AREA 47

SECTION 89:

COURTNEY, Chapter 54

The butlerette brought Lauren and Courtney a covered silver tray, and set it on a stand beside Lauren’s bed.  The girls were catching up on months of news and happenings.  Rumors & Gossip & Courty’s Pregnancy & Modeling Disasters & Idiot Photographers & Byron Reed & Roscoe Hedgecoe & Kathy, Diane, Peach, Lindsay, Ruth & & &.  Courtney swore that Lauren looked luscious in lingerie, while Lauren disclaimed that nonsense and told Courty she was totally rad in her BAD eveningwear . . . But what’s this?  We didn’t order any . . .

Lauren lifted the intricately detailed silver lid.

The girls looked at each other.

“Gawd,” Courtney said.

Twenty-two lines of cocaine, and a dot of cocaine were arranged on the surface to spell: WAKE UP!

Two little silver straws on the side of the tray.

Lauren picked up one of the silver straws.  “Peach takes too many chances.  Griffin is down on drug use.”

“So is Reed.”

Lauren held the straw to one nostril and bent her head over the tray, and did a line.  Then she changed hands and nostrils and did another line.

Lauren nodded, her eyes blinking and her gaze drifting during the ebullient RUSH.  “Peach was having an affair with Beneke.  That’s how we got to be invited here.”  Off-handedly, she off-handed the straw into Courty’s hand.

“William Beneke, the actor?”

Lauren nodded, with a bright twinkle in her eyes.

“Lauren!  Beneke is . . . he must be 60 years old!”

“68.”

“Gawd.”  Courty did it just exactly as Lauren had done it, obliterating the W.  It itched and stung her nostrils, and made her a little dizzy.  “She’ll be born with a silver coke spoon up her nose,” Courty said, pointing at her tummy.

“Not if you just chip occasionally.”

(Peach had made a tactical error in allowing one of the servant girls into her stash of coke; the girl promptly stole half of it; as a result, Lauren & Courty were snorting 24% cocaine, 22% powdered milk, 4% Arm & Hammer, and 50% baby laxative.)

Lauren’s dorm room had four beds in it, one of them free, the other two assigned to other girls who were elsewhere.  Lauren had left the door to the dorm hallway open.  Despite Griff’s NO DRUGS rules and regs, the dorm was a major-league stash of pills and powder.

Lauren snorted the A, to dispel any lingering nap impulses.  Also, to give her some coke-courage.  Lauren lowered her voice.  “Courty, I’m calling in all my chits.  I have to ask you something——you’re going to think I’m Looney-Tunes . . . I need a favor.”

“Sure.  Whatever.”

“If you say no, it’s OK.  But I need——”

“Why would I say no?”

“Just . . . if you can’t do it, I understand.  But I do need your help.”  She was silent for nearly half a minute of fidgeting and facial squinching.  Suddenly, she spit out: “Roscoe wants to do a threesome in bed.”

“Slightly advanced,” Courty commented.

“He’s going to find two girls and do it with them, if I won’t do it with him.”

Silence.  They could hear lady-laughter out the door and down the hallway.

Courtney said, “According to the sexual literature, a lot of guys get off on that.  It’s a real big thing; they get a big charge out of it.”

“I know.  But I want to do it with him.  I don’t want Roscoe making love with two strangers.  What if he does it with cheap hookers who give him——and me——AIDS?  What if he falls in love with one of them?”  Courty didn’t say anything, so Lauren sighed and added, “I knew I was in love, when his bald spot stopped bothering me.”

Courtney didn’t know what to say.  Lauren was always bragging about what a fantastic, enduring relationship she had with Roscoe, about how much they understood and loved each other.  She had always sounded so confident and secure.

Lauren took a deep breath, looked at Courtney straight on, and said, “I don’t want to be left out——it’s way too risky.  Will you do it with me, Courty?”

Courtney was utterly boggled; it was just so unexpected.

She blurted: “Didn’t Kathy tell you?”

“Tell me what?”

Bless dear Kathy; she had not blabbed it around about Courty having herpes.  Courty thought EVERYONE must have heard the story by now.  She almost wished that she really had it; that would get her out of this.  “Oh, it’s nothing, actually,” Courtney said.  “Not important.  I just wondered: why me?”

“Who else can I go to?  If I brought it up with Kathy, she’d never speak to me again!  If I asked Peach, she’d probably steal Roscoe right away from me.  And throw him away a week later; I don’t need that.  You’re still talking to me, aren’t you?  And you’d never run off with Roscoe, would you?”

“Yes and no.”  Roscoe was a RUGBY, as far as Courtney was concerned.  (Rich Ugly Guy, Bald Yo-yo.)  Zero attraction.

Lauren frowned.

“Yes, I’m still talking to you; and no, I wouldn’t run off with Roscoe . . . but . . .”

“Please?  Courty, there’s nobody else I can ask.”

