AREA 47

SECTION 89:

COURTNEY, Chapter 57

Pretty packages (with insufficient postage) embellished the TV lounge in the Sidekick dormitory.  Reed poked his head in from the hallway, and asked the nearest gift, “Anybody seen Courty?”

Michael J. Fox on the Late Late; and the girls had had quite enough of ladylike lamebrains——Thank You!——as interruptive as geriatric Cal Worthington, and his wanna-be dog Spot: “Is Courty here?”  “Where is Courty now?”  “Is Courty going to stay the night?”  “Did Courty already {anguish} leave?”  WHO CARES?  What A Bunch Of Half-Heads!  So what, if the two month subtotal of 2,100 international visitors to Mme. Tussand’s All New Waxwork Museum in London had so far voted Courty the most beautiful woman of our time?

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THE 1994 POLL:
(1) Courty
(2) Marilyn Monroe
(3) Julie Dayton
(4) Melissa Denison

(5) Princess Bi {tie}

(5) Harlot {tie}

(5) Nina Lindsay {tie}

(5) Estelle Moreau {tie}

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“You’re no Courty wanna-be,” the girl with the fingernail file said.  Semi-accusatory; boys were not allowed in the dorm.  All four girls looked up from the movie.  TV & lingerie: wide-screen & narrow strips; 101 channels & horizontal hold.

Reed crossed his arms and leaned against the doorway.  “No, I’m a Courty wanna-ball.  Where is she?  Is she here?”

“Byron Reed!” one girl cried.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” another girl cried.

“Where am I supposed to be?”

It developed that Reed was out of line——but that they would save his place.  One of the girls doted upon him, and then dashed ahead to see how long the wait would be.

Red Courty-cut hair all over the pillow.  The stab of light from the hallway.

Red was awakened only in a hazy, far-off way.  It was just a sweet drift up from sleep, just to taste consciousness and then dive deep down again with wonderful body contentment.  The semi-conscious sense of one of her roommates coming to bed, no doubt.

But a hand on her shoulder was dragging her up from the depths.

“Lucy?  Wake up.  Lucy.  Lucy, where did Courty go?”

“Joooooooanieeeeeeee!”

“I’m sorry to wake you, Lucy, but I need to know.  Do you know where Courty went?”

“Peeeeeeeeetzaaaaah!”

Red, Courty-mussed hair all under the pillow, freckled arms pulling the edges of the pillow down hard over her ears.

Joanie could leave, or she could talk to the pillow.  She left.

“We have only one clue, in the great Courty Mystery,” Joanie told Byron.  “Pizza.”

He nodded.  “I hear that: it’s The Courty Diet; you can expect a book on it soon.  Thanks.  I appreciate the help.”

Byron Reed set off in search of Courtney.

Fifteen minutes after Reed left the Sidekick dormitory, a second male trespassed.  This one was an Apollo Belvedere of beauty, his face awesomely handsome.  He was so divinely devastating, that no one stopped him, as he burned down the hallway past the TV lounge, holding a device in one hand that looked like an electronic compass.  His other arm was held up, shielding his eyes from the overhead hallway lights.

One woman double-taked, and U-turned, and followed him in a subjective state of euphoria.  WHAT A HUNK!

She hurried up and dared to touch him.  “May I help you?”

His stride didn’t slack.  “I’m looking for Courty.”

“Courty?  Courty’s here?”

Eric stopped.  “Right through that door.”  His rebuilt fingers formed into a fist; the fist whammed into the wooden door.

Red came shooting up out of sleep like a fire alarm!  She was petrified with fear for an instant; found herself sitting up in bed, and realized that it was only some maniac pounding on the door.  Her eyes squinted at the illumination from her alarm clock, and she groaned, her heart still jumping up and down all around inside her rib-cage.

The door opened, and the beam of light from the hallway fell across her legs.

“Courty?” Eric asked.

Red screamed.  Real enough, and loud enough, but with frustration, not fear.  “SHE’S NOT HERE!”

Eric was greatly confused.  He entered, and reached to feel the girl’s hair.  “You’re not Courty.”

“Let go of my hair!  Get out of here, you sicko!”  Her hands batted his arms away.

Eric’s dilated pupils were accustomed to the darkness; he used the device: the purse was here, but not the Courty.

