AREA 47

SECTION 89:

COURTNEY, Chapter 35

Courtney forced herself to leave the apartment door open.  Cleaned and casually dressed, minimally made up, Reed-ready, Courtney sat in her living room with a yellow pad prop, and the TV drone, as the Monday afternoon became early evening.  Courtney really didn’t want company, and everyone who stopped by somehow sensed it and quickly left, rather than hanging around.  The girls came and went, bringing news that reporters were hanging around, down outside the building, hoping to get some photographs and words from a mugged & beat-up Courty.

Gawd.  But Mr. Blend of Security reassured her that photo-journalists are, and always have been, unwelcome in this building.

She plugged the phone in and called Michael to complain about his promotional tactics.  But he was chagrined: he hadn’t thought of it.  Courtney didn’t know whether to be angry at his little display of managerial incompetence, or relieved that he wasn’t using promotional ploys without consulting her.  Feeling nothing, she just hung up.

She unplugged the phone.

Courtney wrote painful thoughts on the yellow pad, just to fill it up.  Half-thoughts.  None of it had anything to do with poetry.

She closed the front door, convincing herself that it was just because she wanted to avoid company.  She wanted to be alone, she wasn’t afraid.  She shut off the television.

She hoped to Heavens, Liz would stay away; and Courty kept wondering if maybe she really was bisexual.  She picked through every female friendship memory, racked and wondered them to death trying to find a clue to her perhaps hidden sexuality.

She jumped, when the intercom announced that Byron Reed was downstairs.  Unexpectedly, she was filled with dread.  It was a pang.  Was she doubting herself?  Or was she doubting him?  Just what was his image of her?  What if post-rape, he saw her as no longer pure?  Spoiled.  Cheapened.  Dirtied.

Courtney was suddenly afraid of the way Reed might react, and couldn’t even begin to predict it.

Suppose she became pregnant by one of the rapists!  A little curly-haired cafe au lait kid, perhaps.  What a monkey wrench into their love relationship that would be!  Gawd.  Like a prize career-woman feeb, a sexual abecedarian, Courty had stopped taking her birth-control pills.  She just could no longer make herself swallow the things.  Apparently she Wanted to get pregnant by Reed, and she Loved the MEANING of every act of their pure lovemaking uncontaminated by contraception.  What a cosmic joke the Universe was playing on her, as she now waited for and dreaded a possible pregnant punch line.

Courtney thought she knew Reed so well——she didn’t know him at all.  She desperately wanted to be strengthened and comforted . . . but, oh God, he had the power to lay waste to her emotionally, as well.  She didn’t think she would be able to bear his rejection; even a minuscule devaluation in his eyes, in the way he looked at her . . . it would be unendurable.  She had somehow put off these thoughts of deep doubt until just now, precisely now; holding the thought of Reed Coming To Save Her, Rescue Her; what a laugh.

“What’s the matter with me!” she actually shouted out loud.  All this doubt!  It isn’t like me at all!  My Lord!  I’m really blown away by this!  I’m devastated!  I can’t even THINK anymore!  My mind is MUSH!

“Yes, yes, let him come up,” she chirped into the intercom——or was it croaked into the intercom?

My self-image has taken a nose bash, too!

Minutes and misgivings later, his knock: the familiar drum rhythm of happiness and festivity.

She moved to the door for him, feeling herself floating, swinging & swaying, suspended like a papier-mâché piñata full of qualms.  The clicking sounds of her hands unlocking the door hit her ears like hard sticks.

It was only the third time she had seen him in a suit and tie——his standard scene was turtlenecks, khaki bush jeans, and Rambo leather jackets——but here he was, long brown hair flowing over the shoulders of his pin stripe suit, wearing matching slacks, vest; tie, designer shirt . . . and black eye.  He had a small brown suitcase beside him.  His right hand was bandaged up some.  His left eye was a swollen purple, slightly green bulge on his scuffed-up face; as he smiled at her, it could barely open.  But Courty watched the smile die on his face, as he saw her face.  He quickly flashed into intense rage, which she saw him suppress.

