AREA 47

SECTION 89:

COURTNEY, Chapter 44

Seven dresses later, the FF Femme make-up girl presented Courty with a small cream-colored envelope, sealed with wax, bearing the imprint of the famille de La-Belle.  From Hunter La-Belle to Courty.

Courty laughed: the Femme girl was awed by the envelope.  Hunter La-Belle!  French playboy, ex-actor; incredibly wealthy.  Incredibly divorced: the splash of the scandal refused to die; his German wife had left him for another woman.  Hunter was famous worldwide, now a businessman, somewhere in his forties, who owned and managed a vast shipping and import-export empire.

Allophone-Courty tore it open and read the short English letter, wrinkling her lips with disgust.

The heel was hung-up on her image in the media.  He presented himself as a genie, able to grant any and all of her desires.  All she had to do was suck the cork off his bottle.

His private yacht, 7:00 tonight.  RSVP.  (SSVP?)

Courty trashed the letter.  This awed the Femme girl more than the letter itself.

“Want some pizza?” Courty asked the girl, and then after sharing, shoveled a slice into her own famous face.  RHIP, and one of the perks of Courty’s success was fresh piping-hot pepperoni pizza in all of her dressing rooms.

Post-redressed back into her own duds, but pre-press-conference, Michael knocked on the outer door of her changing room, and brought someone in with him.

Look who we have here,” he said, not particularly happy about it.

“Ms. Joyce!” Courty said, surprised.  “Goodness, it really is a small world, isn’t it?”

“Very much so, Courty,” the deep masculine voice said.  Ms. Joyce still wore dress-suits, still had her hair cropped close and short.  Truck-driving dyke, zipped-up in high-brow upstream-boutique attire (though Michael swore in-’n’-out that she was hetero).  “Is Michael taking good care of you?”  A gruff double-laugh, and she answered her own question.  “I suppose he must be taking good care of you.”  Ms. Joyce had been the boss of Courty’s manager during the short period when Courty had been employed by the Preferred Modeling Agency.  Preferred, of course, managed Julie Dayton, and most of the world’s other top models.  “We made a mistake with you, my dear girl,” she said happily.

“Everyone makes mistakes,” Michael said.  “You made a mistake with me too.”

Ms. Joyce’s gruff man’s laugh.  “Indeed.  Courty, I shall not mince words, I know you are busy.”

“Talk fast, Joy,” Michael said.  “Make your offer, and then get out.”

Ms. Joyce was not offended, but amused.  “But Michael, you were always so good at small talk.”

It must have been a private jab at him, because she just smiled at him, and he just got silently angrier.

Courty said, “I’m not interested in changing managers, if that’s what this is about.”

“But, my Dear,” Ms. Joyce’s low bass voice said, “we wouldn’t hear of it!  We want you and Michael to come back together under the Preferred umbrella.  He can manage you for us.  To obtain the really lucrative cosmetics contracts you will have to return either to Preferred, or go over to Kramer Ellerbee——and believe me, Courty, that would be a tragedy.  Regardless, any deal Kramer can work for you, I’m absolutely certain that we can top it.  Now——”

“Is this a joke?” Courty asked.

Ms. Joyce looked confused.  “But you and Michael have no binding contract.  I know of this.  And I am in a position——”

“Forget it,” Courty said.  She shook her head.  “I mean, where were you when I needed you?”

“But my dear, let us let bygones be bygones, and face reality.  The Pearl Shampoo contract, alone, would be something upwards of $2 million for less than a month’s work!  Priscilla Jane make up, another $1 million or so.  Next year, alone, we can notch your total gross income above $5 million dollars very easily.  Perhaps more.  Perhaps a great deal more.  We have the resources to co-write you the most advantageous accessories and clothes contracts.”

Courty said firmly, “Ms. Joyce, thank you, but Nooo thank you.”

Michael sighed with relief so strong it almost charmed Courty.

Ms. Joyce said, “Pollcrest lipstick is not entirely satisfied with Julie Dayton, and has not renewed her contract.  We can probably sign you, instead!  Also, Kears-Boeruck is offering a semi-classy line of clothes, and we are discussing very large demographics here.  We might be able to work something on the order of $35 million for a 5 year exclusive clothes contract.  Let me repeat those numbers for you.”  She did, with emphasis: “Thirty, five, million, dollars.  Over a five year period.”

