single ahead of the album.  That song is going to fucking zoom up to Number One and play king of the hill for . . . I don’t know how fucking long.  Forever!”

“I remember now.  I divorced you because of your strong language.”

He shifted her weight off of his legs, so that she was now sitting closely next to him on the pillow-soft leather couch, leaning back against his chest, with his arms around her.  “It’s me,” he objected.  “It’s the way I talk.”

“Seriously, Reed, it does bother me.  Or are you one of those Love Me Or Leave Me sort of persons?”

“Which words bother you?”

“I think you know which words.”

“I want to hear you say them.”

“If you want to hear me say them, I will do so, in private, if it turns you on in a sexual context.  If that’s the way you ‘get off.’  But in so doing, I will be moving to your level, speaking your language, to communicate with you.  If you want to effectively communicate with me, you have to do the same.  You must be aware that whenever you use those words, that they offend me.  Really and truly.  It happens on an emotional level.  Call it my upbringing.  But I don’t think I’ll ever simply become used to it, or come to accept it.  Why do you speak so strongly?  Do you know?  Is it to make yourself feel macho?”

“I always thought that my language was relatively temperate.”

“Uh-uh.”  Her whole body shook, emphatically communicating the NO.

“All right.  I’m willing to work a deal.  For every ‘fuck’ that you say while we’re fucking, that’s one less fucking ‘fuck’ that you’ll hear out of me while we’re not fucking.”

Courtney stiffened slightly in his arms.

“I’ll give it a shot,” Reed said seriously.  “I will try to do something . . . to keep my tongue clean in your presence.”

“Honest?” she asked.

“Honest.”

She snuggled back against him.  “Talk to me about your work.”

He did.

Expletives deleted.

He told her about how excited he was that he had stumbled onto a completely new way of composing and arranging music, one that worked for him, in the midst of the exploding musical technology.  And his excitement was obvious and involving.  She could feel his relief that he wasn’t ‘finished as an artist.’  And he confessed other worries.  He spoke like a turned-on visionary, as if every piece of music that he was writing was destined to become a hit.

This creative optimism was restrained by an almost pessimistic pragmatism as he then went on to talk about the wires & plugs practicality of the business side of his music operations.  He spoke of his chain of studios as if they were stagnant.  He confessed that he didn’t know what to do with them, that he might have to sell most of them off, at a loss.  He was excited about the new studio that he was opening up in New York, but also worried about it.  He had his doubts that the newest generation of technology would pay for itself.

Digital was the buzzword.  But he admitted that he actually preferred the sound of a Studor analog 24-track deck with Dolby Spectral noise reduction (whatever that was), over any of the digital multi-tracks he had heard, regardless of format, brand or price.

He confessed embarrassment, almost shame, over some of his past production work.  He wondered out loud if he was spreading himself too thin, if he should bring in outside consultants, if he should hire more people to help solve SoundSync’s problems, if he should concentrate on music and delegate the business side of things.

Courtney found herself a little jealous of the way Reed talked about his work.  His life seemed so rewarding and fulfilling.  Suddenly she wanted the grand tour, she wanted to see the whole studio.

She leaped out of his arms.  “Show me your studio.  I want to see everything!”

“OK.  Hey, I’m sorry, I should have introduced you to Harley.  I wasn’t thinking.  Maybe she’s still here.”

Courtney looked down at him oddly, remembering.  Her look was strong, and strange enough so that Reed didn’t stand up.  “She put her arms around you,” Courtney said slowly.  “She was very . . . casually intimate with you.”

Silence.

Reed couldn’t hold her eyes; he had to look away.  “All right,” he said, looking back up at her.  “We used to have a little something going on the side.  She used to throw herself at me, every once in awhile.  It was hard to say no.”  Reed paused, and looked uncomfortable.  “We were involved quite recently, actually.”  He paused, and looked as though he was trying hard to say something, but fighting against perhaps his better judgment.  “The last time was two weeks ago.  It’s over now.  I promise.”

A moment later Courtney said, “And you still haven’t broken up with Tina.  Have you.”  There was no question at all in her voice.

Silence.

Reed’s good mood was fading fast.  He got up and went to his desk.  He brought out a sealed envelope.  He held it in both hands, and sighed heavily.

