Matt Richtel - The Cloud

My phone sits next to it, looking by comparison like a spacecraft from far in the future.

I look straight ahead, at the bureau with the TV. Behind it, there’s a rectangular mirror with a note written in red lipstick:

back soon.

drink water.

f.

I elongate so I can glance to see myself in the mirror. My right eye is puffy and half-closed, flooded with blood-carrying cells to rebuild the hammer-fist-struck tissue. My elbow aches with distended ligament.

I turn to the side of the bed and I dry heave.

I have no memory of how I got here or when. I’m pretty sure I remember having sex. I called it therapy, and so did Faith.

I slide my feet onto the floor. I stumble to the bathroom, and fumble to extract a paper cup from its sterile paper wrapping. I gulp tepid water, refill and repeat. Even without turning on the light, I can see in the mirror light streaks of red on my chest and arms. Fingernail marks. Faith doesn’t mess around or, rather, she does and with more animation than I might’ve guessed.

I hear buzzing coming from the other room. I wade back through my fog to the bedside, lift and look at the phone resting in the palm of my right hand, notice the screen go briefly out of focus. If I didn’t have a concussion before, I’ve got one now.

A notification tells me I’ve got a voice mail. More brain radiation, I think, as I listen to the message.

“I can tell you more about the juggler thing. Back at the Ramp tonight? Same time.”

It’s cryptic but recognizable. Sandy Vello. The juggler thing. Something having to do with technology and kids.

The motel door swings open. In the doorway stands Faith, breathing hard, her hair wet and flat on her head. She holds a cardboard tray with two coffees and a pastry. I realize my first reaction is not curiosity but hunger.

“Pants,” she says.

“Pastry first, then explain what you mean.”

“Get dressed or you’re going to have to run to the car naked.”

“You’re even kinkier than I remember.”

“He’s coming.” She reaches onto the chair by the door and tosses me a ball of my clothes.

“Who?”

“Let’s go. Now!”

Islither into my clothes as she sprints over and kneels by the bed onto a dull purplish carpet the color of an interred spleen. She peers and reaches under the bed and retrieves a charm bracelet.

I lean down and snag the coffee and high-tops. Hustling back, she takes my hand and pulls me toward the door. She looks at my shoeless feet. “They’ll dry. Let’s go.”

She opens the door to show the washed-out light of mid-morning in wintry San Francisco-fog central, punctuated by a drizzle. We’re on the second floor of a two-floor shithole, blue chipped paint covering the floorboards and railing. I have a vision of being here before that feels something like deja vu and something like nausea. I’m seized by extreme vertigo and I wobble, looking down at a parking lot with a single car-mine.

“Let’s go, Nathaniel.” With a free hand, she grabs me and starts to walk quickly to the stairs.

“The sprint of shame.”

On the stairs, I feel a sharp pain on my right foot, a splinter nicking my slippery arch. I’m hobbling two steps behind Faith when we reach the Audi.

“Where and who is the mysterious stalker forcing me to leave the warm and dry place?”

“I’ll drive.” She pulls out my keys and clicks open the doors, we climb in. “Faith. .”

“The Mercedes guy. I don’t know how, but he found me when I went out for coffee. I took a couple of quick turns and got away from him and came back for you.” She starts the car and pulls to the exit, looks left, pulls onto the street. “Maybe I should’ve left you and come back later. He’s lurking.”

“Take the one to the 280.”

“What?”

“South.”

We don’t speak until we hit the exit for Pacifica, a lower-rent coastal town on a hillside that waits patiently for global warming. When it comes, the fog-soaked apartment complexes will become shoreline properties and their long-suffering owners and Al Gore will be vindicated.

“Pull off,” I say.

“I thought you said. .”

“Please.”

She exits the highway. I gesture with a nod of my head to stop by the side of the highway. I open the heavy Audi door and I dry heave. I sit with my elbows on my knees.

“I should take you to the hospital.”

I pat the tender skin around my eye. If the orbital bone is broken, there’s not a damn thing I can do about it other than trying not to continue to use my head to deflect things.

“Earth clown?” I mutter.

“What?”

I inhale coffee-instant energy, semi-clarity. A deep breath, more caffeine. I reach into my back pocket and I pull out the paper I found on Alan Parsons’s desk. On it, I locate the Chinese characters the pizza maker couldn’t quite make sense of.

I pull out my phone and call Bullseye, barmate and personal IT guy. Predictably, he doesn’t answer. He loves using devices, just not to communicate with other human beings. I leave a message. “I’ve got a mission for you. Text me a place I can fax you something.”

I bring up the menu of my voice mails and return a call to Sandy Vello. She doesn’t pick up either. I text her. “c u at the Ramp.”

A text pops onto my screen. It’s just a number, with no pleasantries. Bullseye’s fax. When I get a chance, I’ll send along the Chinese, and let him scour the Internet for an explanation.

In my phone directory, I call up the number for the offices of Andrew Leviathan. I wonder if he has any idea of the identity of a man with a sleek bald head who attended the awards luncheon, cocks his head like a buzzard, circles like one too.

I dial. A curt woman answers: “Mr. Leviathan’s office.”

“Hi. My name is Nat Idle.”

“Yes.”

“I’m a journalist who. .”

“I’m sorry to cut you off but I refer all journalist calls to. .”

“And I’m sorry to cut you off. Andrew just gave me an award and instructed me to call him if I had any questions.” I leave vague whether or not I am referring to questions related to the award.

“Yes, Mr. Idle. Let me take a number.”

I give the info and we hang up.

“Not to the hospital, I take it,” Faith says.

“Menlo Park.”

We drive in silence, in drizzle, unless I’m going nuts and seeing only phosphenes-lots of them. Consistent with a down economy, the highway isn’t crowded; it’s only bumper-to-bumper here during midday stretches when venture capitalists are funding start-ups faster than they can come up with clever names. A solid fifteen minutes pass before I speak.

“What are you doing, Faith?”

“Driving you to Menlo Park, like you asked.”

“Why are you with me right now? What could possibly be compelling you to join in a goose chase with a near stranger who keeps getting into extremely bad situations and has suffered two head wounds?”

“Your memory is really that bad?”

“It’s seen better days.”

“You don’t remember what we talked about last night?”

I remember getting slugged, going black, experiencing a drunken state, sweaty and light, realizing I was having sex-for the first time since Polly.

Faith waits for me, then continues. “You told me the man in the Mercedes is dangerous. You told me there was a connection between him and Alan, and a big Chinese company and some reality-TV burnout, and that your computer had been hacked into. You said I’m not safe and shouldn’t be alone.”

“One of my cheapest-ever pickup lines.”

“I don’t like being taken advantage of.”