Skin Deep

by Sung J. Woo

  It sounded reasonable enough, and maybe that’s why I didn’t buy it.

  We arrived at the windowless office where one of Girard’s rookies sat behind his desk, nose buried in a paperback.

  “Keeping busy, Russ?”

  Russ almost fell over in his haste to look like he was being attentive.

  “Yes, sir,” he said. Unlike Girard, Russ looked like a guy in a play dressed to look like a police officer.

  “This lady here—I’m sorry, I didn’t get your name.”

  “Siobhan O’Brien,” I said.

  Girard did a double-take. “Not what I expected.”

  “I’m one of those rare Irish Korean-Americans you’ve never heard of,” I said.

  Girard, unimpressed with my attempt at humor, disappeared into an adjoining office and shut the door behind him.

  13

  “Follow me, miss,” Russ said, as he walked over to the wall and pulled down a white screen. He carried over a stool and had me sit on it, then took meticulous care in setting me up, asking me to look straight, then straighter. Still not happy with the way I was positioned, he took both of his hands and tilted my head just so.

  “Now just a little smile, not a big one. That’s it, perfect!” he said, then snapped three pictures with the digital camera on a tripod.

  “You should be a portrait photographer, Russ,” I said.

  He shrugged and blushed. “Just doing my job, ma’am.”

  Russ opened up Photoshop and messed around with a slider control that made my skin glow. And then he used a lasso tool to just slightly lower my bangs. I’ve never looked so good in real life.

  “I can’t believe you don’t do this for a living.”

  “You should see what the pros can do,” he said, but the pride in his voice was unmistakable.

  “How long have you been with the force?”

  “Just a month out of the academy.”

  “A nice quiet way to start your career, I’d imagine,” I said.

  Russ copied my photo onto the ID and clicked the print button. He rolled his chair over to the other side, where the little printer slowly stuck out the laminated card like a tongue.

  “You’d think that, right? It’s actually been kinda crazy around here,” he said. “Some student unrest.”

  “Let me guess—having men on campus.”

  He took an X-Acto knife and delicately trimmed the excess plastic. I could watch his brand of precision all day.

  “The female students were notified last year. President Wheeler sent out the memo, but I guess there was some confusion with the wording and the women thought they had another year. Some of the hardcore feminists transferred out immediately, but the ones on the fence stayed, and they’re not happy. A couple of buildings were spray-painted, the statue of Horace Llewellyn defaced…”

  He was talking real easy now, so it was the perfect time to sneak in. “…and that girl who went missing, what’s her name, Penny something…”

  “Penny Sykes, what a pain that was.”

  “Is that right.”

  Russ buffed my ID with a lint-free cloth. “David had me talk to her roommate, but that was a waste of time because she didn’t even live with her.”

  I was pushing my luck, but Russ was in the groove and we were chewing the fat. “Then who did she live with?”

  “Grace Park. Park Industries? She’s like a celebrity around here.”

  Park Industries was one of the largest corporate conglomerates out of South Korea. Not as big as Samsung or Hyundai, but not far behind. They were known for manufacturing heavy machinery, but they had their fingers in a lot of pies. Like I remember buying an ice cream scooper from Wal-Mart and seeing their logo, the “i” inside the empty wedge of the “P” on the label. So a daughter of one of the wealthiest companies in the world had become besties with Penny.

  I thanked Russ for his awesome job and walked up a floor and back to Gloria.

  “Is Vera Wheeler still on the fourth floor of this building?” I asked.

  “She is, but she’s not in. You can check with her executive assistant, but President Wheeler is away for the week.”

  I thanked Gloria and walked down the steps back to the quad when a girl with tats from her arms to her neck stepped in front of my path.

  “You’re WILLing?” she asked. I didn’t know what she meant, until she pointed to the red folder I was carrying, the acronym WILL on its cover.

  “Ah yes, that is I, WILLing.”

