The Brand (7 page)

The image those words conjured up in Joelyn,
that of a strong male holding a frail, weak girl in his strong arms
and comforting her sorrowful sobs, touched Joelyn’s heart and
brought tears to her eyes, but she fought them back quickly. She
said in a steady voice, ‘She’ll be okay. She looks like a strong
girl. Did you send her flowers?’

‘No. Should I?’

‘Of course. You men are so clueless,’ she
chided. ‘Send her a bunch of red roses, together with a card
telling her that you love her and you wish her good luck for her
next match.’

He gave the suggestion a contemplative
thought and then threw it out of his mind. ‘Nah. She’ll be okay.’
He grabbed her breasts. They were round and firm and beautiful. He
couldn’t get enough of them. He sucked on them alternately until he
felt the power of his penis pulsating fiercely. He kissed her lips
and smiled at her big, round eyes. ‘I want to drink from your ocean
of delights. Look, my cock’s ready for action again. Isn’t it
amazing?’

She grabbed him and stroked him with her
hands. Moments later they were both moaning in delight, their
bodies locked together and dancing rhythmically to a beat heard by
only the two of them.

Because famous people and celebrated
individuals are usually surrounded by people who have private
agendas separate from those of the celebrity they purportedly work
for, it soon emerged into the public fold that Byron Taylor and
Joelyn Smith were having a love affair, and that it had happened on
the set of the movie in which they co-starred, slated for an August
release date. This piece of information generated a lot of sales
for the tabloids in America and elsewhere, because Byron Taylor was
a man on people’s minds, and any mention of his name attracted
readers’ interest. Consequentially, the tabloid frenzy over the
romantic liaison between one of Hollywood’s hottest stars, who had
twice been voted the Sexiest Man Alive by
People
magazine, and a new entrant into the Hollywood
scene, a smoldering beauty of South African origin, culminated in a
major publicity storm for Chris Woodyard’s latest film
project.

While Taylor and Smith’s publicists issued
statements contradicting what the tabloids were saying, Jansen was
devastated. She had broken hearts before, but never had hers
broken, until now, and she was learning how painful an experience
it was. And because she was a rising star worthy of mention in her
own right, she had at the same time become the third party of a
publicly interesting love triangle, so the media was possessed with
learning her side of the story. She did actually go into hiding for
a period of three days, during which her handlers organized a team
of bodyguards to protect her from further harassment by the
paparazzi, and during which she used a cellphone number not
registered in her name to make a call to her brother’s ex-wife. It
took her a while to get to talk to Joelyn herself, because all her
incoming calls were being screened by an assistant, but when Jansen
identified herself by name Joelyn’s familiar voice came onto the
line almost immediately.

‘How could you? What have I ever done to you
to deserve this?’ Both questions were delivered with such spiteful
venom that Joelyn’s mind froze for a moment.

‘I’ve always known that you’re a selfish
bitch, but I never knew you could be this evil,’ Jansen spat out
heatedly. ‘What did you possibly hope to gain by stealing him from
me? God, I hate you!’

‘I’m sorry, Jansen…Please let me
explain—.’

‘Fuck you and all your fuckin’ explanations.
I hate you, and I wish never to see or hear of you ever in my life.
Were you not satisfied with the money my brother gave to you? Did
you really have to go on and steal my boyfriend?’ she fired
quickly, not giving the recipient of her abrasive attack a chance
to respond or defend herself. ‘Well, you can have him all to
yourself. And when you go to sleep every night just know that I had
him first.’

She cut the call, abruptly ending the
one-sided conversation, and threw the small gadget at the nearest
wall with such force that it crashed into the wall and
disintegrated into pieces. Then she burst into tears and cried
sorrowfully.

When she stepped out onto the tennis court to
play in the final of the AEGON International, Jansen Vermuelen was
in such a bad state of mind that she uttered so many nasty
profanities whenever the game seemed to deviate from her will,
eventually earning a cautionary rebuke from the match referee. In
the third and final set of the match, Jansen broke two rackets on
two separate occasions by slamming them to the ground in anger
after a match decision had gone against her, earning loud jeers of
disapproval from an increasingly hostile crowd. She did, however,
silence the crowd into stunned disbelief by winning the last set of
the match, picking up the trophy and the prize money.

