Matt Richtel - The Cloud

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 mildly 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.