The Brand (8 page)

She climbed onto him and took him between her
buttocks. She shrieked in delight, jumping in wild frenzy on top of
him. Then she slid off him and gave him a thorough and fulfilling
blowjob before engulfing him in the delicious sweetness of her wet
vagina. When he came inside her she cried out his name and he felt
like a king of his castle.

In the afternoon, Byron Taylor dodged the
paparazzi and drove his SLS Gullwing Mercedes Benz to Malibu, where
he was received by Joelyn in a foul mood. ‘Who do you think you
are?’ she fired angrily at him. ‘I sat up and called you all night
long. Why the fuck didn’t you answer your phone?’

‘I thought you knew by now that I’m the
fucking best actor the world has ever seen, and I’m God’s gift to
women.’ He was joking, of course, but Joelyn totally missed the
humor in it.

She jumped on him and attacked him with a
barrage of quick but feeble fists, until he was forced to grab and
push her violently from him. She staggered, lost her balance and
fell backwards onto the floor. She leapt to her feet quickly and
yelled wildly. ‘Get the hell outta my house! I hate you! I don’t
ever wanna see you—.’

He pulled her to him and kissed her with a
passion so furious it defeated her wild, angry demon and she melted
into his body. He stripped her naked and made love to her right
there on the floor. She offered no resistance, no protests, as he
took her body and tortured it. She cried in ecstasy as he went
deeper and harder into her, driving her out of her mind with his
quick, frenzied thrusts.

When she climaxed, and held his body tightly
to hers, he kissed her lips and thrust a little more into her
before becoming still. He was very quick to recover from the
fabulous effects of orgasm. ‘Is this what you wanted?’ he taunted
with his eyes, gazing down at her. ‘Are you happy now?’

She clapped him hard across the face and
pushed him off her. He rolled to his back on the floor and burst
out laughing. ‘My God! Bitch, you’ve got wild fire in you!’

Joelyn, her face red with agitation, rose to
her feet and spat spitefully at him. Then she went upstairs to
clean herself and rid her body of his smell.

* * * * *

When Byron Taylor and Joelyn Smith stepped
out of a stretch limousine and walked gracefully down the red
carpet at the Hollywood premiere of their film, the world was not
aware of the lurking animosity between them. The smiles, the
holding of hands, the affectionate laughter between them as they
waved at fans, answered questions and signed autographs, was all
just an elaborate show for the cameras. When it was over and the
movie had been screened, Joelyn pulled Byron to one side and told
him, ‘It’s over, you bastard. I don’t want anything more to do with
you. Don’t call me, and don’t come to my house. I’m done with
you.’

While her sudden departure from the WTA
professional circuit gave Jansen time to reflect on her personal
life and her career options, it caused the executives handling a
Vermuelen account at each of the big corporations that had supplied
her with endorsement deals to develop ulcers. They were not
prepared to see her slip into oblivion before they realized a
return on their respective investments. They went into urgent
meetings to devise strategies to keep the Jansen Vermuelen brand
alive. One of the geniuses at a major sponsor for Jansen came up
with a temporary but effective solution. He pointed out cleverly
that music was a segment of popular culture that could prove
lucrative to any brand. This point was discussed further by the
executive-in-charge’s team until it was resolved that it was a
“workable” option. The executive-in-charge took the eventual
decision upstairs to his bosses, who commended him on his genius
mind and promised him a promotion if his plan worked. They did not
have to mention that he would be replaced quicker than lightning if
he failed to prove his worth to the company on this rather
unsettling matter. He was intelligent enough to know it.

What followed next was a series of frantic
exchanges of communication between the corporation’s people and
Jansen’s people. The corporation’s request upon Miss Vermuelen was
plain and straightforward. The plan was that Miss Vermuelen should
lend her voice to songs to be released by the nation’s current
“hot” recording artists, building up to the release of her pop
album in the first quarter of 2012. Miss Vermuelen, still young but
wise enough to know her limitations, told them decently that she
had neither the hope nor the talent to cheat people into believing
she could sing. The corporation insisted. Miss Vermuelen stood her
ground and wouldn’t be persuaded otherwise. It got to a point where
she told them that if they wanted her to pay back the money they
had committed to her, then she would pay them back in full and they
would part ways amicably. Then politely she excused herself from
the meeting. ‘Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen, but I have to go
house-hunting.’

