AREA 47

SECTION 89:

COURTNEY, Chapter 30

Kathy and Courtney went into Courtney’s bedroom. Courtney closed the door, flounced on the bed, and lay back against big, comfy Bosley, her teddy bear.  Kathy’s mood was so divergent from her own, that Courtney immediately asked, “What’s the matter?”

Kathy edged as tentatively into the subject as her precarious perch on the side of Courty’s queen-size.  Bob treated her like dirt.  Dirt!  Moving in with him was impossible, out of the question.  He was a tyrant.

Courty commiserated.

Oh, she didn’t know what she was saying.  Courty had to help her get Bob back!  She knew Bob loved her, she knew she loved Bob, but he wouldn’t talk to her, and she was sure that Bob thought that she was still mad at him, but she wasn’t, if only he knew, if only she could let him know that she wasn’t mad anymore, everything would be all right again, and . . .

An understanding emotional U-turn: Courtney sympathized fully; agreed to do whatever she could to help.

And her career (the nudge of her hip, a bit more confidently onto the soft bed, clued Courtney) was the pits.  Sterile, barren, dusty, old pits that nobody wanted.  Preferred had let her go, and none of the other agencies would have anything to do with her.  She had taken her portfolio everywhere in the past two weeks, with hardly any results.  (Cynically, Courtney wondered if the real issue focused on Kathy’s faltering ability to support Bob until he could get himself up on his feet with his writing career.)  Kathy seemed to be blackballed.  She had the reputation of an uncooperative, temperamental flake.  The word had somehow gone out, and nobody wanted to work with her.

“What!?  You?  Temperamental?  Uncooperative?”

Kathy sighed.  “I just don’t know how to play the game, I suppose.”

“What game?”

“You know.  I try but I just can’t do it.”

Silence.  Courty said, “Can you give me an example?  I guess I really don’t know what you mean.”

“Everything just goes all wrong!”  Kathy’s eyes were misty, blinking; her mouth was quivering.

“Come on, now.”  Courtney held her arm, and scooched a bit closer.  “Tell me about the last time something didn’t go right.”

“Oh, about a week ago I was booked to work with Poundstone.  One of the other girls he wanted didn’t show up.  It was an all day assignment, and we just . . . we all worked like devils, trying on everything, I changed clothes and changed until I was dizzy, I had to wear ridiculous three-inch-high heels, Two Sizes Too Small For Me!  It was all they had.”

“I know.  I’ve had a few days like that.”

“My feet were raw by the end of the day, I was stumbling around, falling, I could hardly walk, everyone was bitchy, I got something in my eye in the afternoon——IT HURT——and I kept blinking, ruining the photographs, and at the end of the day, it was dark, it was Dark Outside, and his secretary comes into the dressing room and blithely announces that ‘Mr. Poundstone is prepared to work another four or five hours this evening.’  I mean, it was not a suggestion, it was an order.  We were all expected to work that night——to keep on working.  I just couldn’t.  I tried to explain that I was just too tired, and that the booking was, you know, specifically for the Day, but they wouldn’t listen, Poundstone came over and started shouting at me, calling me Terrible Names, he said I was unprofessional, and . . . I just burst into tears.”  Her tone changed.  “Kathy’s standard response when the going gets rough.  Cry!”

“Hey . . . Come on, now . . .”  Courtney held her.

“I was scheduled to do the next four series of catalogs, but I messed that up.”

Courtney quite clearly remembered that several years ago, she had once had an absolutely awful day, very similar.  Shortly thereafter, she had given up on modeling and gone back to writing.  Courty wasn’t quite sure what to say; she felt stimulated by the small exposure to hash, but dizzy or off-balance at the same time, as if she had breathed too much oxygen.  “What do you have when you’ve got five photographers buried up to their chins in the sand?” Courty asked.

“Oh, I don’t know.”

“Not enough sand.”

It didn’t even get a smile out of Kathy.  “Ever since I modeled for Deke Morgan.  It all fell apart after that.  Four or five months ago.  I was modeling lingerie for Intimate Moments.  Deke Morgan runs this town, he normally doesn’t do that sort of assignment, he’s off doing covers and more important shoots.  But anyway, the things!  They just got skimpier and skimpier.  Finally, I just said enough.  I’m not that kind of girl.  Some things are just . . . it was absurd, little G-strings and such . . . and it was the way we were posed, you know?  I mean, it just wasn’t proper.  I told Preferred that I wasn’t a nude model, but Amy assured me that it would all be very tasteful and restrained.  Restrained?!  He had one girl in crotchless panties, and he was deliberately posing her like, like something out of a men’s magazine.  So I just said that I quit.”

