On that fifth day, the sixth night since she
had last seen him, Joelyn stepped out of her depression and went
out to nightclub, a different venue this time, to have some fun.
Fate had it that she would bump into Andy Last-Name-Unknown at that
particular nightclub. He smiled happily when he recognized her. But
he was with another woman at his arm, an attractive blonde with
heavy breasts and too much make-up on her face, so Joelyn’s spirits
took a nosedive.
‘Hey, Joe,’ he said cheerfully, and Joelyn
was really astounded that he actually remembered her name. ‘This is
Melissa. She’s got a fabulous house in Bel Air…and oh! She’s bought
me a Porsche like yours.’
Joelyn clapped him. Very hard. On the left
cheek. ‘All those things…’ Joelyn fumed, her anger choking back the
words. ‘You made me breakfast…the sex…we had a wonderful time
together. And it meant
nothing
to you?’ she hissed, her face red with color.
Clutching his burning cheek in his left hand,
Andy stared incredulously at her. ‘Don’t get sentimental on me,
crazy bitch! Hey!’ He yelled to the dancing crowd. ‘Someone call
911! And tell the police this bitch’s harassing me.’ He returned
his eyes back to Joelyn’s face. ‘I swear I’ll lay a charge against
you.’
The big-chested woman came in between them
and pulled Andy away. ‘Come one, baby, she’s not worth your time.
Let’s go dance.’
They disappeared into the thick crowd inside
the loud dancing hall, leaving Joelyn in tears. She quickly made
her way through the crowd and found her way out of the club.
Outside, she flagged down a cab that took her home. Crying like a
baby, she drank herself senseless until she collapsed inside her
living room. In the morning, she decided she was going to have to
make some friends. One needed a loyal ear at times like this. She
made a long-distance phone call to her friend in South Africa,
Samantha, and for more than an hour Joelyn recited the story of her
disappointment to her best friend.
Welcome to Los Angeles, baby.
Cupid was treating Jansen Vermuelen better.
She had found love at the Australian Open. His name was Thomas
Mandell, a twenty-two-year-old originally from Las Vegas, but who
now lived in New York City and had dreams of becoming the next big
US tennis star since Andre Agassi. For the simple reason that
Agassi originated from Las Vegas, Tommy worshipped the man’s
achievements. Tommy carried around a tennis ball that the legend
had signed for him while Tommy had been a ball-boy at the age of
twelve during a match in Los Angeles in which Agassi had defeated
Sampras to set the record straight on who was the greater between
the two of them.
While Tommy was by no means Jansen’s first
boyfriend, he was, however, fun to be with and a good companion in
bed, though this last claim could be disputed on the grounds that
Jansen had not had that many sexual partners to be an authority on
the subject. They were suited to each other, the common ground
being tennis, naturally, and provided entertainment for their
legions of fans, who couldn’t stop chatting about them on
Facebook.
In January of 2011, Jansen did not win the
Australian Open, but she reached the finals of the tournament. Soon
afterwards, she was contacted by Nike, the US sportswear giant, for
an endorsement deal that would net Jansen $60 million over five
years.
Speckman rejected the offer forthrightly.
‘It’s too early in your career for the corporate guys to corrupt
you. You need to win tournaments…win all four Grand Slam titles
and
then
perhaps you
can be bought. Not yet, Sunshine. Not just yet. You need to
prove
why you should be bought, not
bought to prove your worth.’
‘Maybe they recognize talent,’ Jansen argued
pointedly.
‘Doesn’t matter. They’ll corrupt your mind
and erode your abilities to focus on the game. With money like
that, they’ll want to make you a star, but the pressure to win’ll
kill you, because what’s a star without winning games?’ He went on
before she could answer. ‘You don’t need their money. You’re
already rich, for heaven’s sake!’
‘Are you jealous of me because I’m a far much
better player than you ever were?’ Jansen shot back acidly.
Speckman fell silent and looked away from the
eyes of his young protégé. He sighed resignedly and sat down.
She saw by the prominent veins at his temples
that he was controlling his temper. ‘I’m sorry, Gary. I can be a
bitch sometimes.’