“I’m here,” he said, continuing the phone conversation as if he had just hung up a minute ago.

She was so shocked at seeing him beat up too, that it stalled her, and she just looked at him in horror, not stepping aside to let him in, not leaping into his arms, not gushing love-stuff.  Her mind began to shriek.

Reed silently picked up the suitcase and let himself in, sort of physically moved her body out of the doorway, after kissing her unresponsive, staring face.  Behind Reed, in the hallway, and in Peach’s apartment down the corner of the hall, Courty was aware of the party people cranking up to do something to overcome the Monday Blahs.  Reed set down his suitcase and closed the door behind him.  He started to put his arms around her, but something about her manner stopped him.  “I love you,” he said quietly.  “What happened?”

She just turned away from him and let out a helpless squeal of emotional agony.  She turned her back on him and walked a few steps, and then just stopped.

“Courty, what happened?  What’s the matter?”  He was really worried now.  “Did that maniac on the phone get to you?!”

She turned around.  “What happened to you?” she asked fearfully.  Was the whole world going insane?  Had that monster Eric gotten to Reed too?  Was her mother next?  Every friend she cared for?

“It’s nothing.  I got in a fight.  But, come on, what happened to you?  Please tell me.”

Her eyes were wide and round.  Her mouth was silent.

“What’s going on here?” Reed asked.  “How come I have to ask permission to hold you?  The way you’re looking at me——”

“Please hold me.”

He walked to her, and put his arms slowly and tenderly around her.  She shuddered, thankful that she hadn’t bolted away from him.  “Reed, what happened to you?” she asked, her head on his shoulder——feeling him, feeling him——feeling his slight tremor of pain when she hugged him tight.

“I was in a fight.  I may have cracked a rib or something.  I don’t know.  It doesn’t hurt too bad.  But really, forget about Me.  I’m here for you.”

She drew away from his arms, pulled his unhurt left hand and urged him.  “Reed, here, sit down, sit down.  Please!  Just sit down and tell me everything that happened.  It’s very important to me.  I must know.”

“Courty . . .”  He sat down in the chair she indicated; and looked at her, in the couch close to it, looking at him with big hurt eyes.  “Courty, you’re driving me crazy!  I’ve never seen you like this!  What’s The Matter!”

“Please,” she said, quietly, intently, “just tell me what happened to you.”

After a moment he said, “Two guys jumped me and beat me up.  What’s to tell?”

“But what happened?”

“What do you mean, what happened?  They beat me up!  One guy held me and the other guy hit me.  I got loose, gave them a hard time for a minute, and then they got me again and clobbered me again.”

“Do you know . . . why?”  It was a quiet, hushed, horrified why.

“Yeah, I know why.”

“Tell me.”

“Courty, you’re killing me!  You’re killing me!  This isn’t important!  I have to know about you!”

“Tell me.  I have to know everything.  Exactly, EXACTLY, Everything.”

“May I hold you while I tell it?”

“No.”

“You’re torturing me, Courty.  But I’m tough, I can take it.”  Short pause.  “I hit Krane, busted his lip and knocked out a couple of his teeth, and also busted my fucking knuckles——you know, hitting people is so easy in the movies, but you go to do it for real——and like, fists ain’t for shit!  So I hurt him, and a couple of days later he sends a couple of his pals to clobber me right back.  I should have expected it——it’s about his speed.  But at least he got my message to lay off, so it’s no big thing.  OK?  Now what’s the problem, Courty?  Why am I here?  How can I help you?”

“You’re certain it was Krane?  That he sent them?”

