AREA 47

SECTION 89:

COURTNEY, Chapter 34

“I was mugged,” Courtney said, sitting with her feet tucked under her on the couch, gripping the bathrobe around her, while the others also sat around on the furniture, her allies Peach and Kathy close at hand.

“My God, Courty!” Peach said.

Kathy’s face was all OUCH.

Michael said, “What happened?”

“I was mugged.”

Liz said, “Eric and Phil pushed me outta his limo!  Can you handle that?  I bet if I’d’a stuck with you, that it’d never’a happened.  Damn!”

“He made me get out of his car, too,” Courty said.  “He got very upset when I wouldn’t go to bed with him.  Somewhere in the Bronx.”  She smiled weakly.  “These two big Black guys.”

“Were you . . . raped?” Michael asked.

“No,” Courty said.  “They were really very sweet.  After they beat me up and took my two hundred dollars and all my tampons, they called me a taxi.”

They all looked at her, each with different degrees of horror and incredulity, each not knowing whether she was joking or not.

“What did they want with your tampons, for Christ sake?” Michael asked.

“I think for the coupons on the little packages,” Courtney said, totally deadpan, and Peach laughed so HARD that Courty began to really and truly feel a little bit good.

It was a 1:00pm Monday, and Peach and Diana had both cancelled tiny snippets of their work schedule to conglomerate at Courty’s for their little Feel Good pep talk; so Courtney shooed them back to work.  Michael had found Kathy some test bookings, and one of them was at 2:30pm, so she was also easy to get rid of.

Courtney said, “Kathy, I’m sorry I didn’t let you in to sleep here last night.  I just completely——”

“Old news,” Kathy interrupted.  “I’m moved in with Bob now.”

“That’s wonderful,” Courtney told her.

Michael and Liz proved more resistant to verbal upheaval.

“I want you to see a doctor today,” Michael said.

“I already have an appointment with a doctor.”

“Today?”

“Tomorrow.”

“No.  No good.  Courty, come on, let’s go to a clinic right now.  I’ll take you myself.”

“Michael, back off.  I need a few weeks off.  Come and see me in two or three weeks.”

“Courty, we can’t afford a delay, right now.  You’ve got to get your face checked, and fixed up for the camera FAST.  I’m serious.  We have the momentum rolling right now, and it won’t wait.  If you stop modeling for a few weeks, it could completely stall your career.  You’re hot NOW, and we have to take advantage of that now.”

“How’s Kathy’s career coming along?”

“Courty——”

“How is her career coming along?”

Exasperated sigh.  “I’m doing what I can.”

“Good.  I’m glad to hear it.  Now: go somewhere else and do what you can.”

“Courty,” Michael pleaded with her, “you’re booked the next three weeks up solid, every single minute.  And people have got bits and pieces of you way into next year.  What am I supposed to tell all these people?  That you don’t feel like working right now?  We made commitments.  WE.  You gave me the authority and I went ahead.”

He had a point.  But what could be done?  “It’s going to be a week, at least.  Maybe more.”

“Courty, there are creative directors out there so desperate to get you on film, they’ll shoot the back of your head, and put it in their magazines.  Your hair is instantly recognizable.  They’ll work around your face problem.  I can take you into Len Edwards, right this afternoon, show him how you look, and I bet you a thousand dollars he’ll want to try to shoot you anyway.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“I am.  You’d be surprised what photographers can do.  They’ve got all kinds of tricks.  Courty, we just took a poll of New York.  More people——random, goddamn people on the street——know who you are than who Randall B. Mills is.  Your image sells goods and services!”

Randall Mills: Vice President of the United States.

Courtney closed her eyes.  So fragile, so delicate, like a brittle, cracked eggshell, with nothing inside but liquid pain, about to burst and flow all over into uncontrollable tears.

“Hell,” Michael said, “half the high school kids this fall are wearing Courty-cuts.”

The thought of working, of facing the bright lights again, of sending a dance of emotions across her face, of being ON and UP for the camera——it was devastating, impossible.  “Give me two days off,” Courty said, bravely.

“One day,” Michael said.  “And this is it.  Today, we go see a doctor, and tomorrow you work.  Work.  We’ll put more make-up on you than that ex-preacher-woman if we have to.”

“Tomorrow morning I go see a doctor.”  Pause.  “We’ll see about tomorrow afternoon.”

