Chapter 8
After Julian and Charles leave, Piper sits in their office, worrying. They have a class to teach in a couple hours, but they don’t have it in them to lesson plan. Isabel’s disapproval at their introduction of a private detective into the fragile ecosystem of the English department sits in Piper’s stomach like a lump of undigested mush. Isabel is right: it was a stupid thing to do. Especially right now, with grad open house approaching. Piper ought to have thought this through.
And yet. Lu is missing.
Missing seems a bit dramatic, Piper, I have to say, Isabel had told them in a low voice in her office, as Julian and Charles waited out in the hall. Lu’s not exactly predictable—she probably just went off somewhere on her own.
Despite the collection of suspicious items Julian Ellsworth has unearthed—the ash in the pipe, the crumpled scrap of a note reading or else, the plane ticket never used—Isabel’s words are enough to make Piper doubt themself all over again. They walk over to the Mill for a cup of coffee, taking the long way round when they see Kevin Ng, Karen Gavras, and Jack Hart, three other lit graduate students, approaching from the direction of the library. Once back in their office, they worry their way through three or four student free writes before one of their office mates clears his throat and politely asks Piper if they could stop clicking their pen. Piper apologizes to the history M.A. student, hastily putting down the pen they hadn’t realized they’d been playing with. They stare discontentedly at the grey stone wall behind their pockmarked old desk. Their desk mate, a first-year English Ph.D. student who Piper is pretty sure is going to drop out of the program by the end of the year, has made an attempt at cheering up the space by stretching a home-dyed tapestry over a string hung between two thumbtacks. Sometimes Piper stares at the uneven patches of dye, dark blue that fades in places nearly to white, and imagines themself falling in and swimming around for awhile. It would be very quiet and peaceful in there. Like a calm, warm sea.
They sigh. There’s nothing for it, really. They won’t be able to function unless they do something. So they grab their phone and, trying to banish Isabel’s face from their mind, send a few quick texts.
“Hey,” Katie Lin says five minutes later as she and Phoebe Koening poke their heads through the open door. The history M.A. waves at them on his way out.
“Hey,” Piper says. They tap their fingers nervously against the desk.
“What’s up?” Katie, a fellow English Ph.D. student working on experimental dance and performance art, hops up on the empty desk next to Piper’s and swings her feet, kicking her brown boots against the wooden legs. “That was a very mysterious summons you sent.”
Phoebe, a brown-haired young woman whose dissertation explores her ambivalence around modernism’s queer mother figures, takes a seat in a lumpy brown office chair and draws her shawl around her shoulders. “God, it’s cold in here,” she mutters. Her long cotton dress looks warm, but still not much of a match for the building’s ancient heating system. “Wish they’d invest in some actual insulation.”
“I could pop over to the grad lounge and make tea,” Piper offers. “I have a couple teabags left from the winter mix I got at the holiday white elephant.”
“Is this a tea kind of situation?” Katie asks. “Like, do we need to be comforted? Has something gone wrong with open house?”
Piper opens their mouth, hesitating, but then the third PhD. student they texted, Antonio Ramirez, walks in, flushed from the cold. “Fuck, it’s freezing out there. Anyone want hot water?”
Phoebe nods, but Katie makes an impatient noise. “Guys. I seriously think something’s up.”
Antonio’s head swivels to Piper. “Is it about open house?”
Piper shakes their head. They do wish they had a nice cup of tea to soothe their nerves. “Uh…shut the door?”
“Oh, it is one of those conversations,” Antonio says. “Damn, I thought we had things under control right now.”
“No. Uh. It’s not…” Piper takes a breath, embarrassment squirming through them. What if they are making too big a deal out of this? “It’s Lu. She seems to have, um. Left.”
Katie frowns. “What do you mean? Left what?”
Piper bites a nail unhappily. “Well…”
“Left Pittsburgh?” Antonio asks, eyes widening. “For how long?”
“I don’t…” Piper can’t seem to finish.
“Wait,” Phoebe says slowly. “You mean…left Schenley?”
All eyes fix on Piper.
“Well,” Piper says. “Yeah.”
A stunned silence, and then—“What the fuck?” Antonio asks. He stands in the middle of the floor, palms open. “She’s left the university?”
“For how long?” Katie puts in. “Is she taking a leave of absence?”
