Matt Richtel - The Cloud

“What do you do for work, Faith?”

“You said you usually take someone out for coffee before grilling them.” Another clever line, confident on its face, but she seems only to eek out the last couple of words. Under her eyes the thin lines of sleeplessness.

“Come on up to my office and let’s talk about the burly man who tried to throw me under the subway.”

She pauses, maybe trying to figure out if I’m joking.

“For just a sec. I don’t have a lot of time and I want to show you the diner. Do you have a car?” I nod, a vague signal, approximating agreement. We walk upstairs in silence.

Inside, I pick up a narrow, manila-colored reporter’s notebook and slip it into my back pocket. From my backpack, I pull out the Mac and set it on the desk.

“Faith, do you know much about computers?”

She’s taking in my office. “Not really. Are you having trouble?”

Yeah, as in: someone hacked into my computer and programmed it to tell me about the death of a former reality-show-contestant-turned-employee of PRISM Corporation. I look up at Faith, who looks at my futon. I see her glance at the Minnie Mouse nightlight plugged into the socket and wonder when I got afraid of the dark.

“Is this where you sleep?”

I ignore the question. “I ran into Sandy Vello.”

She looks at me. “Who?” Genuine.

“Never mind. I need five minutes to check email. Pull up a futon.”

A sound comes from Faith’s jacket pocket. She extracts her phone. Her ringtone is Springsteen’s “Born to Run.” She sends the call to voice mail. “Do you have a bathroom?”

I show her to the hallway.

While she’s gone, I call up my email. I type in my password, and while my messages load, wonder who else might be reading over my shoulder. This idea doesn’t particularly startle me; on some level, I long ago accepted our Internet habits are a fishbowl being scrutinized by ne’er-do-wells-on a continuum from advertiser to nosy kid to blackmailer. There are creepy implications, no doubt, but most of what they’d discover is how mundane is our humanity.

In my in-box, there is nothing new, or at least interesting. I pull Sandy’s contact info from my wallet. I scratch her a quick email. “Sandy, great meeting you yesterday. I’d love to hear your story, as would my readers. I’ll respect all boundaries. You around tomorrow? Coffee or beers on me. Nat Idle.”

I search under Sandy’s name again, looking for something that might explain this odd duck. I try her name in various combinations with “criminal record,” and “PRISM,” and “youth volunteer.” Empty, empty, empty. “Sandy” and “Youth Guidance Center” and “Twin Peaks.” Empty, mostly. On the San Francisco Examiner web site, there’s a mention of yesterday’s group fight and lockdown at the juvenile jail, noting it’s the most recent in a series of “behavioral flare-ups,” according to warden Doc Jefferson. One twelve-year-old is hurt and hospitalized. But no mention of Sandy.

Faith has returned. She remains in the doorway.

I close my laptop. I used to tote the machine everywhere, but the iPhone lets me get my data on the go, when the signal works, so lately I’ve been less inclined to carry a Mac that can be stolen or weigh me down. For that matter, the iPhone, thanks to its bevy of apps, has proven a worthy replacement for lots of little investigative tools, not just a camera. I’ve downloaded a program that turns it into a flashlight, a ruler, a scanner. When it can write cliches, I’ll be obsolete myself.

But today, my Swiss army knife of phones may not suffice. I drop the laptop into my frayed backpack and sling it over my shoulder.

As Faith and I walk in a relatively comfortable silence to my car, I recall a scientific oddity I’d recently learned from a researcher at Berkeley who studies the science of physical attraction. She said an unexpectedly big predictor in what causes mates to fall for each other is similar head size; the more alike the size and shape-as a ratio and proportion of the body-the likelier the physical connection. I blogged about this trivia in a brief post about the return of phrenology, the long-since dismissed science that valued putting a ruler up to the cranium. Is that what I find so irresistible about this siren named Faith? Is she a medium too?

“The diner’s in the Mission. Potrero and Twenty-fourth,” she says, climbing into the Audi. “You could take Van Ness.”

She glances in back and sees the car seat. We each gaze for a beat at the blue-and-gray seat restraint. I notice I have failed to remove a rectangular manufacturer’s warning still attached by a plastic band to the base; it warns me the company isn’t liable unless the seat has been correctly strapped in.

“I told you about my nephew.”

It rings a bell, though my memory of everything said the night of the subway accident remains fuzzy. I pull into light traffic on Polk, and turn onto Pine.

“Timothy,” she continues as I take a left onto Van Ness, just sneaking through a yellow light. “He goes to school at Mission Day, and when I drop him off there, I usually stop at Glazed Over. That’s the diner.”

I don’t respond. I’m looking in the rearview mirror.

“Nat?”

An aging black Mercedes guns it to make it through the light and follow my left onto Van Ness. I’d noticed the car double-parked a few spots behind me when Faith and I pulled into traffic. Correction: I hadn’t so much noticed the car as its driver, and his familiar shiny bald head.

“The luncheon,” I say.

“What?”

I don’t say what I’m thinking: at the lunch where I’d received the magazine award, there was a man with severely oily skin, possibly seborrhea, and a thin strip of grayish hair over his ears that looked like wings. He sat at one of the front tables. He followed me into the hallway and told me I dropped my phone. Same oily skin and hair wings.

I slow the car so that he can’t help but pull up close behind me. But I can’t get a good look at him because he seems to catch my glance and look down.

“See that guy behind us?”

She turns. “In the Mercedes?”

“Do you recognize him?”

We’re driving thirty miles an hour, the speed of the thickening traffic. To our immediate right is a delivery truck-white body, bold black lettering on its side and an image of some cute animals wearing red-and-black checkered bibs. I make out the word “catering.” In front of it is a tan Lexus SUV.

“It’s hard to see his face,” Faith says. “Maybe he’s texting.”

I punch the accelerator and the horn. The truck driver slows, which is the desired effect. I squeeze in front of it, rudely and dangerously, jackknifing between it and the Lexus, prompting a chorus of horns. Once through, I again punch the accelerator so that I’ve effectively taken a sharp right turn onto Post Street. The Mercedes is locked in traffic behind me.

I pull into a loading zone in front of a neighborhood deli. I realize I’d at least half expected Faith to scream. She’s sitting as far from me as she seems physically able, recoiled into the door, arms crossed.

“You’ve got a child.” It’s a condemnation what father would act so suicidal?

“Enough.”

“What?”

“Enough, Faith!”

“Okay. Let me talk.”

She looks down. I assume she’s trying to escape the moment, but then realize she’s glancing at the center-console cup holder. In it sits a days-old, half-drunk cup of coffee that has dribbled dark remnants down its side.

“Where are your wipes?”

“What?”

“Every parent has baby wipes in their car.”

She swivels her head to look in the back.