“Courty, why won’t you go see a doctor today?”

“Because, crackbrain, she doesn’t fucking feel like it!” Liz yelled at him.

Michael looked at Liz for an ice-moment and then back at Courty.  “What time is your appointment?”

“Nine o’clock.”

“I’ll take you there myself.  I’ll be here about——”

“Oh No You Don’t!” Courtney objected.  “I want privacy.  I don’t want you and the doctor discussing me as if I’m not even there.”  And objecting to the fact that the doctor is examining the wrong end.

After much additional asininity, Michael departed.

“Hey, can I watch some TV here?” Liz asked.  “Mine’s busted.  Please?”

Courty said nothing, pausing, trying to find words to say to get rid of the girl without being abrupt or unkind.  Just being with people, having to relate with them, put up an act of Feel Good, had drained her.

“Please?” Liz asked again.

“All right.  But I’m going to go lie down and take a nap.  So please keep it low.”  She went into her bedroom, and found that she didn’t close the door all the way.  Courty lay back on Bosley, with her bathrobe still on, and hugged her two pillows to her stomach.  She stared at the ceiling.

This is crazy.  I didn’t close the door because I want to hear when she leaves so I can be sure to go and lock the door.  I’m afraid to leave the door to my apartment unlocked, when before we always left it wide open all the time.  This is crazy!  I can’t let this change my whole life.  But there’s a madman out there!

She thought of telling the whole World Of Modeling to go photograph itself up the ASA; telling Reed YES, I’LL MARRY YOU NOW, of running away to California and hiding away in his home in the rolling hills above Sherman Oaks, making it into a secluded fortress, with burglar alarms and typewriters, lots of strong locks and stamps & envelopes & stacks of paper . . . the line of thought was so enormously attractive that it was frightening.  Courty resolved, then and there, that she would never do it.  Never!  Running away from life, even danger, was not her way!

Liz knocked on her door.

“Yes?”

She pushed it open a little and stood there in the doorway.  “You sure you don’t want to talk about it?”

Talk about it.  I want to talk to Reed.  Or Kathy, maybe.  What do I get?  Alex Lancôme’s child mistress.

Courty lay there, clutching the pillows about her.  She said nothing.

“Did they both rape you?” Liz asked.

Courty smiled painfully, emotional pain that welled up in her.  “It wasn’t like that.”

Liz came over close to Courtney and sat on the bed.  She reached and took one of the hands that Courty used to hold the pillows to her, and Liz held that hand.  “My dad fucked me the first time when I was nine,” she said.

Silence.  Courtney was almost hypnotized by her face.  Her make-up was deliberately raw, her face so hard, cold, and strong; but the way she moved was exactly the opposite: soft, tentative, weak in a touchingly delicate way.

Liz said, “He was a Baptist preacher.  Can you handle that?  It was my birthday present.”

Courtney didn’t know what to say.

“Of course, he’d been finger-fuckin’ me for long’s I could remember.”

Courtney rearranged her head to see Liz better.  She felt as if she were comforting Liz by allowing her hand to be held.

Is that the end of the story?  My Goodness, is she serious?

Liz looked down at her, intently.  “I guess I was about four or five when he started havin’ me jerk him off.  Course, I didn’t know what I was doin’.  Just that it was all some super secret, between him and me and God, and that if I ever told anyone, I’d burn in hell forever, and he’d kill me to make sure I went to hell real quick.  Sometimes he’d spank me and spank me, until I couldn’t cry anymore, to make me promise never to tell.  But his fave was to hold me by the neck, and lift me up off the floor, and yell at me to promise that this was our secret and that I would never tell.  And he would just hold me and hold me, until I was screaming and crying for him to stop.”

Courtney knew she was supposed to say something comforting, something responsive.  But there was no gas in the tank.

Courtney felt so despondent, that when Liz gingerly tugged on the pillows, Courtney let her have them.  Liz set them aside, and lay back against Courty, with her back to her, and she pulled Courty’s arms around her so that Courty was now holding the Liz instead of the pillows.

Liz seemed to be purring in her arms like a kitten.  Then she swung her legs up on the bed, and became more comfortable, and closer to Courtney.

Her hand slowly stroked along Courtney’s arm, creating tingles.

Her hand then gently lay itself on Courtney’s bathrobe covered thigh, and ever so gently squeezed, and moved.

