The Brand

by M. N Providence

  During that short analysis, she had admitted to herself that she could not continue to ignore the blatant honesty that she and Anthony Ryzor were a mismatched couple. For one, Anthony was an unrestrained disciple of human reproduction, whereas Joelyn tolerated children as long as they belonged to someone else. Her resolution was made without remorse but with a reasonable mind. And it was delivered to Anthony Ryzor with such cold ruthlessness he gasped with shock when it fully hit him that she had slipped out of his hands.

  A group of eight tough-looking bodyguards in dark suits and dark sunglasses surrounded and protected him from the menacing media people as if he was a political figure of note as he left the police station and went to the waiting car. He sat at the back seat of the bullet-proof Mercedes Benz S-Guard and was extremely quiet until it reached the magnificently-built mansion at The Hamptons. His fiancée was there, waiting for him. He was thoroughly relieved to see her. A warm, tender feeling engulfed him and he wept as he hugged her strongly. But after a short while she pulled out of his arms and took a step back.

  ‘Get a grip on yourself, Tony. This thing between us will never work. You know it and I know it too. I’m sorry, but I can’t marry you.’

  2012: DISASTER

  Chapter 1

  AMERICA

  The New Year did not start on a good note for Joelyn Smith, ex-Vermuelen, née Smit.

  While the Hollywood party scene exploded to full mode on New Year’s Eve, Joelyn spent the night in the quiet of her Malibu home and would not be enticed outside. She had recently learned, by method of a home kit, that she was pregnant. The home pregnancy testing kit had been bought two days prior to New Year’s Eve by one of her personal assistants, to avoid public speculation if Joelyn did the purchase herself. For two months now, her period had not come. It was the first time such an odd occurrence affected her body. The home pregnancy kit had showed positive results for pregnancy, sending Joelyn into stunned silence and a subsequent depression. There was no doubt in her mind that Anthony Ryzor was responsible for her present condition, but there was a considerable amount of doubt on her part about what she would do about the pregnancy.

  On the one hand, Joelyn was not prepared to have a baby at this time of her life. She was twenty-seven, her film career was soaring, her music career was successful, she had endorsement deals to honor, and she had a fashion line on the pipeline to be released soon that depended on her public image as a single girl for its success. In short, Brand Jo S, as she was affectionately known by her multitude of fans, was presently hot property and she wanted to grow the intensity of that fire to more strength. A baby right now would put a stop to those plans. Indeed, she was afraid that a baby at this time of her life would kill her career in its tracks. On the other hand, Joelyn’s feminine side thought it would be lovely to have a baby of her own creation, her own flesh and blood she would nurture and watch growing up. Indeed, Joelyn Smith was caught between a rock and hard place.

  By the end of January 2012, Joelyn was in a clinically unstable state of mind. She had no appetite, she was finding it hard to sleep without the aid of sleeping pills, and was as a consequence in a severely bad mood. Unable to fully trust her staff with the handling of her present “situation”, Joelyn drove herself in her brand new Aston Martin convertible, a Christmas present she had bought for herself, to the Hollywood home of her agent, Rebecca Lindland. Rebecca lived in exquisite opulence because of the high fees she charged her clients. Her clients never complained because Rebecca was exceptionally good at what she did, and occasionally went beyond the call of duty to preserve the dignity of her valued clients. A damaged and broken actor would quickly become jobless, and a jobless actor was worth nothing in her books, so Rebecca tried all she could to keep her clients out of trouble if they so required.

  On the 5th of January, feeling guilty about her decision to resolve her current crisis by terminating her pregnancy, and not informing Raizer T about it, but strengthened to solid courage by two glasses of Johnnie Walker Green Label whisky, Joelyn smith was picked up from her Malibu beachfront property by a long, black Mercedes Benz S500 with dark windows to conceal its occupants. It took her to a private clinic in Burbank, California, owned by one Dr. Rajesh Amla, a renowned gynecologist who had been educated at a top medical school in India and had become a millionaire by offering his services to wealthy Californians.

