Sugar Valley (Hollywood's Darkest Secret) (14 page)

“I don’t know, maybe everyone’s afraid of
Julienne. I mean, she is a movie star,” answered Darell.

“Uh, but look at all the other movie stars,
celebrities and models, they’re all talking to each other,” Damen
pointed out. Something was wrong with this picture, and Damen felt
it in his empty gut. He wanted to crack this case, this mystery as
to why no one was coming up to Julienne, but his mind was pulled
away from this confusion when Jose came walking toward them.

“Listen, guys, I’ll meet you back at the
motel tomorrow morning. Julienne said she wants to show me her
mansion, especially her bedroom ... if you know what I mean.”
Suddenly people came out of nowhere and began talking to Jose,
ignoring the fact that he was talking to two people who seemed
invisible to them.

“Jose, are you coming back to the table?” a
woman asked, hugging Jose at the same time.

“Yeah, I’ll be right there.” Jose looked at
Damen and Darell with happiness, he felt as if he finally belonged.
“I’ll be right there,” Jose said after three other people
approached him with the same question.

“Who’s that?” asked Darell.

“Oh, that’s Wendy Grason, she’s a supermodel.
So, anyway, I’ll see you guys tomorrow?” Jose smiled at the table
where Julienne was sitting, making them see that he probably didn’t
even realize he just asked a question.

“Yeah,” replied Darell. Damen stared at Jose
in an angry fashion, without even saying a word. Jose knew
something was on Damen’s mind, a strange thought, or something was
eating him alive; he could tell whenever Damen was speechless, like
now.

Suddenly, Damen Schultz broke through his
iceberg of being nice to Jose, and asked with disappointment,
“Dude, what about Maria?”

Jose said with a smirk on his face, “What
about her? Listen, Julienne is harmless. I mean, it’s not like
she’s your everyday girl, she’s a movie star for Christ’s
sake.”

“Oh, so that gives you the right to cheat on
your girlfriend, who happens to be a close friend of ours, and pork
her brains out?” Damen’s words were sarcastic, but well put.

“I promise, nothing will happen. If something
does happen, I’ll make sure that it happens for a short while.”
They noticed Jose’s voice showed sincerity; a kind of truth was
sunken into its slurs.

“Yeah, yeah, just make sure you come to the
motel before 3:00 p.m.,” said Damen. He didn’t even want to argue
with Jose. Damen knew he was pig headed, and wouldn’t listen to
anything he had to offer him that would be considered “good
advice.” So Damen pulled out a condom from his pocket and handed it
to him. “Here, take this.”

“Thank you, I’ll see you guys tomorrow.” Jose
then saw Julienne coming up to him, causing his best friends to
become invisible to his presence. She escorted him to her limo with
a champagne bottle in one hand and a glass in the other.

Damen and Darell were escorted out of the
club after Julienne and Jose left. The guard told them never to
come back there again, and also made sure to shout it out, in order
to embarrass them in front of the club. Even though they became
upset at the guards kicking them out, they were still happy to at
least have seen what the inside of the club looked like, and also
to stay in it for a while.

Beginning to walk down the Hollywood streets,
they suddenly entered onto a sidewalk that Damen always wanted to
see: the Walk of Fame. Both were standing there motionless, staring
at each golden star, their minds overwhelmed with pure wonder. It
was as if the both of them knew their names were going to be on the
Walk one of these days. They walked to the end of it, swaying their
eyes past the last star, and turned around to look at it once more,
gazing up and down the silhouettes of the stars in a stronger,
fixed motion. Damen said, “You know, one of these days my name is
going to be on this sidewalk. One of these days all of our names
will be on it. I can feel it.”

“Yeah, me too. But, whose name do you think
will be on it first?”

“Well, that’s up to fate and fate alone,”
answered Damen. He thought long and hard about what he just
answered, or said to Darell, and how he figured out that this
journey, this adventure was already made, and planned for them, and
the only thing that would differ at the end, was fate, each of
their own destinies. He stared at Darell heavily, remembering what
he just asked him, and the answer Damen gave, and sent out a small
smile toward him; a smile that had some meaning, no definition.