Courtney began to become aware of what was happening.  But each of the girl’s moves was so touchingly tentative that Courtney was charmed rather than offended.

She’s a lesbian, and she’s trying to seduce me.  My body feels just dandy.  I like what’s happening.  But am I submitting willingly?  Or have I simply run out of energy to resist?

Liz turned around in Courtney’s arms, and sat up beside her.  She reached to undo the bathrobe.  Courtney allowed her to untie it and open it.

It was not lust in Liz’s eyes, it was something stronger and more desperate.

Liz bent down, a span of time that seemed to last for minutes——all the time her confident eyes and Courty’s disturbed eyes searching and meeting each other’s gaze——and placed her open, warm, wet mouth on Courty’s left nipple.

Liz lured her along, enticed her with her touch; Courty reached to touch and hold the girl’s head.  Liz moved over between Courty’s legs, and Courty opened her thighs.

And then Courtney was a warm, fascinated flood, a sexually incited rush of throbbing flesh, the pain of her wounds, bittersweet.  Liz lavished her tongue on Courty’s bosom, Courty’s arms encircled her shoulders, Courty’s thighs raised up and closed to hold the girl there.

Courtney had expected sexual affection with another female to be soft, slow, a shared gossamer glow.

But Liz was fierce!  She ruthlessly imposed pleasure upon Courtney, finding her natural rhythm, and resonating with it; increasing it, magnifying it, intensifying it, until Courtney was flapping about helplessly like one of those early flawed suspension bridges where the hanging steel would pick up a resonant vibration and begin to twist and sway, picking up energy from the wind, from traffic upon it, until it was twisting and bending monstrously, hurling cars off into the water, and finally destroying itself.  Courtney was just such a bridge under the merciless touch of Liz.

Liz nestled her tongue in Courty’s genitals, and made herself at home, acquainting herself with the luscious terrain; licking Courty into shape.

Then Courtney was crying because of the extended ecstasy, dripping hydrotherapeutic tears of transport that bathed down her face and body.

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“But I love you,” Liz said, with awful seriousness, as she cuddled her now naked body against Courtney’s now bathrobed body.  The bathrobe was closed, and a sticky drench on the underside.

“I can’t think right now,” Courtney said.  “And I especially can’t——”

“But you’re a lez!  I just proved it!  And I love you, Courty.  I really do.  Like I ain’t never loved anyone!”

“I’m not a lesbian,” Courtney said.  “I don’t even think I’m bisexual.  I think it’s just something that happened.”

“You’re a lez, all right,” Liz said, confidently, and gave Courtney a special squeeze.

Courtney pulled out of her arms and stood up to change and get cleaned up.  Reed really had to be due any minute.  “Liz, please just leave.  I’m engaged to be married.  I’m in love with this man.  I can’t return your love.  Please just leave me.  There’s no place for you in my life.”

With a kind of sob, Liz said, “You don’t never have to touch me!  Just let me be with you!  Courty, I’ll dive your muff ALL DAY, and you don’t have to do anythin’ for me!”  Tears overflowed and ran down the young girl’s face.  Sobbing, she cried, “I just wanna make you feel good.  I just wanna be with you.  Please?  Please?”

Courtney closed her eyes against this unwanted affection.  She just exhaled and stood there, not knowing what to do.  Then, looking at the girl wiping tears from her face, she said, “I’m in love with Byron Reed.  Deeply, deeply in love with him.  If you’re in love with me, I’m sorry for you; but what can I do?  I just love someone else!  Please, just go.”

Liz stood up, and walked close to Courtney.  She was still naked.  Smaller, thinner, younger, hungrier; and determined to reach and motivate her target audience.  “If you want me to go, I’ll go.  But just remember.”  Her hand slithered inside the folds of Courty’s bathrobe and quickly cupped and teased her vagina in a way that sent a shot of adrenaline-sex through Courty’s blood.  Just as quickly, she removed her hand.  “Nobody can make you feel as good as I can make you feel.”  And she sneered, “No boy can make you feel good like I can!  I love you!  And you don’t have to love me back, at first.  You don’t have to love me back At All!  Don’t you get it?  I’ll lick you as long as you want, just to be with you!”  And with her eyes watering into tears, Liz dashed back to the bed, dressed silently and quickly, and left the bedroom and the apartment without another word.

COURTNEY, Chapter 35
 

Copyright 2005 Area 47