“I don’t think Courty’s here, man,” the girl outside in the hall told him.

“Fuck!” he said, and then paced, three steps one way, looking down intensely, rubbing his chin with his right palm.  “Fuck!”  He paced three steps the other way.  “Fuck!”

“Get lost, you creep!” Red told him.

But he didn’t seem to hear her.  He paced back and forth again, the two girls looking helplessly at each other.

“Courty’s not here,” the girl by the hallway door repeated.

Eric looked at her like he was going to rip her apart with his bare hands.  “I know that now!” he said angrily, and charged out, right by her and then down the hallway.

Two room-doors opened to inquisitive cracks as girls wondered what the screaming was about.

Red’s head plopped back down on the pillow.  She pulled the covers over her and lay rigidly on her back, arms stiff at her sides.  She felt Terrible, and so charged up, she knew she would NEVER get to sleep now.  It might take HOURS.  Staring at the ceiling, she said: “Please.  Close.  The.  Door.  Thank you.”

The hallway girl sighed.  “The guy’s a nut, I guess.  Sorry.”  She closed the door.

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Never mind the cramps, right away the girls were talking bikinis and swim suits, and the boys were arguing over which swimming pool would be best.  The Olympic?  The South-East Blue Pool?  The Outdoor ‘Hot Springs’ Pool & Jacuzzi?  The pool with the waterfall?  What about the lake-sized indoor/outdoor one with the speedboats and the submarine?

Feeling limp, blah, and dull, Courtney sat down next to Lauren.  She thought she was an LA Woman, able to mix it up with the New York naughties, the Paris pixies, the London lollypops.  Wrong.  She was a boob from Boobopolis.

“Why so glum, chum?” Lauren asked.

And Byron Reed was a cheat from Cheat City, a sexual pervert!  Four women at once.  Good grief and garbanzo beans!  Estelle was luring him back into her life by playing upon his sexual kinks.  “Did someone say swimming?!” Courtney asked with artificial brightness.

In a kind of conspiracy of agreement, the ‘Gilligan’s Island’ pool with the underwater grotto was chosen as a liquid environment.

On the ‘walkie-talkie’ over there, one of the four boys kept leering at Courtney, and walking close to her, bumping up against her, and generally being an obnoxious ghoul.  Courty changed positions; buffered her bod with the blond banana babe.

The group returned to the scene of the crime (aqueous copulation in public).

Swim suits of all size were available at all hours.  Every Sportsman bathing suit design, every color.  Courtney selected the most demure, sedate swimsuit available; a skimpy wisp of fire-engine red shiny fabric that put Courtney’s exposed skin area somewhere between provocative and indecent.

Courtney examined her tummy in the full-length mirror of the women’s changing room.  Between the pizza and the embryonic baby girl, she thought she looked like a drop-out from the Roseanne Barr diet.  That wasn’t what bothered her though.  It was everything else in the universe.

Lauren was silently thinking that Courty’s gorgeous body was so smooth and gently curvaceous that the beginnings of her pregnancy just made her appear more feminine.

“Oh, that’s right,” vacuum lips said.  “You’re pregnant!  Don’t worry, Courty.  You look all right.”

The China girl whispered into Courty’s ear: “Marty’s right.  Men like women with some meat on their bones.”

“Come on, girls!” a muffled male shout came from outside in the pool area.

“Go ahead,” Courty said.  “I’ll just be a minute.”

Lauren pointed at Amy, the ladylike drunk, who was having some unladylike difficulties with her swimsuit.  “And she’ll be an hour!”  She went over to help.  The suit was a complicated one-piece number, skimpier than most bikinis when properly twisted and stretched around the female form.  Lauren helped the girl.  And then Marty went to help.  Between the three of them, the girls triumphed over male engineering idiocy and female centerfold-certified charms.

“Come on, girls!” came the muffled shout again.

“Go on,” Courty said.

“They want you,” Marty said.

“They want me?” Courty asked.

“Of course.  What do you think?”  Marty didn’t seem a bit jealous; accepting it like any other fact.

“What do you mean, They Want Me?”

It was not the sort of stupid question Marty would have expected Supergirl to ask.  “What do you mean, What Do You Mean?  They WANT you, want you.  Get it?!”

