AREA 47

SECTION 89:

COURTNEY, Chapter 18

On a Beverly Hills lot that could easily hold ten apartment complexes, with landscaping that shamed the wonders of the world, lay the transplanted regal glories of Versailles.

And Courtney Foulke Ryan was being driven up the long winding driveway.  OhMyGod.

Estelle Moreau looked older than in her movies, but also more sophisticated, and more intensely alive; hers was a point-blank beauty.

Estelle stood, in a sleek black dress that shimmered in the sunlight, her hands both placed on Courtney’s door, negligently.  Twenty feet behind her was the front of her awesome mansion.  Reed had not shut off the engine of his ’62 Corvette convertible; it idled powerfully.  The blouse part of Estelle’s dress was styled like a dickey; it had no sides; the fabric stretched over the splendid mid-sized mammaries, creating a frontal view merely suggestive, a side view that was public, disturbing . . . illegal.  Courtney was awed by the impact of the woman, who had not deigned to notice Courtney’s presence, but spoke over her, fondly to Reed.

Courtney would have been a decade shy in guessing Estelle’s age, if not for her research.  Even with the camera close-up of the hands, her private guess would have been at least half a decade off.

This was as close as Californians came to Royalty.  This was IT.  Courtney shriveled into meekness.

But Reed interrupted the Queenly diatribe of four letter, gamut running, verbal abuse directed at the present King (if accusations be truth; an adulterer, an alcoholic, and a loser who could neither sing nor act), to introduce Courtney.  “Take a pit stop, Estelle.  Estelle Moreau, Courtney Ryan, and vice versa; the ex- and future Reeds, the famous and the soon-to-be-famous.”

And then Estelle did look at Courtney.  Estelle’s smile communicated an apology.  But the smile halted for an instant of reevaluation, before speaking.  “Hi!  Forgive me for seeing only him.”  Her tone of voice, intriguingly French in manner: slightly sleazy, slightly subdeb, slightly psychotic.

Reed crashed into the silence with, “So where is Blue?  Send her out.  Let’s get this act on tour.”

“I’ve asked little Blue to give me a few moments with you alone first.  Can we talk?”

“We are,” Reed told her.

“Won’t you both come inside?”

Reed hesitated.

“I would love to,” Courtney said.  “And Reed will humor me.”  She pulled the door lever, Estelle stepped back, and she got out.

“Reed will stay in the car,” Reed said.  He shut off the engine and sulked.

Courtney hazarded a guess, and spoke with perfect friendliness to Estelle, touching her arm gently for a second, as if sharing a confidence.  “He’s such a child when he doesn’t get his way, isn’t he?”  She sort of giggled.

“Fuck!” Reed said, and climbed up out of his ’Vette, slamming the door.

But the look of surprise on Estelle’s face was worth it.

 |

 Courtney Ryan was served tea and left alone in the drawing room.  Joseph bureau plat, Caffieri clock, Savonnerie carpet, Avisse chairs.  She looked around and estimated.  Mom’s entire house could very nearly fit inside the drawing room, Height Included!  She was afraid to move or drink, lest she break some priceless artifact.

Reed had disappeared with his ex-wife into the library for a confidential talk.  One of the French maids waited outside in the marble entrance hall, always within sight of Courtney, she smiled brightly whenever Courtney looked at her.  She was a little overweight.  Courtney got the feeling that the girl’s assignment was not to serve Courtney’s needs, but rather to take care that Courtney did not do anything to damage the palatial splendor of this residence.

Mom had confided to her all the latest juice on Reed’s ex-wife.  Not only was she just about the hottest thing on film right now——earning upwards of $3 million dollars a film——but one and a half years ago she had inherited a vast French fortune when her father and half-brother had both died within a month of each other.  The inheritance was rumored to be upwards of $40 million dollars.  The gossip machine had Estelle romantically linked with Georg Niebuhr, the German director of her last two films.  Husband Krane’s face was pictured escorting a string of unknown lovelies, actresses, and minor celebs.

Courtney closed her eyes, and then opened them.  The room was so elegant, so well proportioned, and peaceful . . . this must be heaven.

“Oh, no!  Not you again!”

Courtney turned her head and saw Blue coming in through the other double-doorway, behind her.

“Hello, Blue.”

Blue, in playtime tomboy attire, dirty tennis shoes (one lace undone), threw herself onto the sofa, dirty shoes up on the mega-buck cushions.  She scowled silently at Courtney for a few moments.

Blue said, “Well, at least you’re better than Bubble-boobs.”

|

 Estelle stood, her body angled sideways from Reed to bare and flaunt her breast, while she stroked the neck of the one-third height bronze horse on the raised pedestal.  Reed, as far away in the room as was practical, stood also and waited impatiently for her to get on with it, his hands behind his back, his eyes on her tit.