They both crossed the street, and headed
toward their motel in a very slow manner, a type of walk that meant
both of them had something important on their mind.

“I know, who you think will win an Academy
Award first?” Darell laughed out.

Damen turned toward him, as the pale
moonlight shimmered down on the silhouette of Darell’s head,
allowing Damen to see him, and face him with such a serious
question he just asked. To Darell, it was a humorous question, but
to Damen, it was a question that he always wanted to answer. He
stopped in his tracks, faced Darell with the Hollywood streetlights
sinking into his back, and allowed Darell to see a shadow of black
on his face. Darell saw that the silhouette of Damen’s head was
moving a little, as if some thought with great rhythm to it was
swimming through his mind, and just trying to find his vocal cords,
to break free and fly in whatever tone he chose at this moment.
“Well, Darell, I would have to say me, but who knows. Come on,
let’s get inside, I’m tired out for tonight. I know, ask me that
question when I’m awake, and not tired; that way I can answer it
better,” said Damen.

They both walked inside of the motel and left
behind their first night in Hollywood; it was a night to remember,
a night where their fate finally began.

Chapter Ten

Julienne and Jose reached her Beverly Hills
mansion after cruising around the Hollywood streets for an hour.
Passion, lust, some form of erotic feeling settled in Jose’s mind,
mixed with the leftover bubbly that swam high in his stomach,
allowed this young man to want one thing, and that thing was
sitting right next to him. Every man’s fantasy was staring him
right in the face; a rich, beautiful, successful woman, with all of
her parts real to his eyes. She was the prototype of temptation. Is
this real, he questioned in his mind, the question that temptation
didn’t want him to ask.

Temptation comes in many forms. Some say the
Devil is behind every form or manner of it, and this type of
temptation, Jose’s innocent mind felt that Satan was aboard it, but
the bubbly allowed his fragile soul to not see him, but only to see
this beautiful, heated woman, who wanted this young man that came
from the South. Jose knew she could make him a star, he knew he
could score tonight, and he knew and felt deep in his drunken mind
that his destiny would begin as soon as they stepped into her home.
Her perfect face, ravishing hair, and a body that only God could
chisel, she was beyond perfect to Jose; too perfect.

The limo drove beyond the steel fence of her
mansion, with J.W. engraved on each gate; the steel gave out a
bright shimmer, due to the car’s front lights. The gates were gray,
with little gargoyles on either side of it, holding swords, and
striking the air as if they were frozen in time, waiting to kill
one another for some apparent reason. The gates slowly opened, Jose
hearing them squeak as they scratched deeply into the earth, and
finally locking onto a metal frame, that was shaped to look like
fire, made out of iron, on the ground on each side of the fences.
The car slowly drove in, and grass, the greenest kind of nature,
flocked on the ground and lay on all ends of her front yard, as if
someone sewed each blade into place: it was perfect.

They drove about a half a block into the
front of her mansion, and while they drove, flowers on both sides
of the driveway got bigger, and changed colors as the car came
closer to her castle. At first, by the iron gates, the flowers were
red, perfectly formed, as if Mother Nature came there herself and
fed them, and every time the car drove farther, the flowers became
different colors. Red, blue, pink, green, and even black lined up
on each end of the driveway, like lights on an airport runway,
showing the airplane its path to take on. The limo finally stopped,
where the flowers were tall, sleek, and highly black, like someone
spray-painted them to be perfect to a human’s eye.

The chauffeur got out and opened Julienne’s
door of the limo, brushing against the heads of these black
beauties that grew from the ground, and reached out his old,
fragile pale hand to help her out of the mansion on wheels. She
popped out with Jose holding her by the waist and a champagne
bottle in her hand, dangling with her wrist, looking like it was
about to fall. They walked up the twenty stairs that led to her
front entrance. Each stair was a little taller than the next, and
by the time Jose reached the top, he discovered that the stair came
below his knee.

At first glance, Jose saw a monstrous home
that had windows on top of windows, shaped in circular forms, as if
the house had fifty thousand mouths that breathed in the smog of
the Hills. White awnings, white frames matched the color of the
mansion, but the only thing that was a different shade, was the
front door: it was black as coal.

