Strike Me Down - Mindy Mejia Page 0,68

never once asked why.

When I was two, my parents divorced and I rarely saw the computer programmer again. He sent child support, apparently, which my mother invested in her Mary Kay business. She held parties at our house and took me along when she visited customers. She taught me to say, “Wow, you look pretty” after she’d finished applying product to the women’s faces. How to say it right, and sometimes reach out a hand like I wanted to touch their cheeks but knew better. Then I’d run back to my toys in the corner, grinning because if she got a sale there was a sucker for me in the glove box. She was gunning for the pink car, and she knew every trick.

“You have to live your brand, sweetheart,” she’d say as she slathered some new lotion on our faces at night, examining our skin in the mirror. She took notes, developed custom talking points, showed up at every school event with business cards and samples in her cotton candy–colored purse. When we watched TV, we’d dissect the commercials together, and when we went shopping she pointed out every strategy—color, graphics, copy, all the elements that combined into a flawless appeal for every consumer dollar. I don’t know who those people in Ohio were, whether it was in my blood or not, but by the time we were driving around in her pink car and I was president of my high school’s young entrepreneurs’ society, there was no stopping me. I was a salesman.

I worked at various companies in college and afterward. I sold everything from vitamins to vacuum cleaners, and found a niche in athletic supplements right when action movies were exploding and everyone wanted Van Damme pecs and Linda Hamilton arms, but by the time I got my MBA I was ready for more. I opened my own brand management business and consulted with hundreds of companies, designing logos and taglines, building mailing lists (actual, physical mail for the dark ages), and convincing them that the internet was a growth channel. I created identities without knowing my own. And I didn’t know it until I went to Vegas and got tickets to the Russo-Palicka fight at the MGM.

It was all there in that night, my entire world shifted and I saw Strike in all its naked, gorgeous ferocity. I saw my purpose, the brand I was born to live.

A few weeks later, I flew Logan to Chicago to meet my mom, who was in hospice, bald and decorated with breast cancer ribbons to match her car. She sat in that bed, assessed Logan’s skin, and told her she had sun damage, then wrote out a detailed regimen, in wavy, broken cursive, on the back of a business card. I was touched and surprised at how much, seeing their two heads bowed together, one covered in glossy, black hair, the other bare and dull as Mom described each item’s formula and benefits before pressing the card into Logan’s hand. That is what commitment looks like. That is living your brand.

At the end of the visit, Logan embraced my mom, looked her straight in the eye, and told her how much she was looking forward to trying the products. “Or my skin is, anyway.”

Then she laughed, and we left. I still had my apartment in Chicago then and Logan stayed the night before flying back to Minneapolis. It wasn’t until a few days later, after she’d gone home, that I found my mother’s business card in the bathroom trash. The shaky lines of her instructions were wet and smeared, illegible.

Mom lost the fight not long after. No Mary Kay products ever showed up in Logan’s medicine cabinet, and neither of us mentioned it. She probably thought it was a kindness, indulging an old, dying woman, but it was the first time I saw Logan with the gloves and ring stripped away, the Logan who thought no one was watching.

* * *

Twenty years. Twenty years of marriage made me the only person in the room who knew Logan was lying to the detective.

When he and the other officer interrupted our Day Three kickoff meeting, everyone appeared unruffled. A flashed badge wouldn’t make anyone on the Strike management team clutch their pearls, except maybe Darryl, but he wasn’t here.

“I apologize for interrupting.” Detective Li didn’t bother with introductions or smiles. “But I was hoping to have a quick word with Ms. Russo.”

Several of the directors glanced at Logan, who merely lifted