The Brand

by M. N Providence

  Coach Speckman told his player not to lose her nerve. ‘Keep your cool. You got nothing to lose, and no points to prove. Play your game the way you started. Don’t get too excited when she comes back strongly. Attack her left side…she’s weak on her left hand…’

  Jansen took the advice to heart and regained the crowd’s support by taking the second set 6-3. In the final set, she was down 0-3 when Gary told her not to throw in the towel. ‘The match’s not over ’til the last ball’s been served. Shut out your fear. She’s just a human being. And you’re better than she is…’

  Jansen stepped back onto the court and leveled the set 3-3.

  Gary couldn’t hide his excitement, but it was ruled by an anxiety so intense it exhibited itself as nervousness. ‘That’s my girl…You’re playing good, Jan. The match is yours. That’s the thought you must stick to your head. Every last game is yours. Don’t give her a chance. She’s getting tired and slow. She’s old, and you’re fresh. Keep attacking that left side and force her to make errors…’

  Jansen went back to face her opponent. The crowd fell into a tense silence, sensing that they had reached the climax of the game. Jansen served three consecutive aces that almost brought her opponent to tears. She won the next two games and was leading 5-3 when she sealed victory on her opponent’s serve with a backhand crosscourt return. In a burst of emotion, Jansen dropped to the ground and yelled at the top of her voice at the heavens above. She regained her composure and went forward to the net to shake her opponent’s hand. Then she turned to face her coach.

  He was uncontrollably ecstatic. She ran up to him and threw her arms around him in a tight embrace. She shed tears of happiness. And he cried too. It was such an emotional moment the crowd fell silent until they let go of each other.

  Chapter 13

  AMERICA

  Aside from winning an Oscar and releasing a commercially successful album, 2012 was generally a bad year for Joelyn Smith. After collapsing at the Soul Train Awards and her subsequent admission to hospital, the Internet was rife with speculation that she had suffered from complications related to drug and alcohol abuse. Although not confirmed, certain quarters of society had it on good authority that doctors at a private hospital had flushed the offending drugs out of her system and restored the pH balance of her body cells before sending her home. Her publicist, a no-nonsense Black woman who did not mince her words, had been educated at the London School of Journalism and was new at her job after having quit from a similar post in a US House Representative’s staff, issued a public statement to the effect that while she appreciated that Ms. Smith was a public personality and therefore things would always be said about her – some correct but most untrue – she wanted to set the record straight on a few things:

  Ms. Smith was not a drug addict. She had fainted at the Soul Train Awards as a result of a strenuous work schedule that had left her dehydrated and with low levels of energy. The doctors attending to her had advised her to take things a bit slowly, and she was resting at home now, unable to perform some of her previously-scheduled duties.

  Ms. Smith was not a closet-lesbian. There was nothing wrong with gay people. In fact, Ms. Smith had several working on her staff. For purposes of clarity, however, Ms. Smith was not having a secret love affair with a female member of her staff, as alleged elsewhere.

  Ms. Smith had not been dropped by her record label, Ryze Entertainment. Certain issues pertaining to her contract had been disputed in a closed court session and she was eventually released under an amicable agreement with the label. She was now signed with Sony Music Entertainment.

  Ms. Smith had not been dropped by a major Hollywood studio as a lead actress in a movie to be released in the summer of 2013, because the truth of the matter was that Ms. Smith had not been involved with that particular project to start with. If the studio was interested in her being in the movie, they still had to contact her. As for the rumors that Ms. Smith was out of acting work, the simple truth was that Ms. Smith had finalized contract agreements to star in six movies to be released over the course of the next two years.

  Ms. Smith was not experiencing trouble coming up with an album as excellent as her debut album. She simply hadn’t had enough time on her busy schedule to devote to the production of her second offering, but she was taking this time of rest to find inspiration and write some material for the next album, whose release date could not be confirmed as yet due to her recent change of labels.

  After the recent events in her life, Joelyn Smith kept a very low profile. December came, with its various end-of-year parties. Joelyn declined all invitations and went to none. She remained in self-imposed exile inside her Malibu mansion, occasionally going out for a walk along the beach in the company of two bodyguards. Upon her release from hospital, Joelyn had made valiant efforts to stay clean, but she was unable to. She still drank enough alcohol to cause concern, and her addiction to drugs had reached the dependency stage. In her sober moments, Joelyn sincerely wanted to return to her normal self again. She wanted to be in control of her life, not ruled by the cravings of liquor and the white powder that had imprisoned her body. She wanted to be free, but did not know how.

  Her people, concerned at the downward spiral of their star, were having incessant closed-door meetings to discuss the way forward. They discreetly consulted a psychiatrist, who informed them that none of them would ever help “the subject” until she herself was ready to commit herself to a change of lifestyle. The psychiatrist charged them an astronomical fee for that piece of information.

