AREA 47

SECTION 89:

COURTNEY, Chapter 55

LUCILLE.  LONG TALL SALLY.  WILD THING.

Moving the man back to melody proved impossible.

Sitting back of the Roland MKB-2300C during Amateur Night was getting old.  Reed on keyboards, Mark on bass, and the bust-ass drummer kept laying down an updated hot groove that put the class back into classic rock, only to hear gluefinger Griff murder it.  (The organist pushed in his stops and stomped off backstage somewhere.)  There was one other alternative . . . Reed remembered seeing a Lync backstage.  He went back and got the portable keyboard, the hand-held Lync-III wireless MIDI controller.  He strapped that sucker on, took the receiver and plugged that puppy into his channel, and went out and did some digital dirt!   Griff would muck up the Bing-Bam-Be-Bop with a chorusing yack, his guitar mistuned to some bizarre mean-tone BEAST from a Wendy Carlos nightmare.  Reed pranced right up, and cut the nightmare with the sweet sound . . . sort of like Amtrak locomotives BOOMING, CRASHING awesome in a HEAD-ON!!  Passenger cars whistling through the newly harmonized air, whopping into buildings right on the beat!

Guitar versus synthesizer: MAMA TOLD ME NOT TO COME!  Griff’s guitar: GREEN ONIONS.  Reed’s synthesizer: SOUL MAN.

Griff would squeeze out a #2, and dump it on the stage: Reed would provide the spinning musical fan: SPLAT!!  The audience throwing up their hands!

Griff started getting into it.  Reed was blowing the lid off.  The nymphos were going nuts, the groupies choosing sides, many of them recognizing and digging Reed.  And Griff was having more fun than he had had in hours.

Griff was buggering the boogie, adding incest to injury, his guitar screeching like a cornholed cheerleader.  The two boys facing each other, yelling at each other with their toys.  Like two kids seeing who can piss the furthest, like two teens with their whangs out: MINE IS BIGGER!  NO, MINE!

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The black stretch-limo approached the edge of the Sportsman property just a few minutes after midnight.  The chauffeur stopped behind the Ford Probe parked to the side.

The thin man in tuxedo who got out of the limousine wore an earpendant on his left ear, all diamonds, emeralds, and rubies that swayed as he walked impatiently over to the Ford.

The chunky man sitting behind the wheel of the Probe sat at attention.  “Evenin’, Mr. Des Barres,” he said.

Eric scowled down through the open window, and took a puff on a cigarette that was not tobacco.  “Richard Morgan.  Are you fucking off?  Or are you doing your job?”

“Courty’s in there,” he said.  He did not comment on his employer’s choice of suicide: the cigarette was not a designer drug, it was pasta basica, cheap cocaine crap, common in South America.  The silence stretched out the tension.  “I’ll go with you.  Help you find her.”

“No.”

“This is a directional locator.  The sender is attached to her purse.  I had the button replaced.”

Eric looked with distaste at the tiny metallic object the detective had in his hand.  The hand thrust out of the window at him.  “I don’t need it.”

“Uh, Mr. Des Barres . . . have you ever been to the Sportsman Mansion?”

“Nah.”

“You’d better take this, then,” the detective said with conviction.  Then he made a stab at racist humor.  “It’s bigger’na Black pussy, you’ll get fuckin’ lost in there.”

The conviction communicated.  “Let’s have it.”

“All right, the way this works, first ya gotta——”

“Just Give Me The Damn Thing!”

“It’s yours.”

The limousine door slammed, with Des Barres on the inside; immediate tire squeal.  The limousine slid up the twisty driveway toward the mansion.

The chunky detective described his employer.  “Dickweed.”

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The mego factor.  Griff’s eyes just glazed right over with boredom.  One hour fifteen minutes of same activity.

The music sludged to a stop.

The Sportsman Mansion groupies hugged the stage, every groupie fighting to demonstrate available affection by the urgency with which she struggled, each to be closest to Griff.  Except for the seven satellite groupies and the Estelle Moreau aimed at Byron Reed.

“That was radioactive!” Griff said, breaking the guitar, the hard way he slung it down onto the rug of the stage.  “How’d you like to jam here all the time?” he asked Reed.

Another voice from down off the stage upstaged Griff’s.  Reed’s attention was stolen down to a more beautiful face.

