The Corporate Beauty

Word Count 1368

The Corporate Beauty

B. Kels

“Happy New Year!” I shout as loud as I possibly can while standing on the ledge of a 10-story building and holding a bottle of the strongest liquor I could snag before fleeing this year’s Annual New Year’s office party. I’ve been the face of the company for some years now and I hate my corporate cosmetics job so much. Well, I hate that my likeness is what is used repeatedly over and over again and not my mind. I worked so hard to attain my degree in Beauty Marketing & Business Management and my expertise nor my knowledge is ever warranted.

I have so much to offer to the company, but my face is what I’m known for - beauty, beauty, and more beauty. I guess when my beauty fades, my ideas will be appreciated, but who wants to wait that long. I am the company's human product with no say in anything.

I almost slip off the ledge when I look down from where I stand tall, and I can see everything below me. This is the highest I have felt in a long time - literally and emotionally. It feels so good to be reckless right now because this moment is far from my beautiful image.

I feel something buzzing and it is my cell phone ringing in my pocket. It’s a good thing that I am wearing this burgundy velvet fitted romper with pockets that was picked out for me to wear tonight because my balance is so off right now, especially with me holding this bottle so tightly in my hand. I don't plan to let it go just yet, but I just know that if I had to reach to find my phone from inside of my cluttered purse while keeping balance on this ledge, it would have been a for sure fall to my end.

 I keep my eyes focused on my feet and the concrete ledge while reaching for my phone. I ditched my 5-inch heels way before I decided to be dangerous and stand on this ledge of a building that is like a second home to me.

I look at the screen of my phone and it’s my mother. Of course, she is calling. She must be wondering where I have gone so she can bring me back into the New Year’s office party to parade me around and bring me to the front of the room where she will then give her crap of a thank you for all of your hard work speech to our “corporate family”.

She seems to only ever care about the steady growth of the cosmetic company that my grandmother built from the ground up with the support of my loving grandfather. She had a dream to bring a sense of regal inspiration to the everyday beauty of women all over the world. My grandparents were a success at building their fortune 500 beauty cosmetic company - “True Beauty by Park & Co”.

However, things changed drastically in my family when my grandmother died unexpectedly 10 years ago, and sadly, my grandfather has been in an assisted living memory care facility due to his struggles with remembering much of anything since her passing. The doctors believe that his lapse in memory is because of trauma, but trauma from what? My mother became the acting CEO almost instantly and the goals of the company changed.

In this very moment, I miss him. Sometimes his memory is sharp when I visit him. We usually have brunch on Sundays, play his favorite game of chess that he seems to never forget how to win, and we laugh just about all day creating new memories. Other times on his not-so-great days, he seems angry and fearful of someone, and he would constantly confuse me with my mother Holly, but she never visits him.

I almost fall when my phone vibrates again while holding it in my other unoccupied hand. The bottle might be helping me keep my balance at this point. I joke to myself.

It is her calling again.

“Hello”, I say in the most slurred and irritated voice imaginable.

“Milly where are you?”, my mother says with her usual intense tone of voice.

“I’m around”, I say hesitantly.

“Around where? We had to end the New Year’s party early. Something has happened”, she says with a sadness that I hadn’t heard since the day her distant sister passed away 8 years ago when I was 14 years old. I had only met my mother’s sister once or twice and the likeness of the two was so uncanny. I never knew them to be close, but they must have been close enough for her sister’s death to change the way she used to be with me.

Affectionate.

Kind.

Warm.

“Milly?”, she now whispers through the phone. “It’s your grandfather.”, she says.

I feel myself hold my breath and my eyes begin to burn.

“I’m so sorry, honey”, she whispers again.

I fall off the ledge.

“Ouch!”, I painfully say as I look at the bloody scrapes on the back of my arms.

I had fallen backwards off the ledge and the glass bottle was now shattered into pieces around me. I slowly stand up to see where my phone had fallen but I can’t find it anywhere. It must have gone over the ledge.

I then rub the back of my head because it is sore and bleeding of course, but just a little.

“Boom!” I hear the door to the roof top slam open.

I look up to see some officers and my mother walking my way.

“Milly, honey?”, my mother says with a sweet tone that I rarely hear.

I am confused and drunk but not too drunk to realize something bad is about to happen to me, I think.

“Milly Park, I am detective Bentley, and we need to take you in for questioning”, says a man in a suite walking through the group of officers and towards me. I hadn’t noticed him at first. He is short but serious and lean.

“What for?”, I say in a slurred speech and dizzy stance.

“We are taking you in for questioning concerning the death of Anderson Park”, Detective Bentley says.

“Wait, no! My grandfather?!”, I say as tears begin to fall instantly.

The detective immediately escorts me off of the rooftop of the building with the officers following close behind.

“Mom, what is happening?!”, I say to her while she is looking at me with intense eyes I had never seen before.

“Honey, everything will be okay. I’m calling our lawyer right now. Trust me.”, she says in the calmest tone considering her father is now dead, her daughter is the number 1 suspect, and all of this is happening on one the biggest nights of the year for the company in celebrating continued success.

I look away from her feeling like whatever is going to happen next, I’ll be facing it alone.

The detectives and officers escort me down through the 10th floor staircase and we take the 9th floor elevator down to the lobby where our company's Annual New Year’s Party was being held.

I remember my mother telling me the party had ended early but as soon as the elevator doors open, everyone who was anyone that was invited to the celebration was still here hanging around in the lobby as if they had heard the terrible news too and are waiting for me to be walked out looking guilty as ever, I can imagine. My appearance was far from anything beautiful.

I drop my head to avoid looking into the faces of those clearly judging me. This is my walk of shame for everyone to see. I just can’t understand why my mother isn’t protecting me from this public embarrassment. Has she even made her way down to the lobby yet to assure me again that everything will be “okay”?  

But she is nowhere in sight and everyone else is. Staring and whispering with facial expressions that tells you exactly what they are thinking.

The starlet beauty of the company is a murderer.

Happy New Year to me, not.

The End