Matt Richtel - The Cloud

I see only one car in the distance but can’t make it out. To the right of the highway, there’s a sharp drop-off that levels off, then widens into a meadow green with tall grass, and then the green terrain begins a gradual climb into the foothills. To my left, a steep ravine covered with bushy green heritage trees opens onto the northbound highway. Peaceful indeed, but if I had to make a quick maneuver on this stretch, I could easily torpedo off the edge.

“Who are you?”

“Like you want my name and stuff?”

“Bill, right? I’ll settle for what you want and why you’re following me.”

“I want you to make sure to get some rest.”

“Buy me a pillow.”

“You really have no idea, do you?”

“I really don’t.”

“You’re not seeing things clearly.”

“Come out in the open and things will get clearer.”

“Okay.”

I check the rearview mirror. The car behind me is gaining. Faith sleeps. I’m nearing the crest of the hill. “Do you work with Alan Parsons?” With a toe tap, I push the car from sixty-five to seventy.

“No. But I liked his style.”

“Liked?”

“As you know, he’s deceased.”

I cruise into a shallow dip that curves right and then begins a long slope upward. The car in my rearview mirror is a sports car, maybe a Ferrari, exploding over the hill, then passing me with ease to my left.

“Did you kill him?”

“Of course not.”

“But he discovered something. He stumbled onto some information. He wanted to give it to me, or maybe he gave it to me. It’s information you don’t want me to know or make public.”

“It doesn’t take an award-winning journalist to figure that out.”

“What does he want me to know?”

“That’s your job. Not mine.”

“What’s your job?”

“To protect you.”

“Protect me from what?”

“Mostly yourself.”

I reach the hilltop. Behind me, I see a flash of light, a silver grill, reflecting sun. The car seems to leap over the top of the hill, one lane to my left. I swerve hard to my right. The car, a sport utility vehicle, speeds past me. A gas guzzler, not Bill.

I hear and feel gravel beneath the tires and swerve hard left to straighten the car and avoid sending me and slumbering Faith to our deaths. I watch the innocuous SUV disappear ahead of us. False alarm, high-risk paranoia at high speeds.

“Mr. Idle?”

“Do you work for Leviathan? Does this have to do with the girl who got hit by a car a decade ago?” I pause, working out my thoughts. “Was it not an accident? Was Leviathan somehow responsible? Is he involved in something with the Chinese? Maybe involving Gils Simons, the old team back together again?”

“You’re confounding things. You’re all over the place. Pointedly, you’re not stable.”

I look down the ravine into the southbound lane. A pack of a half dozen cars pass, tightly packed. Human nature abhors a gap.

“Getting attacked twice in one week has a way of doing that.”

“True, but you haven’t been the same for months.”

“Cut the bullshit.”

“Not since. .” He pauses.

“You know you’ve got a skin condition. It’s why your scalp gets so oily.”

“Not since your family fell apart.” He matches my non sequitur with one of his own. A hot sensation courses through my body, sizzles my brain in an instant of light. I blink. I’m swerving again to the right onto the gravel at the highway’s edge, and pull the car back to the left.

I feel a hand on my knee. I look down to see Faith, waking up but still half asleep, alarmed.

The man says: “You’re dangerous now-to yourself and others. You need to focus. You’ve lost the ability to trust or to know who to trust. Are you honestly trusting that trollop?”

“Who?”

“To get what she wants, she’ll do anything, with anyone.”

Faith sits up, rubs her eyes, looks at me, like, what the hell is going on?

The man presses on: “Can you honestly tell me that your brain is working correctly? Can you tell me you’ve seen things clearly since your utopian fantasies were set ablaze? It’s why you see Wilma, right?”

Wilma. Dr. Jurgenson, a friend and source. I get together with her periodically to talk about life, stories, whatever. What’s she got to do with this?

“Leave my family out of this.” I want it to sound like a threat but it’s plaintive.

“Mr. Idle, you’ve completely lost your grip on reality. You can no longer tell the good from the bad.”

Another hot flash. Isn’t that just what Leviathan said while we were having coffee?

I don’t respond.

“Vello,” the buzzard says. “She’s the key. Find her. Immediately.”

“The key to what?”

“Whatever you do, don’t print anything until you talk to me. I want to help. I’ll be watching, or call me on this phone. I can be a good source but if you print lies you’ll do the world a great disservice, and you’ll make us very, very angry.”

“Us?”

“Vello. Twin Peaks,” he says, “and one more thing.”

“What’s that?”

“Wave.”

I look in the rearview mirror. No cars. I hear a honk. I look down on the northbound lane. A black Mercedes flies by. The phone goes dead.

I look to my right and see the exit for Edgewood Road. I slam the brakes, fishtail violently, but manage to make the exit.

“Nathaniel, what the hell are you doing?” Faith demands.

I take a quick left at a stop sign, cross under the freeway and speed onto the highway going south.

“Who was that?”

“Who is Carl?”

I’m flooring it, southbound, chasing a phantom. He’s nowhere to be seen.

The speedometer sneaks to ninety.

“Slow down.”

No sooner has she said it than I see the flashing light in the rearview mirror, a quick end to my high-speed chase. I pull over, put my hands on the wheel, wait for the cop to lumber to Faith’s window. When he pokes his beak through, I see the quarter-inch pink surgical scar across the center of his thick neck-from the removal of a mass of some kind. He asks for my license and registration.

Faith interjects: “It was my fault. I’m so sorry.”

He looks at her. Demurely, she lowers her eyes, then glances up at him, touches her fingertips to her lips. It’s like physical double entendre: on one level, contrite; on another, raw erotica.

“Your fault?”

“I. . I’m embarrassed.”

“I’ve heard it all. Tell me.” She’s got him.

“I told my brother I had to pee, badly.” She glances at me, then back at the cop. “When I start pleading in the little girl voice, it can be tough to ignore me.” She smiles, then lowers her eyes again. The cop takes my license and registration, pretends to give a long look, doesn’t bother to check his on-board computer, and leaves me with a stern warning.

“There’s a rest stop a mile up,” he says to her. To me, he adds: “Lighten up on the accelerator.” He walks to his car and pulls off.

“I really do have to pee.”

“You’re dangerous.”

“I’m not the one chasing ghosts at high speeds.”

No longer. Ghost long gone. I pull onto the highway.

“Who is Carl?”

“You’ve been going through my phone.”

“He called while you were asleep.” Small lie.

“Did you talk to him?”

I shake my head.

“He’s an ex.”

“Ex-boyfriend, ex-lover?”

“More or less. I don’t want to dwell on the past.”

“If he’s still calling, it doesn’t sound like it’s in the past.”

I see the sign for the rest stop. I decelerate onto the ramp. Just to the right, there’s an enclave nestled against trees with a public restroom in a bland concrete building. I park. Faith grabs her phone and hops out of the car.