The Brand

by M. N Providence

  As if he hadn’t heard her request, Speckman asked her a question, ‘What’re you doing here? I’ve seen you on that show that’s on ESPN.’

  ‘The episodes are shot weeks before. We just wrapped up shooting the last episodes, so…’ She shrugged expressively and her voice trailed off.

  A moment of pregnant silence followed. It was broken by the entrance into the room of two dogs, a huge Great Dane and a tiny Dachshund. They charged into the room and leapt onto Speckman’s lap, fighting for his attention. He shooed them away and the Great Dane lay down dejectedly beside him on the couch. The smaller dog remained on his lap, resting its tiny head on his left knee and gazing curiously at Jansen.

  ‘Cute,’ remarked Jansen with a lovely smile at the dog.

  The Dachshund barked.

  Speckman stroked its head with a pensive look in his eyes. He was not, to be strictly honest, a man given to many words. In his other life, he would have been quite a prophetic philosopher, but Fate had decided otherwise.

  Jansen, not conscious of those hidden qualities of the man, asked him the most important question of her visit. ‘Will you train me?’

  As stated before, Mr. Gareth Speckman was an honest man, sometimes to the point of brutality. He said, ‘I will have to think about it.’

  ‘What’s that mean, Gary?’ A worried expression was on her face.

  ‘It means I’m in a relationship with Sheila, and I’ve decided I like her very much. On the other hand, I decided a long time ago that tennis was the dream I wanted to live. Those two situations make it extremely difficult for me to choose between the woman I love and a childish dream. I need some time to think about it.’

  ‘I understand,’ said Jansen. ‘And I am sorry for putting you in a difficult position. It’s just that I’ve been with you for a long time and I can never trust myself with anybody else to train me. But that shouldn’t force you to make a decision you don’t want. I will understand if you can’t commit yourself to training me. I just want you to know that.’

  ‘Okay,’ Speckman said simply.

  Chapter 7

  AMERICA

  Celebrity couples are more often than not usually rich, famous, fabulous, beautiful and glamorous. Their stupendous wealth enables them to live in fabulously luxurious and opulent multi-million dollar homes, often with electrifyingly breathtaking views. Mr. and Mrs. Smith Kane bought together a house in Beverley Hills and called it their married home. The house had seven bedrooms, eight full bathrooms, a tile roof, a sparkling swimming pool, and various other amenities synonymous with homes of the wealthy. Jason lived and plied his trade mostly in New York, while his wife, who had decided to keep her last name for branding purposes, lived and worked in Los Angeles. Nevertheless, the couple’s staggering wealth enabled them to juggle their schedules – with the assistance of paid servants, naturally – to accommodate time for seeing and being with each other.

  Between March and April, Joelyn Smith, ex-Vermuelen, née Smit, officially Kane, was involved in the making of a film financed in large part by Warner Bros. The action thriller, shot on location in Dallas, Texas, was set for a summer release. In May, she was meant to be shooting scenes for a different movie, a drama, but this project was delayed by bickering between the involved studio executives. Joelyn focused her attention on producing, via her JOY-LINE PICTURES film production company, a movie based on a best-selling novel. The Academy Award winner was twenty-seven, and her life was running on a hectic schedule. She had agents, PAs and time managers to organize her life. She had personal trainers, dieticians and trained chefs to keep her figure in trim condition. She had brand managers and image consultants to oversee the brand that was Joelyn Smith and constantly work on its improvement.

  Granted, Jason Kane, a baseball player currently worth millions of dollars, also had various people in charge of life. The people surrounding a sports star or a Hollywood superstar often do not give a care about the star’s personal life. That, coupled with the mere fact that either half of a celebrity couple often has to work far apart from the other half, means that there is no adequate time for two halves to be together as a couple. Sex is a basic need that is found at the first group of Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs.

