Skin Deep

by Sung J. Woo

  Their names were Joan and Margo, and from where I sat, one table across, I saw the back of another head that was hard to miss. Josie had told me the girl who had brainwashed Penny had hair that was “green like a clown,” so unless dyeing one’s hair the color of spring leaves had become a fashion statement at Llewellyn, she was the one who might know of Penny’s whereabouts.

  “So what do you do, Siobhan?” Joan asked me. Or was it Margo? I couldn’t remember, but it didn’t matter. As I told them about my job as a private investigator, I kept an eye on Green Hair’s table. She’d been the first to arrive, but now other girls were taking their seats, and it was definitely the assemblage of the alternative lifestyles. Twin girls with very short spiky hair, a Latina with a lip ring that looked like it could double as a door knocker, a black girl whose ears were infested by earrings. And a familiar face, the girl who’d handed me the “manvasion” flyer in front of Broadhurst. I had a feeling I was looking at the core members of the Womyn of Llewellyn, chowing down before their meeting.

  “Did you watch Murder, She Wrote when it was on TV?” Betty asked me.

  Coming from anyone else, I would’ve thought they were being sarcastic, but no, Betty was quite sincere.

  “Not when it aired originally, but I have caught a few episodes in reruns,” I said. “I wouldn’t want to mess with Angela Lansbury.”

  “She did run into a lot of dead bodies. Every week, in fact.”

  “In the last episode,” Joan or Margo said, “I thought they’d reveal that she’d been a serial killer.”

  While the ladies discussed their Bizarro takes on television’s favorite gumshoe Jessica Fletcher, I watched Green Hair preside over her table. Whoever was talking stopped immediately whenever Green Hair decided to chime in. And even when she was listening, it was she whom everyone was watching.

  “You guys were WILL students before Lewie became co-ed, right? What was the campus like then?”

  Betty sipped her coffee and weighed her answer. “More than anything, there are kids on campus all the time now. Not that I frequent this place at night, but sometimes I come for a play or a concert, and Lewie used to be as quiet as a graveyard on Friday and Saturday nights. The girls left because there were no men. Mostly they’d either drive themselves or take the school van to Lenrock.”

  “All those fraternities and parties at Lenrock,” Joan or Margo said.

  Green Hair rose, and all the girls at her table rose with her. Green Hair then started clapping rhythmically on her way out of the dining hall, and the rest of the Womyn clapped, too, as they filed out.

  “And of course, those girls weren’t as vocal as they are now,” Betty said.

  “A security guy said there have been incidents?”

  She laughed. “They put Horace Llewellyn in a dress, the statue on the quad. A blonde wig, lipstick, I thought it was hilarious. But the president was not amused, as you can imagine.”

  “They also dropped red dye into all the toilets one day,” Joan or Margo said. “At noon a banner unfurled in front of Broadhurst: Lewie menstruates for her daughters!”

  “Somebody must’ve gotten expelled or something?”

  Betty shook her head. “They’re smart and sneaky. Even with the Selene police officers here, nobody has been caught yet.”

  I pulled out the “manvasion” flyer and presented it to the table. “One of the Womyn invited me to the meeting.”

  Betty, Joan, and Margo each brought out their own flyers.

  “Did they feed you a line about being an experienced woman? Real world, we appreciate your worldly point of view, etc.?” Betty asked.

  “I think they left out worldly,” I said.

  “Well,” Betty said, “maybe you have to be of a certain age to be awarded that adjective.”

  17

  The walk from the dining hall to Eldred Hall would’ve taken me maybe a minute if I’d been going by myself, but traveling with three octogenarian ladies turned my pace a bit more leisurely. It was fine—lovely, even—because slowing down let me take in the gorgeous surroundings that I otherwise would’ve ignored. When we crossed under the gigantic sycamore, I stepped over hand-sized brown leaves on the ground, enjoying every crispy crinkle underneath my feet.

  Betty glanced up at the tree. “Glad there are still things older than me.”

