The Brand (22 page)

The host, an affable little man of good
spirits, with a talent for asking all the pertinent questions
without getting under his guests’ skin, started the show with a
light jab at Speckman. ‘Gary, word is you’re out of a job.’

Gary laughed cheerfully. ‘Yeah, man. If
anybody’s hiring out there, lemme know.’

‘
But seriously, Gary, what happened? I
mean…after being with Jansen for so long, what
really
made you decide you didn’t want to be her coach
anymore?’

‘That’s a good question, Benny, and the
answer to that is it wasn’t my decision to make. It’s a decision
that Jansen made and saw fit to apply to her life. And perhaps it’s
for the better.’

‘Perhaps it’s for the better. What does that
mean, exactly?’

‘Benny, you have to understand that for
someone who has achieved the sort of cult status that Jansen has,
it’s natural that she will be surrounded by plenty of people, all
of whom want at least something from her. Group all those people
together, me included, into one room, and you’ll realize that I’m
the only one who knows who Jansen was before she became a tennis
star. And maybe I’m the only guy in the room who really cares about
her well-being. There’s a lot of egos and clamors for
attention…sooner or later you realize that maybe you’re in the
wrong place and it’s best to get out of that environment.’

‘Are you happy now, though?’

‘I don’t want to lie…I was saddened by her
decision to fire me, and I think I’m still recovering from the
shock. But I respect her decision. I am, though, worried that she
is left with people who don’t have her best interests at
heart.’

‘Let me get this straight, Gary. Jansen fired
you?’

‘She did.’

‘Surely, she made that decision with the help
of other people?’

‘Maybe.’ Gary shrugged. ‘Maybe not. I don’t
want to speculate.’

The host announced that the show would take a
commercial break and return shortly. When it did, Benny resumed his
interrogation of Gary. ‘Gary, everyone knows by now that Jansen’s
new coach is also her boyfriend, Chris Healey. How well do you know
Chris Healey?’

‘As a tennis coach or as a person?’ Gary
threw back the question with an amused smirk.

Benny found it funny and laughed
uproariously. On cue, the studio audience laughed too. Becoming
serious, Benny said, ‘Both.’

‘As a person, I don’t think Chris Healey
amounts to much,’ Speckman responded with the total honesty
characteristic of his nature. ‘As a tennis coach, I do know for
certain that Chris Healey knows absolutely nothing about the sport
of tennis, and he will be the end of Jansen’s tennis career.’

‘Obviously you’re still bitter about losing
your coaching job.’

‘Naturally, Benny,’ Gary responded
good-naturedly. ‘Nobody’s ever proud to lose a job…well, maybe a
bomb-disposal expert…But—.’

The studio audience broke into noisy
laughter.

‘But,’ Speckman said forcefully, quieting the
crowd. ‘I want it to be known that I would not be bitter if I had
lost my job to someone deserving of that job. I am particularly
bitter at the fact that I lost my job to Chris Healey, who is a
very bad influence on Jansen and probably had something to do with
my getting fired.’

Benny asked, ‘You don’t like Chris Healey
very much, do you?’

‘I’d like to be able to say I do, but no – I
don’t.’

‘Before we go to a commercial break, Gary,
supposing – because life has a funny way of turning around –
supposing things didn’t go well in your absence and Jansen
approached you to ask you to coach her again, would you go
back?’

Gary shrugged expressively. ‘It would
depend…on whether or not she would or wouldn’t get rid of some
people around her that I don’t want to work with.’

Joelyn stayed the full four months at the
rehabilitation facility in Arizona and was released to freedom in
the first week of April. She left Andrea Durant shattered, but she
had never made any promises to the short woman, owing to the
delicate nature of their relationship. When she left, Joelyn had
said simply to her, “See you around” and then disappeared inside a
black limousine that had come to pick her up and take her to the
airport.

Having taken the date of Joelyn’s release
from rehab and put it in their electronic diaries, some paparazzi
were gathered at the facility’s gate with their cameras, and made a
noisy commotion as she emerged, accompanied by two mean-looking
bodyguards. A television crew’s helicopter flew in circles above,
filming Joelyn as she stepped out of the gates and into the
limousine. The vehicle sped away to the airport.

