Wind Howls

I could not sleep, for the wind was howling through the iced trees and a conversation banged around in my head. I roamed the five downstairs rooms of the house, staring through windows, watching the darkness, the ice glints, the blank faces of neighbors' living rooms. Tired, still, awake, always, I took Aleksandar Hemon's The Lazarus Project from the pile of unread books and began, discovering this:

The ice-sheathed trees twinkle in the morning drabness; a branch broken under the weight of ice touches the pavement, rattling its frozen tips. Someone peeks from behind a curtain of the house across the street, the face ashen against the dark space behind it. It is a young woman: he smiles at her and she quickly draws the curtain. All the lives I could live, all the people I will never know, never will be, they are everywhere. That is all the world is.