Skin Deep

by Sung J. Woo

  “I always say, you can never start too early,” she said. There was something about this woman’s voice that sounded familiar, but I couldn’t place it.

  “I’m just an observer,” I said.

  I took out my pocket notebook and got my pen in hand.

  “A reporter, huh?”

  And then it suddenly came to me, who this woman was, how she knew so quickly that I was a reporter, or at least faking to be one. Annabelle Wolinsky, a.k.a., A-Wol, one of the vacuous women in one of those Housewives shows on reality television. It wasn’t Beverly Hills but rather an East Coast city, one of the old moneyed places like New Canaan or Greenwich. Gold Coast, that was it – The Housewives of the Gold Coast.

  “I’ve gone A-Wol,” I said, and it delighted her to hear her catch phrase.

  “Wonderful to make your acquaintance…?”

  “Siobhan O’Brien. Reporter for the Binghamton Bulletin.”

  “I see,” she said, and I could see her thought processes run across her well-preserved face in about two seconds: surprise at my name, disappointment that I wasn’t from The New York Times, recalling Binghamton’s location, considering the media reach of the said paper, shrugging and accepting the possible exposure, however slight it was. “I might have something for you, a rumor that might be more.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Let’s chat after this session. A little girl talk, shall we say?”

  “Perfect.”

  Rising from the front row were two of my favorite people, Vera Wheeler and Christine Collins. Next to their empty seats were four black heads, Cleo and Grace Park flanked by two guards. Wheeler walked up to the podium and leaned over the mike. She was coiffed to the hilt, her short wave of yellow hair channeling Marilyn Monroe. She smiled, then started…singing?

  Forever young

  I want to be forever young

  Do you really want to live forever

  Forever, forever young.

  Wheeler was no Adele, but she could carry a tune. Alphaville’s “Forever Young” was huge in the 80’s. Wheeler’s singing had the immediate effect of loosening up the audience, light laughter filling up the room. She leaned into the microphone.

  “Some people say that song is really about suicide—that the only way to stay forever young is to end it all,” she said. “Kind of a downer, wouldn’t you agree? And terribly misguided, because, as our seminar states, Aging Is a Disease, and There Is a Cure. Perpetual youth is what we’re here to discuss, because it is undoubtedly the future. Here to tell you the scientific nuts and bolts is Dr. Christine Collins, one of the brightest researchers we currently have on faculty at Llewellyn College.”

  Collins, who was mousy to begin with, did not take to the eager crowd. When she cleared her throat in front of the microphone, the crackle startled her and she actually jumped.

  “Hello?” she squeaked. She was amplified by the sound system, but somehow all it did was magnify the smallness of her voice. Once the colorful PowerPoint presentation beamed itself onto the white screen, she found her bearings. She pointed her red laser dot at what looked like a blue worm in the shape of a C with black caps at its ends.

  “This is a simple representation of a single DNA strand. Notice what happens when a cell divides.”

  As it divided from one cell to two to four and so on, the black caps shortened until they disappeared altogether.

  “These ends are telomeres, and they are akin to the plastic tips at the end of our shoelaces. Without the protection, our shoelaces would become frayed. Same with our DNA strands. Once the telomeres run out, the cells no longer divide. We call this state senescence, the scientific term for dead. The enzyme telomerase has been shown to slow, stop, or even reverse the shortening of these telomeres. Hospitals themselves would no longer have the burden of extending the life of the elderly since everyone would remain in the prime of their lives. Now I will elaborate upon the scientific details.”

  For the next half hour, Collins tossed out more egghead terms—amyloid plaque, apoptosis, protein cross-linking, mitochondrial mutations—which made me feel like I was back in a college lecture. But most everyone else in the room looked riveted, and as far as Wheeler was concerned, there was only one person who mattered anyway. She sat off to the side of the stage, but I noticed her constantly glancing over at Cleo Park.

