What would you do if you could tell who was about to die?
Drew Percy is an isolated and lonely tech entrepreneur who begins to see halos above certain people. When he realizes the halos appear to foreshadow death, he wonders if his new AI-driven bioanalytics product may somehow be causing them. His search for answers becomes an obsession when the halos appear and interfere with – or perhaps cause – romance in his life. Or do they? To save his work, his life, his hopes and dreams, he must overcome obstacles in the technology he created and grapple with the issues that have kept him isolated and alone for so long.
What would you do if you could tell who was about to die?
Drew Percy is an isolated and lonely tech entrepreneur who begins to see halos above certain people. When he realizes the halos appear to foreshadow death, he wonders if his new AI-driven bioanalytics product may somehow be causing them. His search for answers becomes an obsession when the halos appear and interfere with – or perhaps cause – romance in his life. Or do they? To save his work, his life, his hopes and dreams, he must overcome obstacles in the technology he created and grapple with the issues that have kept him isolated and alone for so long.
I still remember where I was the first time I saw it. It was past dark and starting to get crowded. I was at McNally’s, which is where I usually was if I went out anywhere. I had started feeling a buzz and knew I should be heading home soon before the college kids and twenty-somethings looking for love and a good time showed up.
I used to think going out was fun. It was a nice enough crowd there, normally. There’s a sense of community when you live in a place like Oakland, and people there just wanted to have a good time. But the last few years, I found the whole scene annoying and wanted to avoid the hassle, even if it meant leaving earlier than usual. Pretty soon, earlier than usual became the new usual.
He was an older guy and he didn’t look well. He was wrapped in a wool overcoat even though fall was months away. Or fall here, anyway, it doesn’t start to get cold in the Bay Area until November. But there he was in charcoal grey with an untied black scarf draped over his slumped shoulders.
His face was…well, it was grey, or greyish and stubbly, even though he seemed like the kind of guy who shaved every day. He had straight, greying black hair, and although I guessed he was 60 years old, he had plenty of it left. He looked like the kind of man who had face-to-face conversations and told things to you straight, someone who carried a briefcase and might offer a word of advice. He was neither short nor tall, neither heavy nor thin, in all respects but the one, unremarkable.
He was just sitting at the other end of the bar, looking straight ahead. He was drinking something brown, which added to the air of solemnity. He was alone, staring at his drink or the bar, or, in all likelihood, he was seeing something no one else could see because it wasn’t in the room. He was bathed in light, or so it appeared to me, backlit by a lamp hanging from a cord over the table behind him. That’s what made it difficult to see at first. Plus, I didn’t want to stare at him. Not that he was looking at me or up at all for that matter, it’s just that I feel self-conscious staring at someone. What if somebody said something, or what if Tiny noticed?
Tiny was the bartender, and of course he was about six foot four, bald as a bowling ball and ripped. The nickname was so ironic that it was unironic, which was the way the guys at McNally’s always tried to play it. They were so counterculture that they were mainstream, but they didn’t even notice. The whole San Francisco Bay Area is like that now and nobody realizes it. Some people do, I guess. Whatever.
I thought maybe it was the booze, but I counted the drinks. Four. Not that many, but not exactly judicial sobriety, either, I understood that. Everyone has a magic number and four was a pretty good one for me. I liked to keep it around there. On occasion – tough day, perhaps – it could end up being one or two more, or, if the college kids showed up early, perhaps one or two less.
I tried to make a rule for myself – no more drinking at home. That had the effect of forcing me to spend more time around other people, which, in theory, I knew was a good thing. I know the great Walt Whitman wrote, “Have patience and indulgence toward the people,” but did he mean these people? (I sometimes wonder whether he might rewrite the preface to his great poetic masterpiece were he alive today.) As it happens, though, my “rule” also acted as a curb on my alcohol intake due to my general dislike of crowds. I could have solitude or alcohol, but not both. It was sometimes frustrating, but intellectually, I believed it was necessary.
The next thing I considered was that something was wrong with my eyes. I looked away. I looked back (a few seconds later). I rubbed them. I dabbed them. I tried to distract myself and forget about it. I saw it again, I rubbed my eyes again, etc.
After thirty or forty minutes, I fumbled for my glasses, which I always carry with me but never wear. I put them on and all that did was make the image more crisp and undeniable. I guess I must have almost given the whole thing away because –
“What’s wrong?” Tiny asked, walking over, wiping a glass.
“Nothing.”
“Why’d you put on your specs? Leaving early?”
“No. No, I just…thought that woman was someone I saw last week,” I said, nodding towards a slender blonde woman on the other side of the Grey Man.
“First timer,” he answered. “Tinder date for Mr. Handsome looks like,” he added.
I looked at the guy next to the blonde. Too old to be one of the college kids, too young to be a regular. Probably lived in one of the million-dollar shacks in the neighborhood. I say shacks because that’s what they are, hundred-year-old Craftsman 2 and 3-bedroom houses that for the life of me I can’t tell how they’re worth so much.