Her language lacked a certain precision, however her emphasis was evocative indeed.  It was the old fame folderol; they were probably out there punching their shoulders and not quite believing their good luck.  She would walk out in a suit, and the guys would go ape-shit.  Courty in a swimsuit!  Just like Sports Illustrated!  Gawwwd.

“Fine.  I’ll be right out.  I just want to talk to Lauren privately for a moment.”

The Sidekicks split for the pool; oohs & aahs, giggles, splashes, a playful scream . . .

“What?” Lauren asked.

Mona Lisa smile from Courty.  “Please, no wisecracks; I just don’t want to get the cramps.”

“Huh?”  Lauren watched with confusion, and then amazement, as Courty went to one of the toilets and began to gag herself with her fingers.

Within a few seconds, Courty vomited most of her meal.  She flushed the pink designer toilet with her left foot.  Then she went to the clam-shell sink and washed her mouth out several times.

“What a waste of good pizza,” Courty said.  She examined her tummy again in the mirror, rubbing the sleek surface of the swimsuit.  “Much better.  OK, let’s go.”

But Lauren was all wide-eyed horror.

“Oh, come on!” Courty said.  “I don’t have an eating disorder, I just don’t want to swim on a full stomach!”

“Oh, of course,” Lauren quickly said.

“Lauren, I’m not anorexic.  I’m OK!”

“Of course you are.”  Lauren nodded too forcefully.

Courty gave it up.  The exact same Mona Lisa smile; add an eye-roll.  “Let’s go.”

The large pool was irregularly shaped, with trees and shrubs around most of the sides.  At one end, beneath a flowery bush, was a short oval underwater swimming tube that led to a cave; vaguely vaginal in appearance.

Soft rock wafted across the water from hidden speakers.  They mostly had the pool to themselves at this late hour; just one other couple, and a guy doing laps back and forth across the long way with a fast, polished breaststroke.

“LastOneIn’sARottenEgg!” Lauren yelled, and Courty and her both dived straight in without testing the water.

It was warmer than Courtney expected.  The water felt good.  Good?  It felt GREAT!  She treaded water for a few moments, completely captivated by the tranquil liquid tickle of the water touching and caressing her Everywhere.

Courty could feel everyone’s awareness of her presence: casual glances her way lasted just that trifle bit longer than normal, and the casual glances came back to her again too soon; everyone trying to be cool about the fact that she was here, everyone not quite bringing it off.

Courtney had energy to burn, and her skin felt all tingly and sensuous.  The water was delicious!  She wanted to drink it dry, to swim until she touched every sleek, splendid molecule of it!  Courty started doing laps parallel to the pro.  At nearly his speed, if not his finesse.

She just wanted to SwimAndSwimANDSWIM!  She wanted to DO IT until she had used up the water; she wanted to swim it into submission!  She wanted to swim until the water cried for mercy, until the water couldn’t get up steam anymore, until the water HURT!

The guys and gals were fooling around and frolicking in the shallow end of the water; the Sidekicks still vainly trying to keep their hair dry.  But the boys would have none of that.  December 1993 was rudely baptized into the new year, Westernized with chlorine.  January 1994 was quickly splashed, straight in her outraged, open, objecting mouth.  November ’93, already drenched, got dunked too.

Swimming back the other way, Courtney found a ghoul in her way.  She gamely swam around him, touched the non-skid side, and did an amateur push away from the turning wall.  Immediately the smiling ghoul was in her way again; she tried to swim around, but he swam in her way.  He really did look like a ghoul: white-white skin, thin and emaciated looking.

She treaded water.  The pro-swimmer swished past, taking no notice of her.

“Jesus Christ, you’re pretty,” the guy said.

It hurt her heart that he used exactly the first words Byron Reed had used to her long ago up at Yosemite.  She said, “And how many women do you like to make love to at once?”  He didn’t seem to expect that question, and she swam around him, while he tried to think of a reply.

When she swam back, there was the ghoul again.  “Hey,” she said.  “You’re in my way.”

“One or two,” the guy said.

“That’s nice.  Look, I just want to swim, OK?  Can you just please leave me alone?”

“I’ll swim with you!”

“That’s leaving me alone?”

“You know who you look just like, with your hair wet?”

She tried to swim around him, but he blocked her again.