The easies were now in eclipse of the Estelle, mellowed out to the level of nondescript meanderings.  Estelle bounced up and down, down there, her widest capped-smile as bright as spotlights, wearing the simplest camp pull-ons, no jewelry.  Right behind her was a funky old hairless guy, looking haggard and out-of-place, lost, dragged here against his will and now drowning in a sea of ululating fems.

Estelle was the high-octane stuff, aircraft fuel; slipping back into the groupie role as if it were a second skin for her, and still able to wear it, still able to elbow the cuties aside until she OWNED the primo-best front ’n’ center standing-room-only spot to be!

Ultrarich blue blood, world-class actress, a walking aphrodisiac of FAME; she oughta be the one on stage, he oughta be the one asking for autographs . . . but there she was like a haunt from his past, looking so much like the first time he saw her . . . OUCH! . . . with the same——the goddamn same——nervous nymphet mating-habit gesture that Reed best remembered her by: the right edge of her black skirt, now pulled up and tucked into her mouth as she sucked on the fabric and bit at it, exposing the easy-rider leg.  And there she was, now holding out her hands up toward him, with a goddamn pen in her hand——a goddamn pen——yelling: “Come on, Reed, do my hand!”

Griff snapped his fingers in front of Reed’s face.  “Reed, baby.  What’s your fee?  How about a steady gig?  How about fifty thou a year just to do weekends or somethin’?  Tonight was Fun City!  I want more of the same.  What do you say?  You’re GOOD, man!”

The yell came up from Estelle, delicious, reckless: “He plays sorta like Denny, don’t he!”

It just busted Reed up with laughter.  He chuckled a little, thinking about it.  But then he thought about it again, and laughed some more.  But just when he was about to stop laughing, thinking about it again refueled the laughter, until Reed and Estelle were both laughing, and Giles Griffin was standing there, hands on hips.

Denny was long since dead of a heroin overdose, but he was the original lead-guitarist of Boys of Brash, the first Brash Boy Estelle had gone to bed with, as she slept through the group, member by member, on her way to Krane; and Denny was one of the least musically competent guitarists in the history of Rock-’N’-Roll.

But Estelle’s voice quality was forever recognizable, French accent piquant and oversexed; the girls around her were popping their eyeballs, doing double-takes & ohmygods.

While Reed rejoiced, Griff recognized.  “Estelle Moreau!”

Griff hopped down off the stage and squeezed close to her.

Estelle Moreau was Giles Griffin’s favorite actress, as anyone who read Sportsman magazine would know.  He plugged her whenever possible.  But he had never met her.  She had a standing invitation to come to the Mansion anytime she wanted, but she had never come before.  And of course, Griff couldn’t go see her: he rarely got out of bed, much less left the Mansion.  Someone was going to catch soul-consuming HELL for not informing him of her arrival!

So there Estelle was, in a boisterous sea of unholy recognition, trying to jokingly get Byron Reed to autograph her hand; and there was Giles Griffin, seriously fawning over her as if she was the libidinous goddess of his most sacred sexual fantasy; and there was Reed laughing, and then there was Estelle laughing, and then there was Giles laughing; and there were the Giles Griffin personal bodyguards, burrowing like gophers to get down close to their man, scattering the groupies like geese; there was Griff, snapping his fingers at the ceiling, demanding writing implements from any nearby servant who wished to keep his job, informing Estelle that he would never allow her to exit The Mansion without leaving him the treasure of her hallowed autograph; and there was Estelle’s date, a famous man in his own right, though few recognized him and no one could seem to remember just who he was; and there was Byron Reed, bopping down off the stage to be with them, knocking Griff against a Sidekick girl who was about to faint because of fame proximity overdose; and there was Byron Reed’s loud voice to Estelle: “Shall we make it a triangle?”  He put his hand on Griff’s shoulder and shouted: “And I’ve gotta have your autograph, Griff!  Any guy who fucks five times every day on a hydraulic bed that does his fucking for him, definitely has me for a fan!”

Estelle chuckled, which irritated and angered Griff, who wished to project the absolute best image for his dream woman.  He wished he were wearing his elegant Ralph Lauren pajamas; but unfortunately, he had on his Sportsman jammies.  What must she think of him?

“It’s not hydraulic,” he told Reed, reproving the public record.  “It’s electric!  It does not fly around the room, and it does not vibrate.  What it does is simulate the natural motions of copulation.  It’s . . .”  Giles Griffin racked his brain, searching for the uncompromisingly correct word.  “. . . Fun!”

COURTNEY, Chapter 56
 

Copyright 2005 Area 47