The newspapers would report that it was a
new, mean side of Vermuelen that had never before been seen, that
Vermuelen had played with such bad attitude and forceful drive that
she had bullied her opponent into submission and sent messages
about her intent of purpose to her future opponents. The
Evening
Standard
, with tongue in
cheek, stated that the match had been a delightful spectacle to
watch.

At her next match, at Wimbledon, Jansen
Vermuelen played with such biting aggressiveness that she was
quickly earning a reputation as the bad girl of modern-day tennis.
Few people realized that this powerful drive to win matches stemmed
from a self-destructive force that had captured her since her
betrayal by Byron Taylor, and one of them was Gary Speckman, though
he dared not discuss this aspect of her life with her, respecting
the agreement held between them that he would stick to coaching
duties and not be her personal advisor.

Had he known what would happen next, Gary
would certainly have ignored that moral agreement and prevented a
calamity of great magnitude from occurring. He would have offered
her a sympathetic ear and given her a shoulder to cry on that she
so badly needed. But he didn’t, so Jansen Vermuelen stepped out to
play in from of a sold-out crowd in her next match, and handled
herself with such vicious intensity that she tore a tendon in her
left foot towards the end of the first set, losing two games that
nevertheless did nothing to deny her victory in the first set. She
returned for the second set limping, her left leg bandaged below
the knee, and played with the same characteristic malice of the
evil spirit that had possessed her for recent weeks, until she was
forced to pull out of the match and the tournament with a broken
wrist.

It was the end of the road for her, and at
his first ever press conference on behalf of the star he had
created, Gareth Speckman actually shed tears of grief for his
beloved Jansen. The sports writers quickly rolled out their
eulogies for Jansen Vermuelen’s short-lived tennis career. She had
been a breath of fresh air to the sport, but like spring, it had
come to pass.

The executive producers of the Chris Woodyard
film were business people; they were not arrogant enough to believe
that the tabloid hype brewing in America concerning the imminent
release of the movie would actually translate to buttocks on seats
in theaters. Therefore, they poured millions of dollars into
marketing the film. They sent Byron Taylor and the de facto
next-big-thing-to-happen-for-the-movie, Joelyn Smith, on a tour of
world cities to promote the movie. The two, surrounded by an
entourage of assistants, publicists, advisers, agents, managers and
PAs, went to five countries in Europe: Germany, UK, France, Italy
and Spain. They also went to Japan, Hong Kong and South Korea, and,
at Joelyn’s insistence, they also visited South Africa.

In America, it was the pair’s involvement in
promotional tours of Miami, Las Vegas, New York, Dallas, Atlanta,
Chicago and Denver that generated more social buzz and interest in
the film’s release for a single date across the globe. On the night
preluding the worldwide premiere of the film, Byron and Joelyn had
both agreed by mutual consent to spend the night at her Malibu
residence. Joelyn, helped by a hired chef and his assistants, went
out of her way to prepare a candle-lit dinner for two on the wide
terrace outside her living room, overlooking the ocean. Unknown to
her, Byron had forgotten about their arrangement. Instead, he had
driven himself in his Mercedes Benz SLS Gullwing to a party in
Brentwood, hosted by a friend of his who was the star of a hit TV
series.

In Hollywood, there is a group of young women
who don’t belong to any particularly identifiable association but
can be classified into one by their actions. These young women,
some of them remarkably intelligent, some from proper and wealthy
families, and most of them very beautiful, dedicate their lives to
entertaining Hollywood stars, be they male or female. They make it
their mission in life to know where all the crazy parties are
taking place. Then make their presence felt by offering themselves
up for the carnal enjoyment of the celebrity of their choice. At
the party that Byron Taylor went to on the eve of the worldwide
premiere of his latest movie project, incidentally a night on which
he was meant to be socially bonding with Joelyn Smith, there was
such an abundance of alcohol, drugs and sex that it was a
justifiably chaotic environment. The music was loud, and the levels
of intoxication immoral.

