A Rose From Vanessa

Kimberley Malone had always been beautiful. Haughty, yes. Arrogant, yes. Gorgeous, yes. Whenever she came into a room, the result was dazzling appreciation from the men. Immediately, even as a young girl and when she wasn't being a nuisance, she had at least four guys standing around her and trying to impress her with some gag or some flirtatious remark. Kimberley was spoiled.

The trouble was that Kimberley only behaved well with people who adored her. Kimberley was a mannequin on the outside and a beast on the inside. She had surrounded herself with fans in school and given them the name "The Bitch Gang" and made it her vocation to turn the lives of shy students into a living hell.

It was a miracle she made it through school and college with a diploma as a result. The principals could not expel her because of bad grades. She was reasonably good, but her parents were called in to school so often that it became almost a second home to them.
Kimberley Malone was a problem child.

Vanessa Manchester was the opposite. She had become beautiful. She was the ugly duckling turned into a swan. She studied hard and never insisted on being heard, but was often brought forward to speak simply because she let her work speak for itself. Kimberley hated this. Vanessa would one day metamorphosis into a Bachelor of Finance turned Top Model.
To Kimberley, Vanessa had been a freckle faced loser and shy fatso who had no other traits than zits and bad breath. Vanessa had been shy and terrified.

When Vanessa was thirteen, her body changed. Within four years, her looks became one stunning. The boys wondered what made her tick. She looked great. She worked hard. She really turned Kimberley into nothing more than a novelty act and so the competition began.

Vanessa really never chased boys. It made Kimberley crazy that someone actually had become so beautiful that she rivaled her own position as the school beauty. The worst was that Vanessa didn't even try beating her. She just did.

The battle continued until the day that both of them graduated from college and onward into professional life. They both received their degrees in finance on the very same day and Kimberley, by sheer coincidence, wrote applications to the same firm as Vanessa and got the job along with her rival. Not before long, Kimberley became Vanessa's boss.

Vanessa kept searching for a way out and soon found one.
She had been modeling for years. Her jobs had been good enough to give her respectable enough money to put in her savings account. Her new agent Günther Schneider claimed that an offer from Italy might just be a ticket away from her anonymity.
The famous Milano fashion God Theo Mugler had chosen her as a possible new poster girl for his perfume series "Femme" and was waiting for her reply. Vanessa resigned from the firm and started her career in the modeling industry.

Kimberley worked her way to the top in the business world and ended as a CEO of Haliburn Industries, a company that manufactured cosmetics for professional purposes.
Within five years, Vanessa became the most sought after model in Europe and Kimberley slowly found it good not to have Kimberley Malone around.

Kimberley one day found herself sponsoring a fashion show with Vanessa Manchester as a top drawing card and it started a ball rolling inside her that almost cost Kimberley her job. She started planning the show a half year in advance and invited top magazines there, as she was hosting the show.
What made it difficult was that this was an issue for her. She wanted to make up for the time lost and show Vanessa that she also could be a friend. She didn't want to be known as a bitch.

The atmosphere turned into a very strained one in Haliburn Industries. Kimberley noticed that things were not going her way. Soon, people got fired and her staff began complaining that Kimberley Malone would turn into a menace if she didn't get stopped. They called her Hitler.

For the first time in her life she was faced with becoming a failure if she didn't change for good. She did change. The union gave her one more chance: the fashion show would be a sign of good will.

Kimberley hosted the Danielle Courier fashion show. There were rock bands and light shows, hors d'ouvres and wine tasting. It was a success and the big star of the show was Vanessa, who even took part in the dance show, having studied ballet.

The show soon ended and the two women were faced with saying goodbye. As they were standing backstage speaking, something rare happened. The girl that had teased her enemy to tears on the school playground in London so many years ago actually excused herself. She had been wrong. Five years after her resignation, Kimberley said:

"You know, Vanessa, I'm so sorry for putting you through hell. It was wrong. I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me!"
Here they were, two ridiculously beautiful women caught together in a dance of hate and denial. All that Kimberley could feel was guilt. All that Vanessa could remember was having Kimberley smash her head bloody against the pavement and seeing her being dragged up to the principal's office and almost expelled from school.