“I don’t know,” Piper admits. “She…didn’t say.”
“But where is she?” Katie presses. “Where did she go? She’s not still staying in your guys’ apartment?”
Piper shakes their head. “I’m not sure where she went. She left me a note. On Sunday night. Saying it was—that it was time to leave. That’s all.”
They stare. “Wait,” Phoebe says quietly. “Do you mean you haven’t seen her since then?”
The hot edges of tears spring up at the corners of Piper’s eyes. They blink them back. “She hasn’t even texted,” they say.
“Well, shit,” says Antonio. He slumps down into a chair. “I haven’t heard from her since the weekend, come to think of it.”
Katie pulls out her phone and scrolls through. “Nope.” Phoebe shakes her head.
Piper is still holding their breath, waiting for their friends to say something, to express something other than surprise. To ask the questions Piper has been asking.
Wind blows against the old wood-framed window overlooking an icy sidewalk and the stone walls of the administration building. Katie leans back against the wall, crinkling the poster of a Wyeth painting that another of Piper’s office mates has taped up. Antonio crosses his arms, kicking at the bottom of the desk with one scuffed-up green sneaker.
“Are you okay?” Phoebe asks. She looks at Piper from under her long brown bangs, grey eyes concerned.
Piper nearly crumples. But they take a steadying breath and shrug. “I don’t know. I’m…”
They trail off. “Pissed?” Antonio asks.
Katie swings her gaze towards him, sharp-bobbed black hair whipping across her face. “Worried, I think you mean,” she says. “You really think Lu just left? Like that, without telling anyone?”
A rush of relief flows through Piper at her words. Then Phoebe says, “Hang on—what did she tell her committee? What did she tell Isabel?”
“Nothing,” Piper replies. “She didn’t even tell them she was leaving.”
“She didn’t tell Isabel?” Antonio demands. “That’s messed up. That’s really messed up.”
“Has she dropped out of the program? Like, officially?” Katie asks.
“I’m not sure,” says Piper. It’s a good question. They’ll have to ask the detective to check, if he hasn’t already.
“This isn’t like Lu,” Antonio says. “What the hell’s going on?”
Phoebe makes a little noise, and everyone looks at her. “Well,” she says hesitantly, quietly, “couldn’t she have just…decided she was fed up with everything? It’s not like that doesn’t happen here.”
Katie and Antonio look at Piper. They shake their head slowly. “I think there’d have been some sign. She wasn’t acting like people normally do, when…She was into her work. She was on board for the open house, excited about that new admit that seems so great.”
“And she’d’ve told Isabel,” Antonio says stubbornly. “At the very least.”
Phoebe nods. They all fall silent.
“So what does Isabel think?” Katie asks finally. “Is she worried? She must know about Lu’s registration status, at least.”
Piper shifts uncomfortably. “I…she said…” They feel miscoscoped, flattened out and splayed on glass, their friends’ eyes fixed on their face. “She told me to leave it alone. That Lu probably just—what you said. Got fed up with things.”
“To leave it alone?” Antonio demands. “Excuse me? She’s not on a crusade to find her and drag her back here to finish her dissertation? She just wants to…leave it alone?”
Piper shrugs helplessly. “She told me that it’s not a good time to stir things up. Which, I mean, that’s true. Um. Look. I…” They rub their eyes with their palms. “I hired a private detective to find Lu.”
The windowpanes rattle with wind. Phoebe shivers, suddenly, as a draft blows through the office.
“How can we help?” Katie asks.
Piper feels a rush of relief so powerful they nearly start crying.
On Saturday morning, Charles and Julian meet Piper on campus again. Piper had called Long Street Detective Agency the night before to apologize for sending them away so abruptly after Isabel’s visit. “I hate feeling like I’m causing trouble,” Piper told Charles over the phone ruefully. “Would you ask Julian if he wants to look around campus some more tomorrow? I don’t know who’ll be around, since it’s the weekend, but I can show him Lu’s office and stuff.”
