The Cloud ni-3 Read online

  “What?”

  “You’ve got money. I like money.”

  Before I can react, he grabs my shirt. I pull back sharply, extricating myself. But I slip. I fall backward, bracing my hands beneath me. I land, feeling a pop in my elbow.

  I feel hands on both my feet, pulling me into the alley. I can’t resist him. My arms, awkwardly bent behind me, prove no match. I cut my losses and put my hands under my already fragile head, skidding.

  Then I see lights. A car appears to our left, bouncing along the uneven, one-way street.

  When I look up again, I realize I’m lying just inside the alley entrance, the man having slid up my torso, knee on my chest. He rips at my jeans, going for my wallet?

  I say: Take whatever you want. But I’m trying to figure out how to hit his solar plexus or the nerve-rich hollow above his collarbone.

  He raises his balled right hand, a beefy flesh hammer. He cocks it. It arches downward. I at once buck against his weight and cover my face with my hands. I picture my concussed brain, like an infant, curled up, vulnerable.

  “I have a son,” I mutter, or think.

  The car lights get closer. A horn blares. The man’s hand crashes down. A supernova explodes inside my skull, then swallows itself.

  24

  “I’m seeing phosphenes,” I say.

  I sit on a ledge next to infant Isaac. He looks different than I remember him, more teeth and hair. We’re thousands of feet in the air, cloud level. He wears white overalls with alligators on them. I picked them out at a Babys“ R”Us in South San Francisco with sticky floors a few months before he was born. Between us on the ledge, a white plate holds two fortune cookies. One is cracked open and is empty.

  “I realize you have no idea what I’m talking about.”

  “Of course I know about phosphenes,” my tiny son responds. “I’m little but I’m not stupid.”

  “You can talk?”

  He puts his adorable index finger on his nose and wiggles it absently, an infant discovering his personal space.

  Phosphenes are the product of electrical static inside our brains. When neurons fire-which happens pretty much all the time-they are accompanied by electrical signals. The signals throw off static, just like any electrical signal, a veritable neurological white noise. If you’ve ever closed your eyes tightly, you can see a matrix of light; that’s the static. You can see it too with your eyes open, often against a black backdrop.

  At this moment, I’m seeing phosphenes in spades, my brain murky and white with static, like I’ve blown a circuit.

  “Isaac, am I going to die?”

  “I dunno. I’m just a baby. But I do know she’s been lying to you.”

  “Who?”

  He doesn’t answer.

  “Faith? Sandy?”

  “Yes.”

  “Which one?”

  “And you’re lying to yourself.”

  “About what, Isaac?”

  No answer. I look down at the brown cookies on the plate, understated little bows of pastry and prescience.

  “Wake up, Daddy. Before the damage is irreversible. Besides, she’s calling out your name.”

  25

  “Nathaniel, you’re not serious.”

  “Again.”

  I open my barely cracked eyes and see a tacky white ceiling, cheap square paneling. Then hair. It’s light brown, long and loose, strands tickling my forehead.

  Faith sits astride me. A sheet covers her shoulders. Behind her, on a bureau, sits a cheap television set, flat-panel, from the 1990s, a CRT. I’m in a hotel-no, motel.

  “How about if we take a break and get you to the hospital?” the nymph asks.

  I shake my head. No. I hate hospitals. “Am I dreaming? I was just dreaming.”

  “You’re awake. And you’re having real, live, great sex. Apparently again.”

  26

  I try to lift my head but pain and drool keep it pasted it to a pillow. I smell starch and taste glue.

  Fighting pain, angered by it, I sit upright. I feel momentarily refreshed, alive, and then intensely dizzy.

  Dim gray light comes through the edges of closed curtains covering square windows to my right. A brass-poled lamp stands in the corner. Beneath it, a stiff patterned-cloth recliner is piled with clothes. To my right, on a faux wood nightstand, a square plastic stand holds an advertisement for Roger’s Motel at Ocean Beach. It shows a picture of a motel with a red awning offering “free Wi-Fi” and “free coffee and donuts 7–9.” It instructs: “Dial 0 for the best motel service in San Francisco.” The scuffed and boxy beige landline phone sitting beside it looks like it was bought from a garage sale a generation ago.

