by Matt Richtel
“Can you read this?” I turn the paper his direction.
He leans near, stares at the characters, blinks. “The second one means ‘computer.’ The first one makes no sense.”
“It’s not a Chinese character?”
“It’s like three squeezed together.” He traces his finger underneath it. “It looks like the word for Earth and the word for clown lumped together.”
“Like at the circus.”
He half nods.
I consider this, take a step back. “So all together it means ‘computer earth clown’?”
He shrugs. From the smoldering brick oven, he brings my slice, which suddenly looks revolting. He takes my money and returns to his show.
I take two bites of the pizza as I walk to the office, and toss it in a trash bin outside my building.
Upstairs, I sit on the futon and call Sandy Vello. She answers on the first ring and gets right to the point. “How about 5:30 at the Ramp?” Thanks to caller ID, I think, no one says hello anymore, they just launch right in. “Do you know it?”
I do. It’s a bar with a patio situated on the bay frequented by functional alcoholics who excuse their afternoon drinking on the grounds that they’re just getting some sun. I look outside. It’s going to be cold and maybe wet. “Sure.”
“No paparazzi.” She hangs up.
I fall asleep with the phone in my hand, picturing corpulent, dead Alan. Something about the position of his body troubles me. I wake up two hours later, just shy of my meeting with the reality-show contestant. It’s already getting dark. I pull from the closet a full-length wool jacket and walk into the cold to head to the Ramp. I’m thinking about the Chinese characters, and something I remember about PRISM, Sandy Vello’s employer. It’s got headquarters in Beijing. I’m wondering if this mystery just jumped the ocean-when my phone buzzes.
On it, a text: “I looked u up. I’ll tell you about Kathryn, God rest her soul, but I can’t imagine why you’re interested. Jill.”
I click on the text, which brings up the sender’s contact information. I dial.
“That was quick.”
“Thanks for the response, Jill. I. .”
She interrupts. “Why are you interested in Kathryn?”
“I’m honestly not sure.”
She pauses. “I’m her mother. I was. You do really interesting stories. You won an award from. .” She pauses again, then rephrases. “You won a fancy journalism award.”
“Kathryn is. .” Now it’s my turn to pause.
“She died twelve years ago. She was seven.”
“I’m sorry, Jill. I really didn’t know. Was she sick?”
“No. She. . car accident, a wreck, an accident, something. I’ve never been able to find the right word. But I don’t really want to talk about this by phone and I still can’t understand why you’d care at all about it.”
“Can I come see you?”
She doesn’t respond.
“It so happens I’m going to be in the area.” I’m using a common tactic to suggest it would be convenient for us to get together.
“How do you know my area?”
“Your area code. I assumed Palo Alto.”
“Not tonight. Tomorrow. Menlo Park. Between two and four, I’ll be at the Woodland Learning Center on El Camino, near Kepler’s bookstore. You know the area?”
I know it. We hang up. A dead girl. I wonder what a former reality-TV star knows about it. And where is Faith?
18
Wraparound sunglasses, name-brand windbreaker, and a vacant smile that communicates she feels herself in control of the situation, whatever it is. These are the first of my second impressions of Sandy.
She sits at the end of a long, wooden outdoor table in a light wind and drizzle, dark sky mitigated by a weak patio light. The rudimentary ambience at the Ramp suits the post-college Greek system crowd, which suggests Sandy’s chasing hipness. Twentysomething San Franciscans brim with confidence they’ve found Mecca here until they have their first kid and realize they can’t afford housing AND private schools, and then move.
The deck extends over bay water a half mile from AT amp;T Park, home to the San Francisco Giants. I wonder, looking into the misty fog in the direction of the ballpark, whether AT amp;T realizes that half the expletives uttered during games are directed not at the visiting team but at the fact that AT amp;T’s iPhone service doesn’t work there.
“Wimps.” Sandy looks through the window at the after-work crowd toasting with plastic cups. “But we can talk privately out here. Some things I’ll tell you about the show are off the record.”
She removes her glasses and winks.
“Do they have anything stiffer than beer?”
“I drink water. I got you a Bud Light. What’s your kid like?”
I tense but don’t respond and she doesn’t need much of an opening to get on her soapbox. “I’d love to have a kid. It’s important to pass down life lessons.”
It’s all about Sandy. Good. The challenge tonight isn’t getting her talking but getting frostbite when I can’t shut her up. I sit, feeling dampness; wish I’d worn something thicker than my T-shirt under the coat. She pushes a plastic cup filled with dull yellow liquid at me. I bring it to my lips, sip. Awful.
“He’s got an oral fixation.” I feel a pit in my stomach at the idea of sharing anything about Isaac with this woman. But I have to give to get. Take my time moving from me to Sandy the TV contestant to Sandy the PRISM employee, which is the reason for this ignominious meeting. “Puts things in his mouth, tastes them, senses the world that way and tests his boundaries. If his taste buds are any gauge, he’s curious like his dad.”