“Who the f——  Who the hell else?  Listen, Courty, I think Krane is sexually molesting Blue in some way.  I don’t know; maybe he’s just harassing her.  I don’t know.  No one will tell me shit.  Blue won’t tell me.  Estelle won’t tell me.  But it’s like, they’re not telling me SO HARD that they Are Telling Me, if you know what I mean.  Something is going on with Krane that’s not supposed to be going on.  So I went and told him to keep his fucking hands off my daughter or I’ll kill him.  And he says he doesn’t know what the hell I’m talking about.  But it’s the way he said it.  I could see in his eyes that something is going on.  And I just . . . I just got so fucking mad I just started hitting him and hitting him!”  He was silent for a moment, and then he made a noise half-laugh, half-groan.  “I’ll probably get fucking sued by Associated Pictures.  Sorry.  I’m FUCK-all-over-the-place tonight.  I’ll try to cool it.”

Courty was so subdued, so quiet.

Reed said, “And now you’re acting weird too.  Are you going to tell me?  Or are you going to Not Tell Me to death?”

“Let’s go to your place.”  She smiled her smallest.  “I’ll not-tell you there.”

“Wheugh.”  A noise of disgust.  “If you want to make the rumor rags.  You know there’s a bunch of photographers out there?  They recognized me!  They were popping off at me like I was some kind of news.  Nobody ever recognizes me anymore.  But I’m famous now: I’m Courty’s boyfriend.  They loved the fact that I was beat up.  You want squalls of controversy?  You and me go out there now, looking like we do, and it’ll be Flashbulb City.”  He paused.  “Listen, if you want the publicity, I don’t mind.  I really don’t mind.  But talk to me first.”

Courty held her hands across her breasts, and cringed her shoulders together, feeling cold, chilled.

Reed started to move to sit next to her, but abruptly she shot a palm up to halt his progress.  “Please,” she said.  “Just . . .”  She bit her lip, and made him sit back down by pushing her palm against the air.

She twisted it, and took off her 4-carat diamond engagement ring, swallowed hard, closed her eyes for a second and almost broke into tears, but didn’t.  She placed the ring on the hard, flat surface of the coffee table.

“Courty, don’t do this to me!”  She could hear the agony in his voice.

“Shhhhhh,” she very softly said.

Byron Reed was silenced by hurt.

She did not look directly at him.  Her eyes stared, seeing once again: the combat zone bunk on that yacht, the pain-bright Lights, Camera, Gang-Rape!

So quietly, he had to strain to hear her, Courtney said, “I was . . . I have been . . . raped.”

Reed was an instant of furious movement, but she halted and silenced him with a hurt, trembling motion of her open palm.  Her hand trembled there against the air for a long moment.

“I was . . . kidnapped, I think.  I . . . woke up on a boat.  A pleasure cruiser, I think.”  She bit her lip, and spoke slowly with awful remembrance.  “There were five men.  Four of the men had nylon stockings pulled over their faces.  And one man wore a hood.  They held me down.  Three of the men raped me.  The cabin was very bright, and there were cameras.  Video cameras, I think.”  She cleared her throat, not looking at Reed, but seeing out of the corner of her eyes that he was hugging his gut and bent forward in his chair as if the wind had been knocked out of him.  Tears shimmered in the edges of Courtney’s eyes, but did not fall.  Her voice was hushed; it sounded alien.  “They made a movie out of it.  I . . . resisted . . .”  The barest flicker of a smile.  “. . . to the maximum.  I don’t think I . . . enjoyed . . . any of it, even an instant of it.  I wasn’t even . . . There, when most of it was happening.  I thought they were going to kill me.  They had a . . . persuader is what they called it.  Sort of an electric cattle prod.  To make me cooperate.  That’s mostly what I remember.  They shocked me more than they . . .”  And again, the barest flicker of a tremulous half-smile.  “I was not very cooperative.”  She felt a quiet, actually calming pride; and she held her head high.  “When you see the movie, I think you will agree.  I thought they were going to kill me.  I thought I was one of those movies where they rape the girl, torture her and kill her.”  She shook her head; she could still hardly believe that it all had happened to her.  “I could write for fifty years, trying to express how horrible it was, but I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to get it right.  But . . . When they had had enough, they gave me some kind of shot.  I don’t know what it was, but it must have been something illegal and addictive, it was very powerful, and I just, I didn’t care about anything after that, I felt just great.  I can’t really remember much after that.  Possibly, there was more sex, I don’t know.  If there was, I was probably quite enthusiastic, I don’t know.  I just can’t remember.  I don’t even remember how I got here, but as the drug started wearing off, I was just here, back in my apartment.”  Slowly, with supplication, she turned her wounded eyes to Reed.  She intended to tell him next that she had recognized the voice of one of them, and to tell Reed his name.  Half of her was numb, the other half was ragged tatters.

