AREA 47

SECTION 89:

COURTNEY, Chapter 47

Horny Byron Reed soaped up his dick and balls in the shower, and masturbated.

This is so stupid.  I’m the most successful guy I know, and here I am in the shower jacking off.  Shit.

My fiancée is just about the most famous fox on the planet.  My ex-wife will hop in bed with me any time I pick up the phone.  There’s three women, just waiting——My Own Goddamn Private Harem——hell, they’d be happy to mud-wrestle with each other for dibs on my dick!  There’s that hot tamale at Reed Audio, who keeps bumping up against me all the time.  There’s the blond across the street who must have the most watered lawn in water-starved LA, ’cause every time I drive up she’s waving at me and yelling silly questions.

I just inherited a solvent company worth about $15 million that I’m going to clean-up and take public and push my piece of it over $100 mil.  I’ve finally got SoundSync in the black, the banks are off my back, we’re positioned for future success, and I’ve got the hottest digital recording studio in the world.  My CD is about to go Platinum, and it’s damn near bumping Harlot’s album off #1.  I’ve got two Grammy nominations, with damn good chances to win Best Producer.  And I’m here in the shower jacking off.

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Six hours later, Reed was bumming around backstage after the 35th Annual Grammy Awards.  He was talking to Reed Audio vice president Frank Burns, who had done the house PA soundmixing.  Reed was a long-hair in a $2,000 dollar tux, Frank was a butterball in a Hawaiian shirt, shorts & sandals.

Frank still had headphones around his neck, but not over his ears, as they stood beside the event console.  Frank said, “The worldwide audience was estimated at 70 million.”  He shook his head mournfully.  “70 million people heard that feedback.  Twice.  70 million people heard that miscue.”

Reed said, “Two guys out there heard it.  Everybody else just thought it was supposed to sound that way.  There’s always mistakes.  You covered very good on the miscue.”

“I hit the wrong switch!”

“Cool off.  I’m telling you, nobody else heard it.  You have to know what to listen to, to hear it.”

But Frank Burns was down.  He had made three critical mistakes during pressure.  “They’ll probably cancel our contract and give the Grammys to Tenner & Company.”

Reed shook his head.  “Not Tenner; they were just bought out by the Pontiac Division of General Motors.  I mean, General Motors doing sound reinforcement for the Grammys?  Give me a break!”  Reed wandered off.  He was too emotionally ripped to get any work done, but he was also too wired to go home and crash.  Post-Grammy celebrations throughout the town took up the Tuesday gauntlet, but Reed was more inclined to find a quiet barstool and a tall bourbon.  Reed stood lonely and apart, watching the soundcrew break-down.

Feminine fingers covered his eyes from behind, and the voice whispered, in a croak of disguise, “Guess who.”

“Son of a bitch!” Reed said, his depression completely cured.

The fingers dropped down and pretended to choke his neck.  “Can’t even get the sex right.”

But Reed was already twisting around to grab her.  “I thought you couldn’t make it.”  He gave her a golden bear hug; nodding a fast, automatic OK to the stage hand who had let her backstage.  “GOD, I’m glad you’re here!  I thought you were in London this week.”

Courty hugged Reed right back, almost as hard.  “Actually I still am!” Courty said brightly.  “Or, supposed to be.”

“Here,” Reed told her, taking a plastic visitor’s tag on a string from the stage hand.  “Put this around your neck and you’re road legal.”

She did, and the stage hand left them.

“Mmmm . . .”  They drifted into a yummy French kiss.  “Michael wouldn’t let me have Tuesday off, but I just took it off!”  Kiss.  “Mmmmm.  And Wednesday too.”  Kiss.  “I wanted to surprise you and be here for you.”  Nose nudge.  “But there was plane trouble at Kennedy, and my bags just disappeared!”  Then her voice turned anguished.  “I’m sorry I’m late.  And I’m ever so sorry you didn’t win.”  Her voice turned angry.  “Those judges don’t know zip, you know!  You deserved to win.  Those skunks.  You’re definitely the Recording Artist of the Year.  And not half-bad as a Producer, either!”