  Dr. Amla’s staff were all bound by a code of secrecy that made it libelous for them to divulge the goings-on at the clinic to anyone, even their most intimate sexual partners, so Joelyn’s secret was safe with the clinic. Dr. Amla performed some tests on her and confirmed to her that her pregnancy was two months old. Joelyn sighed and told the good doctor to remove the offending fetus from her womb.

  Chapter 2

  AMERICA

  The most fascinating fact about Jansen Vermuelen’s current life was that she had gone through the previous year without winning a Grand Slam or a major WTA tournament, yet she was recognized in America and the rest of the world as “tennis star Jansen Vermuelen”. Now 21, she was a brand ambassador for Peugeot, courtesy of a deal organized and finalized for her by her sports agent. She currently drove herself around New York in a Peugeot 308CC, a white convertible coupé with an attractive body, that the automaker had given to her for free. After her appearances in a network TV sitcom, her popularity in America had soared to such levels that she made it to the top ten of Forbes magazine’s 100 Most Influential People of 2011.

  Jansen also had a manager, and he saw to it that she was invited to a 2011 Christmas party that showcased America’s foremost young talent under-25, picked from various fields such as sports, music, film, TV, gymnastics and so forth. At the party, Jansen had attracted the eye of a smooth-talking boy of 19, who had the world’s teenagers and tweens eating out of his hands with his songs and dance moves. Jansen and the boy excited the American media with their fling that ensued after Christmas but was over before the New Year came.

  When 2012 came, the people managing Jansen Vermuelen’s life and those benefitting from her existence in the world engineered for her to host a reality TV programme that was aired on ESPN. The programme grouped together thirty men and women competing for a major prize of $500,000 by playing tennis. Each week, a member of the group of thirty men and women was eliminated from the competition using ways devised specifically for purposes of the show. Each week, a renowned professional tennis player from the past or modern game was featured on the programme mentoring the competitors. Regardless of the fact that Jansen had won only the US Open in 2010 to justify her presence as the host of a reality TV tennis programme, and that she was still relatively inexperienced to be in that programme anyway, the show received high ratings and catapulted Jansen Vermuelen to higher levels of stardom. Naturally, her presence on the show had nothing to do with her experience or inexperience. It was because of two basic factors: she was beautiful, and she was a growing brand.

  At the end of January of the New Year, when the show was still in its initial stages, Jansen Vermuelen signed an endorsement deal with Maybelline, New York, to be the face of the cosmetics giant’s beauty products. Around that time, she appeared in a popular rock band’s music video that was receiving widespread circulation across music channels and YouTube. Owing to the contract held with Nike, she was also appearing on billboards across the US, appearing in magazines and TV commercials promoting the sportswear giant’s products.

  The people of America and elsewhere loved Jansen Vermuelen for her clean public image, her self-discipline and her sedate lifestyle. Overall, parents thought she was a good role model for teenage children; teenage girls wanted to be beautiful and talented as she was, and teenage boys and young men had pictures of her on their bedroom walls, in their phones and on their computer screens. The media, unsatisfied with the scandal-free lifestyle of this public personality, wanted things of a salacious nature to connect with Jansen’s name and therefore benefit strongly by mentioning her name in their publications.
Jansen Vermuelen was currently hot property in the entertainment industry, and anyone with a business degree understood that. Businesses, large and small, understood that there was a lot of money to be made from using Jansen Vermuelen’s name, and they wanted to make the most of it before she expired into has-been territory, as most famous people are wont to do at one stage or another in their fickle lives.

  Because Jansen Vermuelen was a brand, and therefore a business that made money for a lot of people, she was a walking, talking, breathing company. And as all successful companies have people running them, Jansen’s handlers included lawyers, agents, managers, accountants, publicists and personal assistants, all of them collectively termed in some quarters of society as her “people”.

