New York City, October 31, 2012

★★★ There was a building shining white, far off in New Jersey. Morning sun angled in under the clouds and pried them apart: blue sky! A new day! White clouds above, the gleaming yellow of moving taxicabs below. The tree was still down on that unfortunate car, though. And before long, the clouds darkened and closed back in. Eventually a crew came to trim away the tree limbs, leaving the bare trunk still lying there on the diagonal, driver’s-side headlight to passenger-side taillight. The air was chilly and breezy, ordinary damp autumn leaking in behind the apocalyptic convergence. There were still no eggs at the Fairway, but the trick-or-treating was indoors and vertical anyway, the children well-behaved. A few Garden State refugees rode the elevators among them, in costume. I fished the lone glow stick out of the bin of emergency flashlights, broke and shook it, and tucked it in the jack-o’-lantern outside the apartment door.