“How many times do I have to say no?” Courty asked.

Michael started to talk, but Ms. Joyce energetically cut him off.

“But Courty, consider your position!  Right now you are a flash in the pan, temporarily the brightest and hottest, but tomorrow who is to say?  Preferred is in a position to offer you true longevity.  We can give your career permanence.  This is something very few models attain.”

“Does she have an off-switch, Michael?”

“She does, but it’s located between her legs.”

The crude phrase seemed to finger the switch, because the woman ignored Courty, threw a Joyce-look of pure horror at Michael, and bombarded the boy with her full, hell-fired basso profundo wrath: “You are nothing, Michael!  You are less than nothing!  You have botched and blundered around, hopelessly, trying to ‘manage’ this girl.  She is the talent here!  Talent enough to rise above your mismanagement.  You’re not a manager, you’re a dead weight around her neck!  And I just hope that she wakes up and comes to her senses before it’s too late!”

After a second of further silent anger, Ms. Joyce spit in Michael’s face!

In a brisk huff, she exited, slamming the obligatory door.

Michael wiped his face with a dandy’s silk hanky.  “You can tell she’s lying.  She uses words.”

Michael and Courty looked at each other, long and searchingly.  They had come a long way, from the days when she was just a cover girl with one cover to her credit, and he was a freshly-fired assistant back at Preferred.

“I feel like I’m in a foreign country, Michael.”

|

“Ah,” Courty said, and then inhaled deeply.  “Makes me homesick for Los Angeles.  OK, shoot!”

Now that they could smoke, the reporters and photographers beefed up the bloodstream with nicotine, rectifying the withdrawal symptoms.  Mot Juste smog.

Michael stood beside Courty, in the supportive role.

Courty-by-numbers: Michael had semi-organized things into a three-questions-per fast scene to get them the hell out, and over to the next assignment across town.  The next assignment was a shorty.  Then she was over to state-run Antenne 2 to do the Apostrophes show, sort of a French version of Jay Leno.  Courty had nixed the real Jay Leno show tens of times, but was doing this French TV show as a foreign favor to Michael.

So just tell who you represent, and get on with your allotted questions.

A chain of giddy flash-bulb flashes gamboled across Courty and Michael and the dress racks behind them like heat lightning.

“Brigitte Thomas, British Mode.  Oh, Courty?  Courty, uh, this is your first trip to France.  What are the things you would like to see and do while here?  You know, what are your plans?”

“Modeling is what happens to you, while you’re making other plans,” Courty paraphrased.  “I’m spread so thin this trip, I’m afraid France only gets an eighth of an inch of me!  That won’t be enough to learn about or SEE any of this wonderful country.  So I’ll just have to come back when I’m not working.  What I’d really like to do is LIVE here for a few months when I have time to take it easy, and just live.”

Brigitte said, “Courty, is it true that you will be spending this evening aboard Hunter La-Belle’s yacht?”

Postquestion photographic fury.

Courty blinked, the flash-bulb fire-fight blaze catching a suboptimal Courty; her copacetic cool instantly ablated.

But the sensation from laid-back Los Angeles dryly said, “I’ve sworn off yachts.  No, in fifty words or less.  Next question.”

Le tribune de la Presse, expecting a breeze brain ditz from the land of the loosely wrapped, collectively did a double-take.  A brilliant face with a brilliant mind?  Qu’est-ce nouveau!

Brigitte said, “Courty, you and Byron Reed, the record producer, are engaged to be married, aren’t you?  Pop singer Tina Sherman claims that she’s pregnant with Byron Reed’s baby.  What do you think about her?”

Courtney narrowed her eyes.  One Nice question, and then two balls of bubblegum cold-bloodedly cohered to her short hairs.  An impertinent insight flickered in Courtney’s mind, and then raged into flaming chutzpah.

“No comment,” Michael said for her.  “Please ask decent questions.”

