AREA 47

SECTION 89:

COURTNEY, Chapter 33

Dumped, in front of her apartment skyscraper, before dawn.  The flower van drove up, stopped between two parked cars; the side door slid open, and two men shoved Courtney out between the parked cars just beyond the unloading zone.  It was gone around the corner seconds later.

Courtney lay there in the wet gutter, feeling just wonderful.  So tired and warm, and blissfully content.  Everything was perfect, even the pain between her legs.

She knew exactly where she was.

I’m home.  Any day now, I’ll get up and go up to bed.  But there’s no hurry.  It’s so nice here, down with this wonderful view of the car’s drain pan, with my head propped up so comfy on the feather-pillow curb.

Eons later, she stood up, and meticulously groomed herself.

She trekked barefoot toward the locked glass double door, and smooshed her face and bosom against the chilly glass——and looked for the guard.  He was not behind his little desk, so she happily closed her eyes, and pounded a thundering drum reveille that surely awakened the entire building, if not most of New York.

The timid little pattering of her knuckle on reinforced glass.

Several centuries later, the glass began to vibrate and jiggle.

“Miss Courty!” the stunned night security guard nearly shouted, catching her as she fell toward him.  “My God!  Are you all right?”

“Of course, silly.”  She stood up on her own two feet, thank you.  She gave him a long, happy look.

Courty laughed.  Well, I combed my hair with my fingers, and rubbed the gravel off my face, what do you want?  Oh.  Well, aren’t we formal, tonight.  My, my.  Courtney prudently pulled her black cashmere dress up to cover her naked bosom.

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Courtney shivered, and gave herself another douche.  The bathroom heater was on full bore, and still she could not quite get warm.  Just like she could not quite get clean.

Two enemas; baths, showers, and an endless series of douches, punctuated by long spells of lying in bed.

She bathed in bubbles until she felt like a wrinkled prune.  She showered until her skin was numb from the tingling blast of the spray.  She scrubbed and soaped until her skin was red and there was no more hot water.

Wanting to sleep, unable to sleep, as Sunday turned into Monday, and then Monday morning.  Wanting to forget, unable to forget, as the dreamy drug slowly wore off, and the body-high drained away.  Wanting to confess, to tell someone.

She called Mom.  Holding there, almost, it had been so close, hearing the warm hello, so reassuringly familiar . . . but no, she was just calling to say Hi, sorry to call so early, and what’s happening in LA . . . She just could not bring herself to do that to Morn.  It would hurt her so terribly much, knowing that her daughter had been raped.  And then some.  Out of the question.

She called Reed, waking him up at home, or perhaps he had been up all night.

“Help.”  A help so bereft and weak . . .

“How can I help?”

“Come here.”

“I’m on my way.  What do I need to know?”

“Come here.”

“You got it.”  The longest silent pause ever between them on the telephone.  “You’re still in New York, I assume . . .”

“Come here.”

“On my way.”  And he was, hanging up without a goodbye.

Saying almost nothing, with no greetings or declarations of love, it nevertheless was by far the best, most loving and comforting phone call with Reed she had ever shared.

She called Michael.  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.  And I’m unavailable, unavailable, unavailable.  Until further notice, until further notice, until further notice.  Don’t call us, don’t call us, don’t call us.  We’ll call you, we’ll call you, we’ll call you.”

“Courty——”

But she was already poking buttons to make an appointment with Peach’s gynecologist.  First thing mañana.

The telephone rang several times, and she had just stared at it, finally unplugging it, afraid to answer it.

There were knocks on the front double-locked and chained door of her and Lauren’s apartment.  She had languored in bed, recognizing many of the knocks and the voices saying that they knew she was in there and to open up, OK.  The familiar voices made her feel good . . . so long as they remained in the distance.

She would sit up in bed, gently put on her glasses and stare and stare at familiar things.  Bosley.  The clutter along her dressing table.  Her typewriter.  The books in her five bookcases: her library.  And she would take off her glasses, slowly feel her sore face, feel her neck, feel along her breasts, and so on to touch herself everywhere, every sore place and every unsore place, not sensuously or sexually, but just: here I am, still feminine, still me, still here and alive, still . . . and when the touching would become sensuous, it was time for another douche.

Her face was not so bad.  The nose did not seem to be broken.  Puffy, swollen, a little off-color.  Both eyes blackened, but not too badly; actually more red than black.  But staring at her reflection in the bathroom mirror, she felt old as the planet.  Her arms folded across her bare shoulders, she listened to her shallow breaths.  A nose hair whistling her existence with every exhale.  A decade of new, as yet unwritten poetry, swirled and haunted her, flashing images of stark, cutting lyric phrase.

My Gawd, not just a few poems, but a chronicle!  Volumes & volumes, a triad tome——I’ve got pictures in my eyes to write a lifetime!

Courtney had recognized the voice of Eric Des Barres; twice when the hooded cameraman had spoken, yelled in anger.  A truth that shocked her deeper than his silly crowd control toy.  Or was it a cattle prod?  Eric Des Barres.

She could not even imagine a motivation.  She could not comprehend such evil.  Only a madman could do those things to her.  It seemed like a vast joke for his insane twisted amusement, a horrible bad boy playing his naughty games away from nanny, knowing his parents are soon to return, so NO EXTERNAL MARKS.  Don’t mark her, just rape her.  Don’t wound her, just rape her some more.

Courtney’s breath caught, as a new thought struck her: Did I ask for it?  My God, I’ve always dreamed of the wild experience that would REALLY give me something to write about.  My God!  Did this happen to me because I really wanted it to??  No!  Please!  No, that’s Madness, Stop!

Her thoughts whirled, and then a black mist seemed to fill her head, relaxing her.  She could feel her memories closing it off, locking the door on it, turning the page, shoving it into the past, lifetimes ago, as an event occurring to some other prehistoric creature, but not, no, not ever to Courtney!  She could already feel the memories becoming less distinct, more fuzzy & forgotten, as if she could not afford it as an event in her life.

Her expensive, black cashmere dress was torn and bloody, and stuffed into a paper sack.  Nineteen hundred dollars, that Courtney knew she would have to donate to a thrift store.  She had to get that black reminder out of her life.

Courtney gave the mirror a hard, haughty Harlot look, down the nose, licking the lips, and ran her fingers through her hair.

Alive.

Feeling every tingle, every prickly pain all along her skin, everywhere, a glorious NOW.

“Well, Courty,” Courtney said in a low mirror voice, “would you like to go to a movie tonight?”

“Oh yes, Reed, let’s,” Courtney said in a high mirror voice.

Low Mirror Voice, “Here’s one that looks like fun: Debbie Does Dinghy.”

Blackmail.  How much would she pay to keep the film away from Mom?  Only everything.  Gawd, she would very nearly let them rape her again, to keep that film away from Mom.

“SHUT UP!” Courtney screamed out at the knock on her front door.  “GO AWAY!”

She crawled back in bed, and lay there, as the knocking persisted.  Oh, how her soul ached.  The persistent knocks like Chinese water-torture drips, hitting her forehead.  It was Liz and Kathy and Peach and Diana and who knew who, a coalition of Courtney’s closest.

Her body buffeted the bed, it pitched and rolled.

“GO AWAY!”

Hands over her ears.

“I Am Not Receiving Visitors!” Courtney shouted, getting out of bed, and putting on a bathrobe.  They had the door open at the chain, the concerned super was there.

COURTNEY, Chapter 34
 

Copyright 2005 Area 47