  As we made our way to Eldred, we passed by a foursome of boys kicking a soccer ball around, then a circle of girls practicing dance moves while singing a cappella, then a boy and a girl sitting on a bench making out. Such a mellow collegiate scene, and now this one in stark contrast, the Womym of Llewellyn standing straight ahead through the doorway, nine girls in a line on the stage, holding hands and singing:

  Lovely Llewellyn, thy daughters sing for thee,

  Dear Llewellyn, hear our hearts beat free,

  Our Alma Mater, dear Alma Mater,

  Thy daughters praise thee, Llewellyn!

  The meeting room was in a theater where the walls and ceiling were painted jet black and the stage was located in the middle, with folding chairs along all four sides looking in, like ringside seats. I’d been dragged to one of these “black box” experimental spaces when I lived with Marlene and Josie, a play where all the actors wore paper bags over their heads, except for one who wore a plastic one. It was titled “Paper or Plastic,” and it was supposed to be a comedy, but the joke had definitely been on the audience, since it was us who’d paid five bucks at the door.

  I counted about seventy-five people here, a pretty impressive number, considering the school itself only had five hundred kids total. Betty and the rest of the golden girls led me to the front row, since their hearing aids worked better closer to the sound source.

  “Welcome, fellow females of Llewellyn,” Green Hair announced. There was a mike stand to her left, but she didn’t need one. If there was a part for a female god voiceover on TV, hers would be it: booming, authoritative, with a hint of condescension. “I’m so glad to see so many sisters here tonight. We’ve got a full agenda here, so let’s get right to it. This is our fourth meeting this semester, and I see a lot of familiar faces, but I also see some new ones. So for those newbies, you’ll find our meetings short and to the point. They never run for more than half an hour, and afterwards, we’ll break out Jackie’s famous brownies and mingle.” The Womyn sat down on a long cafeteria table, with Green Hair in the center.

  For the next fifteen minutes, I couldn’t quite reconcile what I was seeing and hearing. I don’t know what I’d been expecting when I received the invite from the lily-tattooed girl, but hearing about “old business” and “new business” and phrases like “I move to postpone” and “I refer to amend the motion,” right out of Roberta’s Rule of Order, was definitely not it. I mean I wasn’t thinking we’d be throwing our bras into a bonfire, but this was as sleep-inducing as C-SPAN.

  “Sister Faith,” the black girl with the mass of earrings said, “I move to divide the motion on the table into two separate motions.”

  So that was Green Hair’s name—Faith.

  “Is there a second?” Faith asked.

  “Second,” one of the spiky-haired twins said.

  “Let us take a vote. All in favor, say aye,” Faith said.

  The theater was filled with an unequivocal, “Aye.”

  “The motion passes,” Faith said with a tap of her gavel, which meant that they now had separated the budget for snacks and drinks. Riveting.

  They moved onto flyer postings, a bake sale, then some other stuff that I zoned out of, and finally, the other twin said, “I move to adjourn,” and thankfully the meeting came to an end. Faith smacked her gavel twice, and as the Womyn rose, I caught her smiling at the doorway of the theater, and now I knew what Josie meant during our initial meeting, when she’d said Faith had enjoyed it while Penny read from her note card.

  Outside of her green hair, Faith was an ordinary-looking young woman, about five-six with brown eyes, but
that smile of hers had dimensions beyond pleasantness or good humor; it had menace. I turned around and saw a man in a business suit staring back at her, then leaving in a huff. I recognized him from the WILL brochure; he was the Dean of Students.

  And now it all made sense. This meeting was a sham, a front put on by the Womyn for the administration to pretend they were nothing more than an organization that schedules bake sales and charity 5Ks. How appropriate that it was held in a theater.

  “Reading my Medicare statement might have been more entertaining,” Betty said. She and her girls had seen enough and were ready to head home. I told them I’d hang for a bit, so I wished them good night.