Now they’re both following Piper up the stone steps of the humanities building to the English department on the second floor. It’s significantly quieter on the weekend, and since the halls aren’t packed with students, Charles has more opportunity to take in the feel of the building. Like most of Schenley’s campus, it dates from the university’s founding at the turn of the twentieth century and is made mostly of stone and wood in a vaguely neo-Gothic style. Over the years, modern updates like ugly fluorescent lighting and automatic bathroom doors have crept in, giving it a slightly patchwork look. The heating system is old, making most rooms either too hot or too cold; drafts blow through the halls and pipes rattle in the walls. But the building is functional and in many ways aesthetically pleasing; the diamond-paned windows let in the morning light, and footsteps echo off the high ceilings. It’s the Pittsburgh version of an East Coast university: old-ish, medium-sized, falling apart a bit but still working just fine on the whole. Charles likes it.
Like Piper, Lu is—was?—teaching composition this semester, so she also shares her office with a variety of grad students from other departments, as well as with Antonio Ramirez, Piper’s friend whom Charles hasn’t met yet. It’s clear as soon as Piper shows Charles and Julian into Lu’s office which desk she uses. The wall next to it is covered in variously colored sticky notes with names and phrases scrawled on them, and key words pop out at Charles: Holmes, fic, ghosts. “Would you get photos of those?” Julian murmurs to Charles.
A list of what’s written on the sticky notes:
foucault’s secret that must be uncovered = sex -> drive to read detective fiction an erotic one?
thread/skin/fabric, stitching up/spilling out - consumption?
excess & precision
interiority = anal fingering / mediumship (painful) = bdsm?
don’t forget REAL GHOSTS
is skin the right thing? fabric/skin re: spiritualism - too far from hannibal fic? - why skin?
post-seance exhaustion = subspace?
Taussig - “Walter Benjamin’s Grave”
talk about race you coward
interiorized space v. cannibalism/eating - different forms
affect as excess of meaning? (monster as excess of meaning see halberstam) - moment that is “more than”
psychoanalysis will not kill you (: (: (:
fellowships - research ASAP plz
reading queerness “into” texts: scholarship, fic - desire
Julian’s eyes rake over the notes as he crosses to a tall metal bookshelf in the corner.
“That’s a shared bookcase,” Piper tells Julian. “Lu’s stuff is mostly on the second shelf from the top and some on the next one down.”
Julian nods, glancing over the books and items on her shelf.
A list of the books and items on Lu’s shelf:
Items:
A fork
A stapler
A mug with “Moonlight All-Nite Diner” printed on it
A scarf
A roll of tape
An empty plastic bag
A stack of used blue books with composition students’ final exams in them
A pile of papers including a flyer for a book talk, an agenda for an English Majors’ Organization meeting, and several pamphlets about the school’s Counseling and Psychological Services office
A small, scruffy-looking Calico Critter cat wearing a dress
An unopened bag of fake cobwebs
A box of ginger tea
Books:
Ahmed, Sara. Queer Phenomenology
Anzieu, Didier. The Skin Ego (trans. Naomi Segal)
Barthes, Roland. A Lover’s Discourse
Bartholomae, David, Anthony Petrosky, and Stacey Waite. Ways of Reading: An Anthology for Writers
Bechdel, Alison. Fun Home
Castle, Terry. The Apparitional Lesbian
Eliot, George. The Lifted Veil
Hellekson, Karen and Kristina Busse (ed.). Fan Fiction and Fan Communities in the Age of the Internet
Lee, Vernon. Hauntings and Other Fantastic Tales
Love, Heather. Feeling Backwards
Marsh, Richard. The Beetle
Mavor, Carol. Becoming
Michie, Helena and Robyn Warhol. Love Among the Archives: Writing the Lives of Sir George Scharf, Victorian Bachelor
Muñoz, José. Disidentifications
Rankine, Claudia. Citizen
Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. A Dialogue on Love
---. Epistemology of the Closet
---. Tendencies
---. Touching Feeling
Selvadurai, Shyam (ed). Story-Wallah: Short Stories from the South Asian Diaspora
Stewart, Kathleen. Ordinary Affects
Thurschwell, Pamela. Literature, Technology, and Magical Thinking, 1880-1920
“Who are Lu’s friends here, other than you?” Julian asks abruptly, turning away from the books.
“Like, in the department?” Piper asks.
“Sure. Or at the university generally.”
“There are a few other grad students we usually hang out with—Katie Lin, Phoebe Koening, Antonio Ramirez.”
“Thanks. Charles, please write down those names.” Julian drops abruptly to his knees and crawls under Lu’s desk. Charles has to suppress a grin. Voice muffled, Julian asks, “And do you know if there’d been conflict between her and any of them recently?”