Speckman sighed again. ‘It’s okay, Sunshine.
You’re right. I can’t expect to train you and run your life at the
same time. You’re above eighteen. It’s your decision to make. And I
really should be congratulating you, because you’ve made it. They
want to make a brand out of you, and that’s an achievement to be
proud of. And as someone who was there when it happened, I am happy
for you. And I’d like to say it’s been a rewarding experience to
see you grow from a kid who couldn’t hold the racket properly and
went on to become a star. I—.’
‘Are you quitting on me, Gary?’ she
interjected, her eyes worried.
‘You decide,’ he said softly.
‘I want you as my trainer,’ she said
plaintively. ‘I can’t work with anybody else.’
‘Here’s the deal,’ Gary said seriously. ‘If
I’m in, I want it to be clear that my job is to train you. And I
will train you to win games. I cannot handle the other side of
things…the sponsors, the publicity stunts and all ’at shit…I don’t
want to be a part of it. And lastly, I cannot control your private
life.’
‘It’s clear,’ Jansen said.
‘I should warn you, Sunshine. When you sign
your name on the dotted line on that Nike deal every other sponsor
will come hard and fast at you and with them will be vultures
swooping in for every piece of you. You’re going to need a
professional agent to deal with the sponsors and someone to manage
your finances. History has taught us at least one basic rule about
the American psyche.’
Jansen stared back at her trainer with a
blank expression.
‘America likes to build these
larger-than-life characters and then takes pleasure in watching
them destroying themselves.’
Besides the money, the only other part of the
Vermuelen legacy that Joelyn had obtained from the dissolution of
her marriage with Hudson Vermuelen was a plaque that had always
hung on one of the walls in Ugly Joe’s office. It was gold-framed
and always shined to an immaculate luster by the cleaning ladies.
Hudson had been happy to give it away to her ex-wife.
It read:
DON’T WAIT FOR THINGS TO HAPPEN. THEY
WON’T.
It now hung on the wall directly opposite the
headboard of the king-size bed in her favorite bedroom at the
Malibu mansion. It was the first thing she read each time she rose
from bed in the morning. It reminded her now as she went to brush
her teeth in the bathroom that she had to take the initiative and
find herself a film to act in. Her agent had found a part for her
in a romantic comedy where she would be useful eye-candy for the
male audience but Joelyn had declined. Apart from the fact that the
picture would go straight to DVD, she didn’t relish the thought of
being typecast as a rom-com softie.
Joelyn realized that like in most towns,
success in Hollywood was about who you knew. Her agent knew people,
and that was a start. So, Joelyn skipped breakfast and made an
appearance at the Rebecca Lindland Talent Agency at the fourth
floor of a building on Hope Street and requested to see Ms.
Lindland herself. She did not have an appointment, but if the
receptionist could be so kind as to inform Ms. Lindland that it was
Joelyn Smith there wouldn’t be a problem at all. Grudgingly, the
receptionist picked up the phone and put a call through to her
boss’ office. A little while later, Miss Smith was sitting on a red
leather couch that complemented the red-and-white paint sequence of
the agent’s office. Rebecca sat opposite her.
‘I need a good writer,’ Joelyn was saying.
‘Somebody I can work with at short notice.’
‘That’s no problem. I can give you a list of
good writers. When do you need it?’
‘Pronto, please.’
By the end of the day, Joelyn had made
various calls and narrowed her list to twelve. She spoke to the
twelve writers and set up appointments to see them on the next day.
On the following day, she spent the entire day explaining to the
twelve writers the kind of screenplay she was looking for;
basically an action-comedy that was going to make people laugh,
with a prominent female lead a limited budget. She gave each of the
twelve writers two weeks to come up with a story and then set about
establishing her own production house. She had learned from various
sources that she would need to have a licensed film production
company in order to make a movie. She called her movie business
JOY-LINE PICTURES.
In two weeks, Joelyn, with the help of a
hired assistant, sifted through the twelve film-scripts until she
found one that she thought would work as an action-comedy and, most
importantly, sell well to the public. She instructed her assistant
to call the writer of the chosen script, Chris Pizzello, and find
out if he could come to see her at his earliest convenience. When
he arrived two hours later, Joelyn gave him her briefing, after
making him sign a confidentiality agreement with JOY-LINE
PICTURES.