My brain bounces; I think for an instant about the new science around the oral fixation. Freud had us think it was psychological. But the infectious-disease specialists suspect kids put things in their mouths to train the immune system what to react to. The innocuous things, like chalk, get ignored. The bacteria-laced Styrofoam cups found on the ground prompt an immune response.
“There was an episode where they made us eat bugs.” Sandy smiles, taking back the limelight. “It was a joke. Clyde told me he knew from his Marine training that the bugs they chose couldn’t make us sick. Lots of protein. Whatever.”
“Clyde.”
“Robichaux. From the show. Tough-ass Marine.”
“He’s. .”
“Lives in Redwood City. Don’t go there. He shoots trespassers. The main thing is, I’d trust him with my life.”
“Right, I remember but. .”
“Aren’t you going to write this down?”
“Is that okay?”
“I’ll tell you when it’s not.”
I pull a notebook from the inside pocket of my coat. My head pulses from concussion and the pain of this interview. What thoughtful conspirator could possibly make use of this narcissist? Am I being decoyed? Let the source ramble, I remind myself as coldly as I once dissected bodies, and it will reveal its nature. And that of PRISM.
Suddenly, she’s off and running with her story. She tells me how she had a rough childhood but became a triathlete, double-majored at a community college in child psychology and fitness, moved to Los Angeles with dreams of doing life and nutrition management for children of movie stars and other wealthy people who grow up facing “more stress than young people should.” She got some big-name clients, who she lists but I’ve not heard of. One of them, a big soap-opera actor, got her a casting call on the reality show.
“The cliche is that you make your own luck. But I say you fake your own luck. You act and feel lucky and the world bends to your will.” She looks to make sure I write that down.
“You’re always moving forward.”
“What do you mean?”
“You didn’t get hung up by the nonsense on the show. If I can speak honestly, it must have been tough, what happened-getting the boot-and yet, boom, you moved on.”
This is a key reporting technique; say something that sounds just m
ildly critical-but ultimately is not-because it implies growing intimacy. Like, We’re tight enough that I can take a chance on being frank.
“Bingo. What else do you observe about me?”
There are various carvings on the old wooden table: hearts and filthy overtures. If I had a camping knife, I could whittle, “My Intellectual Curiosity Died Here.”
“I observe you’ve got some lessons to pass on, like you were saying earlier. The stuff at the youth center. .”
“Stop.”
“What?”
“Thank you. Thank you.” She starts to applaud. It’s a condescending act, followed by, “I’ve been waiting for you to reveal yourself.”
I put my hands up.
“I will tell you why I volunteer at the youth center but it’s off the record. You cannot use it-not under any circumstances. I will sue you. That record is sealed.”
I’m trying to make sense of this gamble. She’s so dramatic about her purported criminal record that, I’m thinking, it can’t possibly be that interesting. But if it is central to some conspiracy, I’ll find a way to write about it.
“Off the record.” I want to tell her that muckraking is an honorable tradition of exposing truth but why bother.
She eyeballs me. “I came from upper-middle-class money, and neither of my parents drank-alcohol-so who knows why? But I took my first drink of whiskey from my uncle’s bar when I was nine. I never felt so great. I was a closet drunk by twelve. When I was sixteen, I stole my dad’s Buick and drove it into the plate-glass window of a Gap.”
She pauses. This is the truth.
“You crashed because you wanted to get caught.”
“Some people have addictive personalities. I’ve wrangled mine to the ground. Discipline. Fitness. Inner truth. I don’t crave.”
This part is neither true, nor, I think, material. She’s, in fact, an addict-of attention. “Lots of people make mistakes,” I say.
“My mysteries belong to me. I disclosed it all to the producers. And they agreed they could reference the fact I had a dangerous background but leave the details to me. Actually, it was their idea, and I felt it was a fine compromise.”
A few things fall into place: she loves appearing more dangerous than she is. She loves her aura. Her volunteer work could well be ancillary to the reason I’m here. I need to get back to whatever mystery this egoist is involved in and away from rambling preamble.
“Back on the record?” I ask.
“That’ll be my call.”
“What’s the message? How did you parlay the reality-TV stuff into a new great gig?”
“I eat the bugs that scare other people.”
“Bugs?”
She says that one of the benefits of doing a reality-TV show is that they agree to plug your skill set, in her case: nurturing kids. When the show ended, she got contacted by a company looking for help pushing innovative products to young people to help them better themselves.
“What kinds of products?”
She smiles. “That’s stealth. Stay tuned.”
“Oh, give me a break,” I gag out feigned desperation. “This is so fascinating.”
“Stealth,” she repeats.
“You can’t even say what kind of work, generally?”
She shakes her head. She takes off her glasses and eyeballs me, a practiced look of quasi-interrogation or challenge I can picture her using effectively on camera.
I pause. “What do you mean ‘bugs’? You said you’ll eat bugs other people won’t. What does that have to do with your new gig?”
“I see what you’re doing.”
I don’t say anything, hoping she’ll explain. She doesn’t. Her light blue eyes wander aimlessly at the sky behind me. A blast of wind hits the patio. Sandy locks eyes with me and seems to have transformed into a worthier adversary. She reminds me of addicts and alcoholics I’ve known, drug seekers who come to a hospital under the auspices of needing a prescription for severe back pain. They are plain in their needs but savvier and more manipulative than they get credit for.
