He was panicking, looking at the clock, on her dressing room wall, and then gazing at her image again, trying to converse as fast as possible, about the wrongdoing that Damen exercised toward his girlfriend, Julienne Wells. So he grabbed onto his pager, knowing when it beeps, Damen was nearby, and began to explain, over and over again, the situation that Damen put Julienne in; the situation that he didn’t know was fabricated and nothing but a lie.
“Vivian, he did do that, I swear to you he did,” Jose pleaded, seeing Vivian walking around her dressing room with tears in her eyes.
She was aggravated, still not wanting to believe in Jose’s words of truth, when they were only lies. Jose started to rush things along, widening his eyes to her, waiting for her to say that she does believe Damen did that. He was in a rush for time, listening to Vivian saying with sadness, “Listen, I don’t believe that Damen would ever do that to me. How do you know he kissed Julienne and messed around with her?”
“Because, Julienne told me.”
Knock.
A man came to her dressing room door, and knocked once on its timber, hardwood frame. “Who is it?” she questioned with anger, still wondering if Jose was telling the truth or not.
“Surprise.” The man opened up the door and held a bouquet of roses in his hands. “Happy Anniversary, baby.”
“Mike, I thought you weren’t getting back until next week?” she spoke after Mike gave her a big kiss on the lips. Vivian saw Jose looking at her in an astounded manner, observing the situation, filled with suspicion at her kiss to Mike. What is going on with her, thought Jose. After she noticed the look he was giving toward her, she added with nervousness to her tone, “Um, Mike, this is Jose.” She wanted to play it off like Mike was just a friend, just an acquaintance that worked with her on the show.
Shaking Jose’s hand, Mike said, “Oh, pleased to meet you.”
“Yeah, likewise.” Jose formed a small grin as Mike walked back to Vivian. She saw the small grin upon Jose’s face, and she knew he realized the situation that she was in at that moment. Vivian couldn’t accept any more kisses or pecks from Mike’s lips, it was getting too obvious to Jose’s sight, showing Mike was more than a friend. Jose’s thoughts were racing.
Vivian then went over to her door, opened it, and asked with pensive and utter seriousness “Mike, could you excuse me and Jose for a few minutes?”
“Sure, I’ll be in my room.”
As soon as he exited her dressing room, Jose turned to Vivian, smiled vividly, and questioned, “So ... you’ve been cheating on Damen?”
He was very rude, obnoxious for accusing her so abruptly, without even discussing any plausible explanation for her actions. To Vivian, Jose was treating the situation as if it was a game to him, catching her in the act and then finding it humorous. “Listen, me and Mike just started dating. He’s my director,” she explained in a defensive fashion, watching Jose walking over to the bouquet of flowers and looking at the card.
She started to bite her lip, squinting her eyes, tapping her right foot on the ground, seeing Jose looking up from the card, knowing that he read it thoroughly. To her, the words on the card proved her guilty in the pursuit of discovering she was cheating on Damen. “Well, Vivian, it says six-month anniversary on here. Now, are you lying, or is the card?”
“Listen you son of a--” She then calmed down, sedated her anger, numbed her exasperation, seeing that Jose found this situation funny, but not wanting him to tell Damen about it. So she paused, gathered her worries, her thoughts, and pleaded, “Alright, listen to me, please don’t tell Damen, I don’t want him to know. I really care for Damen, but I needed this role.”
Beep, beep, beep.
Jose’s pager went off, revealing that it was Julienne’s signal that she was near. He then looked at Vivian closely, saying with a strong, powerful attitude, “Oh, I get it, you began dating him because you wanted to be in this soap opera, am I right?”
“Listen, we met while I was auditioning for this show. If I didn’t date him, then I’m almost positive that I wouldn’t be on this soap opera.”
Jose deputed his feelings on this matter by starting to laugh at her tears, her pleas, her explanation with such defense to it, and chuckled out with craziness, “Vivian, I don’t really care. As a matter of fact, I don’t give a damn if you’re cheating on him or not.”