Vanessa stuttered something about "it being a long time ago", but it really didn't say anything how much she had tried to forget being treated that way and what that had done to her ambition. After becoming a stunningly sexy brunette paid ridiculous sums of money for modeling, she had turned Kimberley into Russian agent Rosa Klebbs No. 3 from the Bond-movie "From Russia with Love".

Vanessa's boyfriend Federico Zalzáne saved her from saying something that she might have regretted. The limo was waiting and her agent was waiting with some important phone call.
Vanessa took her boyfriend's hand and paved her way through the sea of reporters and slumped into the backseat of her limo.
Kimberley bit her lip as she watched Vanessa walk away with Hollywood's hottest current actor. Why had she been such a bitch and why had she first noticed now what a bitch she had been? Why did it take the union threatening to overthrow her as CEO to make her change? She gazed nervously toward the limo as it left the street.

"Na, how is mein Schatzilein?" Günther Schneider asked her as Vanessa stepped into the car. He might have asked her why the Earth was round, because she wasn't listening.
Schneider may have been the greatest model agent in Europe, but Vanessa hated his slimy, faggot guts. A little less oil, a little less chest hair, a little less gold. He had brought her to the top, though, and that accounted for a lot. She had more money now than Johnny Depp and that was saying something.

"The show was grand," Vanessa answered. "My mood sucks."
"Sucks?" Günther chimed in.
Vanessa sighed. Federico caressed his girlfriend.
"Te quiero. Come stas?"
She looked into those brown, Spanish eyes and understood why so many girls fell for that bedroom gaze when they saw it on the silver screen. She knew she had.
Vanessa looked out into the rainy London night and wondered what the Londoners thought when they saw the limo driving by. She had been a normal girl once and she had seen many limos like that driving by and wondering what went on inside. Now she knew. Kimberley had smashed her normal nose to bits and decided her fate. No one was going to smash her nose again.

"Kimberley excused herself," Vanessa whispered.
"Gut," Günther said quickly. "Good riddance!"
There was a long pause that lasted until Günther spoke again:
"You got what you wanted, Vanessa," he said. "You can perform circles around her. How the fuck has heard of Kimberley Malone? Go on with your life!"
"This is not about revenge, Günther," she spat. There was another silence. "This is about trust. She was my hell on wheels and I grew tough because of her. She kept bugging me so much until she became the threshold guardian that almost pushed me toward success. She has never ever given me an inch. Until now. I hate her."

"Darling," Federico said softly. "She has always been below you. CEO, okay. But you, carena belissima, are you. You cannot possibly compare Dom Perignon with Hochriegl. Both are good beverages, but it would be like comparing Bugs Bunny to Shakespeare. Not fair to Bugs, with or without the carrot."
"You sound like a bad Hollywood script," Vanessa spat.
There was a painful silence in the limo all the way to the hotel.
As Günther disappeared into his hotel suite with some boy, Federico and Vanessa ordered up champagne to their presidential suite with some wafers and caviar. They turned on classic radio and spoke softly about tomorrow's program of interviews to the sound of Rachmaninoff.

It was a restless night. Vanessa kept on seeing herself on the schoolyard with her head against the pavement. Then she saw herself on the catwalk. The whole thing was perverse. Kimberley excusing herself? It was like Newton declaring the Earth was flat.
Waking up next morning with a slight headache was not as bad as trying to keep a straight face. Her press agent, secretary and agent came up to her suite at nine and discussed the day over breakfast. There were seven magazines arriving and all of them had the new cinematic project "A Farewell to Arms" as a top priority. Federico and Vanessa on screen together. Could she act? Why would she want to?

Vanessa disappeared into the bathroom for a second during the break and locked the door. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply. She put on some rouge, checked her clothing, adjusted her cleavage and told herself that Kimberley had meant what she said and never would bother her again. That was that.
Vogue, GQ, FHM and The Times arrived and by two o' clock Vanessa was ready to scream. Every reporter tried to corner her into saying something that would sell her as a stupid bimbo. She had never mentioned her degree as often as now. Banking was easier.
Federico kept his cool. He told everyone that he had been acting on stage with Vanessa in his youth, which was a lie, but it sold her as a legitimate actress. He also said that they were engaged to be married and would have children one day, just maybe not yet.