  The attentive reader will notice that while previously subdued, Joelyn had of late a voracious appetite. She and Jason made beautiful music together. Even after they had been married for many weeks, Joelyn would still catch herself daydreaming about him. He was everything she could ask for in a man: kind, gentle, generous, compassionate, big, strong, funny, handsome, endowed with big genitals, overly sexually experienced…

  He buried his mouth inside her buttocks and licked her private parts. She was on her knees, her chest flat against the bed, and her buttocks stuck high up in the air. He covered her vagina with his mouth and stroked her with his lips and tongue. He grabbed hold of a plastic contraption made of three balls, the size of small round pebbles, joined in a straight line by thin, short rods. He wet her anus with lubricating oil and pushed the balls into her anus. She winced at the pain as the first round ball entered into her. He dipped the second ball into her and then plunged his big penis into her already wet vagina. She yelped like a dog at the wave of pleasure that seared through her…

  He rolled onto his back on the bed and beckoned for her to climb on top of him. She obeyed quickly, and took his enormous phallus inside her vagina. It filled every available space inside her. She placed her hands upon him, palms flat against his chest, and began to rock herself on him. She shouted the Lord’s name aloud repeatedly as the fire of ecstasy engulfed her. He pulled her down towards him and kissed her hungrily. Then suddenly he rose from the bed, carrying her with him. He placed his big arms under her thighs and supported her weight as he stood upright. She locked her arms around his neck and jumped up and down his enormous shaft. It was delicious! Splendirific! Awesome! Outta this world! Heavensent!...Suddenly it stopped, and she realized that the delicious rod had dropped out of her flooding vagina. Frantically, she reached under herself and shoved it back into her sizzling warmth. He jammed himself into her.

  ‘Oh God! Oh Jesus Christ Lord Almighty!’ she cried and collapsed onto him.

  If she was a believer, the Lord might have descended from heaven that night, in some form or shape, but she was not, so the words were uttered in vain. She was, though, a true believer in the power of love, and that night she lay cuddled in his arms and felt herself yearning to be with him every day of her remaining days on earth.

  He broke some news to her in a quiet voice. ‘My contract with the Yankees expires next month. I can either renew it or accept the offer from the LA Angels, so as to be close to you.’

  She looked into his eyes. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘It’s a difficult decision for me. I really want to work in this city so that I can be with you, but my agent thinks the new contract the Yankees have drafted for me is the best from all the other clubs that are interested so far. Again, I’ve been with the Yankees for five years. It’s like a home to me.’

  ‘Don’t do something that’ll make you unhappy.’

  He stroked her hair and brushed her lips against his. ‘You won’t be mad at me if I decide to stay in New York with the club?’

  ‘Of course not.’ She replied with a pretty smile at him. ‘I can always move to New York if I miss you too much.’

  Chapter 8

  SOUTH AFRICA/AMERICA

  Following the immense success of her debut album, Jo S – The Introduction, Joelyn’s voice was on demand to feature in other people’s songs and subsequent music videos. The music side of her life kept her so busy in the first half of the year that she travelled to all the major cities in the United States, recording and performing with other artists, and barely had time to actually stay at her Beverley Hills home for more than three days at a time. In New York, the married couple shared a multi-million dollar condominium at the expensive Upper West Side building, the Grand Tier.

  In Ma
rch, an opportunistic music promoter in South Africa had begun liaising with Joelyn’s managers and agents over the possibility of the superstar performing a music concert in two cities in that part of the world. In April, the two parties had agreed on the terms and conditions of that deal. Ms. Smith’s contract demanded that she be protected by state policemen for the duration of her tour to South Africa; that any hotel she’d be put in should have adequate accommodation for her entourage, totaling 32 people; that her hotel room should be white in color, and have white lilies changed every five hours; that the hotel should have Evian water; that under no circumstances would Ms. Smith be delayed by weather, traffic or unforeseen circumstances; and that any hotel she would be set up in must have an infinite supply of Krug Grand Cuvée, a very delicate and smooth champagne of the highest quality that is imported by wine merchants all over the world from the Republic of France.

