New York City, April 9, 2013

★★★★★ An overwhelming silver glare and an oceanic breeze filled the morning, as if the night had been a plane flight to some different latitude and continent. There should have been magpies or hoopoes. The 1 train smelled of sweat and grooming products, and why have taken it at all? On the B, the necessary train, the bubbling jabber of an unseen flock of children carried from the far end of the car. Downtown, in the warmth and shade of a quiet street, it was no longer Kowloon but a summer sidewalk in Baltimore, the 1970s. Other days came back in fragments — now the roof, in the damp wind, was briefly a sailboat deck on the Chesapeake. Shoulders were exposed, calves, feet; eyes alone took shelter, behind the assumed impassiveness of sunglasses. Interiors were open off the streets but nonetheless dark and forbidding. There were too many MacBooks up on the roof, an evacuation of MacBooks, to politely count. Grill smoke floated through the limits of the workplace. Blocks away from wireless range, there was the clank of an aluminum bat being dropped on blacktop, as the hitter legged out a triple on the hard flat diamond. Iced beverages were everywhere. The basketball court at West 4th was full and running. The mouth of Columbus Circle was jammed. The scaffolding that would never leave was all but gone, down to one stretch of skeleton and some damp square footprints, the breeze blowing unimpeded along 67th. The haze was gone. The toddler chased a ray of sun all the way into the dimmest corner of the apartment, where the coat closet meets the door, and tried to wrap his shirtless arms around it.