How Did You Get This Number Read online

  “I think it’s because it’s not just feces,” says Jeff, my friend’s fiancé, in the driver’s seat. “It has something to do with the percentage of the shit that’s actually in scat. There’s fur in there. Other fur.”

  But of course. Other fur. Why not? Only a few days in and nothing surprises me about Alaska. It is a land of casual extremes, a place located not only on the fringes of the planet but on the fringes of all normalcy. A place where you could wake up one morning to a caribou giving birth in your backyard and you’d go to work anyway. You’re not even sure where your camera is. Life is both worshipped and expendable in equal doses. And the human population is as serious as the scenery.

  Here is a list of the six types of Alaskan residents, not including native tribes:1. Military personnel

  2. State-builders

  3. Nature enthusiasts (by which I mean raw, in-your-face nature; bird-watching is for house cats)

  4. Hippie nutballs who looked at Portland, Oregon, and thought, This is way too urban; I have to get out of here.

  5. People who have at one point done something very illegal involving a sawed-off shotgun and freezer bags

  6. This guy:

  When I boarded my flight to Anchorage in Chicago, I went to wedge my trashy magazines into the polyester pouch in front of me. There was something more substantial than usual in there between the SkyMall catalog and the safety card. It was a library book. I was intrigued. It was like finding an abandoned toy in a random bathroom stall, but less creepy. I let the pocket snap shut before opening it again. On the spine in big, bold letters, it read: The Amityville Horror: A True Story. Nope, just as creepy.

  Passengers were still streaming down the aisle, clutching their boarding passes and looking above the seats, as if trying to remember the alphabet. I quickly shoved the book into the pouch to my right and tried to forget about it. My seatmate turned out to be a state-builder Alaskan. His grandfather had a small bay named after him. He was on his way home to visit his mother, who made custom shotgun cases.

  “She does not.”

  “Well, no”—he looked at me thoughtfully—“she doesn’t make the cases themselves, but you should see what she does with them.”

  I imagined this man’s mother in a floral muumuu, beating the shit out of a sea otter on the front porch.

  Apparently, what she actually does is decorate the cases. Causing no small amount of pride in her son, she was recently commissioned to make one for a Jerry Falwell—like figure I should have heard of but hadn’t. At the base, she Krazy Glued a bleeding crucifix of red rhinestones and her logo: A Case of Class by Melina. He handed me her card.

  “I’m Earl,” he said, stiffly shaking my hand in such close proximity to his chest, it gave the illusion of palsy.

  “Sloane.” I shook back, trying on the the-less-you-talk-the-harder-you-are theory of man-speak.

  “This your first time going to Alaska?”

  “It is.”

  “Well, she’s a beauty.”

  “Is she prettier than a boat?”

  Earl opened his pouch, took one look at The Amityville Horror, shrugged, and saw it as a repository for chewing gum.

  “Prettier. But she has a dark side. Weird stuff goes down. I don’t think people think of Alaska like that.”

  “That’s more or less exactly how they think of it,” I said, and proceeded to index every ax murder I knew of on my fingers.

  “So, Earl, you can see how the stories become geographically dense and objectively creepier as you move farther north and west.”

  “I guess so.” He frowned thoughtfully. “Now that you mention it ...”

  Earl proceeded to tell me about a murder case in which a bakery owner was making brioche by day and picking up strippers at a club near the airport by night. This particular baker charmed the strippers into his prop plane and took them to one of the many secluded islands off Alaska’s coast. Once on the island, the man’s demeanor changed dramatically. He forced the strippers to get completely naked, pulled out a crossbow, and informed them that they had twenty minutes to hide, at which point he was going to hunt them down and kill them. As sure as the dough rises, that’s what he did. This man turned from baker to butcher, murdering about twenty girls in this way.

  To be naked ever in Alaska is already to be inconvenienced. The place is exactly as cold as you think it is. But the most shocking part of the story was that the teller knew the subject. Earl and his mother and his mother’s BeDazzler lived down the road from him. On his way to his old logging job, Earl would get a coffee and bear claw (almond, not keratin) from him.

