AREA 47

SECTION 89:

COURTNEY, Chapter 26

Surprise, surprise.  Tomboy magazine dropped their exclusive control over Courty.  Tyne Peck Geyerman changed her plans in midprint, and completely revamped the second issue, using a dozen other girls rather than focusing upon Courty as the Tomboy image girl.

Fine print blues.  Rather than $100,000 dollars for several months work, Courty was chopped off at $18,500 dollars——deferred dollars that wouldn’t arrive into her pocket for at least three months.  The instant that occurred, Preferred Modeling dropped her as a client, claiming that she was too old for the cat race: off the treadmill at 24.  All the thousand-dollar-a-day bookings went Poof like counterfeit money torched by the Secret Service.  The disposable loyalty of her agent and the magazine that had signed her was a revelation.

If that was insufficiently depressing, Monkey Man showed up at her apartment tower as she was doing the preliminary packing to give the Big Apple the big good-bye.  Monkey Man Michael of the marinated mushrooms.

“He’s OK,” Courtney told Mr. Blend of Security.

Michael arrived, as billboard-ready as ever, with his cute black fluff of hair hanging down over his eyes, his barbell-arms, shoulder-to-shoulder muscles, obnoxiously charming smile, vacation-tanned to the max, dressed poor-boy trendy.

Lauren was in Hawaii, but Courtney left the front door open and Kathy’s door was open across the hail, with instructions to keep an ear out for shenanigans.

Michael laid an interesting set of cards on the table, shuffled by a few opening remarks on mushrooms.

He explained that Preferred was dropping her because of her age; without the Tomboy image account, her value as a model had plunged.

Michael had just quit his job at Preferred, where he had been an editorial assistant for their publicity department (“Michael, how about some coffee?”), doing dung work for the publicity editor and her female associate (“Isn’t he cute?——I keep wanting to ruffle his hair or pat his——”  “Don’t, its sexual harassment.  Oh, there you are, Michael, now before you move the file cabinets, could you get me two creams?”).  It wasn’t that he didn’t like working under women, it wasn’t that he minded the long hours, minuscule pay, zero recognition, or playing the role of token male.  It wasn’t that he objected to working in a career slot where the end of the line in advancement would one day be secretary.  It was . . . he flopped another card down, face-up on the table . . . it was that he had been fired.

The cards kept flopping down.  Now he wanted to be Courtney’s manager.  No prior experience.  What could Courtney say?

“NO!”  Time to bail out of modeling, put her diamond engagement ring back on her finger and go surprise Byron Reed in LA.  With her almost $20,000 dollars on the way, she could find a cheapo apartment and write like a possessed witch for a solid year.  Or get married.  That might be fun too.

Cards.  Michael begged, Michael pleaded.  He showed her a clipping from Diane Macpherson’s fashion column in Ladies Trends Monthly, where she wrote: ‘Courty the California girl with the face to launch not just a new magazine, but a whole new way for women to view themselves.’  If that wasn’t silly enough, the article had the sub-headline: ‘This is the Face of the Nineties.’

Michael put a deck and a half of cards on the table; at least seven Aces: five Jacks or better to open.

“This is my big chance!  This is your big chance!  I’ve already lined up one modeling appointment for you!”

“One.  Very impressive.”

“At $170 dollars an hour!”

“Big Deal.”

“Five hours work, minimum!”

“So what?”

“I’ll work for 15%.  Only 15%!  I’ll phone around like a wild man, lining up appointments for you.  I’ll organize your time.  I’ll hail taxis for you.  Please, Courtney?  I made an appointment for you two hours from now!  This guy’s dying to work with you!”

“You’re wasting your time, Michael.”

“He pays cash.  Same day!  TODAY!”

“What should I wear?”

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“Wow,” Courtney said, breathing hard after her second mind-warping orgasm, lying sprawled on her back on her bed, holding Reed.

“Wow,” he agreed, breathing hard after etc.

Mr. Blend had given Courty just enough intercom warning time to find her ring and slip into her PROPERTY OF BYRON REED T-shirt, before the familiar knock played a quick, happy drum riff on Lauren’s open door.

BAM!  Like fornicating fools they scorched into each others arms.  It was a Byron Reed blitzkrieg.  He was all over her so fast she hardly got a look at him!  His presence HERE, NOW, was a 100-proof shot of aphrodisiac on an empty stomach.  And instantly she was in La La Land, torched, her thoughts popping like popcorn, her body gone hopelessly ditzy.  They were doing breakdance sex.  Dry-humping on the white carpet——Door Open——and she had pulled him down there!