The professional swimmer whizzed by doing a 4mph backstroke, silently watching Courtney and her ‘friend.’

“You know who you look like?”

“I don’t know, and I don’t care.  Please leave me alone.”

“You look just like Buffy Buns!  You really do!”

“Wonderful.”  She tried to swim around him, but he wouldn’t let her, so she gave up and swam back the other way, toward the shallow end.  So much for swimming.  She felt utterly disgusted, and let down: the water had prematurely evaporated.

She needed a bodyguard just to go swimming!  She had been on the move so much she hadn’t really become aware of it.  Plus, in her off-hours, she had been locked away at her typewriter.  Her fame had been an objective fact; but it was starting to sink into her consciousness that the fame was now a subjective reality.  Perhaps she had just been lucky on the plane ride over here.  She recalled odd, intense looks some of the travelers had given her——They must have recognized me, but then thought that they must be wrong.  It could be dangerous, if I was recognized in a large crowd, where I couldn’t escape.

Her flash of mental paranoia was interrupted by the unexpected sight of a bikini top floating on the water inches from her fingers.  Courty could hear an argument going on in front of her.  Lauren leaped up out of the water for a moment to stand on her feet in the 3-foot-deep water, holding her arms across her bare bosom.  Then she held her hands wide, exposing her treasures, and then dunked down, giggling, the guys applauding.

“Take it off, Marty!” one guy told the Sidekick blond.

All the Sidekicks had bigger bosoms than Lauren or Courtney.  But the Oriental just sat on the underwater steps, splashing her feet, shaking her head no.  The shipwrecked Sidekick had twin majestic mammary mountains threatening to burst out of her tricky, stretchy swimsuit, but she didn’t want to either.

“Come on, Marty.  Do it.  You took it off for the magazine, take it off now!”

“You wanna see them?  Go look at last month’s issue!”

Lauren burst out of the water, shrieking, “Hey there!” giving the guys a fast wet peek, before dunking herself again.  One guy clapped, one wolf whistle, one rebel yell!

“I’ll even go first!”  While underwater, one guy pealed off his suit.

Courty was about to stop swimming and stand up in the shallow water, when a hand grabbed her ankle from behind.

“You’re not getting away from me!”

“Hey, Come On!” Courty yelled around at him.  “Let go!”  Courtney was pulled off-balance during an inhale, and she got some chlorinated water in her lungs, which set her off coughing like crazy while she was trying to get her free foot down to the bottom of the pool to get her head all the way out of the water.

Then the hand let her go, and still coughing, she stood up and turned around in water up to her underarms.

The professional swimmer had abandoned his laps.  He was now angrily dunking Courty’s tormentor, actually on top of the ghoul-guy, shoving his whole struggling body underwater.

Courtney thought he was going to drown the bastard.  But eventually he let him go.

The nearly-drowned ghoul surfaced and hurled a gust of obscene invective at both Courty and the pro-swimmer.  But the ghoul was apparently part of a gang, and two of his friends swam over, away from their Sidekicks, to help him out.  Half of the new reinforcements were naked.  The pro-swimmer was completely unfazed, treading water effortlessly, barely in the deep end; he just kept saying, “Leave her alone, and I’ll leave you alone.”  But Courtney was now in the middle of all the verbal cross-fire.

Courtney quickly went underwater and swam out from between all this.  When her head popped back up in the air, she heard the most amazing blast of obscenity she’d ever heard!  It stung her mind, just listening to it.

Courty waded over and sat down next to the Oriental girl on the underwater steps.

Lauren popped up out of the water and waded part way toward the verbal commotion that seemed about to break into violence at any second.  The guys were splashing water in the professional swimmer’s face, taunting him, daring him.  Lauren, in water up to her navel, threw her arms wide in the air and squealed: “Hey guys!  What’s all the fighting about?”

“Yeah!” the ditzy blond yelled, uncupping her D-cups, pulling the bikini top over her head slowly like a stripper, then throwing it at the boys.  “What’s all the fighting about?”

The sloppy-drunk Sidekick tugged at the upper fabric of her suit, and her prize melons exploded into view for the brawling boys.

The topless girls definitely had their attention.

