The next day, at seven, I went to the address on the paper. To my great surprise, what I found on the third floor of that address was a Weight Watchers meeting. I didn’t know what to make of it. I showed the paper to the receptionist, and she told me to go in. I sat in the audience and waited. A few people were already there, and more were coming in. And then Nathaniel came in. He didn’t look at me. He walked to the front of the class and started talking. Apparently, he was a Weight Watchers counselor. He talked about his experience, about how fat he had been. Supposedly 375 pounds. (Hard to believe.) Following a tragedy in his life. A tragedy that led him to overeat. I wondered what the tragedy had been, but he did not mention it. He spoke with intelligence and sensitivity. He was appealing. It occurred to me he might have made a good actor. And perhaps he was that, too.
After the meeting, I had dinner with him. It was strange, sitting in front of him, watching him eat, after knowing the problems he had with food. He must have sensed my discomfort, because early on in the meal he told me he no longer had much of an eating disorder. I asked him what the tragedy had been.
“It’s nothing like what you’re thinking,” he replied. “It’s not romance or family-related. It was business-related.”
“Business-related,” I mused. “I can’t imagine which of your four businesses it could be related to. Unless these are still not your only businesses.”
“Yes, well, I don’t feel comfortable discussing it further.”
We finished the meal talking of other things.
The next day, Damon and I were walking in a park, by the river, a few blocks away from the one in which I had been attacked.
Hanging out with Nathaniel had reminded me what a normal person should be like: open. (Not that Nathaniel was terribly normal, but still.) I was fed up with Damon’s secrecy and mystery. It offended me. And I was telling him exactly that, as we strolled among the benches and trees. I told him I had trouble accepting his “private ways” and that as much as I enjoyed his company, I did not see the point of continuing to see him if he was not going to open up to me at least a little.
“You won’t tell me anything about your family or your past,” I argued. “It’s too bad, but I can take it. At least for now. What I can’t take is that you don’t even want to talk about your job. That’s going too far, don’t you think? You can’t be secretive about everything! You told me you work with the weather. So maybe you’re a weatherman or something. What’s the big deal? I mean, I could understand your secrecy if you were a stripper, or a weight-loss counselor, or even, I don’t know, an etiquette expert. But the weather? There is no reason, no reason on earth, why you should be reluctant to talk about that profession. Which is why I am losing patience.” I huffed and looked away.
He reached inside the bag he was carrying and took out a present, which he handed to me. It was a box, about four inches long, gift-wrapped in blue paper, with a pink ribbon.
“What is this?” I asked.
“It’s for you. Open it.”
“No,” I said, “I want to know about you, not get some material gift as a substitute.”
“It’s not material.”
Although I barely paid attention to this response, I did wonder if the present might be a poem. Was a poem material? “But still, Damon,” I said. “I want to know about what you do, exactly.”
“Then open the present,” he repeated.
Exasperated, I opened it and looked inside. At first I thought there was nothing. But after a moment I saw that there was nothing; so much so, in fact, that there was not even the bottom of the box. Or at least, I could not see it. It was blurry, foggy.
I looked at Damon.
“Take it out,” he said.
“Take what out? There’s nothing.”
“Come, now.”
I snapped at him: “I don’t see anything inside the box. Not even its bottom.”
“Take out that which prevents you from seeing.”
I stared at him.
“Just scoop it out with your fingers,” he said.
I felt foolish, but obeyed him, and the fog came out in my hand. It was denser than fog, and did not disperse. What it looked like, actually, to a tee, was a small white cloud. It sat there on my hand, but I did not feel it; it was not concrete enough, not material enough. I lowered my hand, and the cloud just hung there, in the air, like a week-old birthday balloon that had lost the energy to soar, but was not yet dead enough to sink to the ground.
I looked inside the box, to see if there was anything even more incredible. There wasn’t. Inside the box, this time, was the bottom of the box.
I looked again at the cloud, which had floated two or three inches away, due to the slight breeze coming in from the river.
My first concern was whether other people were close enough to notice this thing, hanging out in the park’s air. I looked around, but there was no one near us.
“What is this?” I finally asked.
“It’s my career.”
Ah, yes, that had been my question, which, in retrospect, seemed rather petty and stubborn. And yet I did not regret having asked it.
“You wanted to know about my profession,” he said. “So now you know. As I told you, I’m a scientist, and I work with the weather … but more specifically, with water.” He cleared his throat. “I discovered a way to make small clouds. Bonsai clouds, you could call them. I’ve been working on developing different varieties, different strains, and I’m now focusing on one area of development. But I don’t want to bore you with that.”
“I’m not bored. What area?”
“Giving them more substance.”
“It’s incredible,” I said.
“What part? Giving them more substance, or—?”
“No, I mean the cloud. But everything else too, actually.”
“Oh, thank you! I’m glad you like it.”
I nodded, feeling extremely self-conscious, I don’t know why. “Can I touch it again?” I asked.
“Of course. Fondle it as much as you want. Though you won’t feel much. Actually, I’d be interested to know how much you do feel, since you’re the only person so far I’ve shown one of my clouds to.”
I stared at him in disbelief.
He went on: “I’ve often wondered if one’s sensory perception of such an insubstantial thing differs from person to person. My guess is no, but let’s see.”
I touched the cloud, and slowly pushed my fingertips against it. My fingers did not enter the cloud more than half an inch or so. Instead, the cloud was being pushed by my fingers. I then grabbed it with both hands, and my fingers sank into it without any perceptible resistance. Yet it did not quite feel like air. The difference was very subtle, and I wasn’t yet sure how to describe it.
Then, like an ax, I sliced my hand through the cloud, and it remained whole, barely disturbed. I joined my palms together and sliced both of my hands through the cloud, halting in the middle and parting my hands. The cloud separated into two halves, which I then pushed back together.
“It’s dense,” I said. “More dense than real clouds in the sky, I imagine. It does not disperse. It tends to remain whole.”
“I’m pleased you noticed. I’m striving for yet greater density.”
It was only then that a question popped into my head; a question it was odd of me not to have asked sooner and that it was irrelevant to ask now because the answer was obvious. But I decided to ask it anyway: “Are you putting me on? Is this some kind of trick?”
“No, I’m not a magician,” he said.
Damon left for his country house the next day. He said he had some work to do, but that he would be back in a week. He let me keep the cloud.