The Cloud

by Matt Richtel

  “I’m sorry I hit you so hard. I thought you were trying to steal from the company.”

  It feels coached. He disappears into the wind.

  “Let’s go,” Faith says.

  I try to swallow and nearly choke from dryness.

  “Nathaniel. It’s cold.”

  A pigeon swoops from the treetops and pecks at some unseen snack at the base of the cross. It sails off again, its off-white feathers blur with the sky behind it and I wonder if the concussion is beginning to reassert itself. Then I realize why I’m so blurred. It’s not my brain but my eyes. They are filled with tears, blazing hot grief. A drip, a stream, cascade. Sobs.

  I see Isaac, pale, bundled, not bundled, actually, shrouded. His weakened mother could not sustain him in utero. I’m in a trance when they show his lifeless body to me and wonder if I’d like to say goodbye. I look down at him and then at the nurse, clenching her teeth, holding it together, much more than I’m able to do.

  Time passes, drizzle comes in and out, Faith finally speaks again. She says she needs to check on her nephew, Timothy. I stand and I find myself straining to look at her. It’s not that I don’t trust her, though I don’t. I don’t want to make full contact with her because it will mean acknowledging that I’m part of this world still, that what I’m experiencing now—the loss—is real.

  She tries to take my hand and I neither resist nor embrace her. I stand. I turn. I feel a muddy patch beneath my feet, the ground indenting, my heart with it. I know the symbolism of this walk, back to the inherited Audi, on with life. Polly got two fortune cookies, both empty, like her future and Isaac’s future, our future. The one I embark on with my next step.

  “Please tell me what’s going on,” Faith says.

  In my right hand, still clenched, I feel the metal object that Faith handed me and that I’ve forgotten about entirely. I open my hand and see, as I’d expected, a pocketknife, a modest weapon that Faith had imagined for who knows what purpose. It falls into the mud.

  I take the next step.

  52

  “May I drive, Nathaniel?”

  I click open the car and climb into the driver’s seat. Warm air blows from the dashboard vents.

  “I’ll take you to Timothy.”

  “I slept with the admissions director at his school.”

  I don’t respond.

  “He sought out my advice because he was thinking of getting out of his job. He seemed, frankly, pathetic. I honestly just needed some release and I dated him. It was his idea to take Timothy into the school, or maybe I planted the seed. When I broke it off, he said he might force Timothy out of the school.”

  I slow the car to allow a woman to cross the street. She has the same crazy, lazy look as her muzzled pit bull.

  “I don’t know how Alan figured it out but he essentially blackmailed me. It was gentle. Not an outright threat. But he said that if I helped him get your attention, he’d pay me $1,000 and help me with my problem at school. Reading between the lines, he was suggesting he could make my problem with Mission Day School worse too. Carrot and stick.”

  “Hacking.”

  “What?”

  “You said that Alan seemed to know a lot about you. Of course he did. He might’ve monitored your email, or hacked your voice mails. He knew what was going in your life—my life.”

  “Why? What is all this?” Stricken, understandably.

  I turn left onto Market, one of the city’s arteries. In a veritable monotone, I tell her: I had a pregnant girlfriend named Polly. She contracted brain cancer, a particular kind called anaplastic astrocytoma. Stage Three. It comes on fast and it doesn’t quit. It weakened her so severely she couldn’t nourish the baby. And it created a deadly conundrum. Starting chemo would kill the baby, but removing Isaac prematurely came with its own severe risks. In the end, there was nothing modern medicine could do.

  I take a right onto Clipper, a steep slope downward into Noe Valley, then the Mission, the fog lightening slightly.

  A whisper: “I’m so sorry. I lost one too. A very late miscarriage, a very early marriage.”

  I let her revelation sink in. “They kidnapped you,” I finally say.

  “It would be hard to prove.”

  Something compels me to look in the rearview mirror. A few cars back, I think I make out the Mercedes. It disappears to the right, onto a side street.

