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“It isn’t good.” From her Gucci purse, Naomi retrieved a small, round, ceramic pillbox and a tiny silver spoon. She unscrewed the lid of the box, spooned a white powder from the container, inhaled it through her left nostril, and repeated the process with her right nostril. “A prescription for my irregular heartbeat. I’ve been so stressed you can’t imagine.” She returnedthe paraphernalia to her purse. “The creep spent so lavishly on his lifestyle, as if there was no end to the money, and he spent even more lavishly to fulfill his hideous, demented, unspeakable desires. In the end, he pissed away a four-hundred-million-dollar inheritance. By the time the house in Beverly Hills is sold, as well as the residences in Rio and on the Côte d’Azur, when the estate is settled, I will be left with only sixty or seventy million.”

Benny did a little math. “Briarbush costs two hundred thousand a year.”

“Plus your allowance, your uniforms, books. It’s exorbitant. Outrageous. I’ve made other arrangements for sixty thousand a year through your eighteenth birthday.”

Alarmed, Benny said, “Not Grandma Cosima.”

“No, no, no. That old bitch would want twice as much. Anyway, I have cut her off entirely. I no longer talk to my mother and intend never to see her again. She’d pry and pry and pry until eventually she’d figure it out, and then there would be no satisfying her, the greedy old witch.”

“Figure what out?”

“Never mind. You wouldn’t understand, Benny. You’re too young to understand. Anyway, there’s nothing to figure out.”

Mile by mile, the storm intensified until it seemed as if it were not a meteorological event, not mere weather, but a planetary catastrophe: as though the trees were thrashed not by wind, but by the ground beneath them quaking violently; the rain not rain at all, but the oceans cast from their depths and thrown upon the land by a wobble and abrupt change in the rotation of the Earth. It was not a time to be alone—or with a mother who made you feel alone.

“I had friends,” Benny said.

“What do you mean?”

“Two friends at Briarbush. I never had friends before.”

“Of course you had friends before.”

“No. Not ever before.”

“Well, if you’ve had no friends, it’s because you’ve always been standoffish.”

He disagreed. “It’s because I never had a chance before.”

He was aware of her staring at him with analytic severity, but he focused his attention on the clenched fists in his lap. He was perhaps beginning to figure it out, the business in Cairo, and he didn’t want to see anything in her eyes that would confirm what he was thinking.

She said, “Sometimes you’re such a strange boy, Benny. I don’t always understand you, but I try. Do you realize how much I try to understand you?”

He dared not answer that question. He said, “Where are you taking me?”

“From San Francisco, you will fly south to Los Angeles. You’re going to live with a woman of great learning, Fernsehen Liebhaber, who will homeschool you.”

“What kind of name is that?”

“You can call her Dr. Liebhaber or Mrs. Liebhaber. Don’t call her Fern unless she invites you to.”

“Where are you going? Where will you be living?”

“I have had a hard life, honey. Under the thumb of Cosima until I met and married Big Al. You remember your father, Big Al?”

“It’s only been six years since I saw him shot in the back.”

“Six years,” she mused. “It seems like a lifetime ago until you put a date to it. Anyway, Big Al was a domineering brute. Cosima and Big Al and then Jubal, the pervert. I’ve had a hard life.”

Benny still stared at his hands. He hadn’t consciously opened his fists, but they were open. They were on his thighs, palms up. Something about his hands was sad. They looked like hands that had forgotten how to grasp and hold, like hands that had given up trying to do anything.

“I’ve had a hard life,” Naomi repeated. “But I’ve found a place that makes me happy. Happy at last. I’ve bought a house on Lake Como in Italy. The rooms are full of light, and the view is lovely. The food, Benny! Such wonderful restaurants within a short walk, one for every day of the week, and wines the equal of the food.”

“When will I see you?”

“Oh, often, often. Whenever I’m in the States, we’ll have fun together. We’ll do exciting things.”

Benny didn’t want to go to Italy. He no longer wanted to be with his mother as he’d once so very much wanted to be with her. Nevertheless, he had to ask, “Why can’t I go to the house on Lake Como?”