“Good for you.”

“So what happens?  Two of the other girls suddenly decide that they want to stop too.  Ashley and——”

Courty smiled and gave her a reassuring hug.  “See?  You were right to do as you did.”

Kathy shook her head, in a deep depression.  “Instigator Kathy.  Morgan had some very big models there that day.  Lorna was there, and Ashley Kauffman.  I don’t know what I was doing there; I’m really not in the same league.”

“Sure, you are, Kathy!  Honestly, Kathy, you’re beautiful, you’re stunning, you really are.  Your self-image needs some work, that’s all.”

“Oh, yeah, right.”  Kathy pause.  “Lorna quits, and Ashley quits, and they didn’t just quit, they told Morgan they would sue if he used any of their pictures, Lorna got on the phone right away to talk to her agent about it.  Morgan was so MAD!  I’ve never seen a man so mad.  I went to change, and he stops me at the door, and comes inside with me for a private talk.  Talk.  He made the other girls go out, so it was just us.  And he starts saying these horrible things how he’s going to ruin me in the business, bragging about all the influence he has, he really had me terrified!  But I didn’t know what to do!”  Her mouth crumbled, turned down, her eyes squinted tight, as tears fell down her cheeks.

Courty put both arms around her.

After a minute, teary-faced and half-sobbing, Kathy went on.  “Oh, God . . . he tells me that . . . I was so afraid . . . I didn’t know what he was going to do . . . but he tells me that he’s going to give me one more chance.  I didn’t know what to do, I was so afraid, I’d heard all kinds of things about him, about how much power and influence he has, about how he can just pick up the phone and make or break people, oh . . . I don’t know what I was thinking, I probably wasn’t thinking at all . . . So I said OK, I’ll try.”  She shook her head, and sort of laughed through the tears.  “He’s so tall, you know, and he suddenly thrust his hand out, and shouted for me to PUT THIS ON.  Well, he hit me on the cheek when he stuck his hand out, but I take the little thing out of his hand.  And it’s so tiny, I mean I don’t even know what it is——mini-panties or a mini-bra, I don’t know——but I’m babbling I guess, you know, yes, sure, anything you say.”

And Kathy just stopped, her mouth frozen, staring past Courtney.  Then she swallowed real hard, and she shook her head slightly, as if she still didn’t believe it.  “And suddenly . . . I realize that he’s pulled his pants down.  It was so unexpected . . . I just stood there stupidly, holding the thing he just gave me, I’ve got my hand out, and I’m looking down at his underwear, and I notice that I’ve got a condom in my hand.”

“Jesus.”

“He wants me to put the condom on him!  I didn’t realize it at the time, I just completely flipped out.  I couldn’t stop screaming.  I just screamed, and screamed!  He pulled his pants up and ran out, and . . . It was such a MESS!  Everybody made such a fuss.  Everybody yelling, wanting to know what’s going on, what’s the matter with me.  And I couldn’t even TALK to anyone, I couldn’t get my mouth to work.  I couldn’t tell anyone what he did, I was so upset.”

A long silence.

“And he did it.  He did ruin me in the business.  Nobody will work with me anymore.”

Kathy felt limp and exhausted in Courtney’s arms.  Courty said, “Hey, now.  I want you to just relax and stop worrying about your career.  OK?  Michael will take you on as a client.”

“Sure.”

“He will!  I’ll speak to him.”

Kathy lay down on the bed.  She was completely drained by the confession and by the remembering.  “Hah.  I know he won’t.  He’s got you for a client.  You’re famous.  He doesn’t need anyone else.”

“I’m not that famous, I just seem to be the girl-of-the-minute.  But let me tell you a few secrets.  Michael is very good.  I underestimated him quite a bit, for a long time.  We got off to a very bad start when we first met, and I still think he’s sort of wimpy as a person; but he’s very, very persistent; he keeps pushing, and he delivers.  I think a lot of people just think he’s a light-weight, and don’t pay any attention to him; and while they’re not paying any attention, he outmaneuvers them, sneaks around them and gets exactly what he wants.  He is kind of a snake.  A sneak.  And because he’s so devious, I’ve never signed a formal contract with him.  We have sort of an informal agreement, but I can chop him off anytime I want.  I’ll just tell him that he takes you on as a client too, or he loses me.  Simple as that.”