‘I liked your script, Chris, and I want to
work with you. There’s some changes, of course, that we’ll effect
to it in order to accommodate certain elements in the film. But
basically, it’s a good story. There’re the two guys who are mean,
reckless cops. One of them must be played by the WWE’s biggest star
of the moment. He’ll bring a guaranteed audience for the film. His
partner should be Black, because we need Black people to watch the
movie. Any of the current, hot Black stars should do, but he will
have to be a Hollywood action hero who’s slipping out of people’s
minds, badly in need of a movie to resuscitate his dying career; it
will make him inexpensive. For his partner we can gamble on an
unknown, who has this gorgeous blue-eyed girl for a wife – me.’ She
stared inquisitively at Chris Pizzello. ‘What do you think?’
‘It’s workable,’ he responded. ‘And I’m not
just saying that because you’re the boss. The problem is this:
nobody ever knows which film is going to work or not. Sometimes you
think you got a hot one and it bombs at the box office, and then
sometimes something that initially looked ordinary explodes way out
of proportion. It’s all just a gamble.’
‘Let’s gamble on this and put our systems in
order. I’d like production to start tomorrow, if it’s
possible.’
It wasn’t. Production started the following
week, and it drew on for a month and eventually took seven weeks to
complete and consumed $55 million of Joelyn’s personal money. Some
of it went towards advertising, publicity campaigns and promotional
work. When the film premiered, it gathered $7,4 million on its
opening weekend in America alone and would eventually realize $33
million worldwide. It was a loss for JOY-LINE PICTURES, but it had
given Joelyn the exposure she needed. She had been on prime time
talk shows, had been interviewed on radio, and had even graced the
covers of seven different men’s magazines.
When Rebecca Lindland arranged for her to
audition for a film slated for a late summer release that year, to
be directed by Chris Woodyard, one of Hollywood’s current brightest
young talents, Joelyn went with her head held high. There were four
interviewers present; acclaimed director Woodyard, a female casting
director, as well as the producers of the film, one male and the
other female. The woman producer was plump and chubby at the face.
She hated Joelyn at first sight – and the feeling was mutual. Chris
Woodyard gave Joelyn a smile that conveyed that he liked what he
saw. They gave her a particularly difficult scene to try out and
she did what by the two men’s facial expressions was a marvelous
rendition of the part.
The plump producer was not amused. She
demanded to know, ‘What other work have you done, Ms. Smith?’
Joelyn answered politely that she had been in
the action-comedy written by Chris Pizzello, starring the hugely
popular WWE superstar, John—.’
‘A funny movie,’ broke in Woodyard. ‘I must
say, I quite enjoyed it. You were brilliant, Ms. Smith.’
‘Please call me Joelyn.’
‘It bombed, as I recall,’ the chubby woman
said disdainfully as if swatting at a repulsive fly that had sat on
her forehead.
Definitely, the remark was meant as a snide.
Joelyn returned it smoothly. ‘Most people do not realize that
movie-making is an art, and in art not everyone is expected to
understand the artist.’
The two men visibly stifled laughs. The
plump woman colored. ‘And what other qualities do you possess, Ms.
Smith, besides being an
artist
?’ The last word was spat out contemptuously.
Joelyn stared back at the insolent woman and
felt herself losing her temper, but when she spoke, her voice was
surprisingly calm, and she was looking directly at Chris Woodyard.
‘I have a rather cute pair of natural breasts, and it is an
established fact that I dance very well naked.’
* * * * *
A grotesque and incomprehensible form moved
under the sheet in a profoundly confusing manner. Closer inspection
would reveal that it was actually the shape formed by two bodies,
conjoined in a furiously passionate act of lovemaking. The figure
at the top sat up, and with a sudden scream of delicious pleasure
threw back the sheet and revealed itself to be the naked form of
the beautiful Ms. Smith, straddling the crotch of acclaimed film
director Chris Woodyard.