  My phone sits next to it, looking by comparison like a spacecraft from far in the future.

  I look straight ahead, at the bureau with the TV. Behind it, there’s a rectangular mirror with a note written in red lipstick:

  back soon.

  drink water.

  f.

  I elongate so I can glance to see myself in the mirror. My right eye is puffy and half-closed, flooded with blood-carrying cells to rebuild the hammer-fist-struck tissue. My elbow aches with distended ligament.

  I turn to the side of the bed and I dry heave.

  I have no memory of how I got here or when. I’m pretty sure I remember having sex. I called it therapy, and so did Faith.

  I slide my feet onto the floor. I stumble to the bathroom, and fumble to extract a paper cup from its sterile paper wrapping. I gulp tepid water, refill and repeat. Even without turning on the light, I can see in the mirror light streaks of red on my chest and arms. Fingernail marks. Faith doesn’t mess around or, rather, she does and with more animation than I might’ve guessed.

  I hear buzzing coming from the other room. I wade back through my fog to the bedside, lift and look at the phone resting in the palm of my right hand, notice the screen go briefly out of focus. If I didn’t have a concussion before, I’ve got one now.

  A notification tells me I’ve got a voice mail. More brain radiation, I think, as I listen to the message.

  “I can tell you more about the juggler thing. Back at the Ramp tonight? Same time.”

  It’s cryptic but recognizable. Sandy Vello. The juggler thing. Something having to do with technology and kids.

  The motel door swings open. In the doorway stands Faith, breathing hard, her hair wet and flat on her head. She holds a cardboard tray with two coffees and a pastry. I realize my first reaction is not curiosity but hunger.

  “Pants,” she says.

  “Pastry first, then explain what you mean.”

  “Get dressed or you’re going to have to run to the car naked.”

  “You’re even kinkier than I remember.”

  “He’s coming.” She reaches onto the chair by the door and tosses me a ball of my clothes.

  “Who?”

  “Let’s go. Now!”

  27

  I slither into my clothes as she sprints over and kneels by the bed onto a dull purplish carpet the color of an interred spleen. She peers and reaches under the bed and retrieves a charm bracelet.

  I lean down and snag the coffee and high-tops. Hustling back, she takes my hand and pulls me toward the door. She looks at my shoeless feet. “They’ll dry. Let’s go.”

  She opens the door to show the washed-out light of mid-morning in wintry San Francisco-fog central, punctuated by a drizzle. We’re on the second floor of a two-floor shithole, blue chipped paint covering the floorboards and railing. I have a vision of being here before that feels something like deja vu and something like nausea. I’m seized by extreme vertigo and I wobble, looking down at a parking lot with a single car-mine.

  “Let’s go, Nathaniel.” With a free hand, she grabs me and starts to walk quickly to the stairs.

  “The sprint of shame.”

  On the stairs, I feel a sharp pain on my right foot, a splinter nicking my slippery arch. I’m hobbling two steps behind Faith when we reach the Audi.
r />   “Where and who is the mysterious stalker forcing me to leave the warm and dry place?”

  “I’ll drive.” She pulls out my keys and clicks open the doors, we climb in. “Faith. .”

  “The Mercedes guy. I don’t know how, but he found me when I went out for coffee. I took a couple of quick turns and got away from him and came back for you.” She starts the car and pulls to the exit, looks left, pulls onto the street. “Maybe I should’ve left you and come back later. He’s lurking.”

  “Take the one to the 280.”

  “What?”

  “South.”

  We don’t speak until we hit the exit for Pacifica, a lower-rent coastal town on a hillside that waits patiently for global warming. When it comes, the fog-soaked apartment complexes will become shoreline properties and their long-suffering owners and Al Gore will be vindicated.

  “Pull off,” I say.