  There could only be one reason why Wheeler was courting the likes of Cleo Park: money. It wasn’t difficult to put two and two together. Llewellyn had a paltry endowment. Perhaps the creation of Travers Hall was a way to woo Park. By showing her how seriously Llewellyn was treating the science of youth as well as beauty, by way of Western paradigms like Christine Collins and Eastern paradigms like Krishna, this felt like an all-out assault by Wheeler to get Park to pony up.

  As I was jotting down my thoughts, a hand touched my arm.

  68

  Annabelle pushed a folded sheet of paper to me. I glanced at her, and she mimed opening the paper and reading it. So this was what my fabulous private eyeing life had come to—passing notes in class.

  Amrita. Do you know what that is?

  I wrote back: No.

  It is the elixir of life.

  My reply: How many bottles can you spare?

  That got her to smile, or at least slightly crease her surgically modified face. Collins was now taking questions from the audience. A woman asked her about cancer and Collins’ response was more scientific jargon, an acronym named WILT, Whole-body Interdiction of Lengthening of Telomeres, whatever that meant. A few people were leaving; Annabelle tipped her head toward the exit to do the same.

  I hadn’t realized how much hotter it was inside the Sunrise Room until we walked out. Annabelle extended her well-manicured hand and ushered us to the large multi-limbed bronze statue of an Indian goddess that stood at the end of the hallway. To my surprise, on the opposite side, the statue was hollowed out and two red cushions were inside the cavity.

  “You must be a regular to know a spot like this,” I said.

  “Welcome to Durga, the form and formless, the goddess of creation, preservation, and annihilation. Krishna is rife with secrets,” Annabelle said. “Like amrita.”

  “The elixir of life. Very Indiana Jones.”

  “Amrita is a fluid that flows from the pituitary gland down the throat during deep meditation.”

  “One of those nice side effects of quieting your mind.”

  Annabelle frowned beautifully. “No. Amrita only flows for the chosen few.”

  “Ah. Let me guess, for the master yogis, like Krishvananda.”

  Annoyance crossed her face, but only for a microscopic moment. “You know of Krishvananda?”

  “By way of Dharma.”

  “Oh yes, Dharma. He’s got quite a lot to say, doesn’t he. But does he know that Krishvananda…”

  “…has returned?”

  Now that pissed her off and she was past hiding it. “Well, did he also tell you amrita can give you eternal youth?”

  “No, he didn’t mention that.”

  “You don’t believe.”

  “I think living forever would probably be less a blessing and more a curse.”

  “I saw you yesterday at the dining hall, talking to Cleo Park. So I know you’ve seen her up close. You know she’s almost fifty, right? No surgery, and she could easily pass for thirty.”

  “Amrita?”

  “You think her being here at the same time that Krishvananda is coincidence?”

  I shrugged.

  “Phone, please,” Annabelle said.

  I handed her my phone. She rang hers so we had each other’s numbers.

  “You’re gonna get a call from me. You won’t want to miss it. God knows I want to see it, finally – I’ve waited long enough.”

  “It’ll be great to have you as an integral part of this feature story I’m writing, Annabelle.”

  She rose to leave. Our transaction finished, she offered her ha
nd, I shook it, and she was off.

  Annabelle, Cleo, Dharma, amrita. All of this was interesting, but I was beginning to feel like I did at Llewellyn, when getting involved with Faith and Wheeler and Travers Hall didn’t get me any closer to finding Penny. It was the chance encounter with Christopher’s roommate Beaker that furthered my case more than anything else, though I had to remind myself that I wouldn’t have even been at the basketball game to see Beaker if I hadn’t been chasing everything else. Glacially slow, achingly slow, frustratingly slow: this was how cases got solved. I had to be patient. Except Penny couldn’t be patient; wherever she was, she was running out of time.

  As I sat alone inside Durga and bemoaned the tangential threads of this case, I recognized a familiar voice nearby: Wheeler. It came from the other side of the statue.

  “…establishing new standards at Llewellyn. Michelle and I have already laid out the framework for additional synergies between us and Krishna.”

  Michelle had to be Michelle West, Krishna’s programming director.

