Free The Cloud by Matt Richtel Page B

I pick up my tattered backpack, and the compromised laptop inside of it, and set forth for Sandy Vello.
    But the other mystery woman intervenes.
    As I approach my office on Polk Street, I see Faith standing under the awning of Green Love, avoiding a drizzle.

13
    I ’m half a block away from her when she looks up and, a millisecond later, seems to register that it’s me. In that moment, her face changes—from pensive to warm, but manufactured.
    “I know what you’re thinking.”
    “That you must be pretty concerned to have taken off work and to show up at my office in person.”
    “That I’m not the sort of girl who loiters in the doorway of an environmentally conscious sex shop.”
    The line, though it feels pre-packaged, is delivered with enough poise to catch me off guard. She points in the window to a particularly well-endowed male prosthetic. Hung over it is a piece of string holding a sign that reads “BPA Free.”
    “Sure, it has no toxic plastics,” she says. “But is it solar-powered?”
    “Wind. You have to use it outside during a category five storm.”
    Her brown eyes twinkle and she smiles, then resolves it. To protect herself against the January morning chill, she wears a puffy brown jacket that says thrift, not fashion, and that sits high on her waist. Her white wool gloves, the fabric cut off the tips, show her slim fingers, nails unpainted. Her jeans hug her legs. I’m struck by an image; I can see her managing a staff at a nice restaurant, quietly controlling her environment, wielding influence, making something in her image. I want to meet her again under regular circumstances and take her out for a drink and feel weightless.
    “What do you do for work, Faith?”
    “You said you usually take someone out for coffee before grilling them.” Another clever line, confident on its face, but she seems only to eek out the last couple of words. Under her eyes the thin lines of sleeplessness.
    “Come on up to my office and let’s talk about the burly man who tried to throw me under the subway.”
    She pauses, maybe trying to figure out if I’m joking.
    “For just a sec. I don’t have a lot of time and I want to show you the diner. Do you have a car?” I nod, a vague signal, approximating agreement. We walk upstairs in silence.
    Inside, I pick up a narrow, manila-colored reporter’s notebook and slip it into my back pocket. From my backpack, I pull out the Mac and set it on the desk.
    “Faith, do you know much about computers?”
    She’s taking in my office. “Not really. Are you having trouble?”
    Yeah, as in: someone hacked into my computer and programmed it to tell me about the death of a former reality-show-contestant-turned-employee of PRISM Corporation. I look up at Faith, who looks at my futon. I see her glance at the Minnie Mouse nightlight plugged into the socket and wonder when I got afraid of the dark.
    “Is this where you sleep?”
    I ignore the question. “I ran into Sandy Vello.”
    She looks at me. “Who?” Genuine.
    “Never mind. I need five minutes to check email. Pull up a futon.”
    A sound comes from Faith’s jacket pocket. She extracts her phone. Her ringtone is Springsteen’s “Born to Run.” She sends the call to voice mail. “Do you have a bathroom?”
    I show her to the hallway.
    While she’s gone, I call up my email. I type in my password, and while my messages load, wonder who else might be reading over my shoulder. This idea doesn’t particularly startle me; on some level, I long ago accepted our Internet habits are a fishbowl being scrutinized by ne’er-do-wells—on a continuum from advertiser to nosy kid to blackmailer. There are creepy implications, no doubt, but most of what they’d discover is how mundane is our humanity.
    In my in-box, there is nothing new, or at least interesting. I pull Sandy’s contact info from my wallet. I scratch her a quick email. “Sandy, great meeting you yesterday. I’d love to hear your story, as would my