COURTNEY, Chapter 77

AREA 47

SECTION 89:

COURTNEY, Chapter 77

Reed’s ears led the way up the stairs. Up one level, the stairs were carpeted here. Below decks, the water was rushing; and the hull was creaking and groaning. The stairway felt woozy under their feet. Reed’s ears tapped against the yacht’s woodpaneling like a blindman’s cane. Suddenly the whole yacht moved sideways, and then caught with an abrupt shudder that made all three of them lose their balance and fall near the top of the stairway.

Liz was in a panic. Courty comforted her: “Don’t worry,” she whispered, “the boat can’t really sink here. The water’s too shallow.” Liz just shivered, and clutched Courty’s hand like a vice, with both of her hands.

The boat listed to the left, tilting slow and lazy toward the wharf. There was a quick snap, like a bullwhip, and the yacht swung infinitely slow toward level, and then began to list away from the wharf. The rushing sounds of water had completely stopped, but the boat continued to creak and groan with stress.

“Come on,” Reed said, moving.

Reed eavesdropped Courty and Liz into a small, darkened bar area with a wide oval window beside the gold liquor cabinet. The diningroom beyond was lit with twin low mood lights, and chandeliers hanging slightly tilted. Reed’s acute producer’s ears drank in the night. He shushed the women to continued silence by a sharp slash of his gun hand; and then motioned them down. Buried in the low decibel background of anguished yacht was a soniferous whisper of motion, somewhere just beyond the dining room. A mere ghost of a misplaced sound that shouted ERIC!

The oval window had a view of the harbor, and a small panel on it that opened. Large enough? Yes! Some kind of security or police car with flashing lights was driving down the quay toward The Lowlander.

Reed’s eyes found Courty’s eyes. “Out that window,” his lips whispered. Micro neck gesture. “Go out. Swim for it.”

Courty’s eyes looked up just long enough to comprehend his meaning. Her neck swung far and strong, an imperial NO that negated a whole universe of possibilities. “Don’t send me back to the cheap seats!” She emphasized her lip-whisper by holding up her gun hand.

The fact that she could retain her righteous style in these seriously shredded circumstances, pierced Reed’s irrational rage with a flash of sober realism. He had killed. He would be caught. He would be caged. But he wanted Courty to get away!

Liz didn’t stop to make any speeches. Not even a final clutch at Courty’s hand. She jerked forward like a jump-started greyhound, and vaulted over the bar counter, her handcuffs clacking on the highly-burnished surface. Her hands were at that oval window, departure fingers scraping and pulling at the complicated latch, then sliding it wide with a slam——skedaddle, skiddoo, Liz scrambled up and through——nonverbal vamoose——just an arrivederci splash, as she hit the water.

“Can she swim with those handcuffs on?” Courty whispered.

“You can, without them. Go!”

The angriest silent NO! A knockout NO! A shake of her head that threatened to spin it all the way around, with teeth that then gnashed and promised to bite his nose off if he ever again suggested such an impossible, ridiculous notion! “I’m going to kill him!” she hissed. “I’m going to! I’m going to! I swear! I’m going to KILL him!!” Her muscles were clenched, her eyes wild with primitive black hate.

Reed’s brain was bankrupt. His thoughts swirled in a dizzy mist. He would have shoved her through the window——he thought he could probably do it one-handed——but he knew Courty would just swim around and climb back aboard. The yacht apparently wasn’t going to sink anymore. It felt rock-solid. Courty was right: There wasn’t enough depth under her.

Courty stood, and walked into the diningroom, with her gun held ahead of her, pointed, both hands.

Byron Reed moved fast, and cut her off. He shielded her with his body, and walked ahead of her, into the light.

The gun slipped from Reed’s fingers. Stupid! He made a fast grab for it, but missed. The gun hit the Chinese carpeting with a heavy thud. Reed bent down to pick up the gun, but when he did, he fell down, onto his hand and knees. Blackness was closing in, and everything was spinning everywhich way. “Shit.” He passed out in a heap. Utterly unconscious.

Courty bent down to touch Reed, to shake him.

He needs an ambulance!

Courty looked at the well-lit doorway up ahead. She could feel the danger. She bounded up and ran fast, straight at it, right through.

Out of the side of her right eye, she caught movement, an image of a standing man. She jammed to a stop and spun around! She held her gun out, aimed, ready!

