Her arm ached, and her chest hurt when she rubbed it, but otherwise was as rested and warm as she had been in months. She arched her body into a line, stretched, yawned and stood. The room was dark and silent. She turned to the window and opened the curtain; cold air pooled at her feet. The winter sky was a clear gray that faded to black, strung through with glittering clusters of early morning traffic. The hotel was the tallest building in the neighborhood, and she gazed down at the rows of old houses below, flat roofs covered with plastic furniture and dead vegetable gardens. Brick chimneys pushed gray smoke upward as crowds huddled around burning trash or shouted from survival tents cobwebbed between walls. Children ran back and forth fighting with sticks while their parents flapped their arms and stamped, trying to warm themselves.