  Most of the audience was still here. From the refreshments table I snagged a marbled brownie and sat down on one of the stools by the sound board in the corner. It was elevated and gave me a nice view into the mingling that was now going on. All but two of the Womyn were in conversation, and they were all talking one-on-one with interested students, not in groups, so the girls formed lines and waited their turn. Meanwhile, Faith scoured the floor intently, and the lily-tattooed girl waited with her phone at the ready to transcribe whatever it was that Faith was telling her. I was too far from them to hear what Faith was saying, but I’d bet a dollar that she was naming names. Potential candidates, perhaps. One common thing about student-run organizations was that they were perpetually turning over. Seniors graduated and freshmen came in, so bringing in new blood was always a priority.

  It was just a matter of time until Faith saw me. She stared at me, so I stared back. She muttered something to the lily-tattooed girl, who took her eyes away from her phone to stare at me, too. And now she was walking over.

  “Enjoy your brownie?” she asked me.

  “Ungodly good. Siobhan O’Brien,” I said, and we shook hands.

  “Sister Molly. Is there a reason why you don’t want to get in line like everybody else?”

  “I’d like to talk to Faith.”

  She crossed her arms and stood straighter. “And why is that?”

  “Penny Sykes,” I said.

  Molly’s face was like a door slowly closing shut. When I can, I prefer to go with Plan A, which is by way of honesty, but I had an inkling that wasn’t going to work here. So onto Plan B.

  “I’m an investigator for K-1 Adoption Services. We operate out of St. Paul, Minnesota, which was Penny’s entry point from South Korea. Her birth mother wants to communicate with her. I’ve spoken with Penny’s mother, Josie Sykes, and she gave me the rundown. I was about to approach Faith myself after this meeting was over, but you beat me to it.”

  And just like that, the door swung wide open. Molly touched my shoulder and said, “Let me talk to Sister Faith.”

  She scurried back, and now she had to wait because Faith was in deep conversation with a girl with dreadlocks. There were a lot of interesting-looking people here, not unlike the cantina scene in Star Wars: a little person wearing farmer’s overalls, a black girl in a skintight bodysuit whose shaved head looked as smooth as stone in water, an Asian gal wearing a pink tutu. Perhaps she was a dance major and had come rushing after a class. Or more likely, this was collegiate fashion now and I was hopelessly out of step with the times.

  Faith and the dreadlocked girl exchanged a heartfelt hug, and now Molly was talking into her ear. And once again, across the open space of this black box theater, Faith and I locked eyes. Lucky for me, she didn’t smile. Molly listened to her, nodded, and made her way back to me.

  “She can see you at headquarters at ten tonight. Can you come then?”

  This day was growing longer by the minute, but it was fine. Well, no, it wasn’t fine, but killing time is often part of the job.

  18

  In the basement of Fordham Hall, I stood in front of a vending machine that looked like it’d been here since Nixon was President. I pressed a green button that had almost turned black from use, and a dark stream of liquid coughed and sputtered into a Styrofoam cup. It resembled a pool of dirty mop water and tasted like burned toast. I drowned two spoonfuls of powdered creamer plus three packets of sugar, but that hardly made it better.

  Regardless, I leaned against the kitchenette counter and drank it down, because I needed the caffeine. It was now five before ten. To keep awake, I crossed the empty room, which was some sad sort of a recreational space. Against a wall was a stack of Hula hoops, a few coils of jump ropes, and what I deciphered to be a limbo dance kit, comprised of a long bamboo stick and two stands with multiple tiers. It was all rather dated, but then again, this entire room felt that way, from the fake wood paneling to the large oil portrait of the donor that hung by the door: HUBERT AND MARGERY BETHUNE (Class of 1942). Hubert was forever frozen in his fifties buzz cut and Margery wore lacey white gloves. He was standing with one hand on her shoulder while she sat daintily on an equally dainty high-backed chair with her legs crossed.

  Click.

  The door had just closed.

  “Hello?” I said.

  I walked over and reached for the knob. I turned it, but it didn’t budge. And on the other side of the door, I heard the footsteps of the person leaving.

  “Hey!” I yelled out, but the footsteps got fainter until they disappeared altogether.

