New York City, August 1, 2013

★★ The morning sky wasn’t exactly darkening, but the irregularities in the cloud cover were smoothing out. “It’s starting to drizzle,” a woman in office black narrated into her phone, as she crossed Bleecker Street. There was so much that a hard rain might wash away: the moving trucks lined up at the edge of Washington Square Village. The soap suds raised by a broom on the sidewalk and left there to walk through. The soiled underwear abandoned at the curb. The man leaning to the edge of the open storefront coffeehouse window, pointing his phone camera straight down to memorialize the foam pattern on his drink. The Vespa with the color-shift paint, transitioning flashily between two non-flashy colors. But the rain that came through the day was not enough even to discourage the half-block run to the pizza place. The little chess campers would line up under a tarp, caterpillarwise, for a walk to visit a chess club. Only after dinner did the heavy stuff show up, harmlessly.