The Cloud

46

My first thought: someone needs an endocrinologist. My second: that someone is a cop.

He stands at the driver’s-side window. Blue and brown uniform, no cap. And no facial hair. Zero. His face looks ice smooth. It’s a relatively rare hormone imbalance, low testosterone, unless he shaves every forty-five minutes.

Nonchalant, he holds a black baton in a beefy right hand that does not lack in testosterone. I open the driver’s-side door. Behind the cop stands his motorcycle, sun bouncing off the black gas tank.

“Not a cool place to sleep one off.” His voice matches the detached coolness in the air. He’s not picking a fight, just giving both my first and last warning. A bird chirps. In the tree above us, a gray gnatcatcher stops on a leafless limb, then darts upward into a crisp, cloudless morning. From the angle of the sun, it might well be ten in the morning.

I swallow hard, tasting foul, lumpy paste.

“I’m sorry, officer. I worked late, got too tired to drive 280.”

He cocks his head. I look at the underside of his nose, a likely spot to see hair growth if his face is capable of it. No little sprouts. He clears his throat, wanting my attention undivided.

“You need to get home to your family.”

“No family, officer.”

He furrows his eyebrows. Those he has. I see him look in the backseat and I turn. He’s eyeing the car seat.

“I could give you a field sobriety test.”

“I’m sorry. I’m sober. One thousand percent. I’m. .” I run out of words. “You’re right. My family needs me.”

“I’ll be back in five minutes to make sure you’re gone.”

I turn on my phone, which tends to be the first thing I do every morning for the mini adrenaline burst, a wisp of dopamine roughly equivalent to a whiff of coffee, right before the first sip. With an impolite beep, the device lets me know that the battery is low. And there’s one voice message. “Tonight. More instructions later.” It’s spoken in the choppy tonality and grammar of a non-native speaker.

I turn off the phone to give it the rest it needs.

I curl my head in a circle, feeling the crackling in my upper vertebrae, the awakening crinkles of the folds of skin around my neck, the paraspinal muscles and fatty tissue at the base and sides of my neck.

I feel a peculiar sensation. I pause, head leaned at three o’clock, to make sure I’m not mistaken. I’m not. I feel lucid. Clearheaded. I look outside and see colors as vivid as I’ve seen in days. I take in the brown pre-spring nubby leaf buds on the tree branch, and the dusty red bricks stacked at the base of a wheelbarrow near a wooden gate. I’m seeing the world in high-definition again.

A hollow, urgent sensation grips my intestines. Hunger. And then a more demanding pressure just lower down from my bladder. I need to pee and eat.

I angle down the rearview mirror so I can stare back at myself. I know that look. I’m rested. And determined. Nine hours of sleep have done some healing magic that no medication could do for my concussed brain. I can imagine the white spots that dotted my frontal lobe beginning to dissolve. In their place, healthy tissue and priorities. Time to tick the first item off the to-do list.

The Mission Day School stretches a half block, a stately and brown brick facade, then cuts sharply and handsomely off on each end so that the building forms the shape of a U.

A string of neatly aligned trees, transplanted from some forest north of the Golden Gate Bridge, ornament the shallow front lawn behind an ornate black metal fence.

A plaque next to the front gate reads: “K-8, Curriculum Vitae. For Life.”

The stately edifice is out of place in a part of the city, the outer Mission, where everything is out of place. Worn concrete-surfaced playgrounds surrounded by chain-link fences abut trendy small-plate restaurants serving $16 finger food abut $2 million three-story stand-alone hipster pads abut the barred windows of “deluxe” low-rise shoebox apartments renting for $625 a month to single moms, Mexican day-workers and their families, and slam poets.

In the idle Audi, parked across the street from the Mission Day School, I gulp a three-shot espresso drink called a Depth Charge and an egg-and-cheese croissant sandwich from a nearby hole-in-the-wall cafe. I’ve closed Bullseye’s laptop, which I used to visit the school’s web site. In a nutshell, Mission Day is an elite school, regarded as one of the best in California at using alternative teaching methods to “foster a generation of 21st-century leaders.” This is Andover and Choate, San Francisco style, costing parents $30,000 a year.

This is where Faith’s nephew goes to school. It doesn’t add up. Faith says that her sister suffers a mental disorder and lives a disheveled life. And she says that her nephew has inherited some emotional instability. I recall his name is Timothy and she described him as having Asperger’s syndrome and as being disruptive in class. How does the family pay for tuition at Mission Day? It seems doubtful that the nephew has earned a scholarship if he’s a source of in-class tension.

I initially wondered if Andrew Leviathan had anything to do with the school but can find no evidence on the Net that he has a relationship to Mission Day. Is he connected to Faith?

Meantime, I do see a different connection between Mission Day School and the events of the last few days. In glancing at the roster of the school administrators and finding the name Carl Lemon. “Carl_L.”

He’s a former corporate lawyer turned director of admissions. There’s an image of him but it’s not a picture. It’s a caricature that was drawn, it says, by one of the school’s students (all of the administrators’ images are caricatures). The one for Carl makes him look mid-thirties: close-cropped curls on the top of his head, maybe light-dark skin, a loose tie, a thin smile. He likes giving out tardy notices in the hallway.

From my glove compartment, I snag a notebook and a pen. I see a little boy walk through the front door. I look back at my car seat. I picture Wilma and hear her give me my homework assignment: focus on the image of the nuclear family you romanticized. Let yourself mourn its absence and passing. Think about “loss.”

“You’re getting somewhere,” I recall Wilma saying as I exit the last time. “See you next week.”

It’s the last thing I remember clearly before I head to the subway on the fateful night this mystery began to unfold. I vaguely recall standing on the subway platform, picturing how Isaac might view the entrance to the subway, how my little guy might view as intriguing the ominous black subway tunnel glistening with condensation.

I flash back further, months earlier, to the night of the Fortune Cookie, and the revelation from Polly that changed my life. “Nat,” she says, her smile at 40 percent, “I have something to tell you. Brace yourself.” In the present, her words sting so much that I instantly blink them away. The memory feels more vivid than it has felt in days, like the colors outside the car where I woke up this morning. I can’t think about this now. I’m close to answers.

I spring out of the car, leaving the empty car seat behind me.

I stand in the pristine hallway with smooth arches sloping to form a high concave ceiling. A stern-looking woman in her mid-fifties approaches. She wears a sleeveless blouse with a sweater tied around her waist.

“Peux je vous aider?”

I shake my head, confused. My best move is to go on the offensive.

“I’m heading to administration.” Purposeful, just shy of angry.

“It’s French Day. We ask parents to participate.” I’m being scolded.

“Gracias.” The only non-English word that comes to mind.

She points to the right and shakes her head.

Carl Lemon’s brass nameplate identifies his heavy brown door. I knock, causing the slightly ajar door to open. Behind a desk sits a man wearing suspenders and who has been flattered by the caricature on his web site. His brown curls have begun to recede, foretelling an eventual sharp widow’s point in the center of his spacious forehead.

“Mr. Lemon.”

“Do you have an appointment?”

“I’m here about Faith?”

“You’ll need to make an appointment.”

He looks down again at whatever he’s working on, summarily dismissing me. He’s serious to a fault.

“I’m with the press. On a big story involving your school.”

“If you don’t leave, I’ll call security.” Still looking down.

“I relish the opportunity to talk with them.” Now he looks up. I continue. “Where is Faith? What have you done with her?”

He blinks.

“So get security.”

“Come in. Shut the door behind you.”