I slept late this morning--till almost 7!--and now the day is fully day: cloudless blue sky, shadow fingers under the trees, cats lurking companionable on a sunburnt patch of grass. The coffee in my cup is hot and strong, and I've got a giant son asleep in the back room. Upstairs Tom is reading a Bolano novel in bed. I'm sitting on the couch beside the open windows as a cool wind sifts into the spare and tidy room: A shabby couch and a shabby chair. A wooden box for a coffee table. An old victrola in a corner. Two lamps. Two old metal baskets turned into narrow shelves. We are not rich in furnishings, unless you count books and records.

Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm is now back on the shelf, and I've started rereading Orhan Pamuk's Snow. I have no desperate plans for the day--probably some yard work, certainly some laundry, of course much pleasure in my boy.

I think of my small modest American life: privileged, greatly privileged, in comparison to so many lives around the world and under my nose . . . running water, a roof and heat, calm and apparently safe. But I also think of the life of someone like Jeffrey Epstein: large, hubristic, selfish, manipulative, destroying. Also an American life. I hate to think that we have anything in common. But we do.