  “At the fire at the annex, the man Steven asked me to go with him. And I said I would do so. Actually, I told him that if he touched me, I’d scream. He said: ‘Please, I could use your help.’ I obviously knew he wasn’t that helpless but the way he asked made me realize that I could . . .” She pauses.

  Silence.

  “Faith?”

  “I’m not stupid. I’m aware of the effect I can have on people, specifically, men. I guess I like the hurt ones because I know they need something besides a trophy kill. I’ve become expert at discerning injury, emotional need. I see it everywhere. Where it’s absent, I run.”

  “That bully is hardly vulnerable.”

  “Maybe not physically vulnerable, to a man. But I could see that, if necessary, I could manipulate him. I wanted to know the answers too. You were acting like a crazy man.”

  “Where did they take you?”

  “To the Mandarin Hotel. I met Gils Simons. We called you, and then they gave me a room and my cell phone to call Timothy and whomever else I wanted. I think they must have drugged me. They told me I could go, but I fell asleep and I slept hard.”

  “You gave me a pocketknife.”

  “To use against Gils Simons. He, by contrast, has no emotional needs. He’s like a calculator, a computer, an adding machine with a toupee.”

  “That’s a toupee?”

  “Might as well be. The guy’s a mannequin.”

  In spite of myself, I laugh, albeit lightly. My first half laugh of the new era.

  “As near as I could tell,” Faith says, “they are excited to launch some new product. It’s some new toy or video game they’re testing here and they’re beginning to sell in China, with the blessing of the government there. Steven is the liaison to the Chinese. He takes that role very seriously. He thinks you’re ruining the launch or stealing the secrets or something like that. Are you?”

  I shake my head no. I don’t really know the answer to her question.

  I take a slow right onto Folsom. A block back, the Mercedes materializes. I lose sight of it around the corner and it doesn’t reappear as I head straight on Folsom past the clumps of day-workers gathered on the corners.

  A few minutes later, I’ve arrived at Mission Day School.

  Faith hustles to unbuckle her seat belt and open her door. “I’m going to figure out how to pay the tuition, if I have to go even further into debt. Timothy’s thriving here, in a relative sense. But I’ve got to get out from under this jerk.”

  She stands at the door. She kneels down. She looks at me until I relent and meet her gaze. She blinks her brown eyes and I realize that, even though she senses her power to connect, physically and emotionally, she doesn’t know its depths. I want to make her smile. And she wants to say something. She opens her mouth, only a tad, then pauses, her perfect lips hung in space. Maybe she’s waiting for me. I’m waiting too. I’m waiting to say what I know I feel: give me a few weeks and then let’s get coffee and a doughnut and see what we can do about having an honest connection, the first I’ve had in nearly a year.

  I have the feeling she wants the same thing.

  “Goodbye, Faith.”

  53

  “Are you having a threesome with state-sponsored terrorists?”

  This is the question that greets me when I get to the entrance to the office. Rather, it’s the question on the meticulously hand-painted sign in the window of Green Love, the politically correct and eco-friendly sex shop that never fails to remind me I’m not nearly the weirdest tenant in the building.

  I can’t help but read a flyer in the window below the provocative questio
n. It explains that some “mainstream sex lubricants” use petroleum-based oils that can “line the pockets of Middle East terror states that treat women as chattel.” The flyer goes on to urge the use of sex products “sold here” from certified fair-trade communities in Latin and Central America and also from local artisans.

  If I ever get horny again, I’m pretty sure I’m not going to be looking for lubricant made in someone’s bathtub in Sonoma County. But then, how could I ever look myself again in the mirror over the bed if I wasn’t making love, but terrorism?

  I look over my shoulder and I see no sign of the bald buzzard or other lurkers. And a minute later, I’ve trudged up the stairs and see that the door to my office is ajar.

  Almost without a pause, I push open the door. Inside, I see the one person who might pose the biggest threat. At least emotionally.