“I need a full picture, Sandy. Your life didn’t end when you left the show. That’s the whole point I’m getting at. You’re the ultimate survivor, right?”
“What are you asking me?”
“Nothing intrusive. I just want to paint a picture of what you’re doing now.”
No response.
“Sandy, you mentioned when we met at the jail that this might be a good time for an article about you. What did you mean?”
“Off the record.”
Jesus. I nod.
“All cards on the table. I might be looking for a new gig soon and it’s good to have the clip. You make your own luck, see.”
“You’re leaving your job?”
“Project coming to an end. May lead to something else, may not.”
“What kind of project?”
She considers this. “Marketing.” The word comes out flat, hard to read.
“Of? I mean, in general terms.”
“Not for print.”
“Absolutely not for this article, not until I get the go-ahead. We’ll find language you’re okay with. I just want a sense.”
She pauses. I’m about to confess that I did a little digging and tell her that I know she works for PRISM, up the stakes, when she smiles.
“Tiny jugglers.”
I shake my head, hopefully expressing my lack of comprehension.
“That’s an awesome image, right?”
“Well, yeah, but I. .”
“I work for some of the smartest people in the world. They’ve figured out how to use computers to make people smarter. Kids. Way smarter.”
“By teaching them to juggle?”
“To juggle data.”
“Sorry, Sandy. I’m just a journalist, I’m not a technical person, so I. .”
“Let me see your phone.”
“Why?”
“You’re so defensive. You’re like Deacon, on Season Two. Just let me see your phone and I’ll show you.”
I hand her my phone. She holds it so I can see the screen.
“Texting, emailing, calls, Skype, a million apps, and so on. There’s so much information coming at you. And the biggest consumers are kids.”
She launches into a presentation I sense she’s given before. She tells me that one recent study found that adolescents consume 7.5 hours of media a day. With rampant multitasking, she says, young people will soon be consuming media for more hours than they sleep or are in school.
I get the point and wave her on to continue.
“Their brains can’t handle it all.” She meets my gaze, wanting me to clearly understand this point.
But it’s not a revelation. Since the 1950s, it’s been clear to researchers that the human mind can’t simultaneously process two streams of information, let alone make decisions about them. Our brains can’t do two things at once; rather, they try to rapidly switch between the tasks, often at the expense of harming the performance of the individual tasks.
I picture newborn Isaac with ones and zeroes flying around his head. He swats them away with his tiny hand.
“Hello,” Sandy interrupts my conversational vacation.
“So we’ve got a way to make it easier for a new generation of children to keep up.” I recover.
“Think: juggler.” She says this like it’s a punch line. “The juggler,” she repeats. “Great image, right? We’ve got dozens of digital balls in the air. Who can catch them? Who can keep adding balls without dropping any?”
“I’m still not following.”
She laughs. “I’m not either. It’s complex stuff. I’m still learning. Anyhow, let’s move on.”
Something about Sandy does not add up. The blowhard has turned sophisticated communicator. Unpredictable. Were I a TV producer, I might have picked her too.
“So is this stuff available on the market? Can I see the kinds of products you’re talking about?”
For a second, she hol
ds my stare. It’s subtle but revelatory. This woman lacks self-awareness but she’s no fool, and a tiny distant light turns on for her; she senses I’m homing in on something but she’s not sure what or why. She looks away.
“Earth clown,” I venture.
“What?”
I’m thinking about the weird Chinese characters: Earth clown. “Sorry, rambling. It’s something I heard about from Jill Gilkeson, Kathryn’s mother.”
She blinks three times, seemingly lost.
“Look, Sandy, I know you work at PRISM. I found it online.”
She takes it in. She shrugs. Maybe, she thinks, this is possible. “So why pretend you didn’t know what I’m doing, Mr. Reporter?” She doesn’t seem disturbed by this revelation.
“I don’t know what PRISM is. It looks like some software mill, some modest real estate here, headquarters overseas.”
She laughs. “It’s the new thing, blending American know-how with this crazy work ethic they’ve got over there. They’re dying for a piece of what we’ve got. They want to catch up.” She pauses. “Off the record!”
“You’re doing all this marketing, the tiny jugglers, for PRISM?”
She shakes her head. “I told you as much as I can. You know how these non-disclosures work. But stay tuned. I’ll definitely get you in the loop as soon as we’re ready to announce anything. It’ll be a great scoop.”
We sit there looking at each other, an impasse coming on quickly.
My phone rings. She’s still holding it in her open palm. On the caller ID, I can see the word “Faith.” Sandy looks at it.
“I should take this.” I snag the phone and put it to my ear. “Hi, it’s Nat.”
“Can I trust you?”
“Of course.”
“I need help. Now.”
19
I stand and hold up an index finger to Sandy, indicating I’ll be right back. I walk to the edge of the deck.
“Where are you, Faith?”
“He’s following me.”
“Who is?”
“I’m near your office. There’s a pizza place where they give massages. Do you know it?”