  She removed a flyer from her backpack and handed it to me. “As an experienced woman who’s been out in the real world, we’d totes appreciate your point of view.”

  Experienced woman. At least she didn’t say “older” or “mature” or “almost dead.”

  THE WOMYN OF LLEWELLYN

  “Hell hath no fury like a womyn scorned!”

  Time to talk tofurkey about the manvasion.

  Eldred Hall – Douglas Theatre

  It was for tonight at 8 p.m..

  “Manvasion,” I said. “Man and invasion put together.”

  She adjusted the straps of her backpack, and white and yellow lily tattoos peeked from the root of her neck.

  “A portmanteau,” she said.

  “You mean a port-women-teau,” I said. I was kinda getting into this female power thing.

  14

  Stacy, our part-time bookkeeper, was sitting at her desk when I returned to the office. I always knew what day of the week it was whenever I saw her—Thursday. I’d liked our office best when we were all there—Ed behind his big old desk, his chair turned around toward the window overlooking the mountains, ruminating on a case. Stacy with her laptop and her extra monitor, her eyes darting from one screen to next, two fingers punching numbers into the keyboard with machine-gun rapidity. Me at my desk, writing up a report or scouring through a stack of old phone books, from which a surprising amount of information could be gleaned. We were a team, now missing its captain.

  “Hey, Stacy,” I said.

  “Hey, you,” she said.

  Our eyes met, and we flitted between uncertainty and sadness. Ed was the one who talked to her about business, not me. But now this was my job.

  “Ed’s lawyer paid me a visit yesterday,” I said.

  “Schafer and Associates. I just paid their bill.”

  I summarized the situation, and she listened and nodded. Stacy was a numbers gal, so when I told her Schafer estimated there were three months left for the agency without new business coming in, she cracked her knuckles and bounced from one Excel spreadsheet to another to verify that conclusion.

  “Sounds about right. Maybe another month, since A1 Insurance is on an installment plan and they still have two more payments to make, but better to err on the side of caution.”

  “Ed had a good reputation, and referrals mean a lot in this business, so I think I’ll still get cases, but then I’d need to create my own history of success to keep the machine going. Like this.”

  I presented the check I received from Josie.

  “Hey, look at you!” she said, but then furrowed her eyebrows when she looked at it more closely. “Half the usual amount and a postdate to boot.”

  “Thanks, Debbie Downer.”

  “Sorry, but you are talking to your accountant.”

  “Better than nothing, though, right?”

  “True, it’s a start,” Stacy said. “I’ll deposit it at the end of the week. So instead of cashing out, you’re going all in.”

  “Dumb move?”

  Stacy twirled a lock of her hair absentmindedly. I’ve always envied her strawberry-blonde hair, a natural perm that she complained about all the time, especially on humid days.

  “Nine out of ten small businesses fail, so the odds are against you. But I think it’s cool that you’re gonna try. Don’t be too timid or squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make, the better.”

>   “Who said that?”

  “Ralph Waldo Emerson,” she said.

  “I became a transparent eyeball. I am nothing, I see all.”

  “Now you’ve made him sound like a pervert.”

  While Stacy finished up balancing various numbers on her spreadsheets, I thought about what I’d learned from my brief visit to Llewellyn. There were male students there now. Penny had roomed with Grace Park, who was loaded like a Rockefeller. How did that come about? And what about the school hiring Selene cops to provide security? Russ, the young officer who made my ID, had mentioned “student unrest,” but what did that really mean? A single string may have led me to Llewellyn, but I left with a dozen different knots. I probably needed to create another list, though first I needed to find that list I’d started earlier. So the first thing on this new list would be, “Find the old list.” Sad.

  “Knock, knock.”

  “Why is it that some people say ‘knock, knock’ instead of actually knocking?” Stacy asked.

  “It’s less intrusive,” Craig said. “You can do it with a regular knock, but the force and the cadence both need to be perfect.”

