She rarely comes across as excitable. She’s not the sort to go off the rails, to be impetuous, to act nervous or scared or raise her voice. But she can’t fool me. I can always sense when she’s about to fly apart the way she is right now. It won’t be pretty. It never is. When she gets like this I usually know why. Or better stated, I have a good idea who it’s about.

“What is it that’s fucked up, Lucy?” I brace myself for what’s next as my eyes adjust to the dark again.

I’m pretty sure I know what she’s going to say. I could have predicted her reaction after the 911 complaint that we now think was made with voice-altering software. If she knew about another bogus call a little while ago, this one supposedly from Interpol, she’d be only more convinced of her curdled worldview. Lucy accepts as unimpeachable her own version of original sin, which is that all horrors and humiliations come from the same malignant source.

As if there’s only one devil. Only one mortal enemy. Only one cancer. And if only that were true.

“Let’s go inside and get something to drink.” Her face is so close to mine I can smell cinnamon on her breath and the subtle spiciness of her Escada men’s cologne.

She’s acting as if we’re being watched. Maybe she worries she was followed here, and I stare past her at what’s parked behind the CFC truck. She jokingly considers her Ferrari FF a family car because it has a backseat and a boot for luggage.

I can’t make out the color in the dark. I know it’s a vivid shade of blue called Tour de France, and the interior is quilted cuoio or a racing-yellow Italian leather. But she could have thundered up in anything, an Aston Martin, a Maserati, a McLaren, a different Ferrari.

Lucy is a genius. I don’t use the word lightly or as a term of endearment. It’s not an adoring aunt’s hyperbole but an accurate description of someone who by the age of ten was programming software, building computers and acquiring patents for all sorts of inventions. Before Lucy was old enough to buy liquor or vote she’d earned an incomprehensible fortune from creating search engines and other technologies.