The Brand (6 page)

Her body became very still and she fell very
quiet, staring down at Woodyard with unmoving eyes and a foolish
expression on her face. He pulled her down to lie flat on his bare
chest. Gently, he stroked her back and fleshy buttocks. While she
was of average height, she had a perfectly trim body – obviously a
woman who took great care in her appearances. From the moment she
had stepped into the audition room, swaying her hips with the
slightest hint of provocation, Chris had known that he wanted to be
inside her and show her who was boss, and when she had looked at
him with those blue eyes and challenged him with the proclamation
that she had an amazing pair of breasts he had known that his wish
was granted.

She sighed contentedly and moved her legs. He
slipped out of her. She slid off him and lay beside him, stroking
his hairy chest. ‘Did I pass?’ she asked in her normal voice,
quickly recovered from the maddening effects of her orgasm.

‘Yes. You fuck like a maniac. Your ex was a
fool to let you go.’

Joelyn had been referring to the audition,
not the examination of her sexual prowess. Men could be so
one-track-minded sometimes! ‘I don’t think there was actually any
deep love between me and him; at least not in the way of lifelong
partners. He married me to fill a void within himself, and
couldn’t. I married him for his money, to be frank, but with time I
learned to love and respect him. Not once during our marriage did I
ever cheat on him.’

Woodyard, who had no kindly inclination
towards marriage, fully intending to be young and a bachelor
forever, fell into a telling silence.

Sensing his discomfort with intelligent
perspicacity, Joelyn quickly delved into safer territory. ‘Did I
get the role?’

‘Yes and no,’ Chris answered cryptically. He
explained. ‘You got a part in the movie but it’s not the part you
auditioned for. Andrea didn’t want you in the movie.’ Andrea was
the plump woman. ‘So, we reached a compromise. She wanted to give
you an insignificant role and I pressed for a part with more
lines.’

‘Thank you,’ said Joelyn modestly, grateful
to be part of a project involving Chris Woodyard. She focused her
eyes on him. ‘How did you ever convince the fat bitch to allow me
into the picture?’

‘I threatened to walk out of the film, and it
worked.’

‘You’re heartless,’ Joelyn laughed in
amusement. She threw her legs over his thighs and caressed his
genitals with her hand. ‘I guess I should repay you properly for
your generosity.’

‘No. This is not part of a work arrangement.
This is two consenting adults having a good time together. When it
comes to making the film, we shall be professionals, and I want you
to repay me for casting you in the movie by doing an excellent job.
I cast you in that role specifically for a purpose. You see, baby,
you have an un-American accent. I will require you to make the most
of it in the project. We want to give audiences something a little
different by Chris Woodyard.’

While California is by all manner of
reasoning and logical deduction a part of the United States of
America, Los Angeles has a tendency to function in abnormal ways.
There is within the city a pervasive obsession with celebrity
culture that borders on the abnormal. When it was confirmed by Brad
Pitt and Jennifer Aniston’s respective publicists in January of
2005 that the two actors couldn’t continue as married partners, Los
Angeles came to a standstill. There was a raging war in Iraq, where
American were dying in alarming numbers at an increasingly alarming
rate, but Los Angeles was deeply worried that two of Hollywood’s
then-biggest stars were divorcing. There are people who believe
that 99% of LA’s residents either wish to, or have at some point in
their lives been, involved in one way or the other with the
entertainment industry. If there is any veracity to that claim,
then it more than adequately explains the LA state of mind.

In January 2011 a 22-year-old man walked up
to a group of people gathered in the parking lot outside a
supermarket and shot a US member of Congress in the head. He went
on to shoot eighteen other people. In total, he shot nineteen
people, killing six of them, before being overpowered by bystanders
and victims. It was a story that gripped the American nation,
except perhaps the people of Alaska, who because of their cold
climate are rarely stirred up by anything; the people of Hawaii,
who at most times do not consider themselves American; and the
people of Hollywood, who think life is a movie and refuse to
believe anything that resembles the truth.