  Jo S, as she was affectionately known in the music industry and to music fans worldwide, would perform one concert in Johannesburg and another in Cape Town on two corresponding Saturdays. In Johannesburg, she stayed at the Hilton/Radisson in Sandton and performed her 90-minute show at what was known as the Coca Cola Dome in the vicinity of North Riding. Johannesburg has a notoriously cold winter spell that usually starts around May and ends sometime in August. On the night that Jo S performed her music show at the Coca Cola Dome in Johannesburg, it was a particularly cold night, but thousands of her fans braved the cold weather, aided by copious amounts of alcohol in some and various illegal substances in others, and came to see their idol in action. The fact that Jo S was a product made in South Africa that had become massive in America gave her divine status amongst South Africans. The show was sold out, and Jo S showed her gratitude for her fans’ loyalty by giving them a show to remember. She was, of course, travelling with a team comprised of dance instructors, choreographers and voice coaches; all of whom worked diligently behind the scenes to bring out the best in her.

  During the week, Ms. Smith visited Sun City, a resort leisure center in the North West Province that is not exactly South Africa’s answer to Disneyland, but has a five-star hotel and various amenities to force the mind to relax and is actually a very popular local tourist destination. Ms. Smith also, for purposes of publicity, posed for pictures with the current South African cricket team, and visited the Hector Peterson Memorial in Soweto. While involved in these activities, she was heavily guarded by armed police whose numbers were exaggerated by the local press to such an extent that the real truth was never known, but it became a story of intense local interest that while Ms. Smith was visiting Montecasino, a leisure and gambling mecca in Fourways, there were clashes between riotous fans wanting to touch Jo S and the police officers protecting her from exactly this sort of particular behavior.

  On Wednesday, she spent the morning and afternoon with her best friend, Samantha Ashford, with whom she still maintained a relationship over the phone and social networking sites. The two friends did not, however, manage to engage in their favorite pastime, shopping, owing to security concerns over Joelyn by the police. In the evening, the music sensation and local hero left Johannesburg and travelled by private flight, a Boeing 747 with all her entourage inside, and descended in the city of Cape Town, where she stayed at the One & Only, a five-star hotel of such excellence and exclusivity that it held an unofficial status as a seven-star hotel.

  It happened that while Ms. Smith was, with all due diligence, preparing for her show at the Cape Town Stadium, an arena originally built for purposes of hosting some of the 2010 Soccer World Cup matches, but now with no apparent use, news broke out in America that while Joelyn Smith had been singing her husband’s praises in her Oscar acceptance speech, Jason Kane had in fact at that time been engaged in sexual activities with two women who would later reveal themselves to be high-priced prostitutes. Owing to Internet availability on portable devices, the people gathered at the stadium on that night learned of the news as it broke out in America, where it was still daylight.

  A vicious row of words erupted amongst members of Jo S’s team and also between the concert organizers and some members of her team. The bone of contention was whether to inform the superstar of the news of her husband’s infidelity or to keep her in the dark until the show was over. Eventually, it was tentatively agreed that the revelations would badly affect Jo S’s performance that night, or, worse still, she might not be able to go ahead with her performance after hearing the bad news. While she did her final preparations for the show that night, Joelyn was unaware that a media blackout had been effected on her. It helped that her Facebook friends and Twitter followers were usually handled by her assistants, and that she had switched off her phone in order to focus her mind on the imminent show. Unknown to her, Samantha Ashford did actually make several attempts to reach her, but each time her efforts were blocked by Joelyn’s inner circle.

  Thus, Joelyn Smith broke out onto the stage, oblivious of her beloved husband’s infidelity, and gave her fans a splendid performance. Towards the end of the show, she spoke to the screaming crowd of thousands and told them that her next song was dedicated to them and the light of her heart, the love of her life, Jason Kane. The crowd erupted and yelled in unison, “Ditch him! Ditch him! Ditch him!”

  It started as a low noise eventually became a thunderous roar that echoed off the big stadium’s walls. Jo S smiled. She innocently thought they hated her husband for “stealing” her from them. She quieted them down and brought half the crowd to tears by doing a soulful performance of a love ballad they hadn’t heard before, which she promised would be on her next album. By the end of the song, the crowd was collectively ready to forgive and forget Jason Kane’s marital transgressions, but then again, alcohol and drugs have the capability to diminish the mind’s capacity for analytical thought.