“But will you still respect me in the morning?”  A pert Courty smile.

Both girls giggled, Lauren with great relief, as she realized that that was a yes.

“Gawd.  Reed would murder me AND the baby if he found out.”

“He won’t find out.  I promise.  How about tomorrow afternoon?  Roscoe is flying out in his Learjet tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow??”

“Courty, I’ve already, sort of, er, Promised.”

“You, what!?”

Lauren gulped.  “Courty, please?  If you won’t do this for me, I’ll have to ask one of the girls here, oh, God, PLEASE don’t make me do that.  I don’t want Roscoe going to bed with a Sidekick.”  She shivered.  “Please, PLEASE!  You’ve got to help me, you’ve got to!”  Lauren was pulling on Courtney’s arm, pleading directly, stretching friendship to the absolute limit.

Courtney pulled loose from the other girl’s grip, and said coldly: “On two conditions.  No, make that three conditions.”

Lauren looked hopeful, excited, and elflike.

“First Condition,” Courtney said, “absolutely, positively, once and only once with Roscoe.  Unequivocally once, categorically once, once with no appeal for a repeat.”

“Definitely.  Only once.”

“Second Condition: Condoms.”

“Oh, absolutely.”

“Third Condition . . . we’ll do it once for Reed.”

Goofy girlish giggling.  Lauren was amazed.  It was the last thing she would have expected Courty to say, and it really tickled her humor spot.

But then Lauren shrieked with mock horror: “Quick!  It’s the Mood Police!  Send your face to jail!”

The two girls canned it, they were suddenly ultra-cool, silent, grim; playing out the game of Mood Police.

Lauren said, in an ultra-droll voice, exactly imitating Courtney, “Slightly advanced.”

Both girls exploded: twin bombs of laughter.

Between the two of them, they assassinated the K.  Then going vertical, Lauren brushed her hair and put on evening clothes; Courty whirled around the tiny room with energy.

“We’ll have lunch tomorrow,” Lauren said, “get totally BOMBED, and then go the Regency Inn.  Roscoe’s going to meet us there at 2:30.  Thankyouthankyouthankyou, Courty!”

Lauren gave the channel-changer knob a violent twist: “I’m doing two TV commercials for Fling haircare products.  We’re shooting here on the West Coast, starting Thursday.  $125,000 dollars for about a week’s work.”

“I’m going to start doing them too, I’m afraid,” Courtney admitted.

“Don’t tell me, let me guess.  Your fee is $1,000,000 dollars per commercial, right?”

Courty was silent, and minimally flustered.

“My God!” Lauren said, her eyes WIDE.  “Not Really!”

“Michael’s been wanting me to do television commercials for a long time.  I told him I wasn’t interested unless they would pay me a million dollars a commercial.  I thought that would shut him up.  Now he thinks that he can get it from several companies.  He’s negotiating now.”

“Not Really!”  Lauren’s look: jealous, spiteful.

“I can’t help it!  It just happens!”

Then Lauren grabbed Courty for a fast hug.  “Oh, God, doesn’t it Just!”

“Hopefully, the products will be no good, or ones that I hate; that’ll make it easy to refuse.”

“You don’t WANT to do commercials?”

“No.  Fame is too crazy!  I can’t clear my head——people are acting so silly——it’s like little bells ringing in my head all the time; it’s hard to think.  I just want to put on the breaks.  Too many people recognize me now, I don’t dare get on TV commercials that are regularly shown.”

Lauren backed off and gave Courty her smiling, shaking-head look: that’s my Courty.  “Don’t worry,” she said, reading her close friend’s unwritten poetry, “I’m not jealous.  Well . . . maybe just a teensy bit.”  Fingers up by her eye, held a fraction of an inch apart.  “Peach is the one who’s jealous.”

“What?  Her?”

“She was fuming that day you went off to Paris.”

Courtney couldn’t believe it.  “No way.  She doesn’t have a jealous bone in her bod.”

A demure Lauren silence, eloquent in revelation.

“No!” Courty said.

Lauren said, “She ripped up your book of stories, she called you names——WHOOSH!——you wouldn’t believe what she called you!  What really set her off was that you hadn’t signed the book.  Boy, did she——”

“I wasn’t supposed to sign it!  Was I?  She’s my friend, not some fan.  Wouldn’t I have been demeaning her by signing it; you know, me the important Author, and her the lowly reader.  She’s my friend, so I just gave her a copy.  Goodness knows, I would have signed it, all she had to do was ask; I’d have been glad to!”

“If you ever write another book, and give Peach a copy; sign it.  Write a whole page to her.  That’s my advice.  It really ticked her off.  She was stark-raving!  I was amazed too, I had no idea she was so jealous of you.”

Courtney confusion.  “But she turns down work all the time.  She only works about three days a week——when she works.”

“No, not that.  It’s——”

“Snowstorm!” two Sidekicks yelled from the doorway.

