New York City, July 16, 2013

★★ The breeze gave comfort where it could in the morning. It flipped at a napkin and a menu in a restaurant’s sidewalk seating, furtively signaling coolness. But it could not quite chase off the ghost of truck exhaust that hung in the street where the truck had passed; it couldn’t help anyone who had to traverse a patch of open, unimpeded sun. Obviously it could do nothing at all about the suffocating subway platform. By late afternoon, even this much resistance had been routed, and the breeze had turned collaborator, an immense invisible roller pushing more heat up the street.