I saw it from a corner restaurant near the hotel, off the main boulevard, sitting in a leatherette booth with a cup of coffee and my notebook open in front of me. Beyond the big windows, shopkeepers were raising the folding metal doors on their paleterias while the ubiquitous taxis whisked people to work and trucks loaded with water bottles rattled through the streets. Kids trooped past with backpacks on their shoulders and their dark hair slicked down, looking pretty much like any other kids on their way to school at half past eight in the morning. The place was crowded, filled with spirited Latin music and even louder chatter. From time to time, great bursts of laughter rose above the music and the noise of babies, which no one seemed to mind. It was just breakfast, but it felt more like a party, the kind of dining you rarely experience in the more WASPish enclaves of the States, unless you carefully plan and orchestrate it, which is never quite the same. I believe I heard more genuine laughter that morning than I’d heard in any single year of my life growing up back in Buffalo.