It said something about Miss Vermuelen’s
character, and was one of the most fascinating facts of her life,
that while she called New York home, she did not, however, have a
permanent place of residence there. It was even more revealing
about the kind of lifestyle she was used to that over the course of
eight months while in the Big Apple, she had moved from the Four
Seasons to the Peninsula Hotel to the Ritz-Carlton to the Mandarin
Oriental, and was currently residing in a spacious suite at the
Waldorf Astoria. Now that her hectic lifestyle had been brought to
an abrupt halt by her misfortunes at the Wimbledon, she craved for
the comfort and privacy of her own home. Thus she was currently
being shown around possible apartments to make her home by a real
estate agent. Eventually, she chose a luxury condominium apartment
for rent at $40,000 per month at the Trump Hotel International and
Towers. Although it was a beautiful show of opulence in the state
she found it in, Jansen hired an interior decorator to redefine the
apartment in a style and colors that suited her fantasies.

As mentioned earlier, famous individuals are
often surrounded by people who have ambitions and agendas of their
own that exclude the considerations of the famous individual. It so
happened that someone had the audacity to leak onto the internet
news that tennis star Jansen Vermuelen was currently in the studio
recording her debut album. This put her management team and her
sponsors in an embarrassing situation, especially now that Jansen
had expressed no desire to make a foray into the recording
industry, and both camps distanced themselves from this blatant
fallacy.

Her second biggest sponsor was part of a
conglomerate that also owned one of the major TV networks in
America. This sponsor suggested the continuation of the Jansen
Vermuelen brand by creating a role for her in the TV network’s hit
comedy series that was in its fourth season and going strong.
Discussions ensured between the sponsor’s executives, the network’s
executives, and Miss Vermuelen and her people, culminating in the
creation of a role for her in the comedy show that was based in New
York. The writers were brave enough to introduce her character in
the storyline as “Jansen Vermuelen”, the young tennis star who was
recuperating from a wrist injury and was currently dating one of
the characters in the show, a thirty-something who had been unlucky
in love but was baffling his friends and earning their envy by
being loved by a young, beautiful millionaires. The network put
Jansen through coaching classes to prepare her for her debut acting
role, such that when she first appeared in front of the cameras she
handled herself with a confidence worthy of praise. Because she was
acting in a cameo role, she was using her natural, South African
accent, which the audience found to be both funny and sexy. Her
addition to the show also gave the writers more leverage to come up
with new material. On the first night that she joined the cast of
the network’s premier comedy show, the ratings shot up. In the six
weeks that followed before the end of the show’s fourth season, it
was the most watched comedy series in all of the major networks in
America.

And Brand Vermuelen grew.

The Chris Woodyard film did for Joelyn Smith
more than she had anticipated. It gained her recognition by the
Hollywood elite; it earned her the respect of honest-to-God
operators in the film industry; and it courted for her the envy and
jealousy of some sections of general society. To reinforce her
standing as a force to reckon with in showbiz, she decided to
exploit her new-found fame to the fullest and record songs to be
released as soon as possible. She made contacts and, enabled by her
inexhaustible financial resources, managed to book recording
sessions with the best Hip Hop and pop producers in the game. She
worked with some at studios in Burbank, California. She went to
Atlanta to record a song with an RnB/Hip Hop producer of note based
there. She flew to New York to work on the rest of the album, and
over time met some of the most talented minds in the music
industry.

While working on her music project, Joelyn
went to Hawaii for two days at the request of
GQ
magazine for a photo shoot. She also appeared on
the cover of
Vogue
, shot in
New York. In an interview with the widely distributed publication,
Joelyn confirmed the rumors that she was working on a music album
and that it was being prepared for a December or January release.
When asked if the rumors that she had split from Byron Taylor were
true she replied in the affirmative. It was a small coup for the
magazine, because it was the first publication to get confirmation
on the subject of the Byron-Joelyn split from the horse’s
mouth.

