The Cloud

8

At just this inopportune moment, I hear Polly’s voice in my head. She’s admonishing me for leaving in the sink a spatula, its tip gooey with cheese-omelet remains. I’ve done all the other dishes and walked away. Her admonition is playful but pointed: I overlook the finest details, she says, and kisses my ear. It’s four months before she leaves me out of the blue, Isaac still in utero. “You’ll teach our baking bean to finish the job,” she says.

It’s an instant flash to my failings. Is my head in the clouds? Am I an inexact romantic? Is this why everything went wrong? I feel my head pulse again and see Sandy Vello, a woman that I understood to be dead, glowering at me-short-cropped hair, long on attitude, very vertical given her alleged medical condition.

“You were on that survivor show,” I say. Is this really her?

“What?”

Her obituary, or what I thought was her obituary, said she had been on a reality-TV show. Clearly, the obit was wrong in its most essential facet-i.e., Sandy Vello is, um, not dead-but maybe this fallacious death notice had some other facts right. I can’t try to make sense of the overriding conundrum right now. My only goal: not alienate this person, who might yet provide answers. Avoid the direct approach. Not yet time to ask if she was trying to contact me. Let the conversation evolve.

“You were robbed,” I say. No net now. “I wanted to offer my condolences.”

“If you saw the show, then how come you didn’t recognize me?”

“I did. I thought I did. I was too embarrassed. I shouldn’t have said anything. I. .”

“I was robbed. That Rodent Nuts Donovan made it look like I lied to Clyde. I’d never lie to Clyde. I’d trust that Marine with my life and, besides, he knows I’m tough but totally true to my values.” She pauses. “What did your kid do?”

It takes a second to reorient. She thinks I’ve got offspring in lockup. I’m sizing her up too, and I instantly identify her pathology: IRC. Ideal reality-show contestant. Combative, self-assured, narcissistic, as desperate for attention as she is difficult to turn away from. Genetically tailored for TV. A doctor in Los Angeles actually came up with such a diagnosis, or so I read. This sufferer is leaning against the counter and I can see the veins in her heavily exercised forearms; she’s got a narrow, birdlike head but also a charismatic, toothy smile, which she now is showing.

“No. Not visiting any residents. I’ve visited before. I thought it was common knowledge you did volunteer work-help kids. I took a chance you’d be around. .”

She’s blinking, skeptical.

I clear my throat. “I’m Nat Idle.” I’m watching her face. She blinks, not with recognition, but boredom. The conversation just stopped being about her.

“Nathaniel Idle,” I expand.

“I told you: we’re in lockdown and closing.”

She’s got no clue who I am, which means she likely didn’t send me an email overture purporting to warn me about some impending “launch.” Launch of what? Would she know what that refers to? Is she as in the dark as me or, instead, one very good actress, far too good for reality TV?

I fight a rising temptation to tell her I’d heard a rumor that she’d been in an accident. Short of that, maybe I could ask her what she’s doing now. It’s a natural segue from her riff on someone named Donovan and someone named Clyde, and maybe an entree into her job at PRISM, or Lord knows if she actually works there. But the rhythm doesn’t feel right. I’m still in a mild state of shock.

“I’ve got a question.”

“You want to know if they rigged the show, right?”

“That too. May I have an autograph?”

She looks at the doorway that leads to the back of the building. It opens. The smaller woman reappears.

“You should wait outside.”

I’m not getting the impression that egocentric Sandy is someone who likes to volunteer with kids but maybe her work here conforms to her desire to be the most superior creature in the room.

“Perfect.” I mean it. I’ve got a few minutes to make sure I’m not living in a dream world.

I walk the few yards to my car feeling a distinct chill, this one borne of weather, not shock. This part of San Francisco’s microclimate makes the other foggy parts feel like sunshine. A few blocks later, I comfort myself, it’ll be 20 degrees warmer. Thanks to our hills, valleys, stretches of trees and lush park that suddenly give way to swaths of concrete jungle, I live in microclimate central. This city’s motto should be: Don’t like the weather? Step to your left.

I sit in the car to extricate myself from the wind and pull out my phone. I call up the Internet and search for Sandy Vello. Again, as I had the night before, I get hundreds of thousands of responses. But none of the first ones is an obituary.

I start the search over, this time specifying her name and “obituary.” Plenty of random search returns. None replicating what I’d found the night before. Same result when I put in her name and “bike accident.”

