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understand? We have bad problem now in Chinatown.”
    She was about to retreat when she saw him in the corridor. He was wearing a white lab coat, holding the hand of a mortally thin Chinese woman, talking softly, as if she were a child about whose future he knew a sad story.
    “I know him,” Ana told the nurse.
    “So? You go now, or wait for other doctor to see you.”
    She remembered the way he had looked at her aboard the ship—as if she were beautiful—and knew that somehow he would help her. He
must
help her. A man shouldn’t look at a woman that way if not prepared to perform a kind of exorcism over her loneliness and desperation.
    People coughed. She smelled their fragile, humid bodies, the condensation of sweat on amber arms. She felt her owns arms, so thin. In that moment she was no one. She had nothing to lose.
    “Look, it’s highly personal. Please tell Dr. McCormick I need to see him. Tell him … it’s the girl from the ship, the
Lurline
.”
    The nurse studied her as if she were both novel and absurd.
    But minutes later he peered out from an examination room, smiled faintly, and came forward.
    Timidly, she took his hand. “I’m Ana. I hope you remember me. I used to watch you stroll the decks …”
    “Of course I remember. I should have introduced myself then. How can I help you? Are you ill?”
    She shook her head. “I’m here because I saw your picture in the paper. I came to ask if possibly you knew of an opening here, receptionist or anything. I’m afraid I haven’t been able to get my bearings since I arrived.”
    In a glance he took in her dress, her worn-down shoes. He sat her down in a corner. “Ana, I don’t officially work here. I’m with a lab outside the city. My field is immunology, and they’ve called several of us in for consultation. It’s pretty serious.”
    She had never felt so desperate. “Well … do you know someonewho could hire me? I had two years of university at home, a science major. It’s just … I left the islands quickly, with no forethought.”
    “And it’s your first time in San Francisco.”
    “My first time anywhere.”
    Months later he would tell her how he had seen her coming up the gangway of the
Lurline
in her island clothes. He had watched her stand alone on deck, waving to no one as the ship’s bow slowly turned and headed out to sea. She had looked so brave and lonely, something touched him. During the crossing he had thought to introduce himself, but she was young and he felt he had already thrown his life away.
    M AX FOUND HER A SECRETARIAL JOB AT A COMMUNITY COLLEGE where eventually she would complete her degree. At first he puzzled her, a man who dressed impeccably as if to compensate for something lost in his expression, something sad, used-up. He asked few questions. He did not seem to ask much of life either.
    But as weeks passed, they began to talk in such a natural way the hours seemed calibrated into periods of stillness and motion, coolness and warmth, a flawless, almost timeless ease. Yet Ana was careful, leaving blanks rather than lie so that she would not have to cover her tracks, lie to protect earlier lies. Rather, she told him half-truths.
    She had dropped out of university. She had left home because her family stifled her. With seeming modest dignity, she spoke of her Hawaiian father, a well-known lawyer. And her uncle, a celebrated trumpeter who had played for heads of state in Europe. Testing Max’s credulity, she began to see how near truths and half-truths could ease her way into the world.
    And so she told of her great-grandfather who had owned a phaeton and matching steeds with which he had raced through the cobblestone streets of Honolulu to play checkers with the queen. And as she continued, Ana saw how in telling her tales, she assumed a kind of power over Max, how in linking sequences of made-up events she captured and held his attention, making him her accomplice.
    She told of a thieving ancestor who had