  Meanwhile, Joelyn summoned her personal live-in hairstylist and instructed him to shave off all her hair. The man, blessed – or cursed – with a pathological affinity for women’s hair, was shocked beyond belief. He totally refused. He considered cutting such beautiful, lush, blonde hair of the finest quality a treacherous act of the first order that was unforgivable according to the laws of his book. Again, he refused and remained adamant that he would not commit such a sinful act.

  In a fit of rage, Joelyn locked herself inside her room, plugged in an electric shaving machine, sat down before a mirror and shaved all the hair off her head. When she emerged out of the room, she was bald, had showered and was dressed to go out. Her hairstylist actually broke down in a fit of uncontrollable cries.

  Joelyn hopped into her Aston Martin and drove herself around town, thinking that she was unrecognizable in her new hairless form. But she was spotted as she walked into the Gucci store on Rodeo Drive in Beverley Hills, and all of a sudden there were cries of delight and shock as a crowd formed around her. Everyone pulled out their phones and snapped away at the odd-looking celebrity, and in quick time pictures of a shaven Joelyn Smith were circulating on the Internet. Meanwhile, there was such a commotion outside the Gucci store – whose staff had wisely scurried a terrified Joelyn inside the store and closed its doors – that it alerted the police, who were forced to disperse the crowd and bring some semblance of order to the place.

  Inside the store, Joelyn calmly shopped around and spent an unmentionable amount of money on fragrances, jewelry, clothes and shoes. When she was through with her shopping, the police, for her security, were forced to bring her car to the front of the store. Only then did the six police officers, who had arrived in pairs in three separate cars, allow her out of the store and accompany her to her car. They loaded her grocery bags into her car and she drove away, accompanied by two police officers in a car that followed at a close distance behind hers.

  Joelyn’s shaving off of her head received widespread condemnation and also became the subject of jokes by comedians across the US. Some people even went further to say that this “sudden and unexpected” shaving of Joelyn Smith’s hair by none other than the star herself, indicated that she was highly mentally unbalanced. In America, there was so much obsessive attention to Joelyn’s hair that Americans – except perhaps those in Alaska, for reasons explained earlier, and Washington, who are rarely stirred up by anything else other than p
olitics – forgot that they had re-elected Obama to a second term of office and his agenda would affect all their lives in a more significant way than Joelyn Smith’s hair.

  December came to pass, and the worldwide fixation with Joelyn’s hair subsided. In the first week of the new year, Joelyn’s name was back on people’s lips, when it was announced, by the same publicist who had announced only a month previously that Ms. Smith was not addicted to drugs and/or alcohol, that the same Ms. Smith was going to a rehabilitation facility to be treated for a drug and alcohol addiction.

  ‘…Ms. Smith would like to convey to her family, friends, fans, the various companies whose brands she endorses, and the general public at large that she is deeply disappointed by her actions. She knows that many children look up to her as their role model, and she is sorry to parents all over America and the world for setting a bad example. She asks that you find it in your hearts to forgive her...To members of the media, we appreciate and recognize the importance of your presence in society, but we ask that you exercise restraint, and respect her privacy in this time of difficulty for Ms. Smith…To her fans, we ask for your compassion and prayers in this time of need…’

  Joelyn was absent from the press conference at the W Hotel in Los Angeles, but the conference, a big area with a holding capacity of 300, was packed to capacity with journalists, TV reporters, photographers and TV cameras. A flurry of hands went up in the air when Ms. Smith’s publicist opened the floor for questions, after telling the gathering of journalists that she was not here for glory, but just to illuminate the facts regarding Joelyn Smith’s impending stay at a rehabilitation center, and that she would answer questions pertaining to that subject – and that subject only.

  She picked a balding, middle-aged man with a big belly and ill-fitting clothes and the ugliest eye-glasses she had ever seen on a human being, to ask the first question. ‘How long is Joelyn Smith gonna stay at rehab?’

  ‘Four months.’

  2013: Mixed Fortunes

  Chapter 1

  SOUTH AFRICA

  The Group Chief Executive Officer of Vermuelen Holdings, Hudson Vermuelen, had inherited, apart from business acumen, one trait from his late father. He loved women; and now that he was divorced, it was something he was free to admit. He was currently in what he preferred to call a “spatial” relationship with a 28-year-old business lawyer who worked for Edward Nathan Sonnenbergs, one of the country’s leading law firms. They had met through their respective jobs. Their busy schedules gave them both an excuse to see each other occasionally, but they were both happy to maintain their love affair. They got along very well together, but they both knew that if they were to live together their relationship would come to an end, because they were both so alike that there would be no room for compromise. Like Hudson, Carlin was spoilt, success-driven and authoritative.

  Hudson had spent the holiday season in Durban, staying at the Umhlanga mansion he had been left by his father. There, he enjoyed the city’s beaches, the night life and the various delights offered to him by Durban’s top prostitutes. When he returned to Johannesburg to start the new year, he purchased an Audi A8 as a New Year’s present for himself. On the 4th of January, he drove the car to work at the company’s headquarters, a 10-story building on Maude Street in Sandton.

