“Getting out of prison is like having a rotten tooth pulled from your mouth: it feels good to have it gone, but it’s hard not to keep touching at that hole. Raymond Gaspar served four years this time. He served them at a place in Tracy called the Deuel Vocational Institution, DVI. The only vocation he learned was making sure the drugs kept moving.”
“How could I be so stupid? How could I be so naïve? How could I be so dumb? These self-accusations became a kind of mantra. I blamed myself. Nikolai had left with our daughter, yes, but I had allowed it to happen. It was my fault for leaving.”
“I escaped from the volley of tomatoes as best I could and headed straight for the greengrocer’s, where I was greeted with a hearty laugh: ‘Good and ripe, were they?’ she’d ask. ‘I saved the best ones for you, they’re from the Hyatt Hotel!’”
