The response comes immediately. “We are nearly at Zero Day,” Cloven writes. “And we lost 20 percent of our capacity for forty minutes.”
He understands the subtext. He is supposed to quantify time and space, the incalculable amount of commerce and exchange that could not take place during a peak time. It wasn’t just citizen traffic; Undertown was engaged in something that had been interrupted. Cheston can only write back, “I’m sorry. I mean, my bad, but there was nothing I could do.”
He can’t tell whether it is sweat or rainwater oozing down his face. He hits refresh, refresh, refresh until the next message appears—a long minute later.
“We are willing to forgive you. So long as you are willing to do as we request. We mentioned before that your role within the company might change, that your responsibilities would greaten.”
There is a glass eye at the top of each of the monitors, a webcam, and he notices then their green lights throbbing to life.
“Yes,” he writes. “Of course.”
“Open this, then.”
The email comes with an attachment. He clicks on it without hesitation and the computers all begin to chitter at once. A red code scrolls across the screens, filling his sunglasses with its script like blood-laced vessels.
Chapter 3
MIKE JUNIPER HAS KNOWN about the storm for days, and now it is finally here. He has three different apps on his phone—Weather Bug, Weather Underground, AccuWeather—and he thumbs through them a few times daily. In the morning, after he fetches the newspaper and pulls off the plastic bag and scans the headlines, he always licks a thumb and flips to the last page to study the five-day forecast. His eyes often cut to the window, where sunlight burns or where clouds cluster. It doesn’t make much sense, he knows, paying so much attention to something completely out of his control. But it makes him feel more connected to and protective of his clients, who suffer the elements in alleys and doorways.
That’s what he calls them, his clients, which they appreciate. “You work for us? That the idea?” they say, and he says, “Exactly.” He works for them. Feeding them meals. Offering them beds. Giving them soap and toothpaste and deodorant, underwear and socks, whatever castaway gloves and rain jackets and shoes get dropped off in cardboard boxes and plastic garbage sacks.
Juniper runs The Weary Traveler, one of several shelters in downtown Portland. He has forty beds, five showers, a kitchen, and a lounge where people can read the paper, watch TV, play cards or board games. The building, which huddles between two high-rises, is square and hatted by a sprung red roof, like some failed cousin of a Pizza Hut. Above the reception desk hangs a large cross that looks like a sword and gives off a pale blue light. The walls are blushed with mold and the linoleum is cracked and the ceiling is stained yellow from the cigarettes people used to be able to smoke here, but it’s a welcome refuge to many. Some sleep here for one night and others for thirty, after which time he’s obligated to review their case and extend or deny their stay. He has trouble saying no. Some of his clients have been with him for years.
Juniper himself has been here for twenty. Nobody asks him what he did previously, as people mind their business in a place like this. And nobody has recognized him and he doubts they ever will. The name he’s changed and the beard he’s grown and the muscle he’s gained from weightlifting make that nearly impossible. He’s only in his mid-forties, but his previous life feels like something that happened a century ago. His forehead juts, a thick shelf that throws a shadow over his eyes. His hair is curly black. His hands are enormous, his mouth small. He wears jeans and flannel, thermal long-sleeves.
He helps out the occasional teenager. There are many in Portland, but they try to keep away from the shelters because the admins are obligated to report underagers to social services. And he caters to the occasional family. Just yesterday, for instance. A hollow-eyed mother whose baby had worn the same diaper for three days straight. Whenever the boy needed a change, she’d simply scrape out the waste. She wasn’t on drugs, though some of them are, and she wasn’t mentally ill, though some of them are. She was out of work and on her own and didn’t want to ask for help until she had no choice. That’s what Juniper’s here for—to help, to make a difference, as a kind of compensation or atonement. These people have hit rock bottom and someone needs to hoist them out, and he’s happy to be the one to do it.
Most of Juniper’s clients are middle-aged men. One of his regulars sits in the lounge area now, a room crammed with mismatched couches and recliners and tables, a potted fern, a game cabinet, a coffee station.
Mitch Gunderson used to work as a horse vet until he took a hoof to the head that dented his skull and damaged his short-term memory. He still favors Wranglers and flannels. He’s presently stirring creamer into his fifth cup of coffee.
“What do you think, Mitch?” Juniper says. “Gonna be a bad one?”
Mitch stops his spoon, looks to the window, says, “Wouldn’t mind a big storm. I’ve always been a fan of enormous weather.” Then returns to his absent stirring.
Sure enough, the pressure shifts, the temperature drops. Juniper keeps a thermometer—round-faced with a faded picture of a crow on it—screwed next to one of the windows. He can see the hand on it slide back a good fifteen degrees, like a clock losing time. “Oh boy,” he says. “Here it comes.”
A gust sends a fistful of leaves skittering across the windows. The door breathes open slightly and the wind gasps inside. A streetlamp burns outside, and by its light they can see the maples bending with the wind. Lightning begins to zap and string the night, and they can see now the shape of the thing, one of those frontal thunderstorms shaped like a monstrous anvil. The gray, lightning-laced shelf of it moves toward them, eating up the sky. The moon has risen, a white rind that the clouds soon eclipse.
Today has been slow. A few of his regulars have checked in and are showering or resting upstairs, but he expects the storm to bring more his way. Mitch stands by the window and sips from his coffee and says, again, “I’ve always been a fan of enormous weather.” He’s tall and lean with big ears made more prominent by his baldness. He still carries the dent of the horse hoof at the temple, and his eyes have a faraway focus to them. He lets out a long appreciative whistle. “That’s a storm all right.” He glances at his wristwatch, which stopped ticking years ago. “I suppose I should head on home, but if I do, that means I have to spend time with my wife.” He takes a loud sip of coffee and runs a tongue across his lips for the taste. “So I’ll just stay here. I’ll just ride her out.”