  “He made the best jelly doughnuts I’ve ever tasted,” Earl said, in complete and total seriousness.

  TOMORROW IS THE WEDDING OF JEFF, THE driver of our vehicle, and my dear friend April, the shotgun holder. Here I am referring to the term for the front seat of a car. I think we can all agree this warrants clarification, having nothing to do with killing sprees or unplanned pregnancies. The event has all the trappings of a destination wedding—jet lag, group hikes, a plane ticket for which I could exchange a month’s rent—but in fact, our little community of tourists is small. One hundred twenty out of the one hundred twenty-five guests are native Alaskans. I am one of the other five, a member of the bridal party. We are a nervous band of outsiders. We are quick to highlight our own ignorance, blurting out things like “I don’t know how to play ice hockey!” when someone casually points to a pond. We think if we surrender our pride early, the state will have mercy on us. The paranoia about wildlife is, frankly, a whole other animal. See: Is that a wolf? I thought I just saw a wolf. Oh, wait, that’s a dog. And it’s not moving. I think that’s a lawn dog.

  Because Canada, the Great White North, is a very dark place, when our plane descended through the clouds, it was like landing in a secret city. I had the same feeling the first time I flew to England. After hours of ocean, I experienced an awe at the reality of the world. To have so much nothing and then something: when you are a novice traveler, London feels like Papua New Guinea. Compounding this sensation in Anchorage was the fact that the only regular pollution is light pollution. Though “pollution” is a little harsh. Anchorage at night is “movie dark,” a perpetual dusk in which the cameras have to capture the actors’ faces even though it’s supposed to be midnight.

  For the first time I understood why people come back from Alaska with fifty pictures of glaciers or return from a honeymoon in Tahiti with fifty pictures of the same sunset. The world is so beautiful in these places, it is impossible to register that there will be more, more, more. Surely this is it. Negotiate with your ailing camera battery. How can it not stay alive for this? How can you believe that twenty minutes from now there will be an even taller forest, an even wider waterfall? We are only as good as our most extreme experiences.

  WHEN THE BRIDAL PARTY ARRIVED, WE WERE LESS of a “party” and more of a bunch of separate people flying in from different locations. Still, April insisted on making trip after trip to retrieve us from the airport, scoffing at the idea of taxi services. This gesture seemed saintly by New York standards. Until I realized that it’s generally warmer in one’s car than anywhere else and there is no real traffic in Anchorage. Even if there was, I wouldn’t have minded waiting. The Anchorage airport is a pleasant place to visit. While you can’t eat off the floor, you can drop your scarf on it without hesitating to wrap it back around your neck. Which is more than I can say for JFK. Plus, the Anchorage airport has a gift shop called “Moosellaneous.” And a fiber-optic starry night on the baggage-claim ceiling, which one finds particularly hypnotic after a long flight. As I came down one of the escalators, there was a person in a polar-bear plushy suit, wearing a Native American headdress on top and handing out flyers. As he wordlessly pointed me toward the exit, I thought, Where is David Lynch when you need him?

  I was the last to arrive. When April and I walked through her front door, there were clear signs that merriment had gone on without me. Around he
r condo were scattered open greeting cards with miniature lace dresses glued to the covers, stained wineglasses, and slicks of soft cheese on a plate in the sink. Everyone was asleep, and all the beds were claimed. April showed me to my room, a cot in the laundry room with a sleeping bag unfurled on top. She reemerged with a second sleeping bag.

  “Oh, I already have one.” I pointed to the cot.

  “I know.” She also pointed to the cot.

  A frigid blast came through a crack in the window and knocked the paper brides on their faces.

  IT IS THE NEXT MORNING, AND JEFF HAS GRACIOUSLY agreed to spend his last day of bachelordom driving his fiancée and five of her girlfriends down the coast. Part of me thinks this is the least he can do, as all of us have flown past Canada to get here. This is a common observation among our group, a default fascination triggered by the sight of one’s breath or the glare of the sun at night: Dude, we’re above Canada.

