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came up with nothing, I knew nothing. Ross and Madeline alone, what did they say, what were they like, who were they? All I felt was a shattered space where my father used to be. And here was my mother, sitting across a room, a thin woman in trousers and a gray shirt. When she asked me about the book, I made a gesture of helplessness. The book was a challenge, a secondhand paperback crammed with huge and violent emotions in small crowded type on waterlogged pages. She told me to put it down and pick it up again in three years. But I wanted to read it now, I needed it now, even if I knew I’d never finish. I liked reading books that nearly killed me, books that helped tell me who I was, the son who spites his father by reading such books. I liked sitting on our tiny concrete balcony, reading, with a fractional view of the ring of glass and steel where my father worked, amid lower Manhattan’s bridges and towers.
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    When Ross was not seated behind a desk, he was standing by a window. But there were no windows in this office.
    I said, “And Artis.”
    â€œBeing examined. Soon to be medicated. She spends time, necessarily, in a medicated state. She calls it languid contentment.”
    â€œI like that.”
    He repeated the phrase. He liked it too. He was in shirtsleeves, wearing his dark glasses, nostalgically called KGBs—polarized, with swoop lenses and variable tint.
    â€œWe had a talk, she and I.”
    â€œShe told me. You’ll see her again, talk again. Tomorrow,” he said.
    â€œIn the meantime. This place.”
    â€œWhat about it?”
    â€œI knew only what little you told me. I was traveling blind. First the car and driver, then the company plane, Boston to New York.”
    â€œSuper-midsize jet.”
    â€œTwo men came aboard. Then New York to London.”
    â€œColleagues.”
    â€œWho said nothing to me. Not that I minded.”
    â€œAnd who got off at Gatwick.”
    â€œI thought it was Heathrow.”
    â€œIt was Gatwick,” he said.
    â€œThen somebody came aboard and took my passport and brought it back and we were airborne again. I was alone in the cabin. I think I slept. I ate something, I slept, then we landed. I never saw the pilot. I was guessing Frankfurt. Somebody came aboard, took my passport, brought it back. I checked the stamp.”
    â€œZurich,” he said.
    â€œThen three people boarded, man, two women. The older woman smiled at me. I tried to hear what they were saying.”
    â€œThey were speaking Portuguese.”
    He was enjoying this, straight-faced, slumped in the chair, his remarks directed toward the ceiling.
    â€œThey talked but did not eat. I had a snack, or maybe that was later, in the next stage. We landed and they got off and somebody came aboard and led me onto the tarmac to another plane. He was a baldheaded guy about seven feet tall wearing a dark suit and a large silver medallion on a chain around his neck.”
    â€œYou were in Minsk.”
    â€œMinsk,” I said.
    â€œWhich is in Belarus.”
    â€œI don’t think anybody stamped my passport. The plane was different from the original.”
    â€œRusjet charter.”
    â€œSmaller, fewer amenities, no other passengers. Belarus,” I said.
    â€œYou flew southeast from there.”
    â€œI was drowsy, stupefied, half-dead. I’m not sure whether the next stage was stop or nonstop. I’m not sure how many stages in the entire trip. I slept, dreamt, hallucinated.”
    â€œWhat were you doing in Boston?”
    â€œMy girlfriend lives there.”
    â€œYou and your girlfriends never seem to live in the same city. Why is that?”
    â€œIt makes time more precious.”
    â€œVery different here,” he said.
    â€œI know. I’ve learned this. There is no time.”
    â€œOr time is so overwhelming that we don’t feel it pass in the same way.”
    â€œYou hide from