“You would do that for me, Courty?”

“Why not?  Don’t friends do things like that for each other?  Or am I thinking of the wrong movie . . .”

Kathy smiled, and blushed a little.  “Can I just take a little nap here?  I don’t know why I’m so tired.”

“Sure.  Another thing you should know is that Preferred dropped me flat too.  They didn’t think they could get enough business for me to justify keeping me on as a client.  But Michael was able to find me plenty of work, and now I’m pretty hot.  So don’t worry: Michael will get your career going again.  Stop worrying about your career, OK?  And start worrying about how you’re going to seduce Bob back into your life!”

A minute later, Courtney was back in the living room.  “This smog makes me homesick for Southern California,” she said.  “All this heavy, blue haze.  My goodness, you guys are getting serious.”  She sat down on the carpeting in front of some of Kathy’s clothes, the second half that she had not moved.

“We waited for ya,” Liz said, lounging as comfortably as if she had lived here for years.  She smiled, and held a packed, unlit pipe in her hand.

Peach was sitting on the couch next to her, nodding her head back and forth.  Her mane was a black eruption of hair.  She seemed lost in an unusually introverted world for a Peach.

Courty was thinking that perhaps now would be a good time to slink cowardly back to her bedroom, and stick her nose in a book until these two left.  She was too emotionally blown away by Kathy’s confession to write anything.

“Is Kathy comin’?” Liz asked.

Is Courtney going?  “She’s sleeping on my bed.”  That elicited a strange, sharp look from Liz, who then immediately lit the pipe, inhaled to get it going good, and passed it to Courty.

Courty looked at the outstretched hand.  The pipe; smoke licking upward in rich, seductive curls.  Liz’s expression was so focused, so intent, so serious.  It was such a contrast to Peach, who was a soft fluff-ball.

Here I am, passive at the moment of decision.  I am doing nothing, letting my inaction become the decision by default.  I have done this so often, in the critical events of my life.  A minor push, here or there, could have created vast changes in my life.  But I allow these external events to overpower me.  The path of least resistance.  I choke when the event looms in importance, do nothing, allowing the world to remake me according to its whims.  Yet, in inconsequential moments, or when somehow the pressure is magically relieved, I FLOW, I shine with the grand gesture so necessary to establish my personality.  Why?  Perhaps it is because I truly do not know which is the better road to take.  And so, when presented with a fork, I let myself be carried along, passively, by a gravity of least resistance, like a ball striking the fulcrum, falling to whichever side the world pulls me toward.

I can stand up from the carpet and walk away.  Or I can move my arm and suck on this pipe.  Perhaps I am not asking the right questions.

Which way to adventure?  Which way to the experiences that might sharpen and improve my artistic vision?

Courtney accepted the pipe.

|

Hashish & cartwheels.  Speedball.

Courtney felt ruptured from Reality.  Plunged into an awful solitary deep well, falling, falling, the walls of the circular well filled with flickering images of artificial reality, like a 360-degree Dolby-surround-sound movie.

She felt the urge to obtain a notebook, and jot down observations.  But the energy required to find something to write with, something to write on, and the energy to actually write . . . it was prohibitive.

Some random flicker, memory-fragment of Byron Reed, brought an intense longing for him.  To have him near her.  Now.  During this.  Surely HE would be Real.

The image of Liz seemed so happy . . . the image of Peach seemed so content . . . why was she not content?

She became absorbed with the way Kathy had folded her clothes.  There was an awesome beauty to it, a rightness, OF COURSE, Kathy had to refold them, they must have been wrong before.  And the pile that was scattered . . . arranged with an aesthetic perfection that was awful in its intensity.

When Liz produced five white cross tablets, into Courtney’s hand, with a glass of water to swallow them, Courtney did so.

And everything improved.  Vastly!  Her whole body was a roaring steam engine with infinite reserves of energy.  And her morbid analytical train of thinking was derailed, throwing her to another plane of relation to not-Courtney.

Play!

The energy threw Courtney back into social intercourse with a vengeance!  Courtney demanded, group-decided, that they would all dress up and go to Club Sun/Moon.  As quick as a lightning bolt, it was decided and acted upon, all the girls running in different directions to out flash-trash the others.

COURTNEY, Chapter 31
 

Copyright 2005 Area 47