  “We’re standing at the tip of the proverbial iceberg, Cleo.” That was West. “There’s going to be so much more. Anti-aging is going to be a significant portion of Krishna’s programming going forward. The board has already approved it.”

  “That’s great to hear,” Cleo said in her Minnie Mouse tone. “I do have one concern, though. How will you integrate Krishvananda into your programs?”

  Silence.

  Wheeler: “Krishvananda?”

  Cleo: “Yes, Krishvananda. The guru who once led this institution.”

  West: “I don’t…this is… Krishvananda is part of Krishna’s legacy, but I don’t understand…”

  Cleo: “I see I’ve caught you both off guard with my question. My aromatherapy appointment is in a few minutes, so I’ll let you figure this out amongst yourselves. Bye now.”

  A few seconds later, West: “Krishvananda?”

  “I thought he was still in Mumbai,” Wheeler said.

  Their voices faded as they moved away from the statue. I waited a few moments before I walked over to the other side, to make sure they wouldn’t see me. I wanted to hear the rest of their conversation, but that would have to wait because a cop almost ran into me.

  69

  As the officer made his way to the lobby, three more joined him to form a quartet of navy-blue uniforms heading in the opposite direction of the Sunrise Room and toward the other side of the building, the Orchard Room. As the cops approached the entrance, they negotiated through the rush of the crowd that had been just let out. I waited until they were halfway to the front of the room before I entered. By the door was a tall chest like the one in the sanctuary, housing yoga mats, blocks, and blankets, so I leaned against it for cover.

  “Benjamin Roth?”

  The cops spread out and surrounded Dharma.

  “How may I assist you, Officer…Salazar, is it?”

  “Sergeant Salazar. We need you to come down to the precinct in relation to the food poisoning that occurred last evening here at Krishna.”

  Dharma, clad in his usual all-white garb, looked so relaxed that he almost looked sleepy, as if being questioned by a cadre of cops was something that happened on a daily basis. “Is this a formal request or something voluntary?”

  “I have a warrant for your arrest,” Salazar said, and took out the document and held it out. Dharma took it, read it, and handed it back to him.

  “So you’re giving me an opportunity to walk out with you quietly and willingly so as not to make a scene or embarrass myself or Krishna.”

  “Couldn’t have said it better myself.”

  “That’s very kind of you, Sergeant, but I don’t think so,” Dharma said. He walked around to the back of the lectern, as if ready to deliver a lecture. “I think I’ll make you folks earn your keep today.”

  Nobody moved or said anything for a good ten seconds, the air tight with tension. Salazar broke the silence.

  “Resisting arrest would be another charge against you. And if you hurt us in any way while trying to escape, that’d be another charge, a very serious one, attacking an officer of the law. I’d ask you to reconsider and come peacefully.”

  Dharma leaned forward against the lectern to get closer to the microphone. His voice now boomed throughout the room and out the door, drawing the attention of passersby. “I won’t lay a pinky on any of you. What I will do is give you a rushed tour of Krishna as you try to arrest me. Consider it a more active version of civil disobedience, if you will.”

  A cop in the back moved up and stood next to Salazar. He was a smaller guy with biceps that bulged underneath the uniform. “Sarge, let me grab this asshole so he’ll stop yapping.”

  Dharma was behind the lectern, and an eye blink later, he was halfway across the room. He ran so fast that he did that thing that Trinity did in the beginning of The Matrix, running sideways on the wall for three impossible loping steps, then did some kind of a somersault in mid-air to a standing dismount that deposited him in front of the door. It was like watching Cirque de Soleil, except cheaper.

  “Enjoy the show, Siobhan,” Dharma said as he walked out. The cops were frozen as I was, and then they snapped awake and rushed after him.

  I ran, too, to follow the unfolding chaos. Like Dharma had said, he was going to make the cops work, because not only was he faster than them, as someone who’d worked and lived here in this building since its very inception, he knew the layout better than anyone. Down the hall, Dharma had enough of a lead that the police had no chance of catching up to him, but now he ducked into one door and then came out in another door. And then he did it again, except this time, he came out through a door across the hall, which meant he had either run upstairs or downstairs through a set of stairs I didn’t know existed, or maybe he’d scurried up the ceiling through ducts or dumb waiters or god knows what. As I stood and watched with everybody else as Dharma toyed with the four cops, I couldn’t help but laugh. It was a farce on stage, like Noises Off or a Roadrunner cartoon.

