Matt Richtel - The Cloud

“You and me both,” she responds.

“You know him?”

“I’ll be right down.”

I look at Faith, who shrugs. Moments later, the doorway fills with a tall woman in her early thirties dressed from the Banana Republic catalogue. “I’m the landlady.” There’s education in her swagger and my impulse is her parents bought her the apartment building five years ago and she’s managing it. I introduce myself and so does Faith. The landlady studies Faith for a second because, well, how can you not?

“I assume you buzzed Alan.”

I nod.

“I’ve sent him two emails asking him to fix my router. Nada.”

Another reference to Alan’s skills.

“You’re obviously not solicitors,” the landlady says.

“Friends,” Faith explains. “I work with Alan.”

The landlady turns around and starts to walk away, holding open the door. We follow her up a flight of stairs covered in low-cut maroon carpet, the sidewalls painted with care in complementary beige. The landlady stops on the top of the second flight and walks to a door labeled “2C.” She bangs a brass knocker that resembles a lion’s head.

No answer. She knocks again, forcefully. Faith steps forward and reaches an index finger toward a white button to the right of the door.

“Ringer’s busted,” the landlady says, pauses, adds: “Broken infrastructure means I have the right to peek in to see if everything’s okay.”

She reaches onto her belt loop where I notice both the ring of keys and the pronounced blue veins on the back of her thin hands. It’s not a medical condition but a genetic bonus; plump, visible veins give nurses easy access for intravenous lines. She extends a key from her ring and unlocks the door.

She pokes her head into the apartment.

She screams.

Iinstinctively nudge Faith away from the door. The landlady’s still peering inside, frozen.

“Alan. Mr. Parsons!”

I move the door open and gently put my hand on her shoulder. She flinches. I nudge her to her left, causing the door to open most of the way. A large man lies facedown. The soles of his heavy boots face us, the heel of the right one graced by a circle of dirt-encrusted pink gum. His beefy corpus stretches along a hallway nearly too narrow to accommodate him. His head rests at the foot of a square table stacked neatly with mail and magazines. Blood pools around his shaggy hair.

Even from here, I recognize the man from the subway, decidedly felled, and fetid. It smells of infant feces and rotten food, just like a dead person.

“What’s going on?” Faith asks. She brushes against me, and then whispers: “Oh my God.”

I want to look at her to see if I can trust this reaction but I can’t take my eyes off him. I step inside.

“Wait.” The landlady produces a phone.

I walk to the body and squeeze along the wall trying not to touch Alan. I kneel by the head. The death smell commingles with aroma from the frothy vomit near his mouth. The scent saturates my blood-brain barrier. I wobble. I cover my nose and mouth with my right hand.

“I said ‘wait,’ ” the landlady repeats.

“We have to see if there’s anything we can do.” I’m muttering through my fingers, knowing damn well we can’t help Alan unless we’ve got a time machine to go back more than thirty-six hours ago.

And bring a nitroglycerin tablet.

Despite what the landlady might think from the sticky pooled blood, I’m looking at a heart-attack victim. The blood, matting his forehead and beard, didn’t flow from anything sinister. It came from a laceration just beneath his right eye, right on the orbital bone. It’s where, as he fell, his face smashed the corner of the table.

His head, flattened on the cheek, is turned to the right and for the first time I see his eye. It’s open. Red from hemorrhage floods the corner. I can still make out the dull blue retina.

My own vision flashes sudden light. When did I last see a dead body? I inhale and taste his decaying vomit. It’s edgy and sharp, like battery acid. Where am I? I’m dreaming. My legs weaken. I fall to my right knee, then my left.

“The police are coming,” a voice says.

I blink.

“He’s too young,” I say.

“What?”

“Give him his dignity,” I hear myself plead. I manage to put a foot beneath me, even as a voice inside my head screams: lie down. But there’s another voice, the journalist, the overly curious and aggrieved, the father nearly turned subway smoothie.

“I’ll get a sheet,” I muster.

“Please get out.”

I stumble into the apartment. I make out a doorway to my left and two to my right. I peer into the one to the left. Just a couch. Covered in blankets. It faces a wall bearing a huge TV. Pinball-like, I bounce to the doorway on the right. Kitchen. Sink stacked with pots and dishes. I glance at the fridge. No magnets hold pictures or phone numbers. I stumble to the second door on the right.

“Get back here!”

“Coming.” I’m not sure if I say it aloud.

The last doorway is shut. I pull it open. Bedroom. Spartan. There’s a queen-sized bed, piled at its foot with a comforter, along with two plastic fifths with red labels: vodka, I guess. Both are empty. Then I see the desk, sitting along the right wall. It’s jerry-rigged; cinderblocks stacked on each side holding up plywood. Atop it stands a computer monitor, big, maybe twenty-six inches. In the bottom right corner, a light blinks green. The monitor’s getting power but the screen is dark. Where’s the computer it’s connected to? Where’s the. . my head pulses. I focus. I see for the first time the stack of papers and folders to the right of the monitor. I walk to the desk. Scribbled notes and phone numbers cover a yellow-lined sheet on the top of the stack of papers. I pick it up and stuff it into my back pocket. I see a folder beneath it. It’s labeled with two Chinese characters.

“Did you have something to do with Alan-with him dying?” I hear the landlady behind me. “Did you know he was hurt?”

I turn to see her standing in the doorway.

“I was looking for a sheet to cover him.”

“On his desk? Tell it to the police.”

Her arms are crossed. Resolute but frightened. I would be. I am. “Where’s Faith?”

“Who?”

“Where’s the woman who came with me?” I practically roar it.

She points down the hallway. “Gone.” I walk toward the landlady, gaining momentum as I reach her. I’m clearly going to push past her. She moves. “They’ll get your fingerprints.” She glares at me.

I chase Faith.

Itiptoe past the body, fly down the stairs, pause at the building’s stairwell, look left and see a man in a cap carting boxes piled high on a dolly slide into a grocery. No Faith in sight. I look right. I see her. She’s in a demi-jog, turning a corner two blocks down. I start sprinting.

I cross a street against a red light, prompting a tinny toot from a cyclist. I take two more quick steps in the direction Faith disappeared, and then stumble. I put my hand on a parking meter and am struck that the top of it looks like a face, frowning, melting. “Are you okay?” I’m not sure where the voice is coming from.

“I lost someone,” I say or think.

I put a second hand on the meter. It’s cold and damp.

“You had me fooled there for a second,” I mutter to the meter, my head clearing.

“Are you okay?” I hear the voice again. I turn to see a lumpy lady in a baseball cap.

I start walking again. I reach the corner where Faith turned. I look down the street. I don’t see her. It’s not immediately clear where she might have disappeared so quickly. The street is residential, with just a couple of pedestrians and one jogger paired with a large dog. Halfway down the right side of the street, a crew of three stands on scaffolding, retrofitting a three-story house, the tallest one on the block.