  Stacy snapped her laptop shut and slid it inside her bag. “Lawyers. They have an explanation for everything.” She turned to me. “See you in a week.”

  “As always,” I said. We watched her bouncy mop of hair as it floated away and out the door.

  15

  Craig’s hands were full. In his left was the contract Ed’s lawyer had left, a few yellow Post-Its sticking out like tabs. In his right was a plain white paper bag.

  He sat down on the client chair that I now had dragged in front of my desk. “Just a couple of suggestions regarding the language,” he said, and slid the contract to me. “Nothing huge, clarifications, that’s all.”

  “Thank you. I’ll have Stacy cut you a check—just send us an invoice?”

  He waved me off. “I’ve always thought we should have a working relationship. Our businesses can feed off of one another, you know?”

  I nodded. “Makes sense.”

  “And speaking of feeding…”

  He pushed the white bag toward me. Inside were two giant weird-looking croissants. One had a dab of chocolate at an end. They smelled fat and delicious.

  “Cronuts—they’re all the rage. A donut made like a croissant.”

  “Thank you, Craig. That’s very sweet of you.”

  I tore both of them in half so we could each have a taste. Croissants were pretty good as is, but fried like a donut? This thing was insane. The center was still warm, and I devoured my halves while Craig ate his slowly, pinching one small bite at a time. He comps the contract review, he brings me food—maybe I should just marry the guy.

  “How come you never came around when Ed was here?” I asked.

  “I asked myself the same question this morning,” he said. “And I don’t know if I have an answer. It’s not like we weren’t friendly—he and I chatted whenever we rode the elevator together, which was at least once a week.”

  He did like to talk, but then again, he was an attorney. He had a smooth, easy voice, almost radio-worthy. I imagined him in court, gesturing with his hands, swaying doubtful jurors over to his side. He was probably pretty good at it.

  And he had nice hands. His ring finger was bare, but I had a strong feeling he was a divorcé. You can just tell, a certain gist of weariness that’s worn like a jacket, which was fine. At this point in my life, I preferred divorced men over the never married. They handled disappointment better.

  “Going back to college?” he asked, pointing at the Llewellyn folder on my desk.

  “Did you know that Llewellyn is now co-ed?”

  “To tell you the truth, I kind of forgot that Llewellyn even existed, since we live in Lenrock country around here. Regardless, it must be quite a switch. But then again, it was probably a concept whose time had run out. Colleges are businesses, and I can’t imagine shutting out half of the population is good for the bottom line. With women ‘leaning in’ and attending colleges more than men now, I’d think the necessity for an all-female college is not what it used to be.”

  “I suppose,” I said. “It’s still a man’s world, though. Harvey Weinstein, Louis C.K., Bill Cosby…”

  “Good point—if nothing else, colleges should teach a course on how to kick oversexed men in the nuts. Park Industries? Why did you write that on the folder?”

  “You got a good pair of eyes there. I can hardly read my tiny handwriting.”

  “20/20,” Craig said. “Plus it’s a skill I’ve developed. Stealing a few lines of a prosecutor’s notes can be very handy in a trial.”

  “The daughter goes there. Grace Park.”

  Craig nodded, then narrowed his eyes, thinking back to something.

  “I tried to sue them once, six, seven years ago. They make everything, you know that, right? Including hydraulic lifts that auto mechanics use. A couple of garage owners in town got pissed off because there was a defect with a relay switch and Park Industries wouldn’t fix it. So I suggested we all get together and threaten them with the possibility of a class action suit. Everyone was on board, until an army of lawyers shocked and awed us. That’s not a figure of speech—I’m being literal. All six of Park’s lawyers on retainer had graduated from West Point, and these guys, five men and one woman, were not to be trifled with.”

  “What happened with the case?”

  “Settled out of court, like 99% of all civil cases. They swapped out the old lifts with newer ones for free, as long as all the garage owners agreed to sign a non-disclosure agreement. No bitching and moaning to newspapers or the internet, that type of thing.”

