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sleeve brushing my arm. Ahead I saw Matti’s corduroy pants leg disappear through the hatch at the top of the stairs.
    The view from the observation deck always gave me a euphoric feeling of freedom, even though there was nothing special about it—endless forest, here and there a lake reflecting the blue of the sky, the occasional patch of field with a black dot indicating the location of a house. In the summer, the view of the city was almost completely obscured behind the hill and all the tall birch trees that lined the streets. During my years in school, this view revealed a world beyondArpikylä, showing me the many different roads that could lead me out.
    And, crazy me, here I was back again.
    I went right up to the railing, playing the old “how far down do I dare to look” game. I saw Meritta Flöjt’s splotch of orange down below, but Johnny had disappeared. Some people seemed to have glasses in their hands, so after a few more seconds of jostling around up top, I headed down to hunt for a drink.
    As I made my descent, I tried to think of what I knew about Meritta—other than that she was my old bandmate Jaska Korhonen’s sister.
    Two main themes dominated Meritta’s work as a painter: muscular male nudes and various phallus and vulva symbols. Meritta’s male figures decorated the office walls of nearly every modern female CEO and politician in Finland who considered herself sexually liberated. Her paintings were undeniably fantastic, and the collection of pictures of ideal men that I used to keep on my dorm room wall included a few of Meritta’s reproductions clipped from magazines.
    Meritta said she had come back to her hometown to paint because the surroundings were so exhilarating. The Tower projecting stoutly above the city and the underground mine shafts were perfect for her paintings. Tame versions of her work hung on the walls of city hall and the library, and the most presentable were even used in city brochures.
    I remembered that she was about ten years my senior and had a child who was about fifteen years old. However, the child’s father, Mårten Flöjt, principal cellist for the Radio Symphony Orchestra, had dropped out of the scene several years before, when Meritta had returned to Arpikylä.
    I had met Meritta a few times when her brother Jaska and I played in the same band, even though she had been studying at the Ateneum Art Academy in Helsinki at the time. Jaska had always acted sulky about his older sister, talking about how stuck-up she had gotten after getting accepted to the Ateneum. I doubted Meritta would remember me, but I thought I’d go say hi anyway. I’ll admit to being curious about meeting a woman whose opinions about so many things resembled my own.
    The party was in full swing in the newly opened restaurant and in the courtyard, where Ella’s dance group was currently performing. I watched the performance purely out of obligation. When someone started playing a saw with a violin bow, I went inside to see if I could find anyone I knew.
    One of the ore-milling buildings had been renovated to house the restaurant. A bar circled the inner wall of the fifty-foot-high hall, and later in the summer the developers intended to install a proper dance floor on the lower level. The idea was to turn the space into a kind of multipurpose gallery suitable for concerts and theater performances. The renovation and retrofitting work had to be burning ungodly amounts of money. I hoped Kivinen’s projections about the increased flow of tourists would pan out.
    I found Matti and Johnny in a back corner on the lower level, chatting with Meritta and a fourth person who was concealed in the shadows. From a passing tray I grabbed a handful of potato chips and a glass of punch and made my way toward them. The light flooding in obliquely from the windows along the roofline fell directly onto Meritta’s dress, and for a moment she appeared to be engulfed in flames. Meritta laughed at something