AREA 47

SECTION 89:

COURTNEY, Chapter 41

Redressed Courtney, fluctuating from living-room chair to living-room chair; scatterbrained.  She was happy+ that she and Reed were back on the sexual freeway, but her thoughts were a fulminating hullabaloo.  She wanted to go back to New York instantly.  She wanted to stay in LA indefinitely.  She wanted to work around the clock at her typewriter, writing her epic poem.  She wanted to laze back for days on the beach and soak up some sun.  She wanted to model, travel to exotic places, go to Europe and make the covers of Vivre & FF Femme.  She wanted to take a natural childbirth class.  She had a hundred and fifty thousand dollars of her own money in the bank, with three times that which would arrive to be deposited in the next few months, for work that she had already done but hadn’t been paid for yet: she wanted to make a million.  And she wanted to toss in the towel, sponge on what she had already made.  She wanted to marry Reed——and she wanted to give him back his dopey engagement ring and be completely free again; what was wrong with being a single mother?

“What?” Courtney asked.  Reed was looking down at her mysteriously, back from his telephoning binge.

“Did you call your mother?  Are we ready to go?”

He shook his head minutely, absently.  “I don’t get this at all.  I keep expecting blackmail, but that’s not it.”  He was talking not exactly to her, but more out loud to himself, and his eyes weren’t quite looking at her.  “These guys aren’t asking for money, it just doesn’t make sense.”

“Reed, what are you talking about?”

“There’s a UPS package for me at SoundSync East.  From Staedtler Graphics.  It was there for me the same day yours was delivered, I just didn’t have time to open any of my mail.  It’s probably a copy of you on videotape.”

Courtney snorted.  “It’s only proper that you get your own copy.”

“So you really don’t care?  You don’t care who else might be on the mailing list?”

Courtney’s face went from minor irritation to outright horror.

Reed said, “What I’m thinking is: Next Day Air would probably be delivered today in LA.  It’s too late to intercept one for Michael or anyone in New York, but——”

“Oh God, Reed!  No!  NO!  Please NO!”  Courtney flowed into helpless tears, thinking of Mom seeing that video of her.  “What can we do?!” she shrieked, through the tears.

Reed sat down with her and held her.  “I don’t know.”

She cried into his shoulder.

Reed asked, “What time does UPS deliver at your home in Glendale?”

“Oh, about 1:00 or 2:00 . . . Reed!  It’s 12:30!  Please, it’s 12:30, please let’s do something!”

On the Bentley-convertible drive over to Glendale, they discussed various illegal possibilities.  Reed was quite willing to rob the damn UPS truck; he had brought along a ski-mask, just in case.  But as they drove, Courtney became despondent.  Then, she brightened.

I’ve got to get there, and sign for it myself, and then loose it somehow.

Their timing was perfect-shit.  As Reed drove up, parking far down the street but within good view, the brown UPS truck was parked in front of Mom’s, and the driver was at that precise moment walking fast, almost running across their front yard, toward the front door.

Courtney went frantic.  She burst into tears again.

“Relax,” Reed told her.  “I’ll just fucking steal it!”  He put on the red ski-mask, covering his face except the eyes, and started to get out.  “I won’t be coming back to this car.”

Courtney, still crying, grabbed his arm tighter than she ever had.

“Just stay down!” he said, trying to shake her off.

“Reed, stop!  Please, stop!  Stop, please stop!  I don’t want you to!  Stop, Reed!”  She was wailing so loudly, holding him so desperately, that he stopped, and he just sat with her as they both watched her mother come out and sign for the package.  Reed took off the mask and tried to comfort her tears, but it was useless, she cried continually.

“Will you fucking RELAX!” he said.  “There’s still time.”

“Don’t do anything illegal, Reed!  Don’t!  Don’t!  NO!”

“RELAX.  I’ll just fucking talk her out of it.  Stop crying, and just relax.”  Reed got out and Courtney watched him with horrified tear-blurred eyes, watched him walk across the street, over to Mom’s home.  She slumped down, hiding herself as Mom answered the door.

Oh, she felt AWFUL.  AWFUL!

It was the longest fifteen minutes of Courtney’s life.