  “I thought you said. .”

  “Please.”

  She exits the highway. I gesture with a nod of my head to stop by the side of the highway. I open the heavy Audi door and I dry heave. I sit with my elbows on my knees.

  “I should take you to the hospital.”

  I pat the tender skin around my eye. If the orbital bone is broken, there’s not a damn thing I can do about it other than trying not to continue to use my head to deflect things.

  “Earth clown?” I mutter.

  “What?”

  I inhale coffee-instant energy, semi-clarity. A deep breath, more caffeine. I reach into my back pocket and I pull out the paper I found on Alan Parsons’s desk. On it, I locate the Chinese characters the pizza maker couldn’t quite make sense of.

  I pull out my phone and call Bullseye, barmate and personal IT guy. Predictably, he doesn’t answer. He loves using devices, just not to communicate with other human beings. I leave a message. “I’ve got a mission for you. Text me a place I can fax you something.”

  I bring up the menu of my voice mails and return a call to Sandy Vello. She doesn’t pick up either. I text her. “c u at the Ramp.”

  A text pops onto my screen. It’s just a number, with no pleasantries. Bullseye’s fax. When I get a chance, I’ll send along the Chinese, and let him scour the Internet for an explanation.

  In my phone directory, I call up the number for the offices of Andrew Leviathan. I wonder if he has any idea of the identity of a man with a sleek bald head who attended the awards luncheon, cocks his head like a buzzard, circles like one too.

  I dial. A curt woman answers: “Mr. Leviathan’s office.”

  “Hi. My name is Nat Idle.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m a journalist who. .”

  “I’m sorry to cut you off but I refer all journalist calls to. .”

  “And I’m sorry to cut you off. Andrew just gave me an award and instructed me to call him if I had any questions.” I leave vague whether or not I am referring to questions related to the award.

  “Yes, Mr. Idle. Let me take a number.”

  I give the info and we hang up.

  “Not to the hospital, I take it,” Faith says.

  “Menlo Park.”

  We drive in silence, in drizzle, unless I’m going nuts and seeing only phosphenes-lots of them. Consistent with a down economy, the highway isn’t crowded; it’s only bumper-to-bumper here during midday stretches when venture capitalists are funding start-ups faster than they can come up with clever names. A solid fifteen minutes pass before I speak.

  “What are you doing, Faith?”

  “Driving you to Menlo Park, like you asked.”

  “Why are you with me right now? What could possibly be compelling you to join in a goose chase with a near stranger who keeps getting into extremely bad situations and has suffered two head wounds?”

  “Your memory is really that bad?”

  “It’s seen better days.”

  “You don’t remember what we talked about last night?”

  I remember getting slugged, going black, experiencing a drunken state, sweaty and light, realizing I was having sex-for the first time since Polly.

  Faith waits for me, then continues. “You told me the man in the Mercedes is dangerous. You told me there was a connection between him and Alan, and a big Chinese company and some reality-TV burnout, and that your computer had been hacked into. You said I’m not safe and shouldn’t be alone.”

  “One of my cheapest-ever pickup lines.”

  “I don’t like being taken advantage of.”

  “I didn’t. .”

  “Not by you. I make my own decisions about who I sleep with. You’re right about being unsafe, and I don’t like being taken advantage of by whoever is making me feel that way and I have just as much of a right as you to figure out what’s happening as you do.”

  Fair enough.

  “Did I say anything else of value or interest?”

  “Ouch.”

  “What?”

  “You said ‘ouch.’ I got a little aggressive with my fingernails.”

  She smiles. It would seem shy, demure, if not for the subject matter, which she’s raised.

  “Sorry.” She laughs lightly. I look out the passenger-side window at the blurring greenery on the hillsides of Atherton. I don’t want her to see the degree to which she has me off balance.

  “Next exit,” I say.

  She pulls onto Sand Hill Road, a freeway exit that can’t but help make you feel poor. Literally seconds from the off-ramp stand a series of modest, nondescript offices that house this region’s barons, the investors who seeded Google and Facebook and the rest.

