Cloud Atlas

The flat world is curved in the boy’s eye. Javier Gomez leafs through a stamp album under an Anglepoise lamp. A team of huskies barks on an Alaskan stamp, a Hawaiian nene honks and waddles on a fifty-cents special edition, a paddle steamer churns up an inky Congo. A key turns in the lock, and Luisa Rey stumbles in, kicking off her shoes in the kitchenette. She is exasperated to find him here. “Javier!”

“Oh, hi.”

“Don’t ‘Oh, hi’ me. You promised not to jump across the balconies ever again! Suppose someone reports a burglar to the cops? Suppose you slipped and fell?”

“Then just give me a key.”

Luisa strangles an invisible neck. “I can’t rest easy knowing an eleven-year-old can waltz into my living space whenever?.?.?.” your mom’s out all night, Luisa replaces with “.?.?.?there’s a slow night on TV.”

“So why leave the bathroom window open?”

“Because if there’s one thing worse than you jumping the gap once, it’d be you jumping the gap again when you couldn’t get in.”

“I’ll be eleven in January.”

“No key.”

“Friends give each other keys.”

“Not when one is twenty-six and the other is still in the fifth grade.”

“So why are you back so late? Meet anyone interesting?”

Luisa glares. “Trapped by the brownout in an elevator. None of your business, anyhow, mister.” She switches on the main light and flinches when she sees the mean red welt on Javier’s face. “What the—what happened?”

The boy glances at the apartment wall, then returns to his stamps.

“Wolfman?”

Javier shakes his head, folds a tiny paper strip, and licks both sides. “That Clark guy came back. Mom’s working the graveyard shift at the hotel all this week, and he’s waiting for her. He asked me stuff about Wolfman, and I told him it wasn’t any of his business.” Javier attaches the hinge to the stamp. “It doesn’t hurt. I already dabbed stuff on it.” Luisa’s hand is already on the telephone. “Don’t phone Mom! She’ll rush back, there’ll be a massive fight, and the hotel’ll fire her like last time and the time before.” Luisa considers this, replaces the receiver, and starts for the door. “Don’t go around there! He’s sick in the head! He’ll get angry and wreck our stuff, then we’ll probably get evicted or something! Please.”

Luisa looks away. She takes a deep breath. “Cocoa?”

“Yes, please.” The boy is determined not to cry, but his jaw aches with the effort. He wipes his eyes on his wrists. “Luisa?”

“Yes, Javi, you’re sleeping on my sofa tonight, it’s okay.” 

8

Dom Grelsch’s office is a study in ordered chaos. The view across Third Avenue shows a wall of offices much like his own. An Incredible Hulk punching bag hangs from a metal gallows in the corner. The editor-in-chief of Spyglass magazine declares the Monday A.M. features meeting open by stabbing a stubby digit at Roland Jakes, a grizzled, prunelike man in an aloha shirt, flared Wranglers, and dying sandals. “Jakes.”

“I, uh, wanna follow up my Terror in Sewerland series, to tie in with Jaws fever. Dirk Melon, he can be a freelance hack, is found under 50th East Street on a routine maintenance inspection. Or rather his, uh, remains are. Dental records and tattered press pass ID him. Flesh torn from corpse in manner consistent with Serrasalmus scapularis—I thank you— queen bitch of all piranhas, imported by fish freaks, then flushed down toilets when the meat bill gets too big. I’ll phone Captain Vermin at City Hall and have him deny a spate of attacks on sewage workers. Taking notes, Luisa? Believe nothing till it’s officially denied. So c’mon, Grelsch. Time you gave me that raise?”

“Just be grateful your last paycheck didn’t boing. On my desk by eleven tomorrow, with a pic of one of those snappers. A question, Luisa?”

“Yes. Is there a new editorial policy no one’s told me about that excludes articles containing truth?”

“Hey, metaphysics seminar is on the roof. Just take the elevator up and keep walking until you hit the sidewalk. Anything is true if enough people believe it is. Nancy, what’ve you got for me?”

Nancy O’Hagan has conservative clothes, a pickled complexion, and giraffe-size eyelashes that often come unstuck. “My trusty mole got a picture of the bar on the president’s airplane. ‘Wing-dings and gin slings on Air Force One.’ The dumb money says the last drop’s been squeezed out of the old soak, but Auntie Nance thinks not.”

Grelsch considers. Telephones ring and typewriters clack in the background. “Okay, if nothing fresher comes up. Oh, and interview that ventriloquist puppet guy who lost his arms for It Never Rains .?.?. Nussbaum. You’re up.”

Jerry Nussbaum wipes dewdrops of choco-Popsicle from his beard, leans back, and triggers a landslide of papers. “The cops are chasing their own asses on the St. Christopher case, so how about a ‘Are You St. Christopher’s Next Slaying?’ piece? Profiles of all the snuffs to date and reconstructions of the victims’ last minutes. Where they were going, who they were meeting, what thoughts were going through their heads?.?.?.”

“When St. Chris’s bullet went through their heads.” Roland Jakes laughs.

“Yeah, Jakes, let’s hope he’s attracted to flashy Hawaiian colors. Then later I’m seeing the colored streetcar driver the cops had on the rack last week. He’s suing the police department for wrongful arrest under the Civil Rights Act.”

“Could be a cover story. Luisa?”

“I met an atomic engineer.” Luisa ignores the indifference chilling the room. “An inspector at Seaboard Incorporated.” Nancy O’Hagan is doing her fingernails, driving Luisa to present her suspicions as facts. “He believes the new HYDRA nuclear reactor at Swannekke Island isn’t as safe as the official line. Isn’t safe at all, in fact. Its launch ceremony is this afternoon, so I want to drive out and see if I can turn anything up.”

“Hot shit, a technical launch ceremony,” exclaims Nussbaum. “What’s that rumbling sound, everyone? A Pulitzer Prize, rolling this way?”

“Oh, kiss my ass, Nussbaum.”

Jerry Nussbaum sighs. “In my wettest dreams?.?.?.”

Luisa is torn between retaliation—Yeah, and letting the worm know how much he riles you—and ignoring him—Yeah, and letting the worm get away with saying what the heck he wants.

Dom Grelsch breaks her impasse. “Marketeers prove”—he twirls a pencil—“every scientific term you use represents two thousand readers putting down the magazine and turning on a rerun of I Love Lucy.”

“Okay,” says Luisa. “How about ‘Seaboard Atom Bomb to Blow Buenas Yerbas to Kingdom Come!’?”

“Terrific, but you’ll need to prove it.”

“Like Jakes can prove his story?”

“Hey.” Grelsch’s pencil stops twirling. “Fictitious people eaten by fictitious fish can’t flay every last dollar off you in the courts or lean on your bank to pull the plug. A coast-to-coast operation like Seaboard Power Inc. has lawyers who can and, sweet Mother of God, you put a foot wrong, they will.”

9

Luisa’s rust-orange VW Beetle travels a flat road toward a mile-long bridge connecting Yerbas Cape to Swannekke Island, whose power station dominates the lonely estuary. The bridge checkpoint is not quiet today. A