“You didn’t see that!” Reed shouted at her, swiftly wiping the tears from his face.  But they immediately reappeared, and flowed down again.  Even while he cried, he was violently angry, and he leaped out of his chair.  He stood there quaking, as if he wished to run around the room screaming.  It was exactly what he wished to do.

He looked down at her, and at her ring on the coffee table, and it wrenched his emotions in another direction: quenched the anger, halted his tears, but added a brand new deep, intense pain.

He bent down, shoved the coffee table aside, and got down on his knees in front of her.  Two fast wipes, attacking the unmasculine tears.  He picked up the ring and held it, looking deeply into her eyes.  “Courty . . .”  He sighed, a sound of pain, of fighting to find the words; his mouth open, moving, but not speaking for such a long time . . . When he did speak, the simple words hung in Courtney’s memory with profound strength and impact.  “Courty . . . your hurt is my hurt.  If you have been physically abused, it is the most awful mental agony for me.  I LOVE YOU.  Seeing you in pain, puts me in pain.  I want to marry you now, the same as I wanted to marry you the first time I met you.  The same!  I want to be your partner.  For life, I think.  I can’t imagine it any other way.  Give me your hand.”  An order.

She did, and he fitted the ring slowly and tenderly back on her finger.

“Now,” he said, “don’t give me any more shit about wanting to break up.”

“You can’t do anything right, can you?”  She tried to make her voice sound light, but it came out flat.  First, he proposes, not on his knees, and now he orders her to wear the engagement ring.

Still on his knees, Reed said, “I have to be straight with you, Courty.  I don’t know how to deal with this at all.  I’m all busted up inside just hearing what you’ve told me.  God, I can hardly talk, I hurt so bad.”  He physically hugged his stomach in obvious pain.  “It hurts me to look at you, because I can see you, feeling pain.  I . . . don’t know what to do about it.  I want to ask you a thousand, million questions, I want to go out, find and KILL The People Who Did This To You——literally——I want to hold you and comfort you . . .”

“I think that would be a good start.”

Reed leaped up, sat closer than ever to her, and hugged her tight.  “I love you.  What are we going to do about it?  Are you hurt?  Have you seen a doctor?”

“I don’t think I’m hurt.  I go see a doctor tomorrow.”

Reed asked, “Do you have any idea who these men are?”

Are, Courtney thought.  Not were.  I want to shove this experience off the edge of the world.  For me, it’s a past tense that I want to have never happened at all.  I want it to always never have happened.

“Should we involve the police?” Reed asked.

Her head shook emphatically NO!

Involve the police, Courtney thought.  He could have said call the police, inform the police, bring in the police.  Involve the police.

“If I’m asking you too many questions for right now, shut me up.  But do you know why you were chosen as the victim?”

She shuddered in his arms.  “None of it makes any sense.”  She thought of Eric Des Barres.  Knowing that he was behind it made it all the more incomprehensible.  She hadn’t led him on in any way, she didn’t even know him, how could he, HOW COULD HE??

“Do you think the main point of it was to make a film?”

