A Good Family by A.H. Kim

Author:A.H. Kim [Kim, A.H.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781488056390
Publisher: Graydon House Books
Published: 2020-04-30T13:45:11+00:00

beth

twenty-one

I jiggle my leg, waiting for my stylist, Erin, to call my name. The air in the dingy room is thick and smells of rotten eggs. Like in any hair salon, there’s a pile of glossy magazines on the faux wood table, only most of these date back to the early 2000s.

I dump a couple months of New Yorkers on top of the pile. Hannah got me a five-year subscription. Not that anyone in here would read them. Hell, I can barely make it through the cartoons myself.

The Alderson hair room is worlds away from my beloved Park Avenue salon, but it isn’t half-bad, especially for the price. I’ve got a box of L’Oréal Preference in Champagne Blonde on my lap, along with Erin’s preferred form of payment—the latest Danielle Steele, also courtesy of Hannah. According to the back cover, this one’s about a beautiful but damaged Eastern European princess who falls in love with a tough-as-nails NYPD homicide cop assigned to investigate the murder of her ex-husband. I didn’t know they still made Eastern European princesses anymore.

The gal next to me has a faded pink streak through her yellowy bleached blond hair. Her hair is buzzed on one side, permed on the other. In her twitchy hands, she’s got a couple packets of Kool-Aid, the hair dye of choice among the younger, edgier inmates. On the dusty floor by her feet is a six-pack of Diet Coke. A widely accepted form of payment. She must be seeing one of the stylists in training.

“Hey, Lindstrom,” I hear someone say.

I look up and see Deb, who glares at the Kool-Aid chick.

“Move or die,” Deb growls. The girl scampers like a mouse to the other side of the room, sitting as far away from Deb and me as she can.

“Move or dye, get it?” Deb says, pointing to the L’Oréal in my lap.

Who knew Deb the Destroyer liked bad puns?

“Damn, someone should clean this shit up,” Deb says, riffling through the teetering pile of magazines. She glances at the date on my New Yorkers and sets them aside before holding up a dog-eared commemorative issue of People devoted to William and Kate’s royal wedding and throwing it in the garbage. She pauses when she gets to an old issue of Esquire with Beyoncé on the cover. I recognize it right away. It’s the Women We Love issue. The one I’m featured in.

“This one’s from 2007, can you believe it?” Deb says.

When God Hälsa’s CEO demanded that Esquire abandon the American Booty photo spread, the magazine almost dropped the entire idea of doing a feature on me. With a little sweet talk, I managed to convince the editors to keep the article but replace the full-page nude photo with a smaller, more tasteful headshot. God Hälsa’s six-figure advertising commitment helped, too.

“I do love me some Queen B,” Deb says. She starts flipping through the magazine. The feature on me starts at page ninety-four—the feature that describes in glowing detail my genius creation and marketing of Metamin-G.

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