  And then the lights went out.

  19

  This basement room had no windows, so without the fluorescents above, it was pitch black. It was one thing to be plunged in total darkness in the comfort of my own bedroom, but in this unfamiliar space, every little sound was heightened, especially my own heartbeat, which thumped against my chest like a wild animal ramming itself against its cage.

  If somebody was trying to scare me, it was working.

  Breathe, Siobhan, breathe. Deep breaths, not little tiny shallow ones like you’re doing now.

  I was close to the door, that much I remembered. I reached out with my left hand until I felt the reassuring wood against my fingertips. I leaned against it for support and turned around. That helped a little but not a lot.

  I had to get control of my mind, because it was thinking a lot of nasty thoughts. Like how easy it would be for someone to stab me right now, the blade coming from nowhere, the cold metal sinking into my body with a squish.

  Better thoughts. Think better thoughts.

  I thought of Ed, sitting at a bench in Athena Park, his body as still as a statue. This was a couple of months ago, when we were on a vandalism case that pushed the limits of our patience. Somebody kept defacing the flower garden at night and it was driving the city nuts, and us, too, because after two weeks, the culprit hadn’t shown.

  You’re it, Ed had said.

  I sat down for my shift.

  You would never think waiting is a skill, but it is.

  On the seventeenth night, I found the guy, a disgruntled employee of the grounds department. I out-waited him. I survived that trial. I would survive this one, too, if I was patient, if I was calm, if I kept my wits about me.

  Somewhere in the basement, there was a squeak of another door opening. That wasn’t possible—I’d seen no other entryway—so I must’ve missed it. So much for my detecting skills. Fordham used to be Horace Llewellyn’s home, which meant it was old and most likely had doors made to look like the wall, the ones servants would use. If only I’d paid closer attention instead of fiddling with the bad cup of coffee.

  I felt movement about me. Something grazed my cheek and I stifled a scream. An idea: I thrust my hand into my purse and found my phone. But before I could unlock it, somebody ripped it out of my hand. Fuck!

  Only someone who could see in the dark, like someone wearing night-vision goggles, could do that.

  “Ever see Silence of the Lambs?” the voice said, a voice I recognized: Faith.

  “I reviewed it for my school paper, actually,” I said, doing my best to keep my voice from shaking. I didn’t like remembering the creepfest of an ending, where the serial killer stalks Jodie Foster in the dark,
everything in that alien green. “Gave it a B. I still don’t quite understand how that movie won Best Picture.”

  Bugsy, JFK, The Prince of Tides—there was one more. Beauty and the Beast, that’s it, the best picture nominees that year. I would’ve given the Oscar to any of those others. Robert De Niro, Warren Beatty, Nick Nolte, Anthony Hopkins, and one more leading actor I couldn’t remember, but that was okay. Like counting from one to a hundred, this kind of rote recall was a good way to bring the blood pressure down.

  Feeling a little more serene, I thought of something else that might further bring the good juju and maybe also telegraph to my captor some confidence: I slowly sat down Indian-style. With my back against the wall and my hands on my knees, I felt more grounded.

  “Make yourself at home,” Faith said. “Because we’re gonna be here a while.”

  I said nothing, and she said nothing. The silence was broken when I began to hear other sounds—a clatter of metallic objects as a cart was wheeled over the linoleum, a liquid poured from one container to another, fabric ripping, chain links clinking on the ground as it was dragged.

  I laughed.

  “Glad you’re finding your situation so hilarious,” Faith said.

  Unfortunately for Faith, instead of frightening me, the sound effects had the opposite effect. Because what I now thought of was Garrison Keillor and his show, the Prairie Home Companion, his troupe performing all their little honks and gongs for sonic verisimilitude on his radio show. And the longer I sat here, the more time I had to think about the situation at hand. These were not hardened criminals, they were kids. Of course it was possible they were deranged and violent, but it was more likely that the majority of the Womyn of Llewellyn were theater majors. Which was probably the real reason they’d held their meeting in the black box in the first place.