Not all of the cops laughed, of course. Some, at the farthest tables, polished off their eggs with chile or their eggs with meat or their eggs with beans in silence or talked among themselves, about their own business, separate from the others. They ate, it might be said, hunched over in anguish and doubt. Hunched over in contemplation of essential questions, which doesn’t get you anywhere. Numb with sleep: in other words with their backs turned to the laughter that invited a different kind of sleep.
