AREA 47

SECTION 89:

COURTNEY, Chapter 9

Mom leaned over Courtney’s shoulder and said, “I promise not to ask.”  She was standing; Courtney was sitting on the couch going through her mail.  Every weekday morning at 10:15 Courtney walked the three blocks to the substation where she kept a Post Office Box.  Spread around her and on the Indian rug beneath her shoes were the torn and scattered remains of envelopes returning her poetry and short stories.  These were the survivors; the stories and poems destined to escape the purge, because they had been in the mail.

Courtney balled the personal rejection slip and threw it at the wastebasket across the room, in the corner.  It missed.  Other misses littered the floor around it.  Courtney sighed.  “Rejection isn’t as romantic as I thought it would be.”

Mom smiled, and gave her a big hug, from behind the couch.  The hug communicated a lot, and almost made Courtney feel good.

Their door chime went off.  Mom went up to get it.  Courtney had her back to the door, but she was too depressed to move.  It was probably Mrs. Malory, over for coffee and gossip.  Courtney was too despondent to rise, pick up the mess around her and go somewhere so that Mom and her friend could settle down in the living room by themselves.

But the familiar voice from outside hitting her ears was as startling as a thunderbolt.

“Hello.  Are you Mrs. Ryan?  My name is Byron Reed, and this is Ms. Tyne Geyerman.  Would it be possible for us to speak with Courty for a few minutes?”

Courtney jumped to her feet and spun around.  The pages of poetry that had been on her lap dropped to the patterned rug.

Mom was speaking.  “Beg pardon?  Excuse me?”

Reed said, “Ma’am, could we please speak——”

“Tyne Peck Geyerman!  I’ve seen you on TV!” Mom blurted.  “On the Carson Show!  Come in, come in!  Oh yes, come in!”

“Mom!” Courtney cried in consternation.

“Hello,” TPG said to Mom, in a friendly way, holding out both arms for a touch or a handclasp.  The two women clasped hands.

“Please excuse these old rags,” Mom said.  “I’ve been gardening.  And I’m sorry the house is a mess, but yes, please come in.  What was your——oh yes!  Byron Reed!  Byron Reed!  Courty, would you please pick up those scraps of paper?  Please, Courty?”  Mom was pleading, almost desperately, as she ushered the two invaders into their small but comfortable living room.

Scraps!  My poetry!  Scraps of paper!

Although hot with sudden anger, Courtney found herself on her hands and knees, picking up.  That man!  Then, surprising herself, her hostility shifted for a second, and she giggled at the sheer outrageousness of the situation.

Courtney glanced up and saw Reed and Tyne Peck Geyerman exchange a look, and the look humiliated her.  It made her feel naked beneath her faded off-pink pretty sun-dress.  She had felt feminine, this morning, and so had put on her old favorite.  What a mistake!  She straightened and stood defiantly, with some of the pages in her clenched fists.

Tyne Peck Geyerman was silently nodding slowly.  All Courtney knew about her was that she was the editor of Big Town.

Reed said, “Courty, is there somewhere you and I could speak privately for a few minutes?”

“Ohhhhhhhh!” Courtney said.  She threw down her fist-fulls on the coffee table, and pointed with hard anger at the dining room sliding glass door.  She walked with powerful, angry strides to the dining room.

“We’ll just be a couple of minutes, Mrs. Ryan,” Reed said.

“Oh, take your time, Mr. Reed,” Mom cheerily called, and then she and Ms. Geyerman sat down to become instant friends (from the way it sounded to Courtney’s ears).

Courtney nearly busted the sliding glass door, getting it open.  After Reed had passed through, she slowly and carefully closed it.  With hard, flinty eyes, she watched Reed’s back as he walked into their sheltered back yard, and admired their garden.  The yard was secluded by high brick walls covered by deep green ivy.

The sun was bright; stabs of it through the trees struck Reed’s long, dark brown hair (brushed carefully as a girl’s for her first date) and touched down along his shoulders as he walked.  He appeared completely relaxed, hands in the pockets of his white slacks, sure of himself, and this reinfuriated her all over again.  Her heart was doing ninety-five down the fast lane on the freeway, blood rushing everywhere; she could feel it pounding in her toes and in her fingers, and in other, more intimate places.

When he turned around, and smiled gently at her, she almost fell over.  He was everything she had no need for, everything any traditional girl would have time-shared her soul for.  His long hair served to soften an otherwise harshly masculine face, not detracting from his maleness one iota, merely lending it a romantic touch.  The sheer physical affinity between them packed a wallop.  Her eggs were frying!

“Hi,” Reed said.

Courtney could see her dreams dying, her future as a great writer, withering like an unwatered flower in the desert blast of this man’s love.  Yes, he loved her.  It was so manifestly obvious in the way his eyes drowned in the sight of her, as if the vision of her was a pleasure so intense that it caused a kind of tender pain.  She saw a little of this same look, on many men as they looked at her, sometimes adding whistles or rude comments.  On Byron Reed’s face the look was so powerful it was a little frightening.

One put-down after another blitzed through Courtney’s mind, and was quickly rejected.

“Hi,” Reed repeated.

Courtney had no weapon against this love, no defense; and she felt, horribly, that she was already reciprocating it, already beginning to return love for love.  Her heart felt like a nuclear meltdown.  But it would be the death of all that she might become!  She would wither, her creative forces would completely dry up; she would become another pampered housewife or socialite, or——Heaven forbid——a model.

“Cape Canaveral to Courtney,” Reed said.

“What do you want?” she snapped.

“To prove to you that my intentions are honorable.  I think I just clinched it for you: a choice modeling contract.  Tyne Peck Geyerman is the publisher of Big Town.  She’s starting up a new magazine, and is looking for——”

“How nice of you to want to live my life for me!  You bastard.”

It seemed to confuse him.  “I’m opening a door for you.  It’s the way I am.  It’s the best I have to offer.  It’s my gift to you.”

But her voice burst forth savagely.  “You think you have the right to make or break people’s lives?!”

He was silent for long seconds.  “I’m opening a door for you,” he said simply.  “I’m not pushing you through the door.”

“Oh!” she said.  And the single syllable carried a world of conversation.  “I don’t have any choice.  Mom will never, EVER forgive me if I say no to you!  You monster.”

Reed looked strangely confused.  “OK,” he finally said.  “We’ll go in there together, and close the door.”

She shook her head.  “It doesn’t work that way.  You don’t realize it, but you’ve brought a lot of misery into this house.  To do that, would be adding to the misery.”

Reed thought about it for a few seconds, and Courty could see him getting intensely angry.  “You’re full of shit, Courty!  I’m doing you a favor, and you come off like the ice-queen bitch-goddess!”  He took two fast steps, and grabbed her chin in his fist, and he wasn’t at all gentle about it.  She yelped, and brought both her hands up to hold his arm.  She seemed to hear the roar of a jumbo jet, taking off.

Reed was so brutally intimate, his eyes passionately throwing fire at hers.  “Courty, I’m gonna say this once.  You have to ride hard in this world!  ’Cause you either make dust, or you eat dust!  Well, if you can’t handle the dust, that’s tough!  If you want it, come and get it.  If you don’t want it . . . fuck you!”

He unhanded her, and like a frightened clinging vine, she refused to let go.  He had to pry her fingers off his arm, before he could stomp back to the house.

COURTNEY, Chapter 10
 

Copyright 2005 Area 47