She became confused, disoriented about the circumstance, wondering why he was laughing, and why he was so snotty to her when he discovered her secret relationship. She knew he had something up his sleeve, under his mind, inside his heart that she didn’t know of yet. So now she was scared, frightened about Jose’s reason for laughing. Vivian still didn’t believe that Damen messed around with Julienne Wells, but became overwhelmed, puzzled by why he was here in the first place, and why he was laughing at this situation that was so terrifying to her thoughts and eyes. “So that means you won’t tell him?”
He noticed that her voice was trembling, her hands were shaking, and her words had fear in them. So he shone, scintillated a horrid grin toward her, and announced with evil, “I won’t tell Damen, but first you have to do something.”
“What?”
She was nervous as to what he wanted her to do, to act, to perform for him, or to him. Tom Fryer used to always begin with the same, almost similar, words, before he would rape her; abuse was going through her thoughts when she stared at Jose.
He laughed a bit, stopped his chuckle, and explained with calmness, “You have to kiss me, and I mean really kiss me.”
She yelled, “Hell no.”
He started laughing again, walked over to the door in an unhurried rhythm, and threatened, “Well then, I guess I’m going to have to tell Damen the truth.”
“Why do you want me to kiss you?”
He stopped dead in his tracks, feeling his pager going off again, knowing that she had to perform this lustful task to him very soon. Jose glared at her eyes, then continued walking toward the door, answering, “I don’t know, maybe because I just feel like it.”
Vivian paused for a second and thought, visioned about herself kissing him. She figured out he was blackmailing her, a small blackmail compared to her experience, she thought, but in actuality of titanic size. Vivian then ran in front of him, while he stood outside, in the hallway, and said to him with apprehension, “Alright, damn it, I’ll kiss you. But if I kiss you, you have to swear to me that you won’t tell Damen about Mike. You swear?”
“Yeah, sure, just as long as you kiss me.”
She walked back into her dressing room while Jose followed, stepping up to her mirror, and looking at his reflection.
It’s just a kiss.
Those thoughts rambled around her head, shooting to all corners of her conscience, raping her mind from the calm situation that she was used to; having Mike as a secret. She then gawked at his reflection more, and spoke, “Alright, get it over with, Jose.”
Jose grabbed her and turned her around to face him, exaggerating this moment by caressing her face, and actually enjoying the warmth of her flesh. He began kissing her, feeling her buttocks at the same time, rubbing her breasts in a medium habit, circling his hands around them, like he was touching a football, or feeling an orange to see if it was ripened. As he was doing this lustful, yet sinister act to her, he grabbed the flowers without Vivian noticing, and placed them in his right hand, for his own reasons. The judging of fate was soon to be heard, soon to be seen, perceiving in his mind that the next step to the plan was just about to enter into the present. At that moment, the door flew open and a voice came out, shouting, “What the hell is going on here?”
Vivian unlocked her lips from Jose’s and looked around the room, trying to get her sight in focus, after having them closed, and squeezing her lids tight against each other, because of the uncomfortableness she felt. The spots vanished from her sight, obstruction was gone, and in her view was Damen Schultz. She didn’t know what to say. That’s when she replied in a serious, but over
wrought manner, “Damen, I can explain.”
Deceit ran through Damen’s arteries, filled with massive jealousy, but hurt gave it flow. The pain was unbearable, showing tears of utterly pain, glaring at Jose and Vivian, asking why, in his mind, why would Jose do this to him? But the anger overpowered his mind, thoughts, his reason for feeling hurt, and he yelled out, “Explain? Explain what? You’re kissing one of my best friends.” He turned his head to face Jose and began to feel a pain in his chest, hurt from Jose’s actions toward Vivian. His bitter indignation, anger, resentfulness grew inside of his head and was ready to blow out of him through his fists hitting Jose’s face, aiming for his nose.