Reed chuckled.  “I never win anything.”

“Oooooh, you’re so handsome in a tux, Reed.  Absolutely smashing!  I’ll have to get you into one more often.”  She gushed the words like a British schoolgirl.

Understatement of the Nineties: “You look pretty good yourself, Courty,” Reed said.  An exclamation-mark kiss.  Reed had his hands around her naked waist, his legs spread wide to lower his gaze down a bit to her level.

Courty was all flirty energy and incandescent colors.

Consistently defining the new fashion image, Courty was not quite formal, in a way that formalized her appeal.  Sanctioned vibrant moxie.  She seized honorable mentions with her Andre Van Pier clingy, sizzling-black tube mini, livid pink silk satin jacket cut like a waiter’s, neon-yellow silk Spandex crop top, pumped-up scarlet-fever purple hose & pumps.  She was iridescent.  Every movement set off a broiling, liquid-fire of coloration.  Naturally, it helped that she had a figure like a dream, a face of awe-inspiring loveliness; and being held in the arms of the person she loved most made her feel so wonderful that she positively radiated energetic attractiveness.

Reed added a second exclamation mark.  “You’re so beautiful it hurts to look at you.”  He had a dopey, dreamy, affectionate smile on his face.

“Have I ever got good news for you!” Courty said.  “Guess.”

“We’re finally going to get married?”

She snuggled very, very close and whispered very, very softly into his ear: “I don’t have herpes.  My lab samples got switched with someone else’s by accident.  I thought that kind of silly stuff only happens in the movies——life imitates art, I guess.  Isn’t that GREAT!”  Great came out as a yell.

“They sure took their sweet time finding out about it.”

“I know!  I guess the other woman complained about the misdiagnosis, or something, and that’s how she found out.  My doctor was VERY apologetic.”  Courty gave Reed the look of sexual love, and then talked naughty into his ear.  It concerned his telephone-pole sized tool and her sanitary snatch, small as a sliver, certified clean as a whistle, and various parasexual, carnal combinations thereof, phrased in the lowest gutter-vernacular expressions, wordings crude enough to throw a biker off his Harley-Davidson.

“You used to be only a hundred percent perfect, but now you’re back where you belong at a hundred and one percent,” Reed told her.

She squeezed him tight and released him.  “Thus ends the formal business of the mutual admiration society, and we may now proceed to the fun and games.  I don’t know what your plans are, but cancel.  I want to show you off!  We’re going to the Sportsman Mansion tonight.”  She sprang out of his arms, and held out her hand for him.  “Let’s go!”

“You, want to show, me, off?”

“Yes!  Peach and Lauren are staying there——for a week, can you believe it?——and I want you to meet Lauren.  They’re having a blast of a party there tonight, because of the Grammys; I hear everybody who’s anybody will be there, and I’ve got invitations.”

Reed allowed her to drag him along, noticing that the two of them were an event that stalled work activity in the immediate vicinity of wherever they went.

“Peach is going to be a Sportsman’s Sidekick.  Gawd.  She did a nude photo-layout.  Hey, is there a secret back way out of here?  If one more nut tonight takes my picture, I’ll . . . I’ll . . . I don’t know, but I will!”

Reed made a call and had his car brought around back.  The two of them took the left maintenance exit out of the Shrine Auditorium, holding hands, stepping over snake cables going out to the truck crews, and stepping aside occasionally for PA people carrying equipment out.

“Hey,” Reed said, “where’s Pope Jones?”

“Piccadilly.”

Reed’s face hardened.  “Courty, he’s supposed to be with you every second.”

“Reed, cool down.  Nobody knows I’m here.  Secrecy is safety, right?”

“You flew alone?”

“Yeah!  I just pushed my hair up under my scarf, and put on some gunky, preppy clothes.  Now, Courty, she’s famous; but Courtney Ryan?  Who’s she?”

COURTNEY, Chapter 48
 

Copyright 2005 Area 47