Julienne turned on her outside lights in
order to find the key to open the seven-foot dark door. While she
looked, Jose turned around and looked down at the limo, seeing it
driving away and going into a structure that was the size of his
house back in Ridge Crest; it was Julienne’s garage. As soon as he
turned back around, this world of beauty changed to a world of
intriguing glamour; Julienne opened up her front door and revealed
her world, which she’d designed, and paid a high price to have.
They walked inside of the mansion, Jose’s mouth dropping with
amazement; it was like he was afraid of this beauty of a foyer,
only because he was so used to seeing lower-class things, that he
was afraid he would somehow break something, or even break this
tranquil scenery that he slowly stepped in to. He stared at the
chandelier that was hanging over his head. Okay what are you doing
here? You don’t belong here. Asking these questions over and over
again in his drunken mind caused a headache to occur. Just look,
but don’t touch, please don’t break anything, Jose, you could do
this. Sit down, that’s it, but where’s a chair? Oh, wow.

He was stopped in his thoughts by the sight
of the chandelier. The chandelier had five layers to it that
consisted of pure crystal with gold trim at the edges. It hung from
the top of the ceiling that stretched fourteen feet high. The
lights from the chandelier reflected off the marble floor, which
caused a bright glare on Jose’s face; shock took the place of his
panicking thoughts.

She told him to wait in the den, which
consisted of two fireplaces and pure leather furniture, while she
changed into something more comfortable, but Jose still wanted to
stare at her foyer; the beauty of it went beyond Jose’s imagination
of a mansion. Plus, he didn’t know if he could take anymore of this
rich world, this beauty that people only dream about. But, knowing
that this wasn’t his home, he obeyed her orders, like a slave boy
obeying his master.

Jose waited for ten minutes. He got up from
the leather coach, which he was lying so comfortably on, and went
into the foyer again. “What are you doing? This isn’t your house,”
he whispered with a drunken voice. But, this sight was too
attractive that he wanted to see if it got better, wanted to know
if this titanic sight can give him even larger shivers up his
spine. He looked beyond her luxurious chandelier and pointed his
eyes up at her ceiling. He nearly fell back, his eyes reaching past
the fifth floor, discovering a fresco painting engraved on her
ceiling. It was of God creating Adam. “Wow, I bet that cost more
than my town,” he slowly laughed out. Mr. Rodrigo was so captivated
by this world of hers that he became like a little boy, trotting
around in a museum: he just wanted to touch something.

Jose walked up the marble stairs in search of
a bathroom, knowing that he’d been holding his champagne in ever
since the club, the search then became a mission. Fixing his tired
eyes on the stairs, he noticed that the marble had little blue
flowers engraved in it, or on it, and also stared at the banister,
noticing that it was formed into little brown, wooden leaves; he
was highly—in an ironic fashion— shocked at this unique sight.

Every stair Jose walked up caused his bladder
to push more, and allowed his feet to get heavier but move faster
at the same time. His alcohol-filled body walked up to the second
floor, still staring at the fresco painting as it got closer to his
eyes, he managed to point his gaze on five hallways that were right
next to each other. It seemed like a maze, a funhouse that was
pretty, and perfectly formed to look like a mansion. The way the
hallways stood right next to each other, Jose was convinced that
this house, kingdom, this mansion of hers, had to have cost in the
high millions.

He chose one hallway, and finally found a
bathroom in his pursuit, at the same time seeing that this
monstrous corridor had track lighting all the way down its length,
with oil paintings that hung as if they were floating in space.
Jose walked into the bathroom, turned on the light and found a
miniature water fountain within it. “Man, this place gets better
and better.” After he was finished, he walked around the house in
search of more amazing things, lingering across a velvet rug,
imagining this was his home. That’s when Julienne caught him in his
nosy search.

She asked, “What are you doing?” Rubbing her
hands together, with some sort of oily substance in the grains, and
rivers of her skin, she awaited an answer. He paused exactly one
second, allowing Julienne to rub the oil faster, acting like she
was trying to create a fire through the friction.