Also, in January of 2011, when Jansen
Vermuelen participated in the Australian Open and crashed out with
a torn thigh ligament in the third round of the tournament, Los
Angeles did not care who she was or what she had done. However,
when she appeared as the face of Maybelline’s new ad campaign, some
sections of American society took notice and started whispering her
name. Soon afterwards, Jansen performed her part in solidifying her
prospects at being a household name in America by becoming
romantically linked to Byron Taylor, one of Hollywood’s foremost
leading men of current times. More correctly, it should be stated
that Mr. Taylor had used his celebrity clout to seek out and
proposition the impressionable young lady, who was swayed by his
charms and had welcomed him to her bosom and completely overlooked
the fact that he was fifteen years her senior.

Tommy Mandell was promptly dropped and
relegated to the memory banks of past conquests. This union had,
for Miss Vermuelen, the effect of making her widely popular in
America and the rest of the world. She was a rising sports star and
an exotic import. America loved her. For Mr. Taylor, for whom
everything was a strategized act of strengthening his public image,
it had the desired effect of fortifying his persona as a successful
actor who had bedded a wide variety of young, talented and
beautiful women. Having lost his virginity at the age of thirteen,
Byron Taylor had twenty-one years of experience in sexual
intercourse with women. In Jansen Vermuelen, he found a fresh,
young, raw thing with inexhaustible bundles of energy, eager to
learn. He introduced her to his vast knowledge, administered his
practiced skill and applied his wide-ranging expertise on her until
she yearned for more. He taught her how to give, and trained her
how to be given. When he was done, he lay back and enjoyed the
fruits of his labor.

In New York, Miss Vermuelen had not
decided where exactly she wanted to settle, so she contented
herself with staying in a suite at the Four Seasons Hotel. Whenever
she could break away from the hectic WTA schedule, she and Byron
Taylor could be photographed by eager paparazzi in the most
beautiful places of the world…shopping on Fifth Avenue in the Big
Apple…at the Trevi Fountain in Rome…the
Arc de Triomphe
in Paris…on a yacht in
Monaco…surfing in Hawaii…with elephants and lions at Zimbali Lodge
in South Africa…at the entrance of The One & Only Hotel in Cape
Town…

Although it was barely five months since she
had moved to America, by the time Jansen Vermuelen flew to France
to take part in the French Open tennis tournament, she had people
managing her life, some of whose names she did not even know, but
all of who were paid from her increasing fortune, money which
mostly came from endorsement deals because Miss Vermuelen had
earned no prize money from the professional tennis circuit since
winning the US Open of the previous year.

Miss Vermuelen travelled to Paris, France,
alone. Her current boyfriend was currently preoccupied with the
rigorous demands of shooting a spy movie in the Netherlands, the
European country that is sometimes also referred to as Holland, but
he did manage to get a break from the shooting schedule and fly
over to Paris to watch and support Jansen as she played in her
2
^nd
round match against a
determined Russian opponent. The officials at Roland Garros almost
fell over themselves to please this special guest at their clay
courts, and he was treated with the honor and reverence fit for
royalty, even though this pampering should’ve been exclusively and
solely directed to the Prince of Monaco, who was attending the
match at the behest of his South African-born wife.

While her lover was enjoying the simple
perks of being a Hollywood star, the rising tennis star was facing
one of the toughest and most determined opponents of her short
career. The evening papers in America would report
late
r that day that
after being on the verge of a seemingly painful exit, № 4 seed,
Jansen Vermuelen made a remarkable recovery to beat Sandra
Navratilova 6-7(6), 6-0 and 6-4 to advance to the third round of
the French Open. Vermuelen, choking back tears of pain, needed to
leave the court for a medical timeout at the end of the tie-breaker
after having twisted sharply for a swinging backhand volley on the
final point and appearing by all visible signs to have injured
either her stomach or groin. She returned for the second set with
her right thigh heavily strapped in bandages and dominated over
Navratilova. The two battled it for the third and final set, with
Navratilova striking 3 aces that whizzed past a helpless Vermuelen,
but Vermuelen fought with steely determination to triumph in the
third set and win the match.

