of your common sense and your ability to discern truth from imagination. You’re making connections and seeing things that aren’t there.”
“I’m bringing Leviathan down.”
I see Gils’ body tense at the mention of the name of the man he once partnered with to build one of Silicon Valley’s most iconic companies.
“He has nothing to do with this. If you print that, you can’t imagine the pain you’ll suffer.”
“From a lawsuit.”
“Why are you doing this?” Gils is truly exasperated. “Nathaniel, this is the future. We’re giving the next generation great tools, facilitating an extraordinary new world. We’re doing in Silicon Valley what we’ve always done.”
“Getting rich.”
He shrugs, as if to say, And your point is. .? He stands. He turns to the man with the crooked smile and the knife, now tucked in his back pocket.
“Make sure he gets someplace warm.”
“Count on it.”
Gils brushes his hands against his pants and starts walking down the mountain.
51
We wait a minute in silence.
“Which one do you think is his?” asks the henchman.
Arms crossed, he’s looking through the trees at the St. Francis Woods mansions. This is where Gils must live. So we met here because it was convenient for the executive, and not because it was a secret execution spot?
“I’m freezing,” Faith says.
“Then go.”
“We can go?” she asks.
“It’s a free country.” He half laughs. He likes saying this.
He turns and starts walking south, making crunching noises as his boots hit the concrete at the cross’s base. Presumably, he parked at some other access point. He pauses and turns back.
“I’m sorry I hit you so hard. I thought you were trying to steal from the company.”
It feels coached. He disappears into the wind.
“Let’s go,” Faith says.
I try to swallow and nearly choke from dryness.
“Nathaniel. It’s cold.”
A pigeon swoops from the treetops and pecks at some unseen snack at the base of the cross. It sails off again, its off-white feathers blur with the sky behind it and I wonder if the concussion is beginning to reassert itself. Then I realize why I’m so blurred. It’s not my brain but my eyes. They are filled with tears, blazing hot grief. A drip, a stream, cascade. Sobs.
I see Isaac, pale, bundled, not bundled, actually, shrouded. His weakened mother could not sustain him
Time passes, drizzle comes in and out, Faith finally speaks again. She says she needs to check on her nephew, Timothy. I stand and I find myself straining to look at her. It’s not that I don’t trust her, though I don’t. I don’t want to make full contact with her because it will mean acknowledging that I’m part of this world still, that what I’m experiencing now-the loss-is real.
She tries to take my hand and I neither resist nor embrace her. I stand. I turn. I feel a muddy patch beneath my feet, the ground indenting, my heart with it. I know the symbolism of this walk, back to the inherited Audi, on with life. Polly got two fortune cookies, both empty, like her future and Isaac’s future, our future. The one I embark on with my next step.
“Please tell me what’s going on,” Faith says.
In my right hand, still clenched, I feel the metal object that Faith handed me and that I’ve forgotten about entirely. I open my hand and see, as I’d expected, a pocketknife, a modest weapon that Faith had imagined for who knows what purpose. It falls into the mud.
I take the next step.
52
“May I drive, Nathaniel?”
I click open the car and climb into the driver’s seat. Warm air blows from the dashboard vents.
“I’ll take you to Timothy.”
“I slept with the admissions director at his school.”
I don’t respond.
“He sought out my advice because he was thinking of getting out of his job. He seemed, frankly, pathetic. I honestly just needed some release and I dated him. It was his idea to take Timothy into the school, or maybe I planted the seed. When I broke it off, he said he might force Timothy out of the school.”
I slow the car to allow a woman to cross the street. She has the same crazy, lazy look as her muzzled pit bull.
“I don’t know how Alan figured it out but he essentially blackmailed me. It was gentle. Not an outright threat. But he said that if I helped him get your attention, he’d pay me $1,000 and help me with my problem at school. Reading between the lines, he was suggesting he could make my problem with Mission Day School worse too. Carrot and stick.”
“Hacking.”
“What?”
“You said that Alan seemed to know a lot about you. Of course he did. He might’ve monitored your email, or hacked your voice mails. He knew what was going in your life-my life.”
“Why? What is all this?” Stricken, understandably.
I turn left onto Market, one of the city’s arteries. In a veritable monotone, I tell her: I had a pregnant girlfriend named Polly. She contracted brain cancer, a particular kind called anaplastic astrocytoma. Stage Three. It comes on fast and it doesn’t quit. It weakened her so severely she couldn’t nourish the baby. And it created a deadly conundrum. Starting chemo would kill the baby, but removing Isaac prematurely came with its own severe risks. In the end, there was nothing modern medicine could do.
I take a right onto Clipper, a steep slope downward into Noe Valley, then the Mission, the fog lightening slightly.
A whisper: “I’m so sorry. I lost one too. A very late miscarriage, a very early marriage.”
I let her revelation sink in. “They kidnapped you,” I finally say.
“It would be hard to prove.”
Something compels me to look in the rearview mirror. A few cars back, I think I make out the Mercedes. It disappears to the right, onto a side street.
“At the fire at the annex, the man Steven asked me to go with him. And I said I would do so. Actually, I told him that if he touched me, I’d scream. He said: ‘Please, I could use your help.’ I obviously knew he wasn’t that helpless but the way he asked made me realize that I could. .” She pauses.
Silence.
“Faith?”
“I’m not stupid. I’m aware of the effect I can have on people, specifically, men. I guess I like the hurt ones
