The Cloud Atlas

“God, that sounds boring,” she said. I think now she was referring to the imaginary classroom as it bobbed across the Pacific, but I thought then that she was criticizing my imagination. Some palm reader I'd make. So I revised things; I found another line and started again. Born in Japan, on top of a mountain, a mother made of snow and a father made of fire. I didn't know where all this was coming from, but she'd fallen quiet and was listening. She spoke every language, I said, the words came to her in raindrops. Raindrops; a cloud; she'd traveled across the ocean in a giant cloud, floating this way and that, until a storm had gathered, and she'd dropped to earth in a flaming downpour-

Her hands flew away from me with a start, and just for an instant, I saw her wear another face, one she hadn't shown me before. But it passed, and then she was holding my hands. Holding them, but looking at my eyes.

“You're a very, very bad palm reader,” she said. “And a creepy storyteller. I, on the other hand-I'm very good at both. You want to hear your story?”

I THINK MINE is the sort of life that almost anyone could read from a hand, or better yet, my eyes. They say those eyes never leave you, eyes that blinked awake each morning wondering if this was the day your parents would come-not some foster parents they'd found for you, but your real parents, a mom and dad, like everyone had, even Jesus. So although I find it patronizing, I long ago decided it was also true: an orphan never loses that look, those eyes.

I wasn't too surprised, then, when Lily got that part right: orphan. And I admire her for not taking the easy route and pretending she knew who my parents were, and describing these imaginary beings to me in exquisite, unknowable detail.

But maybe it would have been better for her to embroider some fiction. Because the more she talked, the more she knew, and the more scared I became. She knew about the orphanage, knew it was nothing like Dickens, knew that the Mary Star of the Sea Home for Infants and Children was south of Los Angeles, knew it was just a block from the beach, knew-and no one would ever have made this up-that the nuns treated us like the grandchildren they'd never have. She knew no family ever came for me (though if she knew why she didn't say), and she knew that all those years saturated with sun and God's love had left me with the pure, naïve desire to be His priest.

And that's where I stopped her. Because I didn't want to know if she knew the rest, how I'd taken the train-paying the fare with money the teary-eyed nuns had given me-to San Diego. How I'd never made it to the high school seminary they were finally sending me to, because I stopped at the armed forces recruiting station first.

I didn't want to know if Lily knew I had been scared. Scared of what, I can't really say, not even now. (Maybe she could have.) All I knew was that I was a kid on a train, suddenly aware of where he was going, guessing at what he was leaving. There were soldiers on the train. And girls on the train. The world was on that train, and the world was going to war. I was going off to high school, a high school seminary, and I could see it, smell it: wax and wood and incense. The train smelled like perfume and aftershave and the ocean, which was just outside the window. By the time we got to San Diego, I was sweating and queasy because I'd realized what I would do. It wasn't that I wanted to lie about my age and enlist-I enlisted because I thought it the only other option God might possibly forgive.

And now, alone in a dark room in the sway of a woman who practiced magic, I finally knew He would not.

“THAT'S ENOUGH,” I said. I pulled my hand away, although she hadn't really been studying it-she'd been holding it, but not reading it. For a while, she'd closed her eyes.

“A priest?” she said again, not mocking, not Gurley just curious.

“There are worse things,” I said.

She scrambled to her feet. “That's not what I meant.”

“I'm-sorry,” I said. “I guess it's not what I meant either.” Lurking in the back of my mind had been the faint expectation that she'd make this easy; she'd just rip my clothes off, then hers, and there we'd be. I gave her another second to. And two more. Then I said I had to go.

“You'll come back?” she said, and while I knew I shouldn't, I knew I would. I wanted to know how she'd done what she'd done. And I just wanted to see her again. But reflexes preceded thought, and I found myself mumbling about the base not being far away, and sure, I'd probably get a day or two of leave every now and then. I was halfway out the door when she caught hold of my jacket. “No,” she said, low and serious, “I mean, you'll come back, tonight.”

Again, I felt something flit in and out of my pocket. “And bring something to eat,” she said, even as the door was closing. As it clicked, I felt in my pocket. My wallet was still there. And along with it, a five-dollar bill, another message: “ 1.”