He joked, “There’s probably a TV show that would tell me how to behave and how to deal with this situation.   Unfortunately, I don’t have any time to watch TV, so I’m probably going to blow it.  Listen, Courty . . . I love you, but that doesn’t mean that I can just declare Tina a tax write off, and just completely forget about her.  She’s in the middle of a tour.  If I tell her that we’re finished, she’ll blow the tour, she’ll completely zonk out.  It’ll destroy her career.  I have to wait until she finishes the tour.  It’s two and a half more weeks.  Here.  This is a copy of a letter that’s already in her mail box at dB Records.  She won’t be reading it until the tour’s over.”

He handed her the envelope.

She sat down.  On the couch.  “You want me to read this now?”

“Whatever you want.  Listen, I’ll play it anyway you want to play it.  If you want to wait until Tina and I are Officially, Officially, Officially a thing of the past, I’ll understand.  It’s probably your smartest move.  But I have to be straight with you.  I do care about her.  I can’t just shaft her.  She’s doing the toughest job known to humanity, and that’s touring.  I know, ’cause I’ve done it, and it’s a bitch.  You’ll just have to take my word on this: if I break up with her now, it will kill the tour and probably ruin her career.  Her profit structure’s set up so that a major share of her income is from touring.  She’s never had a Platinum album.  People depend on her, and I can’t let those people down.”

She opened the envelope.

“I know it sounds like a silly-assed excuse, Courty.  I guess I did blow it, after all, didn’t I?  I didn’t really plan on giving you the ring just yet.  I got carried away.  But it still goes.  More than ever.  I want to marry you.  Shit.  Hey, let me swear a little, will you?  I’ll feel better.  I really don’t know how to deal with this situation, Courty.  You tell me.”

She read the letter.

Slowly she put the letter back in the envelope.  The letter was unequivocal.

He sat down with her and held her hand.  She let him.

“I guess it boils down to this,” he said.  “Do you trust me?  Or do you think I’m trying to jerk you around?”

“I don’t trust me.”  That avoided the question of whether she trusted him or not.  “I’m afraid to be alone with you.  In other words . . . I . . .”

He got up and opened the office door, and came back and sat down.  Down the hallway, a session in A Studio was breaking up; the subdued laughter of exhaustion could be heard in the distance.

“Well,” Reed said, and didn’t say anything more.

Courtney said, “In other words, I love you.”

Reed cleared his throat.  “I was going to try to talk you into bed tonight.  But I guess that’s out.”

“Definitely out.”

“What about the date we planned?  No pressure.  Dinner, dancing; whatever.”

“Reed . . . no.”

“I can call around.  Maybe I can find a fun party!  You wouldn’t believe some of the wild parties that go on in this town.”

“Reed . . .”

“No.  OK.  Well, listen, I want to spend today with you.  Think of something socially acceptable that’s not a date.”

But she was just silently uncomfortable.

Suddenly he got an idea.  “No problem.  I got it.”

He went to his telephone, and while standing up, placed a call.

“Hello Josie,” Reed said.  “Guess who . . . You got it.  How is everything? . . . Is Estelle there?  Can I talk to . . . Thank you.  Hang cool.”  He gave Courtney a wink.

“Hey there!” Reed said.  “Yeah, I’m sorry.  I couldn’t make it . . . I . . . Yeah, I saw it.  You were great!  Really great! . . . Hey, can I borrow Blue for the afternoon?  What’s she doing? . . . Well, let me talk to her.”

Courtney watched Reed’s mood turn to confusion.  Courtney felt a touch of unreality.  Reed was talking to Estelle Moreau, the world-famous movie star.  Good grief!  He used to be married to her.  How could she ever compare with a movie star?

“What? . . . When? . . . Listen, Estelle, don’t misunderstand my question, but why now?  I mean, is something wrong over there?  I get the feeling . . . Hi, Blue.  Hey, how would you like to come live with me for the summer?  Yeah, I’m straight.  What do you say?  Great.  Great.  Second question.  Can I borrow you for the afternoon, maybe early evening? . . . It’s a surprise.”  He laughed.  “OK.”

As he hung up, Courtney asked, “What do you have in mind?”

“A chaperon.”

COURTNEY, Chapter 18
 

Copyright 2005 Area 47