New York City, June 18, 2013

★★★ The shorts the kindergartener wanted were in the laundry, as were several other acceptable fallback shorts options. Lots of pairs of shorts were in the laundry. The morning warmth was nothing much till you stood still at a crosswalk and let the sun catch up with you. A woman was using a cheap black umbrella as a parasol. By late midday, it seemed as if umbrellas would need to be umbrellas. A stroll out for a sandwich, in the oncoming dimness and dampness, seemed doomed. But the rain held off, even as the sky’s burden grew heavier and darker. Every trip outside felt like a narrow escape, a bit of unearned luck. The radar showed angry colored strokes all up the mid-Atlantic, with an arbitrary gap over New York, where the brush had lifted on a whim. The gap finally closed around leaving time, and the clouds yielded a gentle but unignorable rain. Or almost unignorable — the guy ahead in line at the bodega wanted to talk about umbrella price and quality, but in the end he bought only some tallboys ringed together, some snack chips, and a pack of cigarettes. Wet clothes steamed on the subway platform, and hair made ringlets. The clouds gave way to the sunset — first luminous rents in the western sky, then the full disc asserting itself, and finally an eerie upward wash of pink (orange, the kindergartner argued, watching it) while the river went orange and blue. Orange, blue, and pink, the kindergartener said.