The sound of Julian’s voice muffled by the furniture and the sight of his black shoes and skinny legs sticking out from under the desk sends a rush of fondness through Charles.
“Not really,” says Piper. “We pretty much get along.”
There’s a note of hesitation in their voice, though, that gives Charles pause. “What about anyone else?” he asks, after waiting to see if Julian will press the issue. “Did Lu get along with everyone in the department?”
Piper shifts uncomfortably. Now there’s definitely something they’re thinking about. Julian, perhaps sensing this, slides out from under the desk and pops up to full height, cheeks pink.
“Not…well, look. In any academic department, it’s easy for intellectual disagreement to get mixed up with personal relationships. Sometimes that happens here. It’s not always easy to separate theoretical conflict with actual conflict, and sometimes we’re guilty of conflating the two.”
Charles frowns, glancing over at Julian. There’s something off about Piper’s words, something almost canned.
Julian delicately clears his throat. Charles feels his stomach dip: his turn.
“I know what you mean,” he says. “The medievalists and early modernists did not get along in my Master’s program. It can make for pretty uncomfortable seminars. But, uh…” Charles pauses. “Do you think that sort of thing happens more at Schenley than at other places?”
Piper bites their lip. They sigh, then nod, as if making up their mind.
“Yeah, it’s bad here,” they say. “People are pretty divided along academic lines.”
“Historicism and presentism,” Julian says suddenly. “That’s what you meant, yesterday. When you were talking about scholars who care about the past for its own sake versus those who care only insofar as it relates to the present.”
Piper fidgets, glancing at the open office door. “It’s a big deal here, that debate. People don’t really get along if they’re on opposite sides.”
“And Lu is a presentist?” Charles asks, remembering Piper’s description of her project.
“Yeah.” Piper’s voice lowers. “But she used to work with Pace—I mean, she used to be a historicist. Her first three years here. She was working with Francis Pace, who does nineteenth-century sexuality studies. But she wanted to write about fanfiction, too, and—and so now she works with Isabel and Sarah and Jordan.”
“Write down their names, too, Charles,” Julian says, pulling open Lu’s desk drawers.
“That’s not her stuff,” Piper puts in. “That belongs to someone who used to use this office.”
“‘How to write a business email,’” Julian reads. “Mm. Is there anywhere else she keeps things on campus? Anywhere she might store something that’s less publicly available?”
“Oh. Um, yeah, we have lockers down by the grad lounge. Not everyone uses them, but Lu keeps some stuff in there. I can show you.”
“And do you think maybe you could tell us more about departmental dynamics?” Charles asks. “Maybe when we’re not actually in the department.”
Piper bites their nails. “Yeah. Yeah, I can do that.”
Julian gives Charles a nod of thanks as they all leave the office.
The English grad lounge is down a couple flights of stairs, in an almost-basement sort of space tucked alongside a hill. The infrequent windows are pushed right up against the ceiling, and a layer of snow and brown grass is visible through the bottom third of them. Piper takes out their key and opens a door on which a sign on 8x11 printer paper reads: ENGLISH GRAD LOUNGE. PLEASE MAKE SURE DOOR IS ALL THE WAY CLOSED OR IT WON’T LOCK. :(
Inside, a couple of sagging couches keep company with a sink and cluttered counter. An electric kettle and drip coffee maker are perched on top of a microwave, all their cords tangled on their way to the power strip. A fridge hums in the corner. Pens and whiteboard markers are shoved along with a couple ketchup packets into a mug on a long desk. Along one wall, a double row of lockers sport little locks and masking tape name tags.
“It isn’t much, but it’s home,” Piper says, smiling a little. They glance at the locker marked with Lu’s name and their smile fades. “Oh, shit. I forgot about the locks. Lu’s opens with a key. I don’t know where she keeps it.”
Julian doesn’t say anything, but he walks over to the locker and inspects the lock, holding it up to his eye. Charles waits, thinking—no, surely he’s not going to…
“I can pick this lock,” Julian says. “It shouldn’t be a problem.”