He looked for signs of wear and tear——along her face and neck.  She had always looked a little younger than he did.  That had not changed.  He wondered if when he was old and falling apart in his nineties, writing elevator music, if she would appear a spry, active seventy.

Estelle said, “I outbid J.G. Nathan for this.  He wanted it so badly it almost made me sad.”  She smiled, turning her head, not her body, toward Reed.  “I have an unfair advantage, you know.  Dealers have to stop bidding at a price that leaves room to add a mark-up so they can make a profit.  I can just keep on bidding.”

“All right, Estelle.  We both know you’re still a fox.  You haven’t aged a day.  You’re tits are fantastic.  They’ve always been fantastic.  They always will be fantastic.  Now will you for Christ sake get them out of my face, and get on with it.”

Reed had left the door open on purpose.  Now she walked by him and carefully closed the door.

“Will you sit down?”

“I’m fine.”

“Please?”

They sat together on an ultra-comfy two person sofa covered with a soft hand-woven maroon fabric duplicating an eighteenth-century design.  Estelle’s one concession to creature comfort was that she had no period sofas because of the discomfort of all eighteenth-century designs.

Nicely calculated, Reed thought, as he was again presented with a side view into the front of her dress.  The almost pure Louis XVI library was for show, not reading.  The books were matching rows of what were probably rare collectibles.  Books weren’t supposed to be pretty; they were supposed to be tools.  He doubted if there was anything here to read, although one small shelf was messy with unmatched sets, and a couple of . . . paperbacks . . .

“How is your music going?” she asked.

“Just fine.”  Suddenly, he wondered if she was overextended.  Was she going to touch him for more bread?  It was a monster house, far grander than the combined movie incomes of her and Krane could afford.  She had come into some money by inheritance, and had gone on a spending splurge.  Maybe she had used it all up.  Grimly, he decided that he could probably scrape up a fast million or so, if he had to.  If she needed more, it would create problems.

But Estelle said, “I do wish you would stop paying me child support.  Really, it isn’t legally or morally necessary, you know that.”

Relief.  “We’ve been all through this before, Estelle.  Let’s not go into it now.”

“But Reed——”

“It’s the principle of the thing.  It’s not the money.  It’s that I have to help.  I want Blue to know that I’m around as a source of support.”

“Then let’s renegotiate——”

“I’m not interested in renegotiating the terms of the divorce.  If you don’t want the fucking money, burn it!  Or buy another fucking bronze horse!”

She smiled.  “I know I never told you much about my family . . . Reed, you’re not aware of just how much I’ve inherited.”

“I don’t give a fuck!  I really don’t.”

She smiled, and looked at the floor.  “I want you to know,” she said quietly, “that if you ever need anything, anything at all, that you can come to me and I will help.”

“And vice versa,” Reed said.

“I mean financially,” she clarified, looking up.  “If you should ever need some money, for anything, I won’t even ask what for . . . you may have it.”

“Estelle . . .”

“$1 million, $5 million, $10 million; even $50 million.  Whatever you need.  It’s yours for the asking.”

“Estelle, will you give me a break?  I’m doing OK.  Just cause I can’t buy California, doesn’t mean that I’m hurting!  WHAT . . . DO . . . YOU . . . WANT?  Tell me what you want!”

“Some of it was unconvertible, of course, but what was convertible, after taxes, came to just over $780 million American dollars.  That’s my inheritance, Reed.”

He kept trying to reply, and kept failing to come up with something appropriate to say.  Finally he said, “Why are you telling me this?”

“You hurt me, Reed.  You don’t trust me.”

“It’s not a question of trust.  I don’t understand you.”  He started to stand up.  “Is this it?  Is this what you wanted to tell me?”

“No.”  The flat way she said it, made him sit back.

They were both silent for a long moment.  “Are you going to marry that girl?  Are you honestly going to marry her?”

“Well, I’m sure as hell going to try.”

“Reed, she looks like a Yuppie-Punk!”  She smiled a twisted smile.  “Blue told me that you and Tina were on the rocks.  That child!  Your daughter speaks the most incredible filth, Reed.  She’s very difficult to control.  I don’t know where she learns it.”  She paused, and a cloud crossed her face.  “Or perhaps I do know: like father, like daughter.”

“Yeah, I told her to give you hell for leaving me.  Good girl.”

“I don’t want Blue to be in the same house with that man.”

“Who?  Krane?”

She nodded.  “And I would hate to send her away.  She’s only eight.  I would hate that.”

“What’s the problem?”

She looked at him long and hard.  “I’d rather not say.  Just for a few months, Reed.  I think I will have Krane safely out of my life before the year’s end.”

