“Here’s my morning routine (just to give you an idea of what my days are like now): I wake up at 6:15, as if I’ve still got a job. I go downstairs to the front stoop I share with five other units and hope somebody hasn’t filched my newspaper. I take the paper inside and sit at the dining room table, and while I drink a glass of orange juice with Metamucil and eat a piece of toast with marmalade, I read the news. Christ, it’s boring.”
“In the Castros’ living room hung a family coat of arms. The Castros had been noblemen and lords in some century or other in some castle or other on the opposite side of the world—and there was the colorful coat of arms to prove it. They were different from the Fonsecas that way: the only things the Castros held on to from their poorer days were those they’d marshaled up from many generations back.”
“The children have barely slept in days. Nor has anyone. Sometimes a couple of hours just isn’t enough, especially when the little sleep you get is stretched thin with anxiety. Worry plays like a lightning storm behind your eyelids whenever you close them. Only when that stops do your hands start to relax. Then, finally, sleep starts to gather around you, slowly, like a gentle whirlwind, circling you and your loved ones.”
