New York City, June 24, 2013

★★★ The first breath of outdoors, coming across the threshold, was hot and not easy to take in. The off-blue sky made the eyes water. Little estuaries of air conditioning flowed out of shop doors and across the sidewalk. In the afternoon, it was gray overhead, wrinkled in places, with a patchwork of possibilities or threats around the edge: a darker gray pyramid-macaroon floating to the west; a peach streak beyond that; calm blue to the east; pink to the southeast. The finger of sky on one side of a cluster of buildings looked nothing like the next finger over. Warm gusts came over the roof. It was the clear blue, unexpectedly, that held the zenith at rush hour, even as more darkness over New Jersey put an unseasonably early fade-out on the long late daylight.