Dinner was quiet and the Perriere tasted like shit.
Just before Le Figaro arrived, Vanessa's secretary Paula Richmond came storming in and asked if Vanessa was willing to meet with Kimberley Malone tonight at nine. Kimberley wanted to get something off her chest. In her mind, Vanessa thought that those silicon boobs would not drop any heaviness even if she did get something off her chest. After speaking to Federico, she agreed to give her a half hour. They could meet for a drink in the bar.

All day, Vanessa kept thinking about what Kimberley was going to say. She had excused herself. Okay. So what?
The last interview with People Magazine ended at eight and actually Vanessa had hoped to crawl into the bathtub with Federico and drink some champagne. That would have to wait until ten. Her head was aching.
Her feet felt like steel. There were blisters on her blisters.
Federico and Vanessa arrived with her secretary at the bar at nine o'clock. Kimberley was there, wearing a silver colored dress and a Yves Chateau diamond necklace.

She smiled and outward again these were two beautiful and successful women meeting in a bar and chatting. Fans came and asked for their autographs and again they were charming.
As soon as they ordered their drinks, reality caught up with them. They were no longer two successful business women. They were two girls that had just beaten each other up.
"Vanessa," Kimberley said with a chuckle as the bar had Sinatra sing 'L.A. is my Lady' one more time. "I know this will sound crazy coming from me, but I have always been jealous of you."

Vanessa shrugged. "You brought me here to tell me that you are jealous?"
Kimberley waved. "Wait a second." She sighed. "The union almost had my overthrown from the company, because they felt I maltreated the employees."
"They can do that?" Federico said.
"Aren't you popular?" the press agent asked.

Kimberley shook her head. "It might seem that way. I run a successful company, but I haven't exactly been known as Mother Theresa." She leaned forward as if to prove her point. "This has woken me up. I reached the top of my profession only to lose it, because I have used the same methods I used back in school. When I had that lunch with the union boss the other day, something clicked in me. I was no longer the hard nosed boss of a multi million dollar firm. I was back in the principal's office. I have managed to keep my position only because I immediately started giving the employees benefits and sending them bottles of cognac. They only received threat mails from me in the past. Being called up to Malone's office was a sure sign of professional extinction."

"So, you're sorry," Vanessa said. "Now what?"
"I want you to do something for me," Kimberley said.
"What?"
"Come to my company and hold a lecture about how badly you were treated by me in school and tell my employees how the event of almost getting fired has changed me. They wouldn't take it from me. You they would believe," Kimberley said and leaned back. "The ball is in your court."
Vanessa sat there for a minute thinking about what her old loved or hated enemy had said. What was she supposed to say to something like that? Tell her company that she had been treated badly by their boss in grade school?

As Vanessa sat there, trying to formulate a sentence that didn't sound rude and still was clear enough to be a friendly denial of the offer, her secretary chimed in before her.
"Ms. Malone," Paula Richmond said and adjusted one of her blond locks and rubbed her right hand nervously against her gray skirt. "Let Ms. Manchester think about your offer and will we get back to you, is that all right?"
Vanessa held up her hand.
"Paula, why don't you and Federico stay here and have a drink on my expense. Kimberley and I will have a little talk on our own."

Paula was young, but good at what she did. She would defend Vanessa at any cost. Knowing, however, that Vanessa had, as they say, an issue with this woman gave her a certain feeling of insecurity. Having to be hard nosed worked with the press and nosey fans. Now, here was a person that Vanessa hated? Loved? The lines were not clearly drawn.

Paula and Federico looked at each other and nodded.
They stood up and before Federico left he gave Vanessa a kiss and added: "Don't do anything that I wouldn't do, honey."
Vanessa smiled and soon enough the two women were left alone at their table. It was a corner table with a couch and so they could concentrate on their own task.
"Do you want to stay here or do you want to go up to my room?"
Kimberley looked at Vanessa suspiciously and then raised her eyebrows. "What do you wanna do, Nessie? Bash my head against the toilet seat? We've been there you know."

Vanessa shook her head. "I know." She almost whispered now: "I have no grudges. I just don't know how to react to this. I buried this hatchet once I took on Theo Mugler's fashion show. When I went from being Nessie, the nice girl next door with a painful past to Vanessa Manchester, the amazingly beautiful top model I took all those feelings and locked them up. Now, it's Halloween and guess what appears. Freddie Krueger."

