“You have to understand: we were good together. We weren’t even a couple with problems—our days were full of happy hours. I’d accepted a job while we sorted out the mess of my inheritance, and the people there treated me like an emergency fund. They thought that if we found ourselves in trouble, I could inject enough healthy capital to get through four or five bumpy months.”
“This I remember very well: Around two o’clock, the warden came into our office, followed by a tall redheaded woman and a willowy bald man in a loose, mud-colored suit. My first impression of the woman was that she must be a performer at the special assembly—a singer or an actress with a soft spot for child criminals. My assumption seemed reasonable.”
“The diving-school dog is already pulling at its chains and it’s only 8 a.m. He stands on two legs and lifts his scabby brown head above the wall of the roof terrace, snarling at the beach life below it. Pablo is shouting at the two Mexican men painting the walls. They can’t shout back because they don’t have the right legal documents to give him the finger.”