Then I try Sandy Vello and “San Mateo Daily News,” where I recall seeing the obit. There are a couple of hits. But both of them refer to Sandy as a “local woman” appearing on Last One Standing. I speed through one of the articles. It says the show took place in October 2008, filmed on an island off the coast of Washington in frigid conditions, and consisted of various outdoor survival feats. It ended for Sandy in an early episode and she accused one of the contestants of organizing the others to conspire to oust her. I guess that’s the arch-enemy Sandy referred to as Donovan. It says Sandy’s nickname was “the Perp,” on account of her having spent some time in juvenile hall a decade earlier for reasons “sealed by the court.” She’s cast as a bad seed reformed.

There is nothing on the Internet suggesting this woman is dead and no evidence there ever was such a reference.

How is that possible? I know what I saw the night before. And the fact that the woman is right where I’d been led to believe I’d find her by the phantom obituary provides me some comfort that I didn’t imagine the obit entirely.

But now it’s gone.

I look up to see Sandy, standing at the window, casing the Audi.

I open the door but remain seated.

“Nice ride. After the show, Porsche put me in a Cayenne for a few weeks but it was too flashy for me.”

“I thought you were a big road biker.”

“On those shows, they blow your skills out of proportion so they can knock you down. But it’s true that I’ve won my share of races for my age group, and don’t you go asking what that is. So, yeah, I put in my time on the bike. It helps me feel centered.”

“Isn’t that dangerous? All that riding. Do you ever get in crashes?”

“Not a one. Knock on wood. How did you say you found me? Not that I mind having fans. It’s important for me to set a good example. I’m just curious.”

Textbook narcissist; like a meth addict whose drug is attention and who burns through it every few seconds, then resents the need and its provider.

She’s standing in the wind, arms crossed. I stand. “May I make a confession?”

“If this is some weird stalker thing, I’m going to call the guards.” She sort of laughs.

“I’m a journalist.”

She blinks a couple of times, discomfort. “Ha. I should’ve guessed.” She looks at the prison. “This part of my life is off the record. I’ve been where these kids are, and neither I nor they need to have our stories reduced to a bunch of clever sound bites.”

“I. .”

“I don’t want to be part of some humiliating ‘where are they now’ story. They warned us on the show we could be hounded the rest of our lives.”

Yep, good suggestion: a story about where she is now. I clear my throat. “Guilty as charged. I’m following some of the recent stars to see how TV has changed them or their perspective.”

“No thanks. Ask Donovan. Rodent Nuts craves the limelight.”

“You keep up with him?”

“He’s an investment advisor. But, get this: for kids! Doesn’t that beat it? That duplicitous ape is selling himself to rich families in L.A., telling them he can help their children learn to understand Wall Street.”

“I get it. The press can be obnoxious. I’m going for something more thoughtful. It’s a look into a life most of us can only dream of living. You’ve seen what it’s like inside Hollywood. Inside the machine. I’ve heard that it can be a big disappointment-all the promises they make to people who come to it with good intentions.”

“What did you say your name was?”

“Nat Idle.” I reach into my wallet and grab a business card. I hand it to her. She makes an appearance of studying it. On her right hand, only her index fingernail is painted, light pink. She wears Levi’s and a cotton T-shirt under her windbreaker.

“Who do you write for?”

“Various places-magazines, mostly, some online stuff. You know the drill these days. Work where you can get it.”

She looks in my backseat.

“You’ve got a new kid?”

“Yup.”

She’s thinks about a second. “I’ve got to go. But I’ll consider whether I want to do an interview. My time is pretty tight and my employer doesn’t much like press.”

“The prison cares about whether you do interviews?”

“Not them. This is pro bono.” Without elaborating, she hands me a business card. It reads:

Sandy Vello

Student

Teacher

It’s got an email address: 4ABetterWorld@gmail.com. For A Better World. It’s obnoxious and, more so, it’s not the hotmail address I received an email from before. I taste bile. Who does that belong to?

“You work for the government, as a teacher?”

“No questions. Email me and I’ll think it over.” She pauses, then says: “The timing could be interesting.”

“How’s this weekend look for you? Maybe for coffee. I’m under a bit of a deadline.”

“Email.” She walks across the small parking lot to a red BMW M3, a car lover’s roadster. Hardly a step down from her Porsche. She’s got money or a benefactor, but that’s all beside the main point: Sandy Vello is alive.

I stand there, holding her card. Where am I versus where I was five minutes ago? A name was on a piece of paper dropped in the subway by a bum or a drunk or a would-be killer, and then I read on the Internet that Sandy’s been killed in a biking accident. She-or someone on her behalf, or someone posing as her-reached out to me. Is someone playing with my head? Was the obit actually on my computer, or did I imagine reading it?

By way of getting answers, I can think of two things that need immediate inspection: the inside of my computer, and the inside of my head.