New York City to Lawrenceville, New Jersey, to New York City, September 18, 2012

★ The shade rolled up to reveal rain beading on the windows, with gray behind. Showers went and came and went or did both simultaneously, bursts of droplets outside a doorway ending before an umbrella even made it out of a bag. Outside Secaucus, billows rolled through the massed phragmites, their seedheads bowing to the east. The thick, wet air coming through the screens into the Princeton Junction station, with its varnished wood and tile, gave it the precise feel of a sealed hothouse, belied only by the burnt-edged leaves on a potted plant inhabiting it. The car was exactly as it had been left — a scant quarter-tank of gas, a stranger’s forgotten keys — only sheeted with water. Amid the game controls, the info and eco buttons, the lever for the wipers at least was where it belonged. Back in the city, a drizzle blew right under the scaffolding. Along a fencetop on Prince Street ran a crepe festival streamer, once red, now washed mostly white.