Matt Richtel - The Cloud

“I might have the wrong number, though. I’m looking for Kathryn.”

Silence. Then: “You’re joking.” Mildly alarmed.

“I. . Kathryn Gilkeson,” I stammer, reading the name from the piece of paper.

“You’re a mean man.”

“No, I’m. .”

“I know who you are. I can find you.”

“Find me?”

“Your number’s on my caller ID. I’m in the middle of something. Please don’t bother me again.”

“I want you to find me. I want to find you. I. .”

“I’m getting off now.” Click.

I droop my head. What the hell was that? And what was I expecting? My forethought was nonexistent. Maybe, no surprise; a concussion stuns the frontal lobe, the part of the brain involved in planning and setting priorities.

Time for a different tack. I etch out a text. “It’s Nat Idle. Again. Sorry for foot-in-mouth. Have? about Alan P. I’m on up-and-up. Google me.”

I look at it. If this person is bad news and associated with dead Alan, it’ll come to her as no surprise that I’m Nat Idle, the journalist, trying to track her down. She’ll dump the text and that’ll be that.

If, on the other hand, she’s completely uninvolved, I’ll do no harm by sending a text referring to Alan P.

But if she, or someone named Kathryn, has some indirect role in any of this, I might pique her curiosity and prompt her to answer my phone call at some future point. In other words, I send the text and risk putting her off, or don’t send and risk that I already have.

I hit send. I stare at the phone, conditioned for immediate response, but knowing that none is forthcoming.

I consider my hasty decision to call the phone number on the piece of paper, and the bouts of wooziness. I picture Alan’s body, squeezed into a hallway, likely felled from natural causes but who knows?

People are dying-and being reported as dead in fake obituaries-strange happenings to digest even if I were in my right mind, which I’m not.

Still slumped in the car, I peer out the driver’s-side window. On the foot of the stairs of a faded purple Victorian, a toddler stuffed into a winter coat draws on the ground with a piece of chalk nearly as thick as her arm. The girl puts the green chalk in her mouth and looks up at a woman sitting on the stair above, expecting or seeking admonition. But her mom is fiddling with her cell phone, too distracted to engage. The girl looks my direction, perhaps sensing my gaze, and starts drawing again. I think back to Polly. Even when we were together, she spent so much time on her phone. Was that the problem? She ultimately didn’t want to or couldn’t fully connect with me?

I shake my head to send the memory scurrying. I look at the dashboard’s digital clock. It’s almost two. I’m both nauseous and craving something salty.

Brain blank, I drive back to my office. Three doors down is a hole-in-the-wall pizza joint where the dyspeptic Chinese proprietor with a world-class comb-over and perpetual laryngitis doubles as a holistic healer, offering five-minute neck massages in a chair near the brick oven for $10. In Hollywood, everyone aspires to be an actor or writer. In San Francisco, a healer. I’ve run into a lawyer doubling as a yoga instructor and a schoolteacher who spends her weekends organizing silent retreats in frenetic Union Square, the idea being to learn to listen to yourself amid chaos and, apparently, shopping.

For his part, the pizza guy’s subspecialty is shiatsu pressure points. I’ve never experienced his handiwork, but I find his mushroom and pepperoni to have spiritual properties.

I plop onto a cheap metal stool at the ancient yellow Formica counter. Heat from the brick oven makes this tiny place unforgivably hot on many days but is just right today with foggy chill seeping into everything. Steam smudges the glass door and the waist-high windows where I can see passersby passing by. From my pocket, I pull the paper I found on Alan’s desk and spread it on the counter. I gesture to the proprietor, who is half glancing at a TV airing a reenactment of a sea battle between two ancient ships, the story subtitled in Chinese.

“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?

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.