Skin Deep

by Sung J. Woo

  73

  I got behind the wheel under the starry night sky, about to crank my engine but stopped when I heard singing. Or, more accurately, chanting.

  I ducked down in my seat and rolled down my passenger side window, as the noise had come somewhere behind me, getting closer.

  Two figures made their way from the Meadowlark building, dressed in matching all-white robes. The material was something shiny, like silk or nylon. Under the full moon, they glowed like a pair of ghosts.

  From their high voices and their lithe body shapes, I was reasonably sure they were women. They walked holding hands. One of them held a phone with its flashlight on, using it to illuminate their path.

  They were coming right for my car. I slunk down even farther. They passed me and headed for the trees.

  My phone chirped, a text from Annabelle Wolinsky, the Housewife of the Gold Coast that I’d met at the Krishna anti-aging seminar:

  you want2c amrita

  you want2b at parking lot

  follow robes

  Visiting hours at the hospital weren’t for another ten hours, so I had time. I got out my flashlight from my glove box, zipped up my windbreaker, and quietly exited the car.

  Following the two ladies was easy, as they continued to chant and also kept their light on. I gave them a good lead.

  “Ooooom-ma, oom-ma,” they sang in unison. They did not hesitate at all as they made their way through the path, which meant they’d done this before. After they walked under a fallen tree and around another one, I realized we were on the same trail as the one Dharma had taken me a couple days ago, the one that lead to Ondaga Plain. Sure enough, the ladies, like the way Dharma had disappeared before me, slipped through the thicket of hollies.

  Crickets chirped and an owl hooted into the darkness. The yellow moon had risen high in the clear night sky. As I followed the chants of the two women, their singing joined up with others. It was a chorus, and their collective voices rose as the wind picked up, and as the wind died down, so did their pretty, creepy melody.

  A fire glowed from afar. Ondaga Plain was about the size of a football field, and whatever was happening was all the way on the other side. I kept along the edge of the surrounding forest to give myself cover, in case there were eyes looking out for curious passersby like myself. No longer under the thickly populated pines, the ladies in front of me didn’t need their flashlight anymore, and neither did I. All of us could have just followed the scent of burning wood, which grew stronger as we approached the dancing flames.

  This was no mere bonfire—the giant pit that contained the blaze was large enough to sacrifice virgins. I remembered seeing lines of rocks along the periphery of the plain when I was here with Dharma, so somebody, most likely a whole bunch of somebodies, must’ve moved them with great, sweat-producing effort to create this elaborate circle. Because of the sheer size of the inferno, my eyes took a bit to adjust seeing what lay beyond.

  The two figures I’d been following were now almost directly in front of the flames, and they stepped out of their robes and let them fall to the ground. They were indeed women and of a certain age, because their breasts and behinds were a testament to the constant pull of gravity. The two took an exaggerated bow then separated, one going around the flame to the left, the other to the right. I took a few steps back into the forest because at this distance from the fire, I needed more cover. I ducked under a pair of low-hanging branches, scampered around a fallen log, and hid behind a nice big tree trunk.

  After the two women I’d followed took their places, nine naked women sat in a semicircle around the fire, their bodies swaying rhythmically to the same chanting I’d heard before, “Ooooom-ma, oom-ma.” On a raised stage in front of the flames, Krishvananda sat cross-legged in a comfortable pair of gold-fabric pajamas, mumbling something unintelligible. No surprise that the women took off their clothes while he stayed fully clothed—this kind of power trip was right up his alley.

  You never knew when weird shit like this could come in handy. I started recording video on my phone and pointed the lens at the spectacle unfolding in front of me.

  I recognized one of the nude women: Annabelle. Like her reconstituted face, the rest of her body featured strategic nips and tucks. If there was one part that was spectacular, it was her ass, as round and firm as a twenty-year-old’s. How much was flesh, how much silicone?