When Reed disconnected to swing shut the front door, Courtney felt frayed, hot, stalled, as if he had burned rubber on her.  His untouching was sexual mutiny.

But his retouch melted her into sparkling vagina wine.

Clitoriffic!

The first rapid transit grind: tawdry trailblazing, carpet-stains & clothes pointing to her bedroom.  They thrashed that bed.  A pair of untamed desperados.

Hot stuff.

“Wow.”

“Wow.”

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Eric Des Barres tapped at Courtney’s apartment door, holding the single red rose in its custom Swarovski lead crystal holder with his other hand.  Phil was next door, already in Peach’s apartment, picking her up for the date.  Eric was scouting the territory, unannounced.

Eric had Courtney’s address, her phone number, her profession, her business phone number, information about her roommate Lauren, and building security.  A discreet detective was at work, digging for more.

Eric was haunted by the memory of their first meeting.  The more he thought of her, the more he thought of her, until his brain was besieged with overwhelming images of Courtney.  It was a rich flow of boiling emotion through his formerly bored mind.  He had felt nothing for so long——and now this white hot blast, this fixation, this persistent preoccupation with her.

He had come to think of her as an almost unattainable virgin, a landmark lady, a first-rate who’s-new in Who’s Who, the supreme summit of choice, succulent cunt.

His head was locked in infinite loop: dreaming of destroying her, smashing her self-confidence, dragging her down from her apparent apex into the mud and slime of emotional desolation; point her on the road to ruin and whip her down, subvert her, shatter her will power, batter and penetrate her body.  He wanted her prostrate, whimpering, begging, pleading.  Raw, demonstrative proof of HIS glorious superiority.

Rape barely hinted at all the things he wanted to do to her.  Found Joy came into his life rarely, but now with a vengeance.  The two great pleasures of life that could tickle the soul with obscene intensity were Building or Blasting, Creation or Destruction.  Eric had long ago found his métier.

Eric’s knock went unanswered, so before tapping again, he tried the doorknob and was rewarded.

He pushed the door open, taking in the scene.

The clothes strewn about on the carpeting, the odor of lovemaking; it looked like the cozy carnage of an impromptu orgy, some movie director’s lurid idea of spontaneous sex.  The litter of clothes and underthings was such a cliché that it seemed unreal.

Background classical music softly imposed ambience.

Eric stepped inside, about to call out, when he heard gentle female cries of ecstasy coming from inside the open bedroom door.

At first, he assumed that it must be Lauren and her lover, going at it.  He was distantly amused by this hard-core hanky panky, because it was just the sort of thing that Courtney would never indulge in——she was not that type of girl.

He set the rose in its rainbow-creating glass holder on the oak end table by the main couch.  The glass with the small amount of water held the perfect long-stemmed red rose, and split room’s light into a starburst of colors: purple, violet, indigo, flaming yellow, sea green, and finally deep blue.

Eric stepped quietly forward.  He was far back in the living room, but he hung his head to the right until he had the correct angle for a peek into the bedroom.  He was semi-erect and sexually excited by the situation.  The red sunset streamed in from the bedroom window, illuminating everything.

At the moment of his glance, Courtney was on top of Reed, in the women’s lib position, wearing just a T-shirt bunched above her breasts, rolling her hips forward and back in a circular motion, her arms were slowly waving around in the air, her head was churning back and forth, tossing the lopsided hair around, on the edge of orgasm.  She was moaning and squeaking words; obscene, dirty, filthy phrases for Byron’s benefit.

Eric Des Barres was utterly immobilized, stunned beyond belief.  It was Courtney——but it couldn’t possibly be Courtney.  No way in hell!

The man under her pulled her down to him with both arms, kissed her wordless, as her humping and grinding sped up, accelerated to a frantic pace, the two of them grabbing and roughly caressing each other like drug-crazed laboratory-rats.  Eric watched for a long minute, seeing and hearing one of Courtney’s fortissimo orgasms; it was so palpable he could almost taste her ecstasy as her body tensed and throbbed, a titanic eruption, an actual stifled short scream that tapered into relaxing groans and then hushed soothing long inhales and exhales.  A fast laugh of unaffected joy, and she fell off of him, sprawling her arms and legs everywhich way next to him, almost falling off the bed, pulling at him with an exhausted arm, for him to come to her.  The man rolled over on top of her, and she did fall half-off the edge of the bed until only her hips and legs were on the bed.  The longhaired man pulled her back just a little and stabbed his penis into her there.