  “What happened last night, Faith?”

  “I told you.”

  “How did we wind up together at the world-class motel?”

  She explains that she watched the bald man come out from the alley and climb into his Mercedes. Fearing he’d see her, she took off, intending to return for me. And she did, but it took longer than expected because of the one-way streets in the area. Plausible enough. When she finally pulled up, she says, she saw me knocked down. She honked and watched a husky Asian man disappear into the alley.

  “When I got to you, you were mumbling stuff that didn’t make sense.”

  “About conspiracy?”

  “About Isaac. You said you were sorry for hugging him too hard.”

  She helped me to the car. It was her idea to go somewhere we couldn’t be easily tracked. She says it didn’t dawn on her until we got near the motel that I was definitely not all there.

  “You talked about the first time you’d seen a dead body.”

  In the present, I look out the car window and see we’re passing the Stanford Shopping Center.

  “Take a left on El Camino.”

  I have a vague recollection of telling her about my first anatomy class. The woman whose body we dissected had died at eighty-six years old with an interesting backstory. She’d suffered bone cancer and intended to take her own life by parachuting from a plane. Before she climbed into the airplane, she took a sedative, went to sleep and never woke up. It shook me that death can be so cruel that, even when you plan to embrace it on your terms, it can wrestle away the upper hand.

  “Why would I tell you about that?”

  “You were telling me you understood why I got so shaken when I saw Alan’s body.”

  We pass a bookstore, a furniture store, a salad place I’ve been for a work lunch where they pride themselves on serving sixteen variations of lettuce. They frown upon the use of salad dressings, which, the menu notes, dilute the fresh, earthy flavors of the greens.

  Faith says: “You don’t remember.”

  I shake my head. “We’re going two blocks up on the right.”

  Traffic’s thin. Faith drives cautiously; she uses her blinker to switch from the middle to the right lane, even though the nearest car, a beige Jaguar, is four car lengths ahead of us. Dull sun peeks through light clouds, a temperate winter day in the sixties.

  “What did you tell me, Faith
?”

  “I revealed all. You don’t remember my extraordinary revelations?”

  I manage a laugh. “Refresh me just a little.”

  “I told you about my fascination with going to the zoo, and with the anteaters.”

  “This I absolutely don’t recall. You’re sure you were talking to the guy with the head wound?”

  “They can suck up thirty thousand ants a day. Nature’s vacuum.”

  “That’s why they fascinate you? Bad experience at a picnic with ants?”

  She clears her throat. “Because everyone’s got a purpose. No matter how different they seem.”

  Oddly, something does ring familiar about the zoo, maybe because the motel was directly across the street. There’s something deeply familiar too in the way we’re talking, an emotional accord.

  “I’ll give you a recap later. Do you remember telling me about your ex?”

  I shake my head. Does she mean Annie or Polly?

  “You told me about the night she ended it-over Chinese food and two empty fortune cookies.”

  I wince. The night my life careened off the rails at a restaurant in Pacific Heights. I can see the waiter with the injured ankle limping back to our table, holding a big white plate with a fortune cookie. It’s Polly’s second cookie, the first having been devoid of a fortune. Polly, usually so composed, has tears in her eyes. I shiver at the thought of the ensuing conversation, and because I can’t remember describing it to Faith.

  “Take a right here.”

  Set back off El Camino, there’s a gated building made of fashionable concrete and steel. It’s accessible from the side street we’ve turned onto. On the gate, a stately sign reads: “Woodland Learning Center.” In the yard stands a woman, arms crossed, studying me.

  28

  “Please pick me up in an hour.”

  Faith pulls over. She puts the car in park. “I’m joining you.”

  “Nope.”

  She blinks several times quickly, and bites the inside of her cheek. I smile tightly, trying not to betray how much I want to make her laugh or feel comfortable. Based on my track record with the opposite sex, whatever is going on with this enigmatic beauty, it ends very badly.