  Realizing the strong connection Jansen had with the public, especially with the younger generation, her people again brought up the subject of Jansen singing pop songs, to which she again flatly refused, reinforcing her earlier assertion that she was not a good singer, and would never fool the world into believing that she was one. In an interview with the South African edition of FHM men’s magazine, in whose pages she appeared in tasteful but sizzling pictures and whose cover she graced, she expressed her disgruntlement at people who had misconceptions about her job – though, to be strictly honest, Miss Vermuelen nowadays earned money from plenty of varied channels it was difficult to define exactly what she did for a living – and believed that she was a magician who couldn’t fail at anything. She affirmed her earlier assertion, uttered in private, that although every other celebrity had delved into music, her passion for music only stretched as far as listening to songs made by others. She would never make a music recording, and that was the end of that particular discussion. Thank you.

  Meanwhile, the media, perhaps out of jealousy or just plain malice, continued trying to connect Jansen Vermuelen with scandal. Consequently, there developed within the public fold intensifying speculation about Jansen Vermuelen’s private life. Considering her youth, Jansen was remarkably mature at handling this intense public interest in her life. Of course, people have to be forgiven, and designated as mentally unstable to be interested in what you eat, who you sleep with, how you handle yourself in the toilet, when you lost our virginity…etc. Still, the tabloids persisted with their obsession over Miss Vermuelen’s life.

  Meanwhile, they did not know that for three months now, Jansen had been privately pursued by the playboy son of a wealthy Saudi prince. The prince’s son was forty-two, looked thirty-two, was undeniably handsome, and had been educated in the fundamentals of business at Harvard University in Boston, Massachusetts. He spoke English like a native New Yorker, and he had various business interests in America, England and South Africa. Added to that, he was also widely known to have bedded some of the world’s most beautiful and famous women. His last quest had been America’s newest sex symbol, Joelyn Smith, but she had politely refused his offer of a romantic liaison. After several attempts and plenty of rejections, the prince’s son had stopped pursuing Ms. Smith and promptly turned his attentions to America’s fresh-faced darling with an untainted public image, the variously talented young thing known as Jansen Vermuelen, born in South Africa twenty-one years previously but calling America home since the age of nineteen.

  Vindictive by nature, the prince’s son had utilized his inexhaustible financial resources to do a thorough research on his latest quest. He was fully aware of the severed family ties between Jansen Vermuelen and Joelyn Smith, and their private fall-out over their mutual connection to Byron Taylor. To prove a point – stupid as it was – to Joelyn Smith, he relentlessly pursued Jansen Vermuelen for over three months, sending her expensive gifts and using his wealth to appear at parties she went to. The Saudi playboy’s dedicated mission hit two major snags: the first was that a beautiful, famous young woman like Jansen is courted by virtually every man she meets, from photographers to politicians to Hollywood stars to male models to Wall Street tycoons, the list is endless; secondly, it is particularly difficult to impress a wealthy woman with expensive gifts, the reason being that she has an over-abundance of money to buy those gifts herself if she wants them. To win her charms, her hunter must be strictly original and thoroughly imaginative in his approach. The prince’s son’s education at the world’s best schools had taught him to be methodical, and his father’s guidance had taught him patience. These qualities helped him secure a dinner date with the elusive Miss Vermuelen sometime in the middle of February. That dinner was the beginning of bigger things to come between them

  Chapter 3

  AMERICA

  Joelyn Smith, ex-Vermuelen, née Smit, had arrived at the pinnacle of success. Acting jobs were coming to her from all directions. She was at liberty to select those she wanted and reject those she deemed as rubbish. She was being paid large sums of money to lend her voice to other music artists’ music. She was also nominated in five categories for the Motion Picture Academy Awards of that year for her performance in the Chris Woodyard-directed film.

  Knowing that money is power, Raizer T had swallowed his pride and honored the requirements of the contract held between his Ryze Entertainment and one Joelyn Smith. The record label released her debut album, Jo S – The Introduction, to a worldwide audience in the last week of January. The album sold a respectable 200,000 units in its first week of release and peaked at № 1 on the Billboard Pop Album chart. Two singles off the album had reached the number one spot on the Billboard Singles chart too.