Eric watched as he fucked her right off the bed and onto the carpet.  Courty’s shriek, and two fast laughs, and the man shouted, “I love you, I Love you, I LOVE You!”  And they were back, totally at it all over again.

Eric stumbled around in a mental jam-up of disbelief.  He couldn’t believe that it was Courtney in there.  It was such a solid, hefty roast beef of a fuck!  Eric felt like somebody had kicked him in the balls.  They hurt and felt ice cold.  His penis had shriveled to a stump.  He was so angry his whole body was shaking.

He walked out, quietly closing the front door.  Eric stood there in the hallway——still shaking——as girls he did not see walked past him.  He had witnessed sacrilege.  His perfect, sacrificial-virgin was a sweltering whore who fucked like a rattlesnake.

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All of Courtney’s wiring had blown out to protect the fuses in her brain.  Her shark-attack sharpshooting mind was now the hankering, unfocused fluff of a pampered ingénue.

She felt like Donna Reed.  It’s a Wonderful Life.  Colorized.

“It’s terrible,” Jimmy Stewart said.  “SoundSync East is so far over-budget now, I can’t believe it.  And the sub-contractors totally screwed up on the studio half.  The electrical contractor wired the A-Studio console wrong.  I don’t know what he did, I’m almost afraid to tear into it to find out.  It’s a custom console, my Dad and I designed the strips, and it should have a signal-to-noise ratio of 115dB.  I’d settle for 110, but the noise floor is so bad I can hear it without slapping a meter on it.  He also routed all the wiring together; that’s easy to fix, but I specified in the prints that all digital information be routed separately, and he throws it all together.  Jesus.  The mastering lab seems to be all right.  I’ve got advance business enough to run the rest of the year.  I’m hoping I can open up in a week or so.”  Pause.  “My father’s in the hospital.”

Courtney was lounging in bed with Byron Reed like his Number 1 Groupie, wearing only the T-shirt and the ring and his sperm; arm propping up the featherhead to gaze with longing: “Oh?”

“Some kind of bypass surgery.  He wants to retire and turn Reed Audio over to me.  He wants to just give it to me.”

Courtney didn’t say anything, just watched his face.  Such a wonderfully masculine face.  Watching his facial quirks was a simple joy, as endlessly fascinating as a New Year’s Eve fireworks show.  As a cloud of worry darkened the face, she felt a pang of sympathetic resonance.

“He showed me the books.  It’s a lot bigger than I ever thought.  It’s something to think about.  Although, the books don’t really tell you much, they’re kind of sketchy.”

“Is your father’s company big?”

He nodded.  “When you go see a movie, the odds are you’re listening to a sound system my Dad designed or installed.  He’s also done the sound reinforcement for the Grammy’s for years.  My big fantasy was to make it to the microphone——of course, to do that, you have to win the damn award, and I never have yet——but I wanted to slip in a thank you ‘to my Dad, who’s handling the sound tonight,’ type of thing.  Reed Audio has been handling the Emmy’s sound reinforcement requirements . . . oh, for the last three or four years.  He’s been trying to get the Oscars, ever since I was a kid, but those guys won’t even talk to him.”

She watched the sad smile on his face.  “But isn’t it the same building?  Shrine Auditorium?”

“Right, but they always contract out the sound.”  He was silent for a moment.  “Reed Audio holds some key patents.  We have a lot of clout in the industry.”

Courtney noticed the ‘he’ become a ‘we.’  “What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know.  I’m pretty busy, right now.  He really should have taken the company public a long time ago.  If I spent a couple of years cleaning things up, and preparing the company, I could take it public.  With the money, I could develop and license a lot of circuits he’s already done the R&D on.  In five years or so, I could be worth $100 million dollars.  Maybe two or three times that.  It’s something to think about.”

“Is that what you want?”

“No.”  He laughed.  “I’ve been a CEO for a big corporation already.  Fuck that.”

Even his sexual slang chimed in her ears with a masculine harmony so beautiful and communicative that it transcended all her former objections: natural and healthy, like granola.

“What do you want?”

“I want to stop talking about me, and start listening to you!”

COURTNEY, Chapter 27
 

Copyright 2005 Area 47