The Brand (23 page)

Afterwards, they lay in each other’s arms
in the semi-darkness of the room. Stroking the overnight stubble
that was forming itsel
f
into a beard on his chin, Samantha yawned. ‘Joe was here…actually,
she was using the other bedroom during her stay here.’

Hudson offered a weak “Oh.”

‘I didn’t tell her about us.’

‘Why not? Joelyn’s my ex. You and I are two
consenting adults. We aren’t doing anything wrong, are we?’

‘How do you think it’s gonna sound to her if
I tell her that I’m fucking her ex-husband? It’s crazy.’

‘I don’t see a problem—.’

‘I do. And I think you should clarify
something for me before I put my neck on the chopping block for
Joelyn to strike—.’

‘What is it?’

‘How far are you willing to take this
relationship?...You and me, in case you’re confused.’

He hesitated a moment too long.

‘That’s all I need to hear,’ Samantha said
sarcastically.

‘I’m sorry, Sam. You caught me unawares. I
need a bit of time to think about us.’

‘You don’t need time to decide if you love
someone or not. You know it without thinking. Besides, time is a
commodity I don’t have. You see, Joe has asked me to join her in
the States and be her accountant. I’ve got only this weekend to
make my decision.’

Chris Healey made his marriage proposal to
Jansen under a beautiful moonlight on a privately-owned beach in
the Bahamas. The engagement ring was a small but expensive diamond
held in place by a gold band that fit perfectly around the middle
finger of Jansen’s left hand. There is nothing as pleasant to a
woman as receiving confirmation from a man she loves that he wants
to make her his permanent partner.

Jansen was over the moon. In the morning,
after they had made love that fulfilled her soul and filled her
with abundant joy, Jansen had for breakfast a small bowl of
Kellogg’s Special K cornflakes in milk, two mid-sized, succulent
and fresh mangoes, a plate of
grapes and two chunks of fish, specially prepared by her
travelling chef in the kitchen of the 5-star hotel she and Chris
were presently residing in. Afterwards, the two lovebirds were
engaged in fierce lovemaking that took both their energies out and
they collapsed dead on the king-size bed and drifted to
sleep.

The day was spent exploring the culinary
delicacies offered by the islands, as well as partaking in water
activities on offer to tourists. On the morning of the next day,
Jansen took a jog along the beach, while her fiancé was fast asleep
at the hotel. She quickly learned during that jog how horribly out
of shape she had become. A ball of fire lighted itself inside her
ch
est and made it hard
to breathe. It spread to the rest of her body and her muscles
stiffened. She stopped and did some aerobic exercises, but gave up
the idea of a morning swim altogether. She jogged back to the hotel
and instead of enjoying the convenience provided by the elevator,
took the stairs to the 10
^th
floor
suite containing her husband. When she reached it, she was sweating
profusely and gasping out of breath.

She collapsed onto the bed next to him. He
yawned and sat up, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. Jansen, trained
over the years to control her breathing when under intense physical
strain, quickly brought her breathing back to normal and said in a
low voice, ‘I’m out of shape. And Roland Garros is four weeks
away.’

Chris blinked and focused his eyes on his
millionaire fiancée. ‘I’ll have you in perfect working order before
you know it,’ he said with a smile.

‘
I’m serious, Chris,’ Jansen responded
calmly. ‘I want to win the French Open. I have to prove to everyone
that I can pl
ay and win
on any court surface, you know?’

Chris jumped out of bed. His huge phallus
dangled
majestically
between his legs. Jansen stared at it and felt a tingling sensation
at her loins. She diverted her gaze from it and looked at her
fiancé’s eyes. He smiled at her, aware of her weakness at the sight
of his incredibly enormous sexual organ. ‘Let’s take a shower, and
have breakfast. I’ve organized a place where we can train on this
island.’

‘Oh?’ The simple word was uttered in an
apprehensive voice and with a worried expression. ‘I thought we’d
go to SA. Gary and I—.’

‘Forget Gary,’ Christopher snapped. ‘The
guy’s history. He was using ancient and tired tactics to train you.
And look where he got you. Only two US Open wins. I am going to
drive you to win all the remaining 3 Grand Slam titles, and then
some other tournaments of the year,’ he ended boastfully.

Jansen did not look convinced. ‘Sometimes I
get fears, Chris, about my tennis career. My comeback to the game
is meant to be sensational. I know it’s a tall order to ask, but I
want all of the remaining 3 Grand Slams of the year, and I want the
Australian Open in January to complete the circle. It’s a lifelong
dream, and I’m getting to a point where I’m tired of losing major
tournaments…’

‘You won’t,’ Chris answered her. ‘You’re
ranked 25 and rising—.’

‘Ranks don’t mean anything,’ Jansen chipped
in, a touch of exasperation in her voice. ‘Many times seeded
players have been knocked out of major tournaments by unseeded
players. Gary used to say…’ Her voice trailed off and she left the
sentence hanging when she noticed the furious expression on Chris’
face at the mention of her former coach’s name. ‘Sorry, I won’t
mention his name again. But you have to understand; I spent a long
time with him.’

Chris, his ego bruised, was however, very
skilled at handling women, especially young ones like Jansen, who
had yet to learn the ways of the world. He was not about to let his
ego get in the way of a beautiful and financially-lucrative
relationship. He sat down beside her on the bed and looked deep
into her
blue eyes. Once
again he realized how beautiful Jansen was. She was gifted with a
natural beauty that most women don’t have; it was startling to see
how incredibly beautiful she was in bed after waking from sleep.
Any man would do anything in his power to own and keep Jansen, but
only fools worship the beauty of a woman.