  In the morning, all hell broke loose. While holed up in her expensive suite at the One & Only hotel, Joelyn demanded both her BlackBerry Torch smartphone and Apple iPod. All the members of her team displayed their cowardice by giving her the gadgets and letting her find out for herself the news concerning her husband. When she did, Joelyn exploded in anger and yelled at the top of her voice at whoever was close by to be scolded. After the combined shock of learning the news and the anger over her people’s betrayal dissipated, her first reasonable thought was to get in touch with her husband.

  His phone was off.

  She called the numbers of some of the people who managed Jason Kane’s life and career, but it was a futile attempt. The response was the same: Mr. Kane was not speaking to the media. He would issue a press statement in due course. Thank you.

  ‘I’m his goddammed wife, for God’s sake!’ Joelyn screamed down the phone, but the line was already dead.

  Enraged to boiling point, she ordered her people to organize an immediate flight to New York. The flight was available in two hours. On the way to the airport, sitting at the back of a silver Mercedes Benz S-class that was both led and followed by police vehicles, Mrs. Kane phoned her friend Samantha Ashford and shared her grief about a relentlessly cruel media that was hell-bent on destroying her life. Samantha could only sympathize.

  When she arrived at JFK International airport, Joelyn had to be escorted once again since becoming a celebrity by airport security to her waiting car, which took her to the Grand Tier apartment on Broadway Street. She found Jason at the apartment, hiding from the media. When she saw him, a sudden tumult of emotions welled up inside her and tears flooded her eyes. With a tremendous exercise of self-restraint, she only just managed not to rush forward and hug him.

  In a quavering voice, she asked him, ‘Is it true?’

  He looked down in shame, avoiding her gaze. ‘I’m sorry, Joelyn…’

  Joelyn burst out in tears of grief.

  Chapter 9

  AMERICA

  Following the revelations about Jason Kane’s infidelity on the night of the Academy Awards ceremony, confirmed in private to his wife but yet to be conf
irmed publicly by none other than the culprit himself, more women soon came out into the open about their previously-secret sexual relations with one Jason Kane, a professional sportsman with a previously impeccably flawless private life. It soon became a matter of public record that Jason Kane was a sexually promiscuous and remorselessly rampant sex addict of eminent standing within New York City’s sex industry who, since his marriage to Joelyn Smith, had been sexually involved with thirty-seven women, most of them high-priced prostitutes, who by their very own nature would sell their own mothers for money. Eager for their 15 minutes of glory, they quickly sold to the tabloids their individual tales – incorporating the name of Jason Kane, naturally.

  Due to journalistic sadism and sensationalist tendencies, the story dominated the news headlines for weeks and did two things for American society: it provided light entertainment and diverted people’s minds from the Presidential election race; and it also earned Jason Kane a bad reputation in America.

  Joelyn was deeply grief-stricken. In those days of her grief, she moved back to her house in Malibu. The paparazzi hounded her. Even venerable TV shows and print media organizations made valiant efforts to interview her regarding the sudden collapse of her marriage. Her people, upon her instructions, fended off every approach, informing the press that they should respect Ms. Smith’s privacy at this time of her personal tragedy. They even thought it necessary to hire a team of bodyguards to protect her from harassment by the paparazzi.

  Ashamed of being seen in public, Joelyn hid herself in the sanctuary of her Malibu home and spent three consecutive weeks reflecting on her past and her future. She found the unfairness of this life appalling. She found the despicable actions of Jason even worse. The deepest cut of all was his betrayal of her trust in him. Trust is a fundamentally fragile thing. Once broken, it can never be mended. She had given him all of her heart and held nothing back. And he had lied and cheated on her. Joelyn reeled in the agony of heartbreak and almost lost her mind. She found solace in alcohol. Cocaine, sought for her by a select group of her people, provided her with a comforting hand from the agony of pain and shame.