  He was 34-years-old. He controlled and partly owned a multi-billion dollar, multi-national business holding that had generated revenues of $2,25 billion in the previous year. His office at Vermuelen Towers was a sumptuous indicator of the position he held in the Vermuelen Group of Companies. It was a corner office, with loads of space and decorated in a modern style that Hudson had ordered after his father’s death. Hudson had painted the walls black, the ceiling red, and put high quality Italian tiles that were completely white on the floor. The result was a jarring look that caused all sorts of reactions from visitors to the CEO’s office. The office was managed by three women with the following job titles on their respective salary advice slips: Office Manager, Executive Personal Assistant, and Assistant to the Executive PA.

  The three of them collectively organized the boss’ business schedule. They were the first line of communication between his office and business associates, the public, and other offices within the company; they took care of the boss’ business and holiday trips; they arranged breakfast and lunch for the boss; and generally did various other chores required to keep the office and person of Hudson Vermuelen functioning smoothly. During his business trips, Hudson always traveled with any two of the three women.

  All three were in their twenties. They were all beautiful. One was a Colored from Cape Town, having grown up there, and then moving to Johannesburg to seek fame and fortune. The closest she had come to attaining that quest was working for one of the country’s leading businessmen, Hudson Vermuelen. The other two were White girls who had grown up in different suburbs of Johannesburg and each hoped to ensnare a rich man into marriage. There should be no illusion as to the fact that Hudson was sexually attracted to all these three young beautiful women, but his professionalism wouldn’t permit him to commit a scandal with any of them. In short, his body said Yes, but his mind told him No. So, he had learned to content himself with only fantasizing about their bodies.

  The 4th of January, 2013, was a Friday. The building housing the headquarters of Vermuelen Group of Companies (VGC) was completely deserted. The company’s employees would resume work in the New Year on Monday the 7th of January. Hudson was at his office to fetch some top-secret documents that were locked in a safe at his office. He opened the safe and pulled out a MacBook laptop. He pulled it out of the safe and went with it to his desk. He sat down and switched on the computer. He typed in his password and the machine sprang to life in a flash. Hudson transferred some documents from the MacBook to a USB flash drive that he would use on his home computer later that day.

  The MacBook held private and sensitive information regarding VGC’s mining unit’s impending partnership with a Canadian-listed firm which was interested in developing a mine in South Africa. The project would require an estimated initial capital investment of $443 million, and the mine would produce platinum, palladium, rhodium and gold. Talks between VGC’s mining unit and the Canadian mining firm were at an advanced stage, and a meeting between the two companies was scheduled for Monday the 7th of January at VGC headquarters. For business reasons, the venture was still a closely guarded secret, known only to senior members of the two companies’ executive management. The talks on Monday would also revolve around venturing into Zimbabwe, which held the world’s second-biggest platinum deposits after South Africa.

  Hudson was still busy on the MacBook when he was disturbed by a message received on his BlackBerry. He picked it up and noticed that it was from Samantha Ashford.

  Hi, have you heard the news about Joelyn? We need to meet…There’s something we have to discuss.

  Hudson quickly left his desk and went into the adjoining office of his Executive PA. The MacBook was never connected to the Internet, to protect it from viruses and malware. The USB flash drives he plugged into it were formatted first and eliminated of all risk factors before being used on the MacBook. He switched on his PA’s desk computer, typed in his password and accessed the Internet. He read from the US Today website that Joelyn Smith, his ex-wife, had been admitted to a rehab center to be treated for drug and alcohol addiction for four months…

  He called Samantha.

  She answered on the first ring. ‘Hudson, where are you?’

  ‘I’m at the office in Sandton. I just read about Joelyn. You said there’s something you’d like to discuss—.’

  ‘Not over the phone. I’m at my place. Can you come over?’

  ‘Sure. Gimme twenty minutes.’

  He made it in thirty-two. When he arrived, she was sitting in the living room, having a glass of fruit juice. She opened the door for him and led him back to the living room. There was a slight drizzle outside, and the top of his head was wet with water
droplets. She offered him a drink and he asked for a glass of what she was drinking. She was dressed in khaki shorts that clung to her hips and ended halfway along her thighs, flip-flops, and a yellow body-hugging sleeveless top. She was the same height as Joelyn; average. She was neither slim nor fat, just in between. She was a good-looking woman, with lovely green eyes, a pretty face and an even prettier smile. She turned around and he noticed how her ass filled every space of her shorts. He felt himself stir inside his pants.

  There existed between Hudson and Samantha that awkward attraction that sometimes occurs between a lover’s best friend and the best friend’s lover. It had existed while Hudson and Joelyn were still married, and they had both been aware of it. It still existed now; their respective body language proved it. Samantha handed him the glass. He took a sip and stared at her. She smiled nervously and looked down. Then she brought her eyes back to his face.

  He smiled at her. ‘Sam…I…’ he stammered and his voice trailed off.

  She came to his rescue. ‘Can we sit?’

  They sat down next to each other.