New York City, August 12, 2013

★★★ Dawn’s fingers were the color of Tang powder, at the edge of a leaking gray sky. The dimness could not dissuade the children from rising early. Downtown, the sun was coming out, then not, over streets with puddles charting their mini-topography. Haze gathered over the afternoon and the loveliness of the air rose in proportion to its thickness, as the late light scattered into a blanketing glow. The train air conditioning was harsh and awful again. On its way to the horizon — setting before 8 p.m., for the first time since spring — the