The Brand

by M. N Providence

  After Amsterdam, the pair of Jansen and Chris Healey went to Italy, where Jansen mixed business with pleasure. Besides sight-seeing in Venice, she was there to do a photo-shoot for L’Oréal with a professional photographer, whose pictures of the tennis star would appear in magazines worldwide in the coming month. Jansen and her lover stayed at the Hotel Excelsior’s prime luxury suite, with seven large rooms, 15 big-screen TVs, a Jacuzzi, its own wine cellar…

  Chris Healey was certainly living large, at the expense of his lover, and he was making no contribution whatsoever to her life except for the provision of sexual stimulation. She was under the spell of his magnificent penis. And life went on.

  In Venice, they celebrated his 33rd birthday by having a candlelit dinner on the terrace of their hotel suite. The hotel’s chef served them a seven-course meal. For this visit to Italy, Jansen had left behind her usual traveling chef, and ate to her heart’s content various foods she had been denied the chance of eating by people Chris said wanted to control her life. Together, they went to a car dealer and Jansen bought for her lover a brand new Lamborghini Aventador, which Chris ordered the dealer to customize to his specifications. The dealer was only glad to please, and very enthusiastic that Jansen, world-famous tennis star, had chosen to make the purchase of the $400,000 beast at their dealership. It was not their problem that Jansen would have saved herself a lot of trouble by buying the same model in America. Jansen could do anything with her money. They would customize her boyfriend’s Lambo and ship it to New York. In the meantime, one of their employees would benefit handsomely by photocopying the receipt of the purchase and proving to local tabloids that the sale had actually taken place.

  When the story of Jansen’s frivolous spending in Italy broke out and was syndicated worldwide, her tennis coach was not concerned about the financial aspect of that story, but he was profoundly worried that Jansen was spending far too much time with the good-for-nothing Healey and getting distracted from playing tennis. Speckman voiced his concerns, and a very heated argument ensued between him and Jansen, after which she fell into a sulking silence and refused to talk to him until he apologized to her and Chris. Speckman, for the sake of progress, and being the mature man, apologized and the matter came to pass.

  In the beginning of March, Jansen went to the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, California, and played with such appalling mediocrity her coach was attacked by fits of rage, threw tantrums and exchanged heated words with her by turns throughout the match, until he left the court in the middle of the last set, when it was obvious Jansen had already lost the match and been knocked out in the first round of the tournament.

  ‘A 2-time US Open champion!’ Coach Speckman fumed afterwards. ‘And you play like a 9-year-old kid at an academy! This is not how I taught you to play tennis.’

  ‘I’m under pressure to win, and you know I don’t play well under pressure,’ Jansen reasoned.

  ‘Pressure! What pressure? You’ve won a Grand Slam title twice, for heavens’ sake! And you go into the tournament and you’re beaten in the first round by an unseeded inferior player. How is that possible?’

  ‘Very.’ Jansen folded her arms across her chest and responded insolently. ‘And it just happened. Better live with it, Gary.’

  ‘If you could learn to shut your mouth – and God knows what else – and focus on your game, you’d be a better player.’

  That remark, delivered on a soft voice, reduced Jansen to tears. She slumped down onto a chair and wept bitterly.

  Speckman sat down opposite her. He was livid with anger, and he wanted to storm out of the room, but he was a better coach than that. And he had realized throughout their long relationship that sometimes he needed to take charge of Jansen’s life in order to get the best tennis performance out of her. He let out a long, deep sigh, forcing his rage back to the dark cave from which it had emerged. ‘What’s going on, Jan?’

  She sobbed quietly and did not respond.

  ‘What’s happening to your life, Jan? Maybe you need to take a break and ask yourself that question. Sometimes when the train’s moving too fast, brakes have to be applied, or it’ll crash and kill a lot of people. Do you understand me?’ he asked gently.

  She nodded and stared sorrowfully at him. ‘Maybe I’m not as good as you want me to be,’ she sobbed. ‘How come I can only win the US Open and no other tournaments? I’m not good, Gary, and you have to admit it.’

  ‘Listen to me.’

  She stared attentively at him.

  ‘Do you want to win games?’

  Jansen nodded silently.

  ‘Do you want to win other Grand Slam titles besides the US—.’

  She interrupted quickly. ‘Of course I do, Gary. You know that.’

  ‘And I presume that you also want to claim the Number One spot in the WTA rankings?’ He checked her eyes and she nodded her head. ‘Okay, this is what you need to do. Calm down and relax. Take some time to meditate on certain aspects of your life. Clear your mind of doubts. You are surrounded by plenty of people. You know who is good for you and who isn’t. Get rid of the wrong people, and keep the good ones. If you want, bring in people who know what they’re doing. Remove all the useless hangers-on who are of no benefit to your life. Make your decisions resolutely and stay committed to those decisions. Jan, sometimes you need to make sacrifices in order to get what you want out of life. The sooner you understand that, the better.’

  Soon after that, it was announced to the world by Jansen’s publicist that Gary Speckman had ceased to be Jansen Vermuelen’s coach and that Christopher Healey had been appointed to replace him.

  Chapter 7

  AMERICA

  It was reported that the end of the long-term relationship between Jansen and her coach had been an amicable decision, and that the two of them remained friends. Still, people in the sporting world, and plenty of other people not directly linked to the sporting world but interested in anything to do with Jansen, were very keen to know the inside story – not the polished public relations nonsense. Newspapers, radio stations, magazines, TV shows and freelance journalists all contacted Jansen’s ex-coach to interview him. Speckman declined many enticements, but eventually appeared on a prime-time syndicated TV talk show.

  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 decis
ion 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.’

  Chapter 8

  SOUTH AFRICA

  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 too 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 personal 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.’

  Chapter 9

  SOUTH AFRICA

  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 se
lf-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 rooms 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 thirty 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…