"Who is offering you to turn the hatchet into a peace pipe," Kimberley said. "I did something wrong back then. And I have better skin than Krueger. Give me that."
For the first time in their relationship, they smiled at each other. For almost a quarter of a century they had tolerated each other at best and loathed each other at the most. Now, Vanessa smiled.
"I never realized what a beautiful smile you have," Kimberley said. "I have only seen it on the cover of Vogue. No wonder they pay you this much."

Vanessa waved it off. "Ah, it's just a job."
Kimberley said: "A good job."
"May be," Vanessa added and again there was this painful silence between two successful and beautiful thirty-somethings. There was one thing added, though. A possibility of a friendship. "I'm beginning to like you. I have never felt this way about you."
A tear began rolling down Vanessa's cheek.
"I used to hate you," she continued. "I spent my life so far hating you and what you did to me. I went through years of psychotherapy."

Kimberley looked down. "You know. I never realized how much pain I caused you until recently. I never regarded you as a person. You were just a thing with zits. Then you turned into this extraordinarily sexy young chick and I wondered: Hey, hold on. What happened?"
There was along pause.
"I never asked you this," Kimberley continued, "but what did happen?"

"The day you smashed my head against the school pavement was a pivotal day," Vanessa began. "I realized that I was either heading a way where I would be a victim for the rest of my life or I was going to change something. So, I did. The good grades were nothing new. I was going to be a good student whether I was pretty or not. It might seem nerdy from a twelve year old, but I spoke to my parents about this and they agreed. My wardrobe was changed from corduroy pants to pink skirts. I changed my hairdo, my make up, my appearance. I smiled more. I really did all I could. It took all the guts I had, but you never beat me up again. Not like before. You started competing with me. That was good. The fact that my body changed was not my doing. I just changed the rest. I noticed that you became more jealous than ever and were really nasty to me. I ignored you. So you became nastier. I still ignored you. Eventually, your friends left you. I became class president."

"Until I put spiders in your jacket in 10th grade," Kimberley said. "And made you flunk at math."
Vanessa sighed. "I know all this. I just don't know if I want to go through all of this twice. I will gladly smoke a peace pipe with you and for all I care I will help you in your career."
Kimberley laughed. "No. I suppose that I would deserve being a snail to your giraffe, but I have always made it on my own. I just want a clean table, that's all. I don't want to spend the rest of my life being neurotic because of some bullshit hassle that occurred in the stone age. I know that I was wrong and I want to admit it. My employees deserve to know why Kimberley Malone treated them like she did. You became my issue. I was yours. Clean my table. Please."

Vanessa sighed. She nodded: "Okay. I will prepare a lecture. You talk to my secretary. She is sitting with my boyfriend over there. Her name is Paula Richmond and she will give you all the details. Send me per e-mail what you want me to say and I will tell them my story. I just want to tell you that it will be hard. I am flying to Rio tomorrow to shoot a swimsuit ad at the Copacabana. Then I am off to Hollywood. The earliest possible date would be in five weeks, when I will be back here for a week for a photo session for Calvin Klein. I don't know if you can adjust your schedule for me to fit certain dates?"

Kimberley shrugged. "I have international obligations, as well, but if my secretary gets in touch with your secretary I think we will able to find a time."
There was little left to say. The model and the CEO shook hands and walked separate ways. Federico and Vanessa said good night to Paula. She gave Paula a card with her secretary's e-mail address.
The famous couple went up to their suite and slipped into a hot bath. It didn't take long for them to jump into bed and within an hour they were asleep.

Not many words were exchanged about the conversation on the way to Sao Paolo the next day. The business class compartment reserved for them was mostly a workshop for learning lines. The car to Rio was reserved for important phone calls.
The shoot went reasonably well, although the director screamed half of the time that the mike was in picture. He claimed that Vanessa seemed wooden and should loosen up.

Vanessa had other things on her mind and kept on fumbling with her text about Hines' Beach Wear being "the best in the world and a blend of comfort and class." Her text would continue: "Take my word for it: as a Bachelor of Finance, it's worth your dough. And it looks good, too. Especially here on the Copacabana. It's called the Hines Effect." She was walking on the beach and listening to Barry Manilow's song about the Copacabana, when Barry himself interrupted the recording and started singing within the text. Then, in the ad, she walked away with Barry and turned around saying: "See what I mean!"