Reed came back and threw the unopened package in Courtney’s lap.  “She wants you to call her.  I told her you were here in LA.”

“How did you . . . do it?”

“Don’t ask.  These guys know too fucking much about you!  I mean, how the fuck did they find out where your mother lives?”  He was simmering with anger; she was a rush of amazement & gratitude at the unopened package in her lap.  It was from Staedtler Graphics.

She kept asking Reed, over and over, what did he do, what did he say?

Finally, he said, “I told her it was a film of me, and that I’d rather she didn’t see it.  I told her a guy was blackmailing me, and trying to give me a hard time, and I told him to go to hell; so he was dragging out all the skeletons in my closet and showing them around.”

“A film of you?”

“Yeah.”  He beamed, proudly at her.  “A fuck-flick from my early days as a porn-actor: 10-inch Reed!”

“Reed, you DIDN’T!”

“I did.  Your mother was mortified.  She almost refused to serve me the coffee she was making for me.”

“Gawd.”  Courtney started to laugh.

“Then, she wanted to watch it.  More than ever.  She got really excited.”

“No!”

“Yes.  Then I had to REALLY talk her out of the video.”

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Forest Lawn’s finest.  Sunny but cool Southern California day.  Stony-faced Reed watching his dad get lowered into the ground.  His gray and dignified mother crying continuously.  Quite real.  She was completely devastated.  Several of her close female friends, clustered nearby, trying to be comforting.  Estelle Moreau and little Blue in matching mother-daughter black dresses.  Tina Sherman making a surprise late appearance wearing a scarlet red dress, strangely loose & baggy below her enormous breastworks.  A platoon of cameramen dug in back at the parking lot.  Reed’s father had many friends in the movie industry, some of them famous big shots.  There was Frankel, the actor turned producer-director.

Courtney’s mind kept drifting; Mom on one side of her, Reed on the other, next to his mother, with his arm around her.  Mom was tipsy with excitement at being among such rarefied company: ARTIE FRANKEL (swoon)!  Courtney knew that she would get a full report on who’s who from Mom after the funeral was over.

Courtney felt closer to Byron Reed now than she had ever been with anyone else ever.  She couldn’t even imagine being closer, more intimate with anyone.

Thinking of herself pregnant with his child . . . Reed told her, half-jokingly, that he would strangle her if she got an abortion.  But of course she would NEVER abort their child.  She only hoped for the best things: that the pregnancy would be uncomplicated, and that the child would be healthy and normal (i.e.——a girl).

Mom didn’t know.  She would demand that she get married FAST.

Michael didn’t know.  He would strangle her.  No, he would want to take her to the abortion clinic himself.

Thinking of marriage . . . She supposed now was the time.  But she felt like such a little girl, playing at being an adult.

Then Courtney smiled, and quickly threw away the displaced funeral-smile.

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Courtney and Mom returned to Mom’s Toyota from their early morning shopping errand at Target.  As they walked through the parking lot, up to the rear of the car, Mom chuckled.

“Courty, perhaps I should drive.”

Courty looked, and saw that her bag of dress clothes was overturned in the rear, and that her change of clothes was scattered all over.  “Funny,” Courty said.  “I didn’t drive that crazy . . . did I?”  She opened up the rear to straighten her things out.

“Oh, no,” Mom said.

Courty looked to where Mom was looking, and saw that broken glass was on the ground beside the driver’s door, and that the driver’s window was shattered.

Courty took three steps to see better, feeling suddenly light-headed and hot all over.  Broken glass was all over the interior.  The radio was jerked out, all that was left was a tangle of wires.  The glove compartment door was broken and the papers and things thrown on the floorboard.  Mom’s cassette case was broken, and cassettes were dumped all over the front seats.

Courtney backed into Mom and screamed in panic at the touch.  Quickly, she grasped Mom and urged her back to the store, where lots of people would be around them.

It took Courtney almost half an hour to stop shivering.  Unaccountably, later at the glass shop, Courtney started crying, for no reason, and had to go outside in embarrassment.  Mom didn’t seem at all worried about her car, but she was very worried about Courtney, who had always been so level-headed and strong about such things.

COURTNEY, Chapter 42
 

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