The woman at the next table ordered her cortado in perfect Catalan, but her hands were shaking.
I noticed because I notice everything. Old habit from the newspaper years—the story is always in the hands. My editor used to say that. He's dead now, which is a story in itself.
She was maybe sixty, dressed for somewhere important: silk blouse, earrings that matched, the careful architecture of someone who had spent time in front of a mirror this morning deciding what version of herself to show the world. Whatever she'd chosen, it wasn't holding.