Matt Richtel - The Cloud

The phone’s clock reads 9:10. I sit down. It’s quiet enough that I can hear the drizzle. I’m not sure of my next move, so it’s as good a time as any to reflect on the events of the last twenty-four hours:

A gangly, oily-headed man sits in the audience of my awards presentation, then hands me my phone. Had it really fallen from my pocket, or had he somehow taken it and tinkered with it? The next morning, he shows up at my office, trying to follow me and Faith. We evade him, then discover the corpulent corpus of Alan Parsons, the mountain man who nearly felled me at the subway. On his desk, the phone number for a woman with a dead daughter. And a second reference to February 15. Hours later, after I’ve met with still-living narcissist Sandy Vello, the man appears again, this time ostensibly drawn there following Faith.

Faith is beautiful and cautious, scared and confident, irresistible and unpredictable. Why did she kiss me?

And what does any of it have to do with Chinatown? There were Chinese characters on a piece of paper I found on the dead man’s desk. The words have something to do with computers, and so does Sandy Vello. Does it relate to a dead girl named Kathryn Gilkeson? And do all these roads lead to the alley across the street?

One way to find out.

It’s 9:15. I take deep breaths to let a few more minutes pass and make sure the street is as quiet as it seems, and to see if Faith has returned.

9:20. The street is quiet. My car has not returned. I’ve lost Faith.

9:23. I look across the street, at a restaurant on the corner with a pair of enormous chopsticks hanging in the window. It’s a tourist trap, and an emotional one. I flash again on my fateful dinner with Polly, the night I associate with two fortune cookies changing the course of my life. I picture the waiter, his limp left leg, the first empty fortune cookie cracked like an empty egg, water condensed on the outside of Polly’s glass. She’s not sharing my Tsingtao; she’s pregnant. I picture the red tablecloth, damp around the bottom of the water glass. Polly’s smiling a sad smile. She says she wants to tell me something. But I can’t quite remember what she said, or how she said it. I grit my teeth. I look down at my phone.

9:28. Enough.

I stride onto the sidewalk, then across the narrow, empty street, my steps lit intermittently by storefront neon. I reach the mouth of the alley. On the wall next to it, I see the plaque I’d been unable to read earlier from a distance. On its top, Chinese characters. Beneath, a translation: CHINA-US HIGH-TECH ALLIANCE.

I can’t tell if it refers to the dark-windowed office to my immediate right, or something located in the guts of the alley.

I peer into the dark maw.

I see the red glow of a cigarette tip.

“Who are you?” The voice is accented, the “r” swallowed.

A hefty man steps forward. He’s half a head taller than me, square cranium that’s a bit too large for his body, short-cropped hair, flat nose consistent with his Asian DNA but squished to the right. The right edge of his upper lip looks crooked, a jigsaw puzzle. Big head, slightly exaggerated nose and mouth. I almost gasp from mild thrill. I’ve never in person seen a case of acromegaly, a chronic disorder caused by too much growth hormone.

“You walk like someone who has fame or money.” He reaches to his mouth, pinches the cigarette with thick fingers and flips it against the wall. “Are you famous? If so, I’d like to know you.”

“Not famous.” I half step backward.

“Then it’s the other option.”

“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.

“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.”

“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.”

Itry 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.