He wasn’t looking at her, at that instant, but Courty recognized Eric. He had his back to her, looking at Byron Reed. He swung around. He was holding a short-short shotgun. Pointed right at her now. And the two were not more than seven feet away from each other.

Eric winked at her and gave her a confident smile. “Put away the popgun, Babe; and nobody get’s——”

BAM!

Courty fired three times into his chest.

Eric lowered the shotgun, unfired. Then he fell over backwards and died.

Courty’s hand and arm and ears were stinging. Her mind was numb. Her skin felt cool. Lights were flashing out on the wharf; she could see the flashes out of the corner of her eye, as she looked down at Eric. He was bleeding everywhere, a new dye soaking into the Persian rug. Courty could hear a voice amplified by a megaphone. But Courty did not hear the words.

Some time later, she did not know how long, Courty felt the gun being gently pulled from her fingers. She looked away from Eric. Two men, dressed in white ship’s uniforms, were standing there with her; behind them were three policemen, all of them with their guns out, pointed at her. The one wearing the white captain’s cap on his head was silently taking her gun.

“I suppose I should go to jail now,” Courtney said, without any emotion at all. Courty looked, for a second, back at Byron Reed’s body, and then she yanked her head around and screamed fiercely at the men: “Call an ambulance!!”

Boy, little Kenneth was hungry! He was howling at the top of his little lungs for lunch. They could probably hear the boy out in Hawaii.

“He doesn’t like bottled formula,” Courty told Byron. “And he thinks pacifiers are things to throw.”

“Well, the little man knows what he likes, Mrs. Reed. He’s got good instincts.”

“He’s a digestive tract with a noisy voice at one end, and no responsibility at the other!”

“I’d like to sample it,” Reed said.

That got a quirky smile out of her. “I think he has a sample for you, right now.” She patted his Huggies. “Kenneth!” The tyke was screaming to high heaven.

Courty looked around, over Byron Reed’s strong right arm, which held her comfortably close, against him. They had the garden to themselves, outside the HMS Bodale restaurant, as they sat together on the bench below the outdoor patio where they had just eaten lunch. She unbuttoned her pink silk blouse, and little Kenneth already started grabbing for his meal.

M-mmmm . . . mmm . . . mmmm . . . He suckled in instant, immediate ecstasy.

She and Reed smiled at each other, and she turned slightly and lay back against him.

Courtney felt pleasantly tranquilized. The bright, sunny, windy day was everything Northern California should be. She felt all warm and toasty, and safe, and content. The garden was shielded from most of the wind by the rocky hill behind the restaurant. In front of them was the lovely splash of colors of ten or twenty different varieties of blooming flowers that Courty could not identify. An eye feast of yellows, and reds, and purples, and whites. The deep green grass circular walkway, from flower-group to flower-group, meticulously cared for. Below the garden, a hundred feet in the distance, was Highway 1, where an occasional automobile or truck would drive slowly by. Across the highway, the earth slanted sharply down to a beach Courtney could not see, the rich green leaves and branches on the trees swaying slightly, sheltered from the wind. Beyond, was the ocean, silvery with the crest of wind-swept waves that dipped and streaked across its surface.

“Oh, look!” Courty said, pointing.

“Yeah . . .”

A hummingbird was frozen, anchored in mid-air, it’s beak drinking a flower. Then, it instantly darted to another flower, across the grass, where it hung in the air so precisely still it seemed to be painted into the scene. They watched it, with fascination, as it zoomed back and forth, finally darting off to a row of flowers rimming the parking lot. Courtney noticed bees, also enjoying the flowers.

She looked up. Above them, like a kite, was a large gray seabird, gliding in slow, majestic circles, a hundred and fifty feet in the air. It only held its wings out, using the wind to hold it effortlessly in the sky. It’s partners were off playing down by the sea, but it was up goofing-off in the airstream, occasionally tilting and gliding around and down, and then back into the wind it would go, just holding it’s wings out, riding the wind easily.

“Look up,” she said.

But Byron already was. “What’s he doing? Taking a nap up there?”

She watched the bird for a good ten minutes, sharing the sight with Reed. Today happened to be her birthday. Naturally, Reed hadn’t a clue. But Courty could care less. She had never been happier. “Nothing is beautiful unless it’s shared,” she said.

“No argument.”

Kenneth fell asleep for desert.