The question stopped her, and chilled her.  Reed held her tighter and more warmly, more comfortingly.  She suddenly thought not.  And she was suddenly sharply disconcerted by Reed’s manner, as if he was holding himself rigidly under a cold, powerful control, when inside he was a raging maniac blasting with inhuman emotions.  She felt at that moment that he was fully capable of actual homicide.

She imagined herself telling Byron Reed that Eric Des Barres was the cameraman.  What would happen?  Reed would say, excuse me, I have to go do something, wait right here, I’ll be back in a couple of hours.  He would come back in about five or six hours with Eric’s blood all over his clothes, and sit down with her again, hold her tight, and say, don’t worry anymore, everything’s OK now.

“Can you tell me some details, if you’re up to it?  I don’t mean sexual details.  How were you kidnapped?  You say you were on a boat.  Do you remember anything about the boat?  Things like that.  Or about the men.  Anything characteristic about the men.”

“Why?”

“Perhaps we can identify who did this to you.”

“For what purpose?”

She felt the beast in him almost leap out, but he was able to slam the cage door shut.  Slowly, and rationally, he said, “For your future protection.”  But it was also so ambiguous.

Point blank: “If you knew who the men were, would you try to kill them?”

He didn’t have to answer, she knew the answer just by feeling his body.

“I don’t know.  How can I know?  But we have to put an end to it.  Is it really over?  Is that it?  I don’t understand the motivation here.  A woman is kidnapped, raped, movies are made of the rape, and then the woman is released.  That makes no sense to me.  Judging just from what little you’ve told me, it’s not a random crime.  It seems like you were targeted.  Are the movies supposed to be some kind of blackmail?  What do you think?  Have there been any calls?”

“I don’t know.  My phone is unplugged.”

“Don’t you think we should plug it in?”

“Reed . . . if we ever find out who the men were, I want you to promise me that you won’t do anything, that you won’t try to exact some kind of vengeance.”

“How can you ask that of me?”

She pulled herself out of his fatherly arms, sat with her face close and intimately to his face, held his face with her hands.  She spoke with the authority of deep love.  “Because if anything happened to you, I couldn’t bear it.  I don’t want you dead, or locked away in a prison somewhere.  I don’t want that!  You must promise me that if we find out who they were, that you won’t try to do something about it.”

“I can say the words, but I’d never be able to keep the promise.”

She had to respect, even love, such brutal honesty.  She resolved that he must never know about Eric Des Barres.  She removed her hands from his face and looked away.

“Reed, you must never tell anyone that I was raped.  I don’t want anyone else ever to know.  Can you promise me that?”

But he didn’t immediately say anything, and it quickly upset her deeply.

“Why can’t you promise me that??”

He smiled slightly.  “I was just thinking.”  He smiled again, a guilty smile.

“Oh, I see!” she yelled with sarcastic hurt.  “You were going to sell the film by mail-order!  Maybe write some music for it!”

“Hey!”  He pulled her back into his arms.  “Cut it out.  I should probably lie to you, but I’m trying to play it arrow-straight with you, Courty.  Listen, you have to motivate the troops.”  He paused.  “I get the feeling you’re not playing it arrow-straight with me.  I think you know more than you’re telling me.  I think you either know who they are, or you know how to find out.”

“Reed!”

“I’m just telling you what I think.  But listen, I know guys who would help me, who would back me up, if I wanted to do something.  But I’d have to tell them that you were raped.  I’d have to motivate them.  I want you to think about——”

“Reed!  I don’t want——”  But he put his left hand over her mouth.

