At night in warm weather, the courtyard of my building is crowded with children jumping rope and playing various games. They’d bashed in a piñata while I was at the IHOP, and I returned to find bits of it all over the ground, lying among candy wrappers. This afternoon I was working, and when someone knocked on the door, I answered wearing a hideous rubber mask I’d brought back from Raleigh. I’d assumed a kid had come around, but instead it was the man down the hall, who asked for a cigarette.