He frowned.  “Estelle.  Talk to me: what’s the problem?”

“Do you mind, terribly, if I send Josie with Blue?  She should have her tutor with her.  You have room for them both, you’re still living in Sherman Oaks, and——”

“Now stop right there!  I don’t need chauffeurs and maids and butlers.  Hell, I got a maid already.  She cleans the place once a week.”

“That’s not what a growing young girl needs.”

“What she needs is a little honesty between her parents.”

“In this instance, I think, Blue has exactly what she needs.  A concerned father.  And a mother who has sense enough to do what must be done, without spreading a lot of unfounded, malicious rumors.”

Reed stood up, angrily.  “Estelle, what the hell is going on here!?  Are you not telling me what I think you’re not telling me?  Is Krane sexually molesting Blue?  I’ll KILL the son of a bitch!”

Estelle jumped up and put her arms up on his shoulders.  “No, no, you mustn’t think that!  No, no, it’s something completely different!  Will you please calm down, Reed?”  She drew a deep breath.  “But you would be a little upset if you knew what I suspect.  Just do this for me, without questions, please.”

Reed pulled her hands off his shoulders, and placed them at her side.  This irritated her.

“And please, dear, try not to give Blue the third degree.”

Finally he said, “When?  When do you want her to move in?”

“Well, I thought that Blue and Josie could——”

“No.  Absolutely not.”

“But Reed, you have that nice little maid’s quarters out back to the side——”

“Forget it.  Besides, I’ve converted the place out back into a small audio studio.  I do a lot of composing there, and working out musical ideas.”

“Then one of the bedrooms.”

“Space is not the problem.  You’re not fobbing off on me any of your employees.  Period.  End of story.  Now, when do you want me to take her?”

Estelle sighed with resignation.  “How about next Tuesday?”

“Fine.”  Reed charged to the door.

“Reed . . .”

Reed stopped, but did not turn around.

“Reed, I would like us to be closer as friends.  You never visit me anymore.  You never come to the parties we have.  You come to take Blue somewhere and . . . well, I barely get to see you.”

“Estelle . . . I don’t know what to do with you.  I really don’t.”  He opened the door and walked out.

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Courtney seduced Blue’s dirty shoes off the sofa with the game of Nim.  The two were sprawled on the wonderful patterned carpet, pages of marked up and discarded scratch paper all around them.

“You got me Jaked,” Blue said.  “What am I doing wrong?  What am I doing wrong?!”  They had played through about forty-five games, and Blue had lost every one.

Courtney said, “What you should do is——”

“Get real,” Blue snapped at Courtney with disdain, and then added in a friendlier tone of voice, “I’ll figure it out.”

“OK.”  Courtney watched Blue put the marks down for another game.  Seven sticks.  Below that row, five sticks; then three sticks, then two, and finally at the bottom, one.  The rule of play was simple: cross out as many sticks in one row as you like, but at least one stick per turn.  Object: force the other player to cross out the last stick.

“I’m getting good at crossing out the last mark,” Blue said.  “I’ve got that down.  You go first, this time.”

“Suppose I give you a general rule, that pretty much holds true for all games . . . or a lot of games, anyway.”

“A rule?”

“A methodology.  A way of approaching the game.”

Blue looked at the paper with disgust.  Courtney had just crossed out the next to the last mark.  “Go,” Blue said.

“Break the problem into pieces.  Solve a little piece of it.  Once you’ve got a little piece of it solved, it makes it easier to solve bigger sections of it.”

Blue thought about it as they played another game, and Courty won again.

“Also,” Courtney added, “it’s very important to learn from the past.  If you don’t learn from your mistakes, you’re doomed to go on repeating them.”

“Oh!” Blue suddenly said, and instead of starting a new game, she started studying the games they had played.  Some of them, it was difficult to tell the order of the play, but others she could remember.  “You always make these two rows even.  Oh.  No, you don’t.  Wait, yes you do!  Except for the last two.  OK . . . OK.”

They started another game.

Courty said, “I’m curious: is Blue your nickname?”

“Yeah.”  There was a forceful edge to the way she yapped out the single syllable.

Slowly: “You’re eyes aren’t blue . . .”

Blue crossed off the correct two sticks, and looked up with raw challenge.  “Not my eyes.  Me.”  Courtney made her response on paper, and looked the question at Blue.  Blue made the correct move again, and said, “I lived my first two weeks in an incubator.  My twin didn’t make it.  She wasn’t tough.  I’m Tough.”  As she snapped out her last word, she scratched down the mark that won the game for her.

Blue won the next game, too.

When Estelle and Reed returned to the drawing room, Blue jumped up excitedly. “Let’s bail!”

COURTNEY, Chapter 19
 

Copyright 2005 Area 47