  Annabelle knelt in front of Krishvananda with a wide white bowl in her hands, placing the dish under his mouth. His chanting rose to a higher pitch. Like a conductor orchestrating his musicians, all the ladies followed his lead, the chorus gaining urgency. Some raised their arms and waved while others flailed their limbs, as if their bodies were out of control. Somewhere in the distance, a wolf let out a primal howl. Krishvananda opened his mouth and a pale golden liquid started to seep out, drip over his chin, and fall into the dish that Annabelle held.

  Amrita. Had to be. It wasn’t saliva because the liquid ran down with hardly any viscosity. Since he’d been chanting, there’s no way he could’ve held that liquid in his mouth. I wouldn’t have believed it if I wasn’t seeing it with my own eyes.

  Behind Krishvananda, a tenth woman emerged. She must’ve been lying down behind the raised stage because a moment ago, she hadn’t been there. While Krishvananda kept spewing his elixir, she stood upright in all her glorious nakedness. Cleo Park, in the buff, not one extra cell of fat on her body. It was like looking at a Photoshopped photograph, a physically perfect female specimen. Even with the world’s best nutritionists and personal trainers and plastic surgeons, it wasn’t natural for someone almost fifty to look like this. Older people in the best shape of their lives were still sinewy, the passage of time impossible to mask. She should’ve looked more like Annabelle, her body an unwilling map to the years of her life. So what did this mean—that the effects of amrita were real?

  Krishvananda closed his mouth. Annabelle gave the dish to Cleo, who put it to her lips and drank. I had to suppress an involuntary gag—that was like swallowing someone else’s spit, but I guess this was the disgusting price of everlasting youth. “Ooooom-ma, oom-ma,” the crowd kept chanting.

  It was at this unfortunate moment that my phone rang, my ringtone of New Order’s “Blue Monday” blaring out its techno beats. I fumbled for the Do Not Disturb button, but it was too late. Cleo stopped her imbibing and all eyes turned toward the source of the noise. A pair of very bright flashlights, the kind that you see advertised in gun magazines as military-grade, almost blinded me.

  “Stop!” somebody yelled. Since Cleo was partaking in the festivities, most likely it was one of her Seven Star Mob guards. I had no desire to confirm that in person, so I sprinted through the woods. With their brilliant illumination behind me, it was easy to retrace my steps, but the forest was full of stuff that could trip you, which almost happened twice. Visions of falling down and cracking my head against a tree invaded my brain, but I shook them off and kept my eyes focused on the ground.

  White lights of civilization, the tall lamps in the parking lot, peeked through the pine trees. The beams of the flashlights behind me had receded to some degree, but they were still coming. As my tired legs and spent lungs started their earnest complaint, I considered my options. I could run back into the Meadowlark building to try to lose the guards, but that’s also where there were even more guards and they’d probably already radioed ahead. No, the simplest choice was the best choice here. I was already packed, my car ready to go, so I pumped my legs and made my final push, out of the trail and onto the asphalt. I yanked my keys from the pocket of my pants, pushed on the fob, and dashed to my black Accord. I hazarded a glance back, and there they were, two of the Mob, in their usual white turtleneck and black slacks, the scariest looking waiters in the universe. Even though they all looked like clones, the one on the left was as tall as Beaker and galloped toward me like Usain Bolt.

  I threw open my car door and jumped in, cranking the engine, whose ri
se and hum had never sounded sweeter. As I peeled off, I caught the human gazelle in my rearview mirror, close enough to my car to jump on it. He looked like the kind of guy who might do just that, clamp onto my roof with his vice-like grip, but instead, he reached for something in his pocket. A gun? No, a phone. To take a picture of my license plate.

  74

  I got to my office by 3 a.m. I managed to fall asleep on the couch, but by seven, the room was bathed in full sunlight and I woke up with a crick in my neck and a cramp in my leg.

  I made a cup of coffee from the Keurig and felt slightly more alive. I picked up the financial statements Krishvananda had given me and stared at the columns and rows of tiny numbers. They seemed innocuous enough, official-looking digits with accounting labels like capital depreciation, net cash flow, and EBITDA. I emailed Stacy and asked her if she had time today to look it over, telling her to consult with Craig on anything.