  The state of Alaska itself is like one big whale. Chunks of ice the size of Rhode Island exist like barnacles. They could detach from a glacier up north and no one would notice. During my time there, no fewer than three people explained to me that if you took the outline of Alaska and superimposed it over the continental United States, it would stretch across the country end to end. They must teach this in elementary school up there, because it had the same delivery I like to employ for “Well, you know, yellow’s a primary color” and “A tomato is actually a fruit.” It makes sense to imagine Alaska in this way, as a giant sheet of shadow pulled over our cities and hills. It is a dwarfing place. It manages to be both roughly lumbering and quietly graceful, light about twenty hours a day but dark on the ground. Every mountain passed is so imposing, it would be the mountain if transplanted south. What I see from across a gas station on a dirt road would be the main attraction in, I don’t know, Missouri. As we drive, the combination of soaring mountains and low clouds gives the illusion of smoke—of a series of forest fires. So much so that the sight of each mountain sets off a small panic in my chest until I grow accustomed to the view.

  In a less tangible way, I feel I am in Alaska at a very fragile time. I arrived at the Ted Stevens airport one week after the senator had been ousted from office for accepting illegal campaign donations. Now I insist on tooling around the town of Girdwood as if I have a crush on Ted Stevens. I am looking for his house, which was built with the blood of baby caribou. Or just dirty money. Meanwhile, banners line the paved streets of Anchorage, announcing that the following year is the state’s fiftieth anniversary. I feel the way the Italians and Chinese must feel when we point to the Liberty Bell and say, “Look at this old thing we built. We are pleased with it.”

  At one point, April’s mother notes that there is something is the air these days besides the usual (just more air). In addition to the mysteriously high number of bear attacks this summer, there are rumors that Alaska’s otherwise unknown governor is on the short list for the Republican vice presidential ticket. She refers to this woman as “our Sarah Palin,” which strikes me as pleasantly loyal. Our Sarah Palin. Perhaps it reveals a political passivity on my part, but I don’t think of any of New York’s politicians as mine. Not in the “Our little Mikey’s all grown up” way. Then again, I wouldn’t elect a child to office, and perhaps that’s the way it should be. Their feet flail around when they sit, and they have a tendency to stick gum underneath the desks.

  Palin’s nomination will serve as a strange social call to arms among the Alaskans I know living in New York, like the way one twin can sometimes feel the pain of another from miles away. Except, in this case, one of the twins considers the other an embarrassment, the worst Alaskan PR tragedy since Jewel started publishing poetry or—as even Earl put it—“the time that moron walked into the woods to die in a bus.” Each time Palin winks at the world, one of my Alaskan friends feels a deep pang of shame. But like the rest of the country, right now I know absolutely nothing about Sarah Palin. For now I think, Good for Sarah Palin! Good for April’s mom! Good for Alaska! Politicians are like Olympians. Every four years they bloom into the American consciousness, but they’ve been there this whole time, putting down roots beneath the surface. I am excited for this sneak preview of what’s to come. I look forward to parties back in New York in which I will know a thing or two about contemporary politics.

  “And there”—Jeff ducks forward a little and points—“is where we used to camp and fish when we were little.”

  I scan the solid patch of spruce trees to which Jeff has gestured. I look for a path or even a gap in the foliage. Starting from the sky, there’s a layer of light blue, then a layer of white, then a layer of green, and then a layer of dirt. If the Alaskan state flag were striped instead of starred, these would be the colors, and this would be the order.

  “But”—Jeff’s voice trails off—“you can see how overrun it’s become.”

  My heart goes out to Jeff. To the naked eye, he is far more out of place on this road trip than I am. He is our lone star of testosterone in a galaxy of chick. I spend much of the car ride wheeling through my iPod, on the hunt for songs that don’t instantly conjure footage of hipster girls ironically sipping Pabst with their cheeks sucked in. I must have music that corresponds with the dead-serious consumption of Pabst. Even a band called Grizzly Bear feels too tame. Jeff is millionth-generation state-builder Alaskan. His family helped create the state—specifically, the railroads—which connected oil towns to fishing towns, and fishing towns to gold-rush towns, and so forth. This fascinates me in a way that does not fascinate Jeff himself. He is used to his own background, even used to outsiders’ interest in it. Absolutely no one will ever say to me, No way, you grew up in suburbia? Man, that must have been amazing.