Joy bubbles up in Charles’ stomach, sudden and startling. He can still remember the episode of Young Sherlock in which Julian showed the audience how to pick locks with a bobby pin. He’d tried so hard to imitate him, borrowing the luggage lock from his mom’s suitcase and shoving one of her hairpins inside, wiggling it around. But he’d never managed to pull it off. Now, he watches Julian’s long fingers as they slip a pin he’s materialized from his pocket into the little hole of the lock. He wiggles the pin carefully, brows knitted in concentration. Charles is mesmerized by the tiny movements. He can’t seem to take his eyes off Julian’s hands.
Suddenly, with a little click, the lock opens. “Wow,” Piper says, sounding mildly impressed. Charles, on the other hand, feels a burst of excitement in his chest that knocks him off kilter. Julian steps back, eyes flicking casually to Charles’, and Charles flushes, looking away.
Pull it together, he tells himself. Be professional.
Julian slides the lock off the locker and carefully opens up the door. Charles and Piper peer inside, as if there’s going to be something meaningful or frightening there, but everything looks normal: a green sweater, a pair of mittens, a stack of old student papers. An almost-empty sampler box of holiday-flavored coffee grounds gapes open.
Piper makes a disappointed noise and Charles feels his heart sink; a letdown, after the drama of lock-picking. But Julian gets closer, poking his head inside the locker. After a moment, he pulls out a plain white envelope with its flap gaping open. He tilts it, and a few small pale objects fall into his hand.
Charles and Piper lean in. They’re seeds—citrus seeds, Charles thinks, probably about the right size for lemons or—
“Oranges,” Julian murmurs. “Five orange seeds.”
It takes a moment.
“You don’t think…” Piper starts.
“What—” says Charles, and then, “Oh.” A beat. “Oh.”
“Pips,” says Julian. His voice is odd. “Five orange pips.”
Piper breaks away, leaning on the table for support. They shake their head. “No. Is this—is this some sort of joke?”
Julian flips the envelope over. On the back, typed in 12-point Times New Roman, is the word LU.
“Same as on the scrap of the note we found in your kitchen sink’s pipe,” he says.
“Everyone uses Times New Roman,” Piper says shakily, “it’s the standard for MLA formatting—”
“It’s a threat.”
As all three of them know, “The Adventure of the Five Pips” is a Sherlock Holmes story. In that story, anyone who receives an envelope with five orange seeds in it ends up dead.
Piper sits down hard at the table, looking stricken.
“Do you know who has access to Lu’s locker key?” Julian asks.
Piper shakes their head. “I assume she keeps it in her backpack. I don’t know, I’m sorry, I…”
Charles sits down next to Piper. “Hey,” he says. “We don’t know what this means.”
“Someone was threatening her,” they say shakily.
“Yeah,” says Charles. “This confirms that. But…in the story it’s—it’s the KKK sending the notes, right? I mean, Lu’s not—she’s presumably not being hunted by the Ku Klux Klan. So, um, maybe—maybe that means the seeds also don’t mean she’s going to be—I mean, they’re an allusion to the book, but that doesn’t mean they’re a sign of…” Death, he doesn’t say.
“I guess,” says Piper, unconvinced.
Julian is scrutinizing Charles with narrowed eyes. “You know,” he says, “I think it would be helpful if Charles and I stayed here for a little while and looked around on our own. Piper, what we need from you is a list of anyone else you think we ought to talk to. Could you text or email that to Charles later today?”
“Oh,” Piper says. “Um…sure. Yeah.”
“Do you have someone you can go be with, if you need to?” Charles asks, the impulse to help emerging before he can question it. “Tyler, maybe?”
“Oh. Yeah.”
“It’s just—I’d understand if you were feeling…a little off balance right now.”
“Yeah,” says Piper. “Yeah. It’s just. I just hope she’s…okay.”
Charles nods. “We’ll keep working on it.”
“Thanks.” Piper gets up, then glances around the room. “Uh…”
“We won’t mess anything up,” Charles assures them. “And if anyone comes in and is worried about us being there, I’ll tell them to text you to make sure it’s okay. Yeah?”
Piper nods and turns to go.
“Oh, one more thing,” Charles says quickly. “Can you send me some stuff about Lu’s online presence? Usernames, sites she uses, that kind of thing?”
“Sure,” Piper says. “You want to read her fic?”
“Yes, please.”
“Do you think it’s important?”
“I think,” Charles says carefully, with a wary glance at Julian, “it might be important.”
Julian’s face gives nothing away.