Besides being ostensibly in New York for
the
Vogue
shoot, she
was mainly there to meet one of the most-sought-after music talents
of all time, Raizer T.

* * * * *

Anthony Ryzor was a music phenomenon – some
preferred to call him a music genius – and a businessman. His
Wikipedia profile stated correctly that he was a rapper, a record
producer, a record company owner, an actor, a businessman and a
philanthropist. Without forgetting to note that the term
“businessman” was used to denote the twelve business units he had
under his ownership, a man with such a long and varied list of job
descriptions was very hard to pin down. Known affectionately to
close friends and family as Tony, and to fans worldwide as Raizer
T, Anthony Ryzor was a notoriously difficult man to get an
appointment with. Time was so valuable a commodity to him that he
paid people to manage his time. Those people did, however, make
concessions for the boss’ sexual needs, because they all knew that
Raizer T produced his best work when sexually fulfilled. Like most
successful superstars in showbiz, Raizer T was at any given time
always surrounded by people, including bodyguards, business
advisers, legal advisers, managers, publicists, personal
assistants, masseuses, friends, and many other people whose benefit
to him was questionable.

Raizer T was born and raised in Philadelphia,
but had moved to New York City at the age of 16. He had become
friends with another youngster who was well-known for his rapping
skills in the New York underground Hip Hop movement. When that
youngster had signed a record deal with a major record label and
had gone on to achieve commercial success with his first album,
four songs on that album having been produced by Anthony Ryzor,
Tony had never looked back. He had gone on to produce over the next
four years dozens of songs with other artists, until he established
himself as one of the go-to-men in Hip Hop. By the age of
twenty-three Anthony Ryzor was a multi-millionaire and living
comfortably.

At age twenty-four he released his debut
album and
Vibe
magazine
called it a classic. Using a fusion of electronic beats, drum
sounds, stringed instruments and African percussion instruments,
the 14-track album had featured only two guest artists. Its main
themes were romantic disaster stories, Black consciousness and
machismo nonsense, delivered in a distinct voice that set Raizer T
apart from other rappers, over addictive choruses that were sung
mostly by the rapper himself. Critics said that the reason why
Raizer T was so major was because he could rap
and
he could
actually
sing. When asked by
The Source
magazine in a featured article, with his face on the
magazine’s cover, about his style of music in the album he said
that it was nothing new; he was simply following an increasingly
popular trend in that era of Hip Hop, when RnB and Hip Hop were
evolving in such a way that singers were rapping and rappers were
singing. It was an exciting era for RnB/Hip Hop, and he was happy
to be a part of it. He singled out R Kelly as one of the pioneers
of this trend, pointing out that as far back as the year 2000, when
Kelly had released his hugely successful album, TP-2.com, a
classic, he had rapped better than some established rappers on some
of the songs in that album. Raizer T also paid tribute to fellow
rap artists, Kanye West, Lil Wayne, and Jay Z for helping to
transform the face of rap and making it an indelible part of pop
culture.

Following the huge success of his first
album,
Tha
Ryzor
, Anthony Ryzor
would spend the next two years expanding his business interests,
writing music for other artists, producing songs and albums for
other artists, and being featured in other artists’ music, and
overall growing the brand that was Raizer T. Between 2008 and
2009,
The
Source
magazine counted
that Raizer T had featured and appeared in a combined total of 167
songs and music videos by other artists in virtually every
mainstream genre of music. Forbes magazine estimated that he was
one of the top five earners in Hip Hop in both 2008 and 2009, even
though he head not released an album in those two years. In 2010,
amid intense hype, Raizer T released his hugely anticipated second
album,
Tha
Ryzor II
, in February.
It defied declining record sales in the music industry and sold
more than 700,000 copies in its first week. It went on to sell a
total of more than 3,000,000 copies for the year. The only other
album to match those figures in 2010 was Eminem’s
Recovery
.