“Listen!  Just listen, Courty.  I want the world to be a safe place for you.  I want you to feel safe.  I’m quite willing to do all kinds of illegal things to accomplish that.  You come first in my life!  The legal system, the courts, forget it, a woman takes a rape case to court——it’s the worst thing she can do to herself!  She just gets raped and humiliated all over again, in Court, over and over, publicly, and the guy’ll probably plea bargain his way out of it!  In rape cases, I really believe that you have to just ignore the law and do what’s right.  So please, if you can tell me who did this to you, please, please tell me.  If you know anything that might be a clue, I can get some private detectives on it.  You may know things you don’t know you know.  If you’re willing to let me get a discreet
professional, and if you’re willing to let him interview you, really go over everything with him——do it once, just once, in private——maybe we can find these bastards . . . do something so that they’re never in a position to do this to anyone ever again.  It’s the only kind of ethics and morality I can understand!”  He released her mouth.

She was already shaking her head, NO, NO.

“Absolutely not!” she said.  “No!  Never!”

“But, Courty——”

“Promise me now,” she said harshly, “that you will never tell anyone that I was raped.  Promise me!  You owe me that.  God, you owe me that much.”

He looked at her long, and then nodded.  “OK, I promise.”

After about ten minutes of just silently holding each other there on the sectional, silently lost in their shared anguish, Reed said, “It’s my fault.  I pushed you into modeling.”

“Reed, that’s not true, modeling is what I really wanted to do.  And this has nothing to do with modeling!”

“And I listened to all your nonsense about freedom and room to move and all that shit.  I should have insisted on getting you a bodyguard.  I Do Insist Now!”

“Well, I accept, now.”

There was a knock on the door.

Courty said, “Probably a BM party, trying to involve me in its clutches.”

“A BM party?”

“Blahs Monday.  A party is the last thing I need right now.”

“Well, let me get it,” Reed said.

“This overprotectionism must cease!”  She quite happily let him deal with it.

Reed opened the door, and he could hear the party in the makings that Courtney was talking about, down the hall, but the guy at the door had a small package and a clipboard.  He was dressed as a messenger.  Speedo Deliveries.

“Is Courty here?” he asked.  “I have a package here for her.  She has to sign.”

“I’ll sign for it,” Reed said.

“No can do.  She has to sign.  What happened to you, guy?”

“Do you want to sign for a package?” Reed called out. 

Without thinking clearly, she got up and went to the door.  Where do I sign?”  Her voice was tinged with dread.

The messenger quickly opened the package, pulled out a flash camera, and he took two fast pictures of the two of them.  FLASH!  FLASH!

“God damn it!” Reed yelled, and angrily reached to grab the camera, but the man dropped the package and the clipboard and ran down the hall to the elevator, which was waiting open for him.  His partner in it, hit the down button, and he just barely streaked through the door before it closed.  Reed stood out there in the hallway, shaking his head.  “Some of those guys really piss me off.  I mean, they’ll do goddamn anything for a photograph.”

He came back in to find Courtney laughing.

“Hey, you’re laughing!  You’re feeling good!”

“Whew!” she said.  “I’d get an intercom call about anyone delivering a real package, and besides, they would just sign for it downstairs.  I thought they were delivering an X-rated movie.”

Reed closed the door.  He put his arms around her again.  “Here I am.  Tell me how I can help.”

“Just be here.”

“I’m here for as long as you want.  If you want me to stay with you 24-hours a day, everyday for a month, you’ve got it.  Whatever.  But I am definitely going to get you a full-time professional bodyguard.  You warrant it just on the basis of fame alone.  You’re getting too famous to go around unprotected.”

“I’m not that famous, Reed.”

“Oh yeah?  Then let’s go down-elevator and walk the reporter’s gantlet.”

She hugged him tight, tight, tight.

“Ouch!”

“Sorry.  I could get addicted to you.”

Uncle Byron’s Sexual Trauma Service.  They slept together that night, asexually, and it was one of their warmest and most tender nights with each other.  Reed slept very little, because he was so incredibly aroused by her, and Courtney seemed never to settle into a comfortable sleep: all night long she was moving against him and aching and moaning.  A long, extended super-cuddle, all the electric lights on for her, the gorgeous physical intimacy comforted both of them.

COURTNEY, Chapter 36
 

Copyright 2005 Area 47