The Cloud by Matt Richtel

than anything else. Is he—a drinker?”
    “She took the bribe, after all.”
    I sidestep a woman pushing a stroller, exiting a shop. I pause long enough to see her baby, wearing an oversized red sun hat. I want to tell the mother that it’s okay for the baby to get a little Vitamin D, especially with the sun hanging low in the sky this time of year. Haven’t I tried to tell Polly that Isaac needs more sun?
    “Nat?” I feel Faith’s arm on my elbow, nudging me along.
    A block and a half later, we cross in the middle of the street as I feel doughnut sugar tickle my brain.
    Next to a phone store, there’s a stoop and a stairway to apartments located above. I walk to the intercom laid into the red brick wall. I see among the ten apartments two that might belong to an Alan. “A. Parsons” and, simply, “AM.” I press “A. Parsons,” prompting a buzz. There is no response. I buzz again. Nothing. I press “AM.”
    It buzzes. A woman answers with a hello.
    “Alan, please.”
    “Who?”
    “Alan. Big guy. Lives in the building. I’m worried about him.”
    “You and me both,” she responds.
    “You know him?”
    “I’ll be right down.”
    I look at Faith, who shrugs. Moments later, the doorway fills with a tall woman in her early thirties dressed from the Banana Republic catalogue. “I’m the landlady.” There’s education in her swagger and my impulse is her parents bought her the apartment building five years ago and she’s managing it. I introduce myself and so does Faith. The landlady studies Faith for a second because, well, how can you not?
    “I assume you buzzed Alan.”
    I nod.
    “I’ve sent him two emails asking him to fix my router. Nada.”
    Another reference to Alan’s skills.
    “You’re obviously not solicitors,” the landlady says.
    “Friends,” Faith explains. “I work with Alan.”
    The landlady turns around and starts to walk away, holding open the door. We follow her up a flight of stairs covered in low-cut maroon carpet, the sidewalls painted with care in complementary beige. The landlady stops on the top of the second flight and walks to a door labeled “2C.” She bangs a brass knocker that resembles a lion’s head.
    No answer. She knocks again, forcefully. Faith steps forward and reaches an index finger toward a white button to the right of the door.
    “Ringer’s busted,” the landlady says, pauses, adds: “Broken infrastructure means I have the right to peek in to see if everything’s okay.”
    She reaches onto her belt loop where I notice both the ring of keys and the pronounced blue veins on the back of her thin hands. It’s not a medical condition but a genetic bonus; plump, visible veins give nurses easy access for intravenous lines. She extends a key from her ring and unlocks the door.
    She pokes her head into the apartment.
    She screams.

15
    I instinctively nudge Faith away from the door. The landlady’s still peering inside, frozen.
    “Alan. Mr. Parsons!”
    I move the door open and gently put my hand on her shoulder. She flinches. I nudge her to her left, causing the door to open most of the way. A large man lies facedown. The soles of his heavy boots face us, the heel of the right one graced by a circle of dirt-encrusted pink gum. His beefy corpus stretches along a hallway nearly too narrow to accommodate him. His head rests at the foot of a square table stacked neatly with mail and magazines. Blood pools around his shaggy hair.
    Even from here, I recognize the man from the subway, decidedly felled, and fetid. It smells of infant feces and rotten food, just like a dead person.
    “What’s going on?” Faith asks. She brushes against me, and then whispers: “Oh my God.”
    I want to look at her to see if I can trust this reaction but I can’t take my eyes off him. I step inside.
    “Wait.” The landlady produces a phone.
    I walk to the body and squeeze along the wall trying not to touch Alan. I kneel by the head. The death smell commingles with aroma