From Cohn & Konig

An everyday sort of earthquake had caused the sapphire bottle of cholesterol-free mineral water from the Scottish highlands, which welcomed you to your suite at the Beverly Hilton along with compliments of the management, to vibrate off the nightstand and shatter against the marble base of the floor lamp, foiling your designs for yesterday evening. With a pained groan you rolled over onto your side-always the right-of the amusingly named king-size bed in order to call Mom in Santa Monica: "Are you okay?" Your attempts at a cover-up were easily thwarted: after all, it was safe to assume the light tremors weren't felt too far outside Los Angeles, and even in the age of CNN, news of something impossible to predict necessarily had to arrive after the actual event. What else could you do but admit you were in town three days sooner than expected? Because we had to take off first thing in the morning. "That's right, WE!" To Johannesburg. No not Africa, don't be silly: it's halfway to Las Vegas. No it's family business, not business business. Her memory was not deceiving her, she was the closest relative you had, and the last one left as well-it has to do with Florian. "You know very well who that is, Mom!" On account of his father. It's a funeral not a party. "He died, that's right!" Even before you could end the conversation ("If you'd like to... Of course I think it's appropriate!") with an "All right, see you soon!" it was clear what was coming: "My mother wants to meet you!" Her persistent refusal to meet or even acknowledge me, which had caused you seven years of pain, had never really bothered me, except to make me sorry for your sake. After all she was an old lady raised in a different world, under the Kaiser-what purpose would it serve to make her fragile heart bear one burden more? But now that I was finally going to meet her, I was excited to find out exactly who this person was, this woman capable of reducing you to a few pitiful excuses, and so much so that you coated yourself in a tar-like silence, which didn't become you at all, as the traffic shoved us from one signal to the next, while we rode our rented wheels from the land of the rising sun down the boulevard of the setting one, towards the giant, blindingly lit sign hawking California oranges at the end of the asphalted world. "You don't mean to tell me you're still running around in those Asian nightshirts!" A gray-haired lady in a white nurse's uniform had opened the door to one of the look-alike houses that fronted one of the look-alike lawns of saturated green (so perfect I had to convince myself it wasn't Astroturf) on one of the look-alike streets in quiet, upscale Brentwood Park. Her black face was beaming as she greeted you like a long-lost brother, then led us ("Bring them in, Nancy!") into a dimly lit room where clouds of Chanel No. 5 battled a lingering odor of Lysol. Now we were standing in front of a tiny old woman who looked as lost as a child in the overly large hospital bed, but who was sitting very erect, sizing you up reproachfully, her face a shiny lump of greased dough stuck with a pair of big dark raisins, until at last she allowed you to bend over and embrace her. She was wearing a cream-colored, quilted bed jacket and a kind of turban made of purple crushed silk, which instead of evoking a dancer's ageless rigor, as intended, made her look more like a down. "So you're the little boy who's turned my son's head-come closer, it's not every day I get to feast my old eyes on so much beauty!" I could have kissed her, but all I dared do as I presented my hand was make a little bow that felt more mannered than polite. "Mon dieu, a cavalier, he can't have that from you, Peter; tell Nancy she can put the flowers you didn't bring me in the vase she broke yesterday-and you sit down right here, we have a lot to talk about, the two of us!" Apart from a small dressing table from her days as a movie makeup artist, and the wide-screened television resting on top of it, the room was accoutered only with shadows; before I had a chance to find a chair she had grabbed my arm and planted me on the edge of her bed. …