  Samantha, my Witch, my sister-in-arms, sits cross-legged on the floor. Her head is back as if looking at the heavens but her eyes are closed and, even if they were open, the most exotic or mystical thing she could see is a water stain on our ceiling that looks vaguely like a tarantula eating a strand of spaghetti.

  She’s in deep thought, or a trance, something I’ve learned not to interrupt. Not that I want to. Seeing the Witch means poking the wound I’ve just discovered.

  I start to walk to the futon. I’m going to lie down on it and then get up again when I’m struck by any urge of any kind that seems more powerful than the urge to lie on the futon.

  But, then, I’ve forgotten the lure of my mobile phone. En route to the futon, I remember that it—my iPhone—is dead for wont of a charge. I beeline to the desk to plug it in, genuinely rueful at the inescapable need to attend to my device. I find the power cord plugged into the wall behind my computer. I insert it into the device. I see the picture of Isaac on the desk. It’s the one I took with this self-same phone, the image I emailed to myself and printed out, wanting, perversely, to keep alive some memento of all the things I lost. Equally inexplicably, I kept tacking it to my wall, no doubt one of the many small missteps I made that allowed me to create a virtual reality, concussion enhanced, that left me believing that Isaac never died.

  I pick up the photo.

  I turn around. The Witch stares at me. With her hands folded in her lap, as in the shape of a cup, she looks like a statue you’d see in some comically peaceful Asian rock garden. Water should be flowing from her lips into her hand cup.

  I take the picture and I lay it on the desk. Facedown.

  This elicits no discernable reaction from Samantha. Maybe her eyes soften. Maybe I’m projecting. She tilts her head back and looks up in the direction of the water-stain tarantula, then closes her eyes.

  My phone chirps, suddenly juiced, coming to life. On it, the clock reads 12:05. What day, though? Then the phone, as if reading my mind, beeps again. The calendar pops up, reminding me I’ve got an appointment in three hours. It’s the tax hearing.

  I wonder if I’ll make it.

  I plod to the futon. I plop down. I fall asleep. I don’t dream.

  I feel warmth on my hand. I open my eyes. The Witch sandwiches my fingers between her palms, bringing me to life as if an anesthesiologist gently awakening a cardiac patient from a post-surgical haze.

  “Your phone says you’ve got a meeting at three,” she says.

  “What time is it?”

  “Twenty minutes until your meeting.”

  I sit up and prop my back against the wall.

  “I’m glad you’ve stopped running.”

  “Yeah, maybe.”

  She cocks her head. I imagine she’s seeing all kinds of different Karmic colors swirling around me.

  “What if I’m running to something, instead of away from something?”

  “Are you?”

  I stand up. I walk to my desk and I pick up my phone.

  “Nathaniel, have you ever?”

  “May I say something important?”

  “Please.”

  “I hope you and Bullseye aren’t using lubricants that support radical extremists.”

  She laughs. “I saw that sign. Don’t worry. Our love oils are certified organic.”

  Outside, I climb into my car and see a familiar face or, rather, two. Sandy Vello and boyfriend, Clyde. They sit across the street from my office in a pickup truck—Clyde’s, I presume. When I stare at them, they first pretend not to see me. Then Clyde starts the truck and speeds off.

  I suspect they are no threat, though I’ll need to deal with Sandy again at some point. Not when I’ve got a date in court.

  54

  The magistrate wears a pantsuit and a grim visage. Making sure to alternately make eye contact with me and a mousy man with a small head and a full beard sitting across an oak table from me, she explains she’s not a judge but a state-appointed arbiter. Do we have any questions about that?

  Just: Why am I here?

  “I’m not being cute,” I say. “I got served two or three days ago.”

  “You know about your responsibility to pay taxes,” says the man, the Internal Revenue Service rep.

  The magistrate holds out her hand, nun-style, urging calm. Her hair is pulled so tightly into a bun, I see scalp.

  Overhead, one of the filament lights blinks out, making the boxy bureaucratic room even dimmer.

  The magistrate looks at me. “This revolves around the estate of Pauline Sanchez.”