There, Joelyn, with the aid of her
bodyguards, fought her way through an even larger contingent of
reporters and boarded a flight to Los Angeles, where her personal
hairstylist washed and treated her hair. The blonde strands had
grown to a long length, but the hairstylist opined that it needed a
lot of work before it could be seen in public. From Los Angeles,
Joelyn Smith, Hollywood superstar, travelled incognito, under heavy
disguise, using her South African passport that still bore the name
Joelyn Vermuelen, to Johannesburg, where no welcoming party awaited
her. Her brother, not known to the local media hounds, had come
alone to fetch her. He took her in a grey Toyota Corolla Verso and
they went to the family home in Orange Grove, where a small party
of friends and relatives had been organized to welcome Joelyn
home.

In South Africa, they call a barbecue a
braai, and their favorite braai item is boerwors – sausages. There
was also succulent ox-steak on the braai, as well as chicken
fillets and peppered chicken gizzards. The men drank beer while the
women enjoyed red wine – except Joelyn, who drank soft drinks – and
everyone had a good time.

In the evening, when it became apparent
that some members of the party intended spending the night at the
Smit residence, both for reasons of being to
o inebriated to drive, and wanting to be
around a Hollywood star for as long as possible, Joelyn stealthily
left the party with her best friend, Samantha. Samantha drove them
in her Mercedes Benz SLK to her townhouse across town in
Morningside. The two friends, once inside Samantha’s place, went to
bed very late, updating each other on what had happened in their
respective private lives.

Samantha told Joelyn that she had broken up
with JJ, her rugby beau, but left out the reasons why. Joelyn was
too excited to notice. She had a lot of storytelling to do. She
shocked her friend with the story of Andrea Durant. The two women
giggled like teenage girls at Joelyn’s anecdotes. Much later,
before they went to bed, Joelyn recounted to her most trusted
friend how difficult it was to be a drug addict, and that she was a
much improved person and never wanted to go back to that life
again.

‘There is a shrink at rehab that I regularly
spoke to during my…um…healing process. She helped me face my fears
without running away from them, and helped me understand that I was
doing drugs and alcohol to mask the pain that Jason had caused me.
Without confronting that pain properly, it will never go away. But
now I’m stronger, Sam, and I won’t allow anyone to hurt me the way
Jason did.’ Her eyes clouded and she fell silent.

Samantha grabbed her friend’s left hand and
squeezed it gently. ‘I’m here for you, Joe. I will always be here
for you.’

‘He hurt me badly, Sam,’ Joelyn said in a
shaky voice. A tear dropped from the corner of her left eye and
trickled down her face. She wiped it away quickly. ‘I was possessed
by him, and I would have unequivocally moved mountains for
him.’

Samantha did not know what to make of this
declaration, but she understood it to be sincere and true. She
found it easy to understand, because she and Joelyn were very much
alike. They were both women who were passionate about everything
they did, and these sort of women usually fall in love with all of
their hearts.

Samantha lost herself in
persona
l introspection
for a moment, thinking of how much she had fallen in love with
Hudson Vermuelen, and how he didn’t seem to notice.

Her mind was brought back by her friend’s
voice. ‘Sam, I need to ask a favor of you.’

Hudson Vermuelen was a very rich man indeed.
He possessed wealth that was far beyond many people’s imagination,
and he had learned early in life that the availability of money in
abundance afforded him exclusive status in many spheres of life.
Somewhere along the course of his life, Hudson had also discovered
that money made life a lot more comfortable, and enabled a lot more
thrills to be explored – at a much cheaper expense – out of
marriage than in marriage.

Hudson Vermuelen loved his life. He was
living a good life, replete with all the comforts he desired. He
thoroughly enjoyed his life. For him, marriage was out of the
question. Ever since his father’s death, Hudson’s priorities had
drastically changed. For one, marriage had fooled him into
believing that he was required by society at large to live up to
the time-honored tradition of reproducing a replica of himself or
something close to that. Nowadays, his thoughts were far-removed
from creating little people. Being a wealthy bachelor, without
responsibilities other than those related to making money, was a
good way of life.