  There was a knock, and unlike Craig’s, this was a real one, two hard raps against the glass.

  “That’s probably my client,” I said.

  Craig popped the last morsel of the cronut into his mouth and wiped his fingers on a napkin. He swept the desk clean of crumbs, neatly catching them into the now empty paper bag.

  “Thank you for lunch,” I said.

  “There’ll be more.” I liked the way he said that, a promise that had some oomph behind it, a friendly threat.

  He opened the door and greeted Marie Michaelson on his way out, who was looking sexy and sharp in a red body-hugging above-the-knees dress. She shuffled right up in her high heels and hugged me. A few strands of her big hair got in my mouth, but I didn’t mind because they sort of tasted like cherries.

  “Oh, Siobhan!” she squealed. “Those pictures were just what my lawyer needed. Thank you, thank you, thank you!” She rooted through her Louis Vuitton purse and handed me an envelope. “The rest of the payment. I wanted to hand deliver it and give you the good news myself.”

  Taking the envelope, I said, “I’m glad you’re satisfied.”

  “Oh yeah,” she said. “My lawyer says this was worth at least another grand a month.”

  So it was just a ploy for more alimony. I was actually relieved, because I had a feeling, even with Henry Michaelson violating the custody agreement, that he was the better parent for their son.

  “I’m here if you need anything else,” I said.

  “I’ve already told a bunch of my girlfriends about you, so don’t be surprised if you get a call or two.”

  I put on my best fake smile. “I look forward to it.”

  Marie hugged me once more, then she was gone, leaving me with her cherry hair aftertaste. I opened the envelope and stared at the check for $1000. I stared at the empty chair where Ed used to sit.

  Even in the shittiest of cases, as long as you get paid at the end, that’s what matters.

  I could still hear his voice in my head if I wanted to, and I wanted to.

  16

  Like the blinding chandelier in Broadhurst Hall’s lobby, the refurbished cafeteria ushered in the new and improved Llewellyn. One of the perks I’d discovered in the WILL welcome packet was a comp meal ticket, which I
now handed to the girl behind the podium, a round-faced smiling machine.

  She held my ticket up to a scanner, and it dinged me in.

  All the old wooden tables and chairs had been refinished, sanded and varnished to look like new. This probably cost more than replacing it with newer furniture, but Wheeler had promised to honor the Llewellyn traditions, so perhaps it wasn’t all bullshit. In one corner of the room, a server with a toque hat cut slices of prime rib kept warm under a heat lamp. Next to her was a dessert bar that offered eight different treats, including crème brûlée, finished on the spot with the gal wielding a tiny blowtorch over the sugary surface to brown it.

  I picked up a tray and got in line and slopped a nice portion of sirloin beef tips in gravy and a scoopful of Yukon gold mashed potatoes onto my dish, probably more than I should have, but it was supper time and my stomach was calling the shots.

  “Doesn’t it smell wonderful?”

  Right behind me was a tiny old lady, cotton-haired and with thick glasses that turned her hazel eyes into pins.

  “I want to start eating it right here,” I said.

  She giggled. “I’m guessing you’re a WILL like us? Sit with me and my pals, why don’t you. We’re over in the back, the table underneath the school insignia. I’m Betty.”

  “Siobhan.”

  “Siobhan! I wish I had an exotic name like that.”

  “It’s never too late to change,” I said, and she giggled again.

  “You’re funny. You should take the humor class they offer here, it’s very popular. Make’em Laugh: From Aristophanes to Zero Mostel. My class schedule is pretty full, but there’s always next year.”

  At the fountain, we filled our glasses, apple juice for her and iced tea for me, then she led me over to her table, where two other ladies of identical hair color and sunny dispositions greeted me with such naked enthusiasm that I felt like I should do cartwheels or break out in song.