He walked up to him slowly and added in an angry, but hurt fashion, “And you, I thought you were my friend. How could you do this?” Damen was trying to come up with any explanation, in his mind, of why Jose was kissing her. Firstly, he came up with: maybe Jose was saying goodbye to her, but then again, it was a very passionate kiss. After that, he came up with: Why would Jose do this to him, when he already had Julienne Wells as his woman? There had to be some other deep meaning, that Damen’s intellect couldn’t focus in on yet, only because anger, rage, misery, distraught, nervousness, tears of confusion, and a labyrinth of jealousy and resentfulness was obstructing his mind’s eye from seeing and perceiving the real truth and reason. Suddenly, to make matters worse, Damen saw a little grin on Jose’s face, so the hurt that he was feeling went away and the anger took over. “You asshole,” he yelled out, punching Jose in the mouth and causing him to fall to the ground. Damen looked at Jose’s bloody face, adding in a yell, “So, that’s what you wanted to talk to me about?”
“Listen, Damen, he asked me to kiss him,” Vivian pleaded.
Damen grabbed the roses from Jose’s grip, reading the note and saying, “Oh really, Vivian? Well it says six-month anniversary on here. That means you’ve been cheating on me with my friend for six months?”
Julienne walked to the room and saw Jose lying on the ground, hearing Vivian frantically answering, “No, those are from Mike, not Jose.”
“Mike? You’ve been cheating on me with Jose and a guy named ‘Mike’?” he asked, not realizing that Julienne took his wallet out from his coat pocket.
As they argued back and forth, Jose and Julienne managed to sneak away from them. Tiptoeing down the hallway, past the guard, and to the huge doorways, they ran to the outside and got in a taxi that took them straight to the airport.
After an hour of tears, not resolving the confusion, Damen ended the arguing by saying in a low pitch, “It’s over, Vivian, have a nice life.”
“Please, Damen, I swear to you, Jose told me to kiss him,” she yelled out.
He threw the roses on the ground and exited the room, still feeling that she was lying to him, not knowing the real truth, and really not desiring to. He then stopped in the doorway, without facing her, and stated in hurtfulness, “Yeah, even if he did, you still cheated on me with some Mike guy.”
Vivian’s sadness turned to anger, knowing that he was the one who was dumping her. She screamed, “Fine, you jerk, I never want to see you again.” She wiped her tears away with a tissue, seeing that Damen was looking around the hallway in confusion.
“Hello? Jose, Julienne?”
Vivian was still angry, yearning to tell Damen some hurtful words that would please her own self, and make her feel like the one who was dumping him. She didn’t want to feel like the bad guy, even though she was, so she pulled Damen back into her dressing room, faced his eyes, and yelled, “You know what? Damen, you’re right, I was wrong for cheating on you, but could you blame me?”
“What, blame you? What the hell are you talking about?”
“Well, look at yourself, you’re pathetic, you’re a loser, and you’re a dreamer. I warned you, a long time ago, that I would allow nothing to come in my way when it involves success in this industry. I warned you, Damen, and now you’re making me out to look like the bad guy,” she shouted, staring at his perplexed, bewildered, and confused look, watching the intensity of his rage building up in his eyes.
He started to see red; his fury was so great now, that Damen felt like he was about to lose consciousness from it. “You warned me? Vivian, you’re going to be so sorry, in the future, mark my words, you are going to be so sorry that you hurt me like you did,” he shouted.
“Spare me the speech, asshole, why don’t you just cry and go back to that landfill of a Valley. I mean, you’re crazy, you’re a lunatic, no wonder I cheated on you. You actually think that that stupid Valley is alive. Hearing voices in it? Well, Damen, keep on dreaming, because me ditching you was the best thing that I have ever done in my entire life,” she yelled back.