That last phrase was being sold as the company's motto for creating sultry beach wear. Barry had been flown in separately from New York and he was very cordial and good about everything, so Vanessa really felt comfortable around him. Federico was very understanding and still she could not relax.
She had some time to enjoy Rio before flying over to L.A., but it all had the strange aftertaste of not being really in sync with reality. She had to ask herself time and again why this woman meant so much to her that she had to spend years contemplating her decisions.

It was in Hollywood at the film studios of 20th Century Fox, after three weeks of rehearsals, that Vanessa heard of Kimberley's accident. She had skidded off a cliff, while speeding in her Porsche at the French Riviera. She was in a coma.
It didn't take a long time for Vanessa to decide that she needed to fly over to France and see how she was doing. Shooting was rescheduled to fit the new situation. Federico now shot the scenes he was doing alone and anything without Vanessa was postponed. Once in France, Vanessa spent five full days next to Kimberley's bed. She had heard of comatose patients waking up when someone spoke to them, but didn't know why this mattered so much to her that she had to do that. Maybe Kimberley was just what the lost son in the bible had been. She had been someone who had done something wrong and finally admitted it. That needed to be celebrated.

Vanessa spoke of her photo shooting in Rio, about Federico, about Barry Manilow. Telling her how nice he had been, she imagined seeing a reaction in Kimberley's face. Vanessa gave her newly found friend all the details of how the press said how miscast Federico and Vanessa were for the parts in the new movie. The press had forgotten that Vanessa had gone to acting school and that Federico actually spoke English without an accent.

She wanted more than anything to be the one that Kimberley saw when she woke up again. So, she bought a rose in the café downstairs and laid it next to her on the nighttime table. It was fake one, but the thought mattered and not the flower itself. Vanessa wanted to prove that Kimberley could hear her talk in spite of her coma, so she asked Kimberley to tell everyone around her that the rose was from Vanessa once she woke up.

Vanessa had to leave France and returned to Hollywood to finish shooting the motion picture. Once the filming was finished, she knew the editing would take a while. Federico was co-producing the movie and so he stuck around.

Vanessa returned to France, where Kimberley was still in coma after a month. Kimberley's family were desperate and kept on pleading that she might find another specialist that might help. Vanessa knew what would help and she was doing that: she was speaking to Kimberley, playing her favorite songs and reading her favorite stories aloud. This person that had tortured her now wanted her best and this was something she had to thank for.

Vanessa had fallen asleep in her chair the morning Kimberley woke up. She woke up hearing a voice exclaiming: "Vanessa, is this rose from you?"
Kimberley's awakening and Vanessa's constant devotion to waking her up had become the number one headline in the press next to the war in the middle east and the next election.

Now, the two women were interviewed everywhere. There had been headlines like "Supermodel sleeps next to comatose rival", "Will Kimberley wake up?" and "Vanessa prays for a speedy recovery". From Vanessa's point of view, there was no show business involved here. This was private. The press turned it into a circus, as usual, but that didn't matter. The main thing was that she had a clear conscience.

Now, the headlines read: "Rivals become best buds" and "Coma Drama now resolved - breeds unlikely friendship". Vanessa knew the press very well. It wouldn't take a long time before they started searching for some trash to print.

Right now, Vanessa and Kimberley were in a renaissance of good press. Kimberley was learning to use her muscles again and Vanessa took many walks with her in the garden of the sanatorium. Before leaving for Hollywood, she made sure that Kimberley got the kind of attention that would turn her into a healthy, popular CEO again. The company and the union had already promised to throw a party for her when she got back.

The lecture wouldn't happen, after all. The press had seen to the fact that everyone knew about their prehistory, anyway.
The nice epilogue to this was that Kimberley arrived at the press screening of "A Farewell to Arms" in London a couple of months later with her new boyfriend Sam. Kimberley had a drink with Vanessa at the party and left tipsy and laughing, actually feeling as if she had made up for her years as a bitch.

She left a note for Vanessa at the reception the next day.
"Dear Vanessa, I would be happy to call you my friend. Would you and Federico like to spend a weekend with us? Sam has a nice house in Boston. By the way, thanks for the rose! Your hopeful rival turned friend, Kimberley."
Sometimes, the most unlikely of people become best friends.
It just takes a while for the fire to start burning.
Even if all it takes is a rose from Vanessa.