The splash-fighting slowed, the would-be slugfest aborted.  Slowly the guys swam and then waded toward the girls, one of them picking up Marty’s bikini top, the naked guy baring his buns as he swain sideways to grab Lauren’s top out of the water.  The pro-swimmer just hung back and watched.

The naked guy in the water taunted: “Courty!  You’re next.  Let’s see those peaches!”

The ghoul was the succeeding scum: “YEAH!  Come On, BUFFY!  I wanna see that big mole on your left tit!  Guys, I’ll bet anyone a thousand Washingtons she’s Buffy Buns.  And all we need to see is that mole on her tit for proof.”

Everyone in the Universe was looking at her expectantly.  Gawd.  She felt like such a vamp.  Lauren was looking at her strangely.  None of the girls tonight had seen her bosom when she had changed with her back to them.  But of course, Lauren had seen the mole on the underside of her left breast before, had even commented on it once, calling it a breast beauty mark.  The mole on her breast hadn’t been very noticeable on the version of the rape-tape Courty had seen in New York.  Apparently, the new video version of her gang-rape had clear close-ups of the distinctive mole.

“I’ll accept that bet!” the pro-swimmer shouted.  Courty couldn’t believe it: the stupid, mindless invertebrate!  He was supposed to be on her side!  How could he??

“You’re on!  Come on BUFFY!  Take It Off!”

Courty stood up on the steps, only in water up to her knees now.  “I just want to swim.  I’m not a stripper.  I’m not going to take off my swimsuit or expose my top.  I don’t want to talk, I don’t want to strip; I just want to swim!  If you have some fool-bet going on about me; I’m sorry.  I’m not a nude model; I don’t get paid for it, and it’s not my thing.  I’m not going to strip for you!  I just want to SWIM!  Since you won’t let me swim, OK, I’ll leave.”

Promptly Marty said, “Oh Courty, no, wait!  I’m sorry!  We’re sorry, aren’t we?  Don’t go!  Ralph, gimme my top back.  Don’t go, Courty!”  She waded out toward the guy holding her bikini top, with an urgency to her movements that was almost comical.  “You can swim all you want!  Right?  Ralph, gimme that.  Ralph!”  She got in a tug-of-war for the top, which the boy clearly did NOT want to relinquish.

Lauren was still looking very oddly at Courty, holding her nakedness underwater now by bending her legs.

Alcoholized Amy was doing her own little tug-of-war, trying helter-skelter to fit her kettledrums back into the tangle of stretchy swimsuit.

Lauren slapped the back of her flat palm on the top of the water, and said, “My top, Please,” in an imperious way that got her the top without any argument or delay.

Amy got one breast in, but when she fit the second in, the first popped out; she fit that one into her suit, and the second one popped out.  Then she started crying!  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I can’t get my . . . I’m sorry, I’m . . . oh . . . I’m . . .”  She fought her way up out of the pool, almost falling a couple of times, crying wildly, and headed for the changing room at a slow, crooked run.

“Go on, Courty,” Marty said.  “You can swim now.  Right?”  Her voice took on a warning tone to the boys.  “Right?!”

A silent wedge of varying degrees of male disgust and macho disbelief formed among the ranks of the beasts, for Courty to swim through.

Courty iced them with her look.  Then she gave them all a SCREW YOU dive into the surface, and swam that water right down into the drain!  Back and forth, and back and forth; put a towline on the girl and go skiing!  Breaststroke, sidestroke, butterfly, Courtystroke!  EVERYBODY left her alone.

Probably whispering about me behind my backstroke.  Heck with it.  I can’t believe how much energy I have.  I could swim all night.  I could swim back to England!

While Courty swam, the ghoul disappeared, the Oriental and one of the guys left together, Amy came back out in her eveningwear, one of the guys went off with her somewhere, someone cranked the volume on the Rock-And-Roll until it was almost at disco levels, bopping across the water, oh, and the pro-swimmer kept perfect pace with Courty, until the moment he climbed out of the water and disappeared off into the late evening——before Courty could thank him.  Lauren was talking and laughing with one of the boys, out of the water, under a bank of sunlamps.

On one push-away turn to begin a new lap, Courtney noticed that there was an underwater swimming tube right below where she had been.  That was a surprise.  She wondered where it led.  So, she made like a submarine, and checked it out.

COURTNEY, Chapter 58
 

Copyright 2005 Area 47