By virtue of his celebrity status and his
ability to turn any film project into a commercial success, Byron
Taylor was honored on the film set with the biggest trailer. He was
also being paid $20 million to appear in the film, and not
surprisingly, considering that she was virtually unknown for her
acting skills, Joelyn Smith would be paid just a tiny fraction -
$500,000, to be precise – of her co-star’s asking fee, and she had
to content herself with one of the minimalistic trailers on the
film set. She swallowed her pride and took it all in her stride,
because she knew that all great people
must
start somewhere undignified.

However, her “trailer situation”, as she
thought of it privately, improved in a conventional and
not-entirely-unexpected method. As time progressed, workers on the
film set realized to their amusement that Ms. Smith was spending
very little time at her trailer and spending most of her time when
not in the shoot at Byron Taylor’s trailer. Speculation was rife on
the film set that these two were not helping each other memorize
their respective script lines but engaged in a secret romance. It
got to a point where the rumors reached director of the film, Chris
Woodyard. Upon hearing the news, Woodyard was elated, and because
he realized the potential benefits this romance might have for the
film’s pre-release publicity, he came to congratulate the
couple.

‘Guys, this is very good news for the film.
There’s nothing the public loves like a real off-screen romance
between co-stars. It’s good publicity! Let’s get word out in the
tabloids and follow it up with confirmations from both of you on
Twitter. By the time the film’s released, everyone will want to see
the two of you together on screen.’

Both Byron and Joelyn begged him not to
publicize their affair. Naturally, they each had differing reasons
why they didn’t want the affair spilling into the public domain.
Joelyn feared the catastrophic consequences that might arise if it
was found out that she had “stolen” her ex-sister-in-law’s lover.
Even Byron himself was not aware of Joelyn’s relation to Jansen,
because she had wisely kept that part of her life hidden from him.
On the day that they had first slept together, she had said to
Byron, ‘I was once involved with Chris…nothing major, just a
once-off thing, and it was months ago, but I don’t want him to find
out about us.’

‘What do you care if he finds out?’

‘I don’t want the three of us to have an
awkward tension between us. The shooting must go on smoothly. And
frankly, I don’t want Chris to think I’m a whore. It matters to me
that he doesn’t.’

‘Are you one?’ Byron taunted.

‘I sleep with whomever I have decided to,
just like you do. If that makes me a whore, then you’re one too.
The rules shouldn’t change just because I’m a woman.’

Their conversation, bordering on dangerously
volatile territory, had ended there, and they had made love.

Now, as they lay in each other’s arms, after
Byron’s return from Paris, he said seriously, ‘I’m worried about
her.’

‘I’m sorry to hurt your feelings, but I find
that hard to believe,’ Joelyn said truthfully. ‘Since when do you
get emotionally attached to pussy? I thought you said you get in,
hit it hard and enjoy the sweetness while it lasts and get out
before things become complicated.’

Like most people with an aversion for
commitment in a relationship, Byron Taylor had hopped from one bed
to the next in a series of relationships that had left him
emotionally detached. But as it always happens to even the most
skilled players in the game, there comes a time when the champion
player comes across someone who gives a whole new meaning to their
life, and all of a sudden the player doesn’t know how to handle the
situation because the rules of the game have been unexpectedly
altered. Byron Taylor found himself emotionally drawn to Jansen
Vermuelen, and he cared about her more than he cared to admit, but
he had already sacrificed a lot of things in the past for his
public image, including love.

‘I’m not joking,’ he reprimanded softly. ‘I
held her in my arms at the hotel room after the match; she couldn’t
stop crying, both from the relief of winning the match and from the
pain at her ribs and pelvis bone.’