Reed seemed in no hurry to go anywhere. After awhile, he reached into his leather jacket and pulled out a paperback copy of her epic poem Priestess of the Veiled. Reed claimed that he had no difficulty in the studio composing music with his damaged left hand——he certainly had no trouble controlling the pages of Courty’s book with finger and thumb. Occasionally, he would laugh at something he read. Citizen magazine thought her book was sexy and smoldering. Epoch thought that her epic poem was a profound parable of contemporary American life. Byron Reed thought it was funny.

Courty watched a fishing boat trudge down the coast, bobbing up and down in the swells. Far off was a speck in the ocean that Courty decided was an island of rocks, since it had not moved in half an hour. She made up her mind to check it out later with Reed’s spyglass.

Courty thought, fleetingly, of Lincoln Des Barres, and of his paranoid passion for privacy. And money. She had killed his son, and he had not charged her with murder. He had swung his mighty power behind hushing everything up. Of course, the $25 million dollars she had offered to return to the Des Barres family may have had something to do with that . . . or perhaps it was her idea of scripting a teleplay on the saga of Courty the model kidnapped by Eric the Des Barres that had done the trick . . . Liz had survived her handcuffed swim, thank goodness.

Two miles further up Highway 1, was Courtney-&-Byron’s new home that they were building on the coast. It was hidden behind trees and shrubs and a long, winding, seaside dirt road with potholes that looked like it lead nowhere. But it lead to forty-five prime acres, a modest tri-level mansion with a 175-degrees view of the sea, and a winding wooden stairway leading down to their own private pebble beach.

Byron chuckled again at something in her poem, and that made Courtney smile.

It was not necessary to speak. Just being with each other was enough.

It was retrogressive, but Mom was right: a good man was a career; creating a home and a family was a full-time job. It was so dopey. Courtney had absolutely no plans for the future but to be with Byron Reed and Kenneth.

Well . . . maybe another book or two . . . or ten . . . And maybe a nice little baby girl. Reed didn’t know it, but he was on the Morganstein Method, with copulations plotted precisely along her period, and with sexual positions designed to encourage the slower and more persistent little girl sperms. Girls were much more fun to try for! Almost the whole calendar was open . . . then again, the movie offers had been getting rather attractive, as of late . . . (Couldn’t A Girl Work Some Over-Time?) . . . and ever since Reed had heard her sing in church, he had been trying to get her into one of his studios to do some singing for him . . . and of course poor Michael was wearing out her New York answering machine with wild modeling offers and pleas that she call him; she didn’t dare give him her California number.

Beeeeeep!

“Reality calling,” Courty said, changing her posture to take her weight off Reed. Kenneth stirred, but did not awaken. “Maybe it’s the subcontractors who are going to do our kitchen. I hope so.”

Beeeeeep!

Reed got up to answer the digital cellular phone that he had brought with him. It was behind them at their table on the patio. “It’s probably Emmy,” he said. “She’s having lots of fun trying to run Reed Audio and five SoundSyncs while I goof-off like that bird up there.”

Beeeeeep!

“This is Reed.” He listened for a moment, and then brought the tiny portable telephone over to Courty. “It’s for you.” Insider’s smile. “I think I’d better put it on the speakerphone.”

He sat down beside her again, put his right arm around her, and held the Hitachi digital phone with his thumb and finger for her to speak.

“Hello, this is Courty.”

“So, how’s the secondhand celeb, these days?” Kathy North asked. Her voice coming out of the speaker was bubbling with excitement.

“I’m starting my own modeling school,” Courty joked. “You know: Be A Model, Or Just Think Like One . . .”

Kathy was silent for about two seconds, and then she giggled hard.

“You sound in good shape,” Courty said. “How are things in Chip City?”

“Same old, same old,” Kathy said. “You’re still coming down Friday for the weekend, right?”

“Oh, yes. But Reed’s not sure, yet, if he can stay the whole weekend. If he leaves early for New York, I’ll probably want to go with him. So we might just stay until Saturday night.”

“Great! Great! Hang on, just one second.” There was the sound of clicking on the connection.

Kathy & Tom North, from the Silicon Valley, with conference telephone lines connected up to Peach & Billy Beneke, in Switzerland, and Lauren & Roscoe, from New York City and the Florida Keys, respectively, sang, together (more or less), “HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU; YOU ESCAPED FROM THE ZOO; HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DEAR COURTY; HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU!” It came as a giddy roar out of the cellular speakerphone.

Kenneth woke up fast. And hungry.

Courty quickly popped her left nipple into his mouth.

THE END

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