“Comment!” Courty corrected, cynically thinking that Beauregard got it wrong: The mirage wasn’t the meaning, The Volume Was The Meaning.  Mass-media meaning was a quantifiable event.  The message was measured in loudness.  These reporters didn’t want the quality of reality, they wanted a fantasy of QUANTITY: stand-up sentences, fired-up phrases, pent-up paragraphs that exploded with scandal.  They wanted Buy-Me, Read-Me, Talk-About-Me; not Truth!  She had no right to be news; she was a look, a face, a haircut . . . what else?  There was no information, no enlightenment, no knowledge.  Courty was chitchat during phone calls, she was TV tittle-tattle, just a juicy morsel in the magazines.

Ask decent questions?  What would be the point?  Michael, get real——kill yourself or go bowling.

“What do I think of her?” Courty repeated.  “I don’t think of her,” she said, quoting her favorite author.  She patted her tummy.  “We have one of Byron Reed’s babies right here!”  A kindly, motherly Courty-smile that warmed the cockles of the heartless.

Michael went into an epileptic fit!

Byron Reed sang a stereo cock-a-doodle-doo into the short pool of silence.

“Jacques Duronsoy, Channel 7!  Courty!  You’re pregnant!?  What will this do to your modeling career?  Will you get married?  Will you get an abortion?  What will you do?”

“No abortion!” Courty yelled, because suddenly there was so much commotion, everyone whispering and talking at once that it was difficult to hear.

“What will you do?” Jacques asked again.

Courty laughed lightly.  “Probably phone Mommy right away, so she doesn’t hear about it from you guys.”  As a French comic, Courty was victorieux.  The laughter came as a roar!

“What will you do after that?” Jacques yelled.   “Marriage?  Single motherhood?”

With a pixie twinkle in her eye, spryly slurring the words, Courty said, “Then I’ll call Reed.  And tell ’im we’re gettin’ married.”

Just about everyone in the boutique laughed.  They liked her.  They accepted her.  She was quirky, and she was real, and she was all right.

Michael’s programme-entrevue got stomped on, and they just fired questions right over his objections.

“What do you think about all the things that have happened to you?”

“I only think about the things that haven’t happened to me.”

“Courty, what do you have that all the other world’s models don’t have?”

“Byron Reed.”

“Do you think you’re beautiful?”

“Well, I have a striking haircut!”

“Is that the secret of your success?”

“Well, you have to make a choice: Life, Death, or Modeling.  Most people choose life.  A few die.  And I chose Modeling.”

General laughter.

“What do you mean by that?”

“Yes.  The haircut is the secret of my success.”

“But surely your haircut can’t be the whole story!  How do you explain your popularity?”

“I don’t explain it.  I just DO IT!”

Laughter.

“Do you see yourself as the model of the Nineties?”

“Well, I rarely look at the magazines.  So it’s up to other people to see me, or not see me.”

“But do you think you’re the model of the Nineties?”

“Well, it’s the Nineties, and I’m a model.”

“But are you THE Model of the Nineties?”

“Only God and History know the answer to that one.  The Nineties have plenty of years to go yet.”

“But how do you see yourself?  Do you think that you are the model of the nineties?  What do YOU think?”

“Persistent little guy, aren’t you?”

Strong general laughter, and the guy gave up.

“Courty!  Do you come from a wealthy family?”

“Not really.  No.”

“So you’re an average American girl?”

“Yes.  Unlike all the other American girls, I am just an average American girl.”

Three people laughed.

“But what do you mean by that?”

Courty giggled.  “I think I mean that your question is silly.  Average American girl?  What’s an average American girl?  How do you average city girls and country girls?  West Coast Girls and Northern Girls?  Kentucky girls and Montana girls?  The question is silly, so you got a silly answer.  What’s an average French girl?”

“Quelle touche elle a!” someone yelled.

“Courty!  Courty!  What do you have to say about the story in the National Confidential?”

“What story?”

“The National Confidential’s front-page lead story claims that you are the star of an American X-rated video.  Is it true?  Have you made any pornographic movies?”

“No comment!” Michael yelled.  “That’s too offensive to even talk about.  It’s absurd.  We’re considering taking legal action against the National Confidential.  Next Question.”

COURTNEY, Chapter 45
 

Copyright 2005 Area 47