Damen stood silent for a moment, looking at every inch of her face, watching the way her image reacted to what she just said, and understanding that Vivian really, truly meant those words, giving pain to his mind. So, he gave a bit of a grin, ironically finding that his oxymoronic smile was due to the pain he was aware of now; his intuition was being baffled by her confusing change in character. He found it funny that everything that happened to him since he left Ridge Crest was nothing but hell, pain, tears of sorrow, and now his girlfriend, or soon-to-be ex, was announcing things that Damen already knew, but kept locked away in his mind. She unlocked it, showing him his weaknesses, mirroring his pipe-dream, and letting him know that he was a loser. Yet, the thing was, he wasn’t a loser, so that’s when he wanted to mirror back words of anguish toward her image, her mind, to let her know how it felt to speak words of assumption, to judge a book by its cover. He yearned and desired, because of his misery at this moment, to hurt her, as she hurt him, so he spoke with evil to his voice, “Oh yeah? I thought fucking Tom Fryer was the best thing that you did.”
She slapped him once, slapped him again, shouting, “How dare you.”
“How dare me? Vivian, I bet that whomever you’re cheating on me with is probably the director of this soap opera. Vivian, you are nothing but a fame-digger, screwing your way to the top, and then crying about it later, saying that you were a helpless victim just so you can trick your mind into believing that you’re not a whore, when all along that’s exactly what you are,” he yelled out with tears in his eyes.
She slapped him again, and his neck jerked to the side. Coming toward her eyes once more, he finally knew why she cheated on him. It was all so clear now, a piece to this particular puzzle fit into place, and revealed a picture of truth to him, seeing Vivian’s true colors, being colors that her beautiful mask didn’t show; colors of ugliness. He then added with calmness, “I bet you wanted to keep me, while you were dating that other guy, just for insurance, just in case I became successful in this business, so then when the time comes, you could decide whether to ditch him, or me, am I right? Am I, Vivian? You never cared for me. To you, I was just an investment, with my good looks and my charm.” He paused, looked at her eyes, and saw tears falling from them, and then abruptly roared, “Am I right?”
She turned away from his hurtful glare, craving for him to go away, to not allow her to answer that question in front of him. Yet, he wasn’t going, he deserved this answer, and she wanted to be truthful with him. She whispered through her tears, “Yes.”
Vivian paused, looked at him again, and added quietly, “You’re right about everything, I just never imagined that it would come to this. Okay? Damen, I’m a bitch, and I realize it, but you’re very gullible. Everyone in this business, black or white, boy or girl, everyone is out for themselves, and they don’t give a damn about what other people think, they just care about what they think, do, feel, and what people they hang around with. It’s their image. The relationships that you see in Hollywood, are nothing but acts, they’re fake, phony, they’re just using each other to get higher than any other celebrity they’re around. And yes, I’m also like that, I’m a bitch, and I’m sorry that you fell in love with me, I’m sorry that you’re hurting right now.” She stopped her words suddenly, and then
continued, adding with unpleasant carelessness, “But, Damen, I don’t really give a damn.”
He walked out into the hallway, dried off his tears with his shirt, and turned around to face her. “Well, Vivian, I give a damn, it’s my heart that you messed with, and mark my words, it will come back to you ... three-fold.” He then proceeded to walk down the hallway, looking for Julienne and Jose, then coming across the guard by the entrance to the building.
Damen started looking, feeling for his wallet, desperately trying to find it while the guard asked to him, “Excuse me, are you looking for that Julienne chick and that guy?”
“Yeah, have you seen them?” Damen was worried, he realized that Julienne had his plane ticket.
“Yeah, they left the building a little over an hour ago.”
“Oh my God.” Damen was frantic; he comprehended and understood that Julienne and Jose had stranded him in New York City without a plane ticket and only thirty dollars in his pocket.
He took a taxi with the money that was left to his name, traveling back to the hotel in a panic-stricken frenzy. He opened the hotel door, looking around it, realizing that his checkbook was missing and their luggage as well; all that was left was his clothes and the suitcase he brought. He became engulfed in his own nerves by the thought of being stranded out in New York City and needing to get to the movie set, knowing that if he didn’t get back on time, he would piss off the director and possibly lose his big shot at stardom. Damen was frantic, so he called up Chuck for help, and noticed there was a busy signal. That’s when he said in a frightened whisper, “My God, I’m stranded out here. How could I let this happen?”
Sugar Valley (Hollywood's Darkest Secret) Page 59