Chris Healey was no fool. He had learned
at a very early age
in
life that beauty alone did not provide meals. He respected – and
understood – money more than anything else in the world. The
Vermuelen heiress had that crucial commodity in abundance. He took
her left hand and enclosed it in his hands. ‘I understand your
fears, honey, and I understand your attachment to Gary. I know that
I’ve done nothing to prove that I can be a good coach to you. But
I’m asking you to trust me, and soon I want to show you that you
made the right choice by placing your faith in me. Next month you
will lift the women’s trophy at the French Open. I guarantee
that…so help me God.’

Brand Joelyn came back to full swing after
four months of uncertainty over its future. It is a verifiable fact
that had Joelyn decided then and there at that point in her life to
stop all income-generating projects connected to her name, that
decision would have consequentially led to many people being
rendered either jobless or unemployable. That eventuality was
circumvented by Ms. Smith’s return to her former life – albeit in a
more subdued and mature manner than before.

Four months’ absence from the Hollywood scene
can be enough to damage the career of an ordinary celebrity, but
Joelyn was a superstar. The four months she spent at rehab assured
Brand Jo S the world’s undivided attention, and guaranteed maximum
exposure and publicity to everything bearing her name, such that
people with capitalist proclivities soon learned that Joelyn’s
stint at rehab had done more good than harm. Although dropped by
two Hollywood studios from two film projects she had been signed to
feature respectively in, mainly because the two respective studios
wanted to avert a scheduling crisis, Joelyn was retained by two
others, so she was on course to shoot scenes for those two films in
the second half of the year. A major US TV network even offered her
a contract to star in a reality series of her name, but she
declined, mentioning that at the moment she was otherwise engaged
in other interests.

The “other interests” Ms. Smith was
referring to but not elaborating on was the pursuing of her music
career. During her stint at rehab, Joelyn had written a lot of
material that she wanted to record. In an intense and restless
period of three consecutive weeks, Joelyn recorded the material of
her upcoming sophomore album in various studios around the country.
She worked with record producers in mainly Chicago, New York,
Atlanta and Los Angeles. Twenty one songs were recorded for the
album, but her record label eventually decided on using fifteen of
those songs. On the third and final week of her marathon recording,
while she was still adding more material for the upcoming album,
the first single of that album was released, accompanied by its
music video that debuted on MTV. The song, a love ballad stemmed by
a disco beat, was the most requested song of that
we
ek. It debuted at № 12
on the Billboard Hot 100 and peaked at № 2, a position it held for
the following six weeks.

Jo S was back in business. Her record
label invested millions of dollars in a marketing campaign for her
second album. Prior to the release o
f that second offering, Jo S appeared in magazine
interviews, on many radio stations’ shows, and in an “exclusive”
interview on a syndicated TV talk-show, where she spoke about her
past struggles with alcoholism and drug addiction. She spoke
candidly about her stay at a treatment facility in Arizona, and
revealed that she had used that time to reflect on her life in
general and her future in particular, eventually finding
inspiration for her second album, which she said touched on issues
of love, forgiveness, faith in God, family and tragic fate. In a
moment of vanity, Jo S said that her album was “going to change the
world”. She probably meant that she was going to change the music
industry with her new album, but the world held her to her words,
and waited eagerly for the release date of the new album. Jo S
ended the talk-show by performing her album’s first single and the
recently-released second single.

Handled by major music group Sony, Jo
S’
s second album,
The First
Chapter
, was released
worldwide in July and shot to № 1 in all charts, transcending the
genres of Pop, R&B and Hip Hop, and selling 800,000 copies in
its first week, mostly in digital format.

It is hardly surprising, then, to note
that most people, even those that had strongly castigated
Joel
yn Smith’s
alcoholism and drug addiction, realized that being associated with
her name was more beneficial than being dissociated from her. Those
businesses holding endorsement deals with her, which had listened
to their chief executives and not terminated their contracts with
her, thanked the heavens that Jo S was back with a bang. Those
businesses that had betrayed her by terminating their contracts
with her paid a high price because Ms. Smith refused to be enticed
back to the negotiating table with people who would stab her in the
back without careful reflection of her situation.

At the end of July, when Jo S was riding the
crest of success once again in America, it was reported that for
four months, while receiving psychological treatment for her
alcoholism and drug addiction, Joelyn Smith had been engaged in an
“intense” sexual affair with another woman, described as “openly
gay Andrea Durant”.

There was immediate panic within the business
corporations that thought they controlled and owned Joelyn Smith’s
life. Urgent meetings were set up at her record label and elsewhere
to devise mechanisms for damage control. In the violent media storm
that ensued, Joelyn kept a calm head. The learned lawyers sent to
advise her by the various business enterprises whose interests she
represented, by way of marketing, cautioned her not to make any
public statements regarding the issue. On behalf of her, they
intended suing the tabloid publication that had initially broken
that story for libel, invasion of privacy and general lack of
respect for the life of a public figure…

Tired of all the conniving
games regarding her well-being,
Joelyn decided to take control of her life and stop allowing other
people to take charge of it. She used her tablet computer to post a
message on her website, in which she stated that she admitted that
all the things said about her by one Andrea Durant were true.
Joelyn mentioned that she was a normal human being, with normal
sexual needs, and she had found an outlet through which to express
them…

While she was not sure of her sexual
orientation, she was neither embarrassed not boastful of her affair
with Andrea Durant: it was history – and belonged in history. She
understood Andrea’s grief over the ending of their affair, and
appreciated that Andrea had broken the lid of their private affair
by speaking to the media because of a purely vindictive agenda.

Joelyn ended her message by stating that she
chose to forget the matter altogether because the incident did not
define who she was, and she completely forgave Andrea Durant
because God asks us to forgive all those that trespass against
us…