Hudson currently had two cars in his
Johannesburg home garage that he liked for different reasons; an
Audi A8 – a car of such technical excellence and refinement he had
loved it from the first time he took a test-drive in it, and a
Jaguar XJ – a vehicle of such superior quality and status few of
its kind were available on Johannesburg roads, unlike its BMW and
Mercedes Benz
cousins.
Hudson also currently had two women who could be defined as his
regular sexual partners, and they each loved him in their
individual ways. The first, in the alphabetical order of their
first names, was Carlin Steyn, a tall woman with a slim figure,
long, slender legs and a beautiful mane of long black hair. With
dark eyes, Carlin was self-opinionated, ambitious, stubborn,
self-conceited, highly educated, sophisticated and classy. There
were more adjectives to describe her, but those few would do for
now.

Samantha Ashford was the second. Average
height. Green eyes. Bleached blonde hair. Cute tits. Nice ass.
Short, thick, strong legs. She was a bit on the stout side. He had
visions of her twenty years from now and he didn’t like what he
saw. For now, still in her twenties, she was a good-looking woman.
Kind, gentle, intelligent, emotional, well-mannered, domesticated
and sexually-deviant. While Carlin couldn’t cook to save her life,
Samantha could cook a dozen decent meals. And while Samantha wailed
uncontrollably during sexual intercourse, Carlin took her pleasure
as stoically as a mule.

Around the time of Joelyn’s imminent
arrival in South Africa, Hudson was required to make a business
trip to Cape Town. He spent the night before his morning flight
with Carlin. In the morning, he was in the first-class cabin of a
South African Airways flight with two of his office assistants on
their way to Cape Town, such that when Joelyn spent the night at
Sam’s place Hudson was away. In Cape Town, he put his assistants in
separate hotel room
s
while he stayed at his sprawling Llandudno mansion. On the first
night there, he picked up the Cape Times newspaper and opened the
Classifieds section. He chose numbers at random from the escorts
column and called them, eventually getting interested in two
lovely-sounding voices he gave his address to, told them to take
cabs and get there quickly. When they arrived, they were greeted by
the two security men in a cabin at the gate.

One of the security officers accompanied
the first woman to arrive into the house to meet Mr. Vermuelen. She
was a tall thing with a round, beautifully-shaped ass and a face
that could pass for pretty. The second woman arrived
thir
ty minutes later, a
brown-eyed Colored with a stiff body and tough-looking face. Hudson
led the women to separate showers, told them to strip naked and
wash themselves thoroughly. When they were done he took them to his
large living room and stripped naked. He sat on a sofa and
commanded the two prostitutes to start working on his
body…

* * * * *

The Vermuelen Group of Companies had 47
grocery stores in Cape Town. The company had bought vacant plots of
land in various parts of the city, which it would develop into mini
shopping arcades, as well as unused buildings which it would strip
down and build new stores. The VGC CEO went around town, inspecting
these investments, all at differing levels of development. His stay
at the Mother City lasted five days – the whole working week from
Monday to Friday. He left Cape Town on an evening flight and
arrived at Johannesburg’s OR Tambo International airport on the
same night that Joelyn departed South Africa, bound for the United
States of America.

Hudson picked up his Audi A8 from the
airport’s paid-for parking lot and drove it straight to Samantha’s
Morningside townhouse, located inside a gated community. Mr.
Vermuelen already a familiar face to the gate-guards, he was let
into the townhouse complex without
fuss. He parked his car in front of Samantha’s
townhouse and phoned her. He woke her from deep sleep. She opened
the door for him, mumbled a hello and went straight back to bed.
Hudson went to her liquor cabinet and poured himself a brandy over
ice, then he joined her in the bedroom. He took off his clothes and
slipped into bed next to her. His penis became instantly erect when
he made contact with her body. He turned her and she protested
lightly, offering little resistance as he climbed on top of her and
slipped his erection between her thighs. In a moment, she was fully
awake and they were both panting with their labor of
love.