  I flipped through my snail mail: junk, junk, junk, bills, bills, bills, and then a package from Keeler, the test tube I’d had him put through forensics, the one I’d found in Christopher’s desk. Perfect, as it would save me a trip to the police station because I wanted to ask Christopher about it in person.

  I fished out my toiletries from my suitcase and walked over to the bathroom in the hallway, where I washed my face and brushed my teeth. Nothing like cold water and mint to start the day off right. My t-shirt and jeans felt a bit lived-in, but they were gonna have to do as everything else in that suitcase was in worse shape. On the way back to my office, I walked beyond mine to Craig’s. Looking through the window on his door, I imagined him in his chair, hunched over his desk. He really came through for me while I was sick at Krishna; I owed him one.

  The sun lasted just long enough to wake me up, as the skies turned gray by the time I got back out to my car. Another fine Athena overcast day, at your service.

  Driving to the hospital to see Christopher, I thought about how I was going to approach him. The first and only time I’d talked to him, he’d run away crying. Hyper-sensitive, that was the word Beaker had used to describe him. Screw it, how about if I just go for broke this time, put the fear of god in him, tell him he’s in a world of trouble, that he’s an accessory to a kidnapping and could be tried for manslaughter. But then again, Beaker did tell me he tried to kill himself, so that was probably a terrible idea.

  It was times like these that I missed Ed the most, having someone with the knowledge and experience to give me guidance, or if not that, just to be able to bounce off some ideas. I imagined his deep voice speaking to me, as he often had across the car seat. A lot of our detective work was spent in cars, though our positions would’ve been reversed, with me in the passenger seat while Ed was behind the wheel.

  It never hurts to triangulate.

  Christopher, Penny, and Grace. Three people, three sides, a triangle. Beaker had said Christopher dated Penny during the summer. Grace and Penny then become BFFs, until something happens and Penny disappears. That’s what it looks like, after the fact. But what about before the fact? What if…?

  After parking my car in the visitors’ lot of Athena General, I called Beaker on his cell. He picked up on the fourth ring.

  “It’s way too early to be calling a college student,” he said.

  “I need you to check something for me. I assume you are friends with Christopher on Facebook, but what about Grace?”

  “You called me to see whether I was Facebook friends with Grace Park?”

  “Yes.”

  “I have no idea. Probably. You want me to check?”

  “Might as well make this huge inconvenience worth something, right?”

  Beaker did not find this funny, but he did bring up Facebook and confirm their friendship. I asked him where Grace went to high school.

  “Exeter.”

  “That’s not where Christopher went, I gather.”

  “No. Are you trying to compare two Facebook profiles, to see the commonalities? Because that can be done like really easily with code a buddy of mine wrote. I’m a beta tester.”

  “This sounds infinitely better than asking you to eyeball it.”

  “Computers were born to do stuff like this. Hold on. For this, I gotta get on my laptop. I’ll put you on speaker.”

  A flurry of clicks and clacks later, he said: “Looks like Dinesh—that’s my friend who’s worked with me on this—added a whole new functionality since I saw this last. Now this thing even compares if there are any photos where people may appear together through a facial recognition engine. I’m sending you a screen capture of the earliest match.”

  A few seconds later, Beaker’s email buzzed on my phone.

  “If I click on this, I won’t lose you, right?”

  “Of course not,” Beaker said, sounding like the exasperated tech-savvy kid that he was.

  The photo that came across was not digital, at least not in its initial incarnation; it had the low-quality, washed-out look of a scanned print. Four kids wearing their Sunday best were in the picture, standing in front of an old, gray-bricked church. Seven, eight? Probably about that age. Two on the left, a boy and a girl, were in each other’s arms, hugging and smiling: Christopher and Grace, more than a decade ago.

  75

  Since Christopher had attempted suicide, the chances of me waltzing right in and seeing him probably weren’t good. So when the receptionist at the lobby of Athena General asked who I was, I said, “I’m his sister.”