Amidst it all, he found himself being
propositioned by a slender thing in a body-hugging black dress and
long blonde hair that went all the way to the small of her back.
She pushed the straps of her dress off her shoulders, exposing a
succulent pair of breasts, and invited, ‘They’re yours for the
taking, Byron Taylor. I’m young and talented. Do you wanna find
out?’

All the blood in his body raced to his
penis.

‘I have a tight pussy and an even tighter
asshole – whichever you prefer,’ she continued, giving him a wide
smile as another slender thing that was a spitting image of the
blonde joined them. ‘And I have a twin – for double the
delight.’

Byron had the power to perceive through his
inebriation that he was senselessly high, to be seeing double. But
soon afterwards, as he lay on a bed in one of the many rooms inside
his friend’s mansion, he realized that his mind was not playing
tricks on him; the girls were two and they were identical twins and
they were beautiful and they were young and they were active and
they were delicious and they were getting ready to service him!
They took turns to suck on his him, then they pushed up their
dresses to their waists and pulled off their matching G-strings.
They went down on their knees and pushed back their nude behinds
invitingly at him.

He came to his knees before the two proffered
buttocks and took turns to bury his sexual member into a hole of
his choice, until the repeated heat applied to his organ brought
forth a powerful ejaculation that was discharged into the twins’
mouths. They sucked him dry and swallowed his ejaculation. It was
an experience they would later brag about to their friends on
Facebook, and a sexual liaison whose existence Byron Taylor’s
publicist would be forced to deny. For now, though, as he lay
sandwiched between the two eighteen-year-old twins, Byron’s phone
had rung incessantly, countless times, but he did not hear it
because it was buried deep inside the pocket of his jacket, which
was locked in a closet in some part of the big house.

By the time Byron Taylor drifted to sleep,
Joelyn Smith, née Smit, had decided to stop calling him. She closed
the living room’s sliding glass doors and left the food to its
peril on the terrace. She curled herself up on a sofa and listened
to the album
Thank Me Later
,
by Drake, in particular the songs
Karaoke
and
The Resistance
,
while she consoled herself with a box of premium Swiss chocolates
and a full bottle of
Moët et Chandon
champagne. She had promised herself earlier on in
the night, when she had begun to worry that Byron had forgotten
about their rendezvous and had begun to call him and he had not
been answering his phone, that she would not cry over this
incident. She held on to that decision resolutely. He was a fucking
worthless son-of-a-bitch, and he didn’t know what he was
missing…
The
brainless-fucking-cocksucking-cuntlicking-pussyeating-dickheadshit
of an asshole!

That venting of anger in a loud voice,
alone in the room, calmed her down and brought some peace to her
soul. She picked up the remote and selected
Aston Martin Music
in her music system. The smooth voice of
Drake over the rapping of Rick Ross soothed her. She played the
song over and over again until she came up with an idea that later
convinced her that the blunt treatment by Byron Taylor had been a
blessing in disguise, after all. Struck by the haunting chorus, of
the Rick Ross song, Joelyn’s creative juices flowed. She picked up
a pen and wrote a song of her own composition on a notepad. Then
she began to sing, putting tunes to the words, and recorded her
singing using her iPhone.

When she went to sleep very late in the
night, she had written and recorded two songs that spoke of
unfulfilled love and broken promises.

In the morning, Byron Taylor, Hollywood
hotshot and man-about-town, woke up to find himself not with the
two young women he had gone to bed with the previous night.
Instead, he was in the company of a slender Black girl with a very
dark complexion and big natural breasts. She propped herself on one
elbow and looked down at his face with her dark eyes. ‘I was just
in the bathroom a moment ago. My pussy’n’ass is fresh ’n’ clean for
your pleasure, honey.’ She grabbed his genitals and felt him stir
to life. ‘Do you wanna feel how horny for you I am?’