David Mitchell - The Cloud Atlas

Which is a long way of saying that I went straight back downtown. But after Father’s hype, downtown was actually something of a disappointment. Magicians: maybe I’d expected I’d walk down the street and be in the midst of a circus parade. But it looked a lot more like scout camp. Mountains all around, loud voices, uniforms, dirty faces, and everywhere, mud and muck. No girls.

Scout camp isn’t so far from the truth, I suppose. Alaska was still a territory then, not a state, and Anchorage was more outpost than town, its civic boosters’ and newspapers’ claims to the contrary. Downtown, such as it was, looked like a city for a few blocks, but soon enough, paved streets gave way to gravel and, inevitably, mud. Much of it looked like it had been built by a film crew for a B-grade western-sagging wooden facades, peeling paint promising goods and services from another era. A source of great pride was the city’s Federal Building, which housed the court and post office. It showed up on more than one postcard, looking quite formal and impressive, if a bit small-it helped that the various ramshackle buildings nearby were always cropped out of the picture.

Any magicians had been cropped out as well; from my walks around town, I determined that Anchorage ’s population consisted entirely of men and dogs, the dogs more likely to be sober. That’s probably because dogs couldn’t read the paper, where they’d find ads like the one I spotted that afternoon for the Big Dipper Liquor Store (conveniently located next door to the Big Dipper Bar). The type must have been four or five inches tall: “1 CENT SALE. GIN-RUM- BRANDY. Buy a Bottle at OPA Prices-Have Another for One Cent.”

But it was a much smaller ad, in tiny type, that intrigued me. In the midst of the classifieds, which consisted largely of desperately worded ads seeking housing, appeared a section called “Personal Services.” Here were found notices for professions that Alaska did not seem to need-professional tailoring, pet grooming, even a phrenologist. But, then: “Lily reads palms and tells fortunes in the Starhope Building, room 219, most days, 5-7. Careful and correct.”

So I went. Of course I went. Out of curiosity, and out of respect to Father Pabich, who I suspected would be disappointed if I didn’t get in some kind of trouble downtown. And out of respect to a bomb disposal sergeant I’d trained under, whose three favorite words were careful and correct. It would be interesting to meet a woman who adhered to the sergeant’s philosophy.

“First,” she said. “The rules.”

I had climbed the stairs of the Starhope, less sure with each step. Debris-paper, sand, bits of construction material-was scattered everywhere, as though the building were in the process of going up or coming down. The sounds of the street faded, the muffled din and occasional shouts now sounding like a far-off party that I’d been left out of.

I’d expected many doors-or at least nineteen-on the second floor, but found only three. One, missing a door, opened into a darkened office. More trash. The third door was locked. A smoked glass window gave no clue as to what lay behind it. The door to 219 was ajar. A bare bulb burned inside.

“No yelling. No laughing. No spitting. No taking your clothes off. No stupid questions.” That all seemed easy enough, if odd. The only difficult rule was the last one: once my eyes adjusted, all I had were questions.

Lily-I assumed-stood beside the room’s one window, which overlooked the street. My first question was whether this really was the Lily from the ad-the palm reader. I had no idea what a palm reader looked like, but I suppose I thought of them as being older, heavier, maybe wearing some strange getup. Lily was none of that, or rather, she was her own strange getup. She was tall, tall as me, and when she stepped closer, taller. She had long straight black hair, black eyes that didn’t reflect, a wide, flat face, and-well, which of the most striking facts should I mention first? The one that surprised me more then, or the one that surprises me more now?

Let me share the one that surprised me then, since that does more to explain the mix of idiocy and naïveté that I was in those days: Lily- was the enemy. It only took a single glance-at her face-to tell me this. Me, who had never exchanged a word with a Japanese citizen. No matter. I was a highly trained soldier. I’d seen newsreels. I read the papers. I knew, precisely and instantly, who or what she was. Japanese.

But the second surprise is better, and unlike the memory of the first, still brings a smile to my lips: Lily was wearing a man’s shirt, long but not that long, a clunky pair of boots, and absolutely nothing else.

In that respect, in every respect, she was the most remarkable palm reader I had ever seen. And having seen her, I knew that I had to leave, immediately.

I ducked my head in a kind of goodbye, and then moved quickly to the door. Or I thought I moved quickly. But then there was some against-the-rules shouting-from her, I realized, but it took a moment because the noise seemed too loud, too off-key-and when the shouting was done, she was in the doorway, blocking my exit.

“Damn you,” she said, staring hard, breathing hard. “You’re not a damn cop, are you? Or an MP? Because they’ve been through. And things were taken care of.” She’d been moving on me as she spoke, and before I knew it, I’d stuttered back half a step.

She frowned. “You’re not a cop.”

“Ma’am,” I said, touching my hat like I’d seen the good cowboys do in the movies. “I’m sorry.” I looked down at her legs. They started where the shirt stopped, and descended, smooth, brown, and, here and there, bruised, into those boots.

“I said no laughing,” she said quietly. “I wear boots. So do you. It’s cold. Welcome to Alaska.” She scuffed at the floor. “Why do boys get so hung up on the boots?” she asked, and then left the doorway to walk around me. “There’s a discount if you’ve got some cigarettes.” I didn’t. “And sometimes a discount if you’re a gentleman.”

That’s when she saw my shoulder insignia: that bright red bomb, fat and finned and ready to drop. On a trip into Anchorage a few years ago, I saw the patch disposal guys wear now-our World War II-era bomb is still there, but smaller, crowded by a base of lightning and laurels. Naturally, I prefer the one we wore. Nothing but that bomb, the red brighter than blood. People’s eyes usually caught there a moment, but Lily did more than that. She flinched slightly, like I’d raised a hand to hit her.

“Well, hello!” she said, or stammered, unable now to meet my eye. I relaxed, sure that I was intimidating her rather than the other way around. A pause followed as we both tried to figure out something to say.

But a sharp voice behind me figured it out for us: “Problem here?”

I could feel someone step around me, and then, there he was: thin, taller, blond, milky blue eyes scanning Lily and me. “Young man getting out of line, Miss Lily?” he asked.

I could tell two things by his insignia: he, too, was in bomb disposal, but more important, he outranked me. Once he discovered the same, he smiled.

I shook my head, but turned to Lily: Had I been out of line, somehow?

“No,” Lily said. She laughed weakly, gave me a questioning look- surely this man and I knew each other?-and then retreated deeper into the office.

“No,” I mumbled.

“Good night,” the man said, not even looking at me. I felt like I was moving out the door without really moving my feet.

“Right,” I said, but by then I was outside, the door was closing.

Before it shut completely, Lily shouted for me to wait. The door eased open again, and I could see her rustling around in the room’s pile of blankets while the man watched. As soon as I realized my vantage point afforded me a somewhat intimate view of her backside, I looked away. The other man did not. I looked again.