  I MET APRIL WHEN SHE WAS SPENDING HER POSTGRADUATE years in New York, where I was spending mine as well. April was raised in a city where the fog has been known to freeze and fall on people’s heads. A city where the swank downtown neighborhood is dubbed SoNo (South of Nordstrom). For a place with so much clean air, it was strangely suffocating. She was ready for something a bit more fast-paced in SoCa (South of Canada). New York was her first choice. We exchanged a few sideways glances during a health-care-benefits orientation at work. Then we went around the conference table sharing arbitrary facts about ourselves. I divulged that I had never been stung by a bee. April said she was from Alaska.

  “Alaska!” The human resources lady brightened. “Hey, now! I’m sure New York will seem like Jamaica to you.”

  April gritted her teeth and let out a fake laugh, the kind where one pronounces the word “ha.” The assumption of dramatic regional evolution is one of humanity’s odder tics. I, for example, do not listen to every schizophrenic hobo muttering to himself on the subway or cover my ears when the train comes. But must I be diagnosed by the rest of the country as legally deaf? How many times has it been suggested that I will actually have difficulty falling asleep in someone’s peaceful country house? People of central Africa, I beg you: never come here unless you are willing to sit in a locked sauna and have some bozo say the words “I’ll bet this feels like air-conditioning to you.”

  “It’s a little infuriating,” admitted April, as we sat on the metal benches of a corporate office park and ate salad-bar lunches.

  “It’s like they want to take away my socks and dunk me in ice water. I never realized how little people knew about Alaska.”

  Perhaps to appear more knowledgeable than the human-resources lady, I told April the only thing I knew about Alaska. It was an old news story about some local Anchorage kids who decided to sneak into the zoo’s polar-bear exhibit and swim across the moat. Alaska may have a free-for-all Noah’s-ark quality when it comes to breeds of puffin, but a polar bear is a big deal. Those they lock up. The tragedy was amplified each time I heard it. In one version, one of the kids was being mauled and crying for help as the other two jumped back in the moat. Sometimes only one of the boys swam back. Sometimes none of them swam back. Sometimes they were a
ll found dead, floating in the red water. It took on the quality of a morality play, awkwardly undercut with Darwinian themes of stupidity.

  April rested her plastic fork in her salad bowl and, in the same tone Earl would employ when discussing jelly doughnuts years later, said, “I had homeroom with those boys.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “No”—she put her hand on my knee—“I’m kidding.”

  “Oh, phew.”

  “Actually”—she laughed—“I’m not. But I wanted to get that worried look off your face.”

  We quickly made the transition from amicable coworkers to voluntary friends. Eventually we moved a building away from each other on the same block in Manhattan. It was like a Broadway musical, if only in set design. Our apartments faced the same inaccessible courtyard, and a typical phone conversation might go something like this:APRIL: Hey, it’s me. Do you smell that?

  ME: No, smell what?

  APRIL: Walk over to your back window. I think something’s burning.

  ME: I think ... Yes, that’s definitely barbecue.

  APRIL: Good, just checking.

  Most people have at least one friend in New York who never gives up the crusade to make their lives feel rural, and April was mine. Assuming you’re not one of those “no furniture, no hot water, no problem” people, we all have elements of self-comfort in the beginning. Means of making our lives feel a bit more civilized. But gradually the city fights back, like crabgrass. Not that you know what crabgrass looks like anymore. You stop setting your alarm clock early and start vowing to run only when chased. You make peace with those cracks and corners of your apartment that came ground to the floorboards with rust and dirt. You tack up articles about museum exhibits, only to tear them down months later when you realize the show has moved to Moscow. The diligent sheen wears off your book club until it’s more of a wine club until it’s not even in someone’s apartment anymore until it’s just drinks and a movie and enough last-minute cancellation e-mails to, ironically, fill a book.