  The first part of the year was generally a good time for Joelyn Smith. She was a rare commodity in the sense that she had a successful film career running parallel with a successful music career – and she was fully aware of it. Endorsement deals came in abundance from the world’s biggest brands. A fashion house entered into a business partnership with her and created her women’s fashion line, Jo S. Jo S merchandise included underwear, sunglasses, jeans, shirts, sneakers, sweat pants and sweatshirts, shoes, handbags and other accessories. Not to be left out, L’Oréal, the French cosmetics giant, paid her millions to be its newest face on its beauty products. Both the Coca Cola Company and Pepsi-Co entered into a bidding war for Joelyn’s services, until her people decided to go with Pepsi and thus she featured worldwide in adverts for the company’s sugar-free drink.

  Certainly, Joelyn was now an established brand with a claim to a large section of the world’s market. Naturally, she was increasingly surrounded by people dedicated to maintaining the life of Brand Joelyn and growing it to more strength. Joelyn could have sat back and enjoyed a moment of relaxation, but she charged forward, determined to conquer higher achievements than those she had already attained. Somewhere along the line, politeness and humility disappeared from the constitution of her character. Her volatile temper and arrogance surfaced. The people around her tolerated her abuse and risked permanent psychological damage only because they benefitted handsomely for being under the employ of Joelyn Smith, Hollywood star and music superstar.

  Success had come rapidly to Joelyn, and it had quickly eroded her respect for other people. She carried herself like she owned the world, and to an extent she did, because she had fans who would die for her. The bitter side of success was that she was under such severe microscopic scrutiny that it was difficult for her to have a casual fling with a man and leave it at that. The people around her understood that her mood swings were attributable to sexual deprivation, for, all these successful women, the high flyers who walk around as if they are infallible, at night they go to sleep cold and alone with no one to hold them because they’ve alienated all potential suitors. Her people, without her knowledge, devised a secret ploy to find a man for her, but she beat them to it by finding him by herself.

  At a party to celebrate the release of her debut album, organized by Ryze Entertainment at the end of January in New York, Joelyn Smith met with Jason Kane, a player for the New York-based Yankees baseball team. He was a tall, very dark African American with a big body made of nothing but muscle. He was
the most handsome Black man she had ever seen, though he had the sort of eyes that said he had been around the block a few times and seen all of the good, the bad and the ugly – in no particular order. For Joelyn, it was love at first sight. For Jason, it was an irresistible temptation. She was beautiful, she was White, and she had a round ass like a Black girl. She was also filthy rich, which eliminated the gold-digging factor.

  The chemical reactions in Joelyn’s body keeled over when he made love to her. He was big, in every sense of the word. His head was big, his arms, his chest, his hands, his thighs, his feet, his buttocks, all were rippling with muscle, including the appendage between his legs. It was such a delicious source of pleasure she found herself becoming moist when, days after their first sexual encounter, she thought about it and what it had done to her body. Jason Kane was tall, big and strong. He made love to her like no man she had ever known. He had the ability to use his mouth and hands on her vital organs and make her orgasm even before he entered any of the penetrable orifices of her body.

  Jason Kane…His cock…Hm.

  She dreamt about him and fell deeper in love with the very essence of the man. The Jason Kane cock…She termed it “JK” and fell very much in love with it. It was a monster of a thing, a thick tube of black flesh, bigger than any penis she had ever made contact with, and presently lashing about fiercely and hungrily at his crotch. She took it in her mouth and enjoyed it as she would a deliciously succulent banana…He dug his hands into her underarms and lifted her high up into the air. She encircled her legs around his torso as he lowered her down to his majestic penis. He entered inside her flooding vagina and filled it with his massive hose. She erupted in a rapture of delight and bit hard at his neck.