  “Umm…his sister?” she asked.

  Perfect. Time for some racial shaming.

  “Yes,” I said. “Adopted sister.” Then I added with the kindest smile, “I was there when he was born.”

  “Oh. Of course. I’m so sorry.”

  I handed her my driver’s license.

  “But your name here is…”

  “That’s right,” I said. “I’m married to a lovely Irish gentleman. I changed my name to Siobhan because my Korean name is Shee-Bong. Sounds kind of like Siobhan, doesn’t it?”

  Never hurts to throw in a pinch of truth into a stew of lies. The receptionist, tired of being confused and humiliated, told me to go up to the second floor and follow the signs for Room 106.

  The hallways here were labyrinthine but well-marked. Christopher’s room was located in the new wing, the walls stenciled with inspiring quotes around every corner: Helen Keller, Florence Nightingale, Mother Theresa, Nelson Mandela, the usual suspects. The last one before 106 was by Mahatma Gandhi, who said, “You must be the change you wish to see in the world.” How did these people come up with these wise tidbits about life? Did they sit in a room with a notepad with the intention of cranking out a few bon mots, like they scheduled it into their daily planner? Were there terrible ones they bunched up and tossed in the trash? When they got frustrated, did they write down a page full of curse words or doodle rude sketches of anatomical body parts?

  Christopher’s door was half open, but I knocked anyway. No answer, so I knocked louder. Still nothing. I let myself in. He was asleep. Underneath the white sheets with his hands balled next to his face, he looked even younger than his twenty-one years, especially now that he had shaved off the goatee. There was a closet next to the bathroom, so I peeked; just his t-shirt and pants were hanging in there. I fished his wallet out of his pants pocket and had a look-see. Twenty-two dollars in cash, a Visa card, an ATM card, his driver’s license, school ID. The days of finding clues in wallets were long gone. What I should get instead was his phone.

  It was on his nightstand, face down against the fake wood. It was PIN-protected, so I opened up my own phone to see some bits of information I’d gathered. His birthday was December 12th, so I punched in 1212 and was not surprised to be let in. I clicked on his phone icon and checked out his recent calls, inbound and outbound. The last call he’d made was to a contact named Grace, made last evening at 7:13 p.m. The call lasted forty-seven seconds, so a brief conversation or a message.

&n
bsp; “What are you doing?” Christopher asked.

  “What it looks like,” I said.

  He held out a hand. I gave him his phone.

  “How did you find me?”

  “I told you,” I said. “I’m a detective. This is my job. I actually get paid for this.”

  “Beaker,” he said.

  “Well yeah,” I said, “that too.”

  This is all that I’d said to him, but he was already crying. Not hard, but wow, did tears ever fall easily for this guy. I picked up the box of Kleenex sitting next to him and pulled off a few to get him started.

  “You know, he’s like the best friend I have.”

  “Maybe that’s why he called me, because he cares about you and thinks that I can help.”

  This made him cry in earnest. Was I going to have to start telling jokes or something? I didn’t quite know what to do with my hands. Throw them up in the air? Punch him in the face? Punch myself in the face? All of these alternatives seemed better than what I was doing now, which was nothing.

  “I’ve been looking for you ever since you left Krishna,” I said.

  “I understand,” he said.

  A nurse knocked on the door and entered, a slim black woman with a sunny smile.

  “Good morning, Christopher,” she said. She had a Caribbean accent.

  “Hello, Elsie.”

  She looked over his chart. “How nice for you to have a visitor already.”

  “I’m Siobhan, Chris’s sister,” I said.

  Elsie placed the chart back in its slot and came over to shake my hand. “I didn’t know you had a sister who lived nearby.”

  If Christopher wanted to get rid of me, it’d be easy. All he’d have to do was tell Elsie the truth. But he said nothing and stared out the window instead, his eyes on the giant weeping willow in the distance, watching its wispy branches sway in the breeze.