Lauren quickly prorated the spoils.  “We get the E.  The UP and the exclamation point are up for grabs!”  She and Courty snorted and then everyone became acquainted: there were priorities involved.

“Are you THE Courty?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“You know, your song’s on the radio right now!”  The dark Sidekick, a megaleggy bamboo babe——all the rage in the foreign editions——was wearing tiny FM radio earphones on her head.  She offered the headset to Courty.  “Here.  Listen!”

“Thanks, but I’ve already heard it.”  Courtney was starting to become aware of the high.  She felt up and energetic, and in control.

The girls lined up to do lines.

“That’s the kind of stuff Peach is jealous of,” Lauren said.

“Peachfuzz?” the blonde Sidekick asked, postsniff.

Lauren nodded, and Courtney said, “What stuff?”

“Oh, like you having a hit song all about you that’s on the radio all the time.”

“But that’s just Reed; it’s what he does!  He’s a pop producer and a musician.  It’s all he can do: make hit songs.”

Lauren said, “Nobody’s singing any love songs about Peach.  The longest she’s ever had a boyfriend was about three months, and she says that all guys ever want from her is sex.”

“Get REAL.  It’s all any guy wants,” Sidekick #1 said.

“That’s the boy-girl game,” Sidekick #2 agreed.

Courtney smiled.  “It’s darn near all Reed wants from me.”

“You’re not listening to me,” Lauren said.

“I’m listening fine,” Courty said.  “I just disagree.  I’ll have to have a talk with her about it sometime.”

“Peachfuzz is a sexual cripple,” the blonde Sidekick announced authoritatively.

Lauren and Courtney both thought that was an outrageous and amazing thing to say.  Especially about Peach!

Since the blonde had everyone’s attention: “I give her five more days as Griff’s girl.  A week, max.”

The Sidekicks were sniffling at the P.  “Oral inadequacy,” the Oriental said, nodded, and bent down to the tray with the silver straw in her hand.

“Peachfuzz is hopeless at oral sex,” the zipperhead blonde immediately agreed, about to come unzipped with excitement: Wow, I’m talking to Courty!  We’re just talking like Friends!

“Why do you say that?” Courty asked.

Bimbette blink.  “Everyone says!”

“She cannot keep her man,” the Yin/Yang yo-yo said.

“What else could it be?” the blonde ditz asked.

“Deviated septum, yes, I think so.”

“Small mouth.”

“Listen to her voice,” the Eastern Kick confided, “sounds like an ineffectual glottis.”

Courtney burst into laughter.  Goodness!  Ineffectual glottis!??  They were getting deep!  This was suction erudition; do they teach these terms in Oral Sex 101 at night school?  Sign up now, at your local JC: Remedial Fellatio!

The Sidekicks flipped a coin for the exclamation point: the China Doll triumphed.

The blonde wistfully said, “If I could just get my mouth on Griff’s cock . . . he’d never want an ol’ sticky pussy on him ever again.  I’m not threatened one bit by Lindy Loveluck, let me tell you!  I’d be up there in his private windowless apartment, right now.”  She sighed, dreamily.

Courty almost burst into additional laughter, but managed to seriously ask, “What’s your secret?  I mean, I’m not much on that sort of thing.”

“Well,” the blonde cannibal considered, “. . . if you want to learn to give great blowjob . . .”

Lauren tapped Courty’s shoulder and said, “Remember when Reed called you in New York, and you knew it was him before you picked up the phone?  Peach was telling me——”  She had a one-track mind, oblivious to the oral drift of things.

“Wait a minute,” Courtney interrupted her.  “I want to hear this.”

“I need a banana.  I’ll demonstrate!”

Lauren synced to the speech.  “No prob.  Got a couple right her.”  She sprang to the covered fruit bowl.

“It’s important to time yourself.  A little more time every day.  When you can suck the same banana for 16 hours straight, you’re ready to go down on anybody.”

“16 hours??” Courty screeched.

“Hey, get real.  A good blowjob makes the world go round.”

Lauren brought the best banana.

“Too ripe,” the Sidekick sniffed, examining the banana, trying it out on her teeth.  “I need a FIRM banana.  Unripe.”

“I have some green ones,” Sidekick #2 said.  “I’ll go get.”

“Make sure they’re——here, I’ll go too; I’ll be right back.”  She hurried out too.  The chance to demonstrate her cocksucking superiority for Courty the supercelebrity . . . WOW!  It got the blonde Sidekick really excited.

Courtney and Lauren looked at each other.  Courtney leaned her head over and said, with a straight face, “We may need this information tomorrow.”

Lauren tried to keep a serious face.  “16 hours?  We’d better suck him in shifts.”

Courtney almost lost it; she fought heroically to keep a straight face.  “Right.  My glottis is out of practice.”

COURTNEY, Chapter 55
 

Copyright 2005 Area 47