  Dharma dashed back out into the hallway with a very tall stack of papers, and as he ran down the hall, sheets flew off and fluttered all over, like very large pieces of confetti. One caught a cop right on his face, and he ran blindly into an unlucky bystander, tumbling onto the floor and entwining in each other’s arms like lovers. Another of the cops had gotten smarter and had run way ahead to wait in ambush, but no chance; even though he’d guessed the right door, Dharma fell into a roll and spun away from his grasp, then pushed off the wall with both feet to come right back up and continue on his entertaining escape.

  How long could this go on? Not long, considering these were just small town cops. Salazar, who was doubled over and trying to catch his breath, ripped the walkie-talkie off his belt.

  “Jones, radio for backup. Not SWAT—it’s not like that. I don’t know, we just need more uniforms here because this guy is fast as hell and pulling that parkour shit.”

  “You should’ve seen him thirty years ago,” said a melodious voice.

  70

  I turned and faced a tall, thin man in a beige tunic, his long white hair tied in a loose ponytail. He was of Indian descent, and here at Krishna, his mode of dress and the way he held himself did not stand out. Except when I stared into his eyes, I felt a little swimmy. They were enormously round, a shade darker than caramel, and slightly wet, as if he’d just heard something that touched his heart.

  He wasn’t young, but he wasn’t old, either. Sixty? Fifty? Maybe even forty, or possibly seventy. Not that it mattered, because what he exuded in every cell of his body was wisdom and intelligence and…danger? No, more like mischief, the fun kind of peril that every girl secretly craves. I’d heard of animal magnetism, but I’d never experienced it to this extent.

  “Krishvananda,” I said.

  “You’ve been foretold of my arrival, I see.”

  It was almost too much, talking to him this close, one on one.
My mouth had gone dry.

  Another Indian, an older woman in a yellow sari, briskly walked past Krishvananda and handed him a gray folder, then disappeared into the crowd that was moving outdoors, because Dharma was now outside the building and running full speed down the grassy hill. When a cop tried to intercept him, Dharma juked and dodged him like an NFL running back.

  Krishvananda opened the folder and thumbed through the pages. When another Indian, a bald old man who could’ve been Gandhi’s twin, walked by, Krishvananda reached out to him and said, “This is good. Dharma is done.” And then that man disappeared into the crowd, too.

  Another police cruiser arrived with its red and blue lights flashing. Dharma, who at this point was all the way down to the visitor parking lot, stopped running and walked right to the car. He raised both arms in a gesture of surrender, and as soon as a cop got out of the car, kneeled on the grass with his hands clasped behind his head, ready to be cuffed.

  Krishvananda and I watched all this from the lobby window. I turned to him and saw his smile, which rounded his face into a boyish expression of unadulterated joy. It made me smile, too.

  “I have heard that you are a reporter,” he said.

  “That’s right.”

  “I’d like to share something with you, something that may, how do you say, break open a story?”

  He offered me his arm and I took it. I can’t say I know what it’s like to be a queen, but walking down the Krishna hallway with this man had to be something like it. I don’t think many people recognized him, but their heads turned, regardless, at his innate regality, and I stood up straighter and let him lead me to the elevator, where he pushed the button for the 4th floor.

  “You said I should’ve seen Dharma thirty years ago?”

  “He could’ve been an Olympic gymnast. He had muscles in places I didn’t think muscles could exist. Like here,” he said, and took my hand in his hand and traced a line on the flesh between my thumb and index finger with his fingernail. I felt for the elevator wall with my other hand, trying to find support because his touch was alternately soft and hard, gentle and spiky. I blinked twice and looked up at his face and that’s when I found a few tiny drops of resistance to pull my hand back.