  I nod. Of course. I clear my throat. “How much is she in arrears?”

  “Not she,” the mousy man says. “You. Nine hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Plus penalties. We’ll not settle for a penny less.”

  I shrug. Okay. “Why me?”

  “Is this guy for real?”

  The magistrate cautions him again with her hands, palms down. “Mr. Idle, you understand you have to pay the estate tax on what you inherited.”

  “On the apartment and the car. I’m sorry, I . . .”

  The mousy man seems to soften. It dawns on him that I am not merely playing ignorant.

  “You’re the journalist,” he says.

  I nod.

  “You obviously know you’ve got to pay the tax not just on the hard goods but also the liquid assets.” It’s not confrontational anymore, a tonal olive branch.

  I shake my head. “I don’t . . .”

  “The cash,” the magistrate interjects. “Several million dollars in . . .” She looks down at the file. Something seems to dawn on her too. “It was in a trust but payable to you in the event of . . .” She trails off.

  “You’re aware of the inheritance.” The tax man blinks rapidly.

  I’m aware, vaguely. Even before she died, I had already moved into Polly’s house and started driving her car, all at her behest so that I’d be ready to take care of Isaac. Subsequent to their deaths, I’d been contacted on several occasions by an executor with regard to Polly’s estate but I’d asked him to take care of it, figuring she had her own cadre of money people. I recall him telling me I was in line to inherit a substantial sum of money. But, I kept thinking, for what? For being the helpless guy who watched the whole thing fall apart, who sat on the sidelines with the medical degree and the reporter’s notebook?

  I’d asked him to give the money to Polly’s brother. I seem to recall that the executor had told me that, given the brother’s substance-abuse problems, Polly had wanted the lion’s share to go to me.

  I remember getting letters from the lawyer and some from the IRS. I piled them up on the end table at the front of the flat I inherited and never quite took ownership of.

  The magistrate clears her throat. “I’m going to order a continuation, Mr. Idle. Get yourself a good accountant.”

  I nod.

  “I’m sorry.” She puts her sun-cracked hand on my arm. “No one should lose a child.”

  I put the Audi into drive and take a right out of the lot. No one should ever lose a child.

  I pull to the side of the road, next to a yellow-painted curb, which, if memory serv
es, means I can be fed to piranhas if caught parking here. I pull my phone from my pocket. I dial Jill Gilkeson.

  “Hi.” She’s lifeless in a way I now get.

  “I’m sorry to bother you. One more question regarding all the fine work that Mr. Leviathan’s done.”

  “Shoot.”

  “Were there any others who worked with you early on at Leviathan Ventures, people who could attest to the germs of his efforts?”

  She asks for a second to think about it. She starts listing names, thinking aloud. She promises to get me contact info for the ones she can find. She asks if she should just email me the names and contact info and I say sure. I’m fishing for something, not really sure what, when it leaps onto my boat.

  “I’d appreciate if you didn’t call the Gearsons. Lena and Erik.”

  “Sure. They don’t get along with Mr. Leviathan?”

  “Oh no, not that. They just lost their son. He was friends with Jill, my daughter. A long time ago. He died earlier this year. He was one of those kids at Los Altos High School.”

  “Sorry, I’m not following.”

  “They had three kids who jumped in front of a train. Anthony, I think that was his name, he was the first. Then two copy cats.”

  “Anthony Gearson.”

  “Please don’t bother them.”

  “I promise.” Deep exhale. “No one should lose a child.”

  “Do a nice article. Andrew has given his life to make the world a better place.”

  “I will.”

  Click.

  I sit bewildered, five minutes, ten. The phone rings.

  I answer and hear: “It’s Doc.” I don’t respond, uncertain which ghost this voice represents. “Doc Jefferson. Sorry it took so long to get back to you. It’s been crazy, right?” Then friendly laughter. It’s the warden from Twin Peaks juvenile hall, the nominal administrator of the learning annex that went kaboom. “You’re one hell of a journalist.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Snooping around before an explosion. Great instincts.”