I moved into the neighborhood when rent was cheap and the restaurants were fantastic, crowded, noisy, small places with excellent food. Now, the restaurants almost all are parodies of themselves, all aesthetics and no character, like giant iPhone restaurants serving more of what people wish they were than actual food.
I took off the glasses. “Oh, I guess not.”
Tiny moved away. I think his real name was Mike or Mikey and I made a mental note to remember and to start calling him that instead of Tiny, and then I realized that was dumb and I would just call him what I’d always called him, except that was dumb, too. I got mad at myself for being so drunk that I was tying myself in knots and starting to see things.
I caught Tiny’s attention and asked for some water and chugged it down. Tiny refilled it and looked in my face. That’s the last thing I wanted because you don’t have to be a genius to know how observant he is and I hate it when people ask me too many questions. I have very particular opinions about asking questions. I am a lawyer, after all. So I just sipped the new glass of water and set it aside.
“Thanks,” I said.
“Don’t mention it,” he replied and I guess it would be redundant if I told you that he said it ironically.
It occurred to me to ask Tiny if he saw what I saw, but I didn’t want to get cut off and possibly never be allowed into McNally’s again. It was the only bar in the neighborhood that had a whiff of authenticity left to it and if I had to go sit at B45 or Le Plume, I would rather just say to hell with all my rules and drink myself silly out of a paper bag on my front stoop like the old timers that used to live in the neighborhood.
So I did the only remaining thing that there was left to do. I got up to walk past the Grey Man and go to the bathroom.
This was a bit of a high-risk maneuver, but I didn’t see any way around it. I thought of just finishing my drink and leaving, which is probably what I should have done, but I was too invested at that point. I mind my own business anymore as much as anyone, but even I couldn’t handle walking away from this. The light, the overcoat, the thousand-yard stare. The guy hadn’t looked up in forty-five minutes and I needed to know, I had to know, what I was really seeing. How could I be seeing it? How could I not be seeing it?
So, up I stood. I made an effort to steady myself, and then walked around the bar and toward the bathroom in the back, attempting to be as casual as possible. I passed Jim, the finance guy who works at Google and comes in to watch the Warriors (only the Warriors weren’t playing). I passed two older neighborhood guys that I see now and then. I passed the first of the college kids, with their beautiful skin, full heads of hair and not-a-care-in-the-world smiles. I passed the blonde and Mr. Handsome and a couple of empty barstools. And then I got to him. The Grey Man.
I was looking down at the ground, trying hard to be discreet. I was pretending like I wasn’t paying attention to anyone so nobody would pay attention to me. But I knew that when the moment came, there would be no getting around it. When I got there, when I got to him, I would have to look up and would have to do so deliberately. So, that’s what I did.
And when I did, I saw it. I saw it up close and without any doubt, sure as I was standing there. All of my concerns about being unassuming went out the window. In that moment, I didn’t care if everyone in the entire place saw me staring as I walked past him, my mouth open. Because right there above his head, unmistakable fact, bright, gleaming circle. The Grey Man had a halo.
The premise for David Perozo's book is an interesting one. We follow Drew, a lawyer, who is also a would-be entrepreneur, hoping the analyser he has developed is a hit. His invention takes information from urine and offers lifestyle advice and most importantly supplements so that you are, scientifically and biologically, your best self. Testing it on himself, he experiences what could be strange side effects, which raise questions and uncertainties for our protagonist.
A bit of a loner, Drew is our narrator throughout and is engaging as a guide through the properties of his experimental device and his quest to make it more widespread. But can we trust him?
The title of the book reveals the key idea of the book: Drew's life becomes dominated by haloes and not due to an invasion of God's own envoys. The haloes appear above the head of everyday people and Perozo shows how Drew deals with this revelation and what it means. Initially, the haloed people he encounters are strangers but as more appear and Drew convinces himself he's not hallucinating, he becomes more involved with the individuals with these odd manifestations. Where does this lead? Well, that's for the reader to find out.
There was much to like about this book. Perozo's prose is accomplished and the narrative flows, has direction and the dialogue is convincing. Drew is likeable, funny and feels like a safe pair of hands. With regard to the writing, there were no times where I was thrown out of the action of the book by continuity or editorial errors: in that, it's strong. And the book ends positively for the most part with ends tied albeit, in my opinion, a little loosely.
To expand on that, it's that it felt like there was scope for more. And that was true of the novel as a whole: it's not that it wasn't fulfilling but there were times where I was expecting more tension or conflict and the book didn't present that. That's not to say that there aren't tense moments as there are but these are not the drivers of the book.
But there's lots to recommend it in the dialogue and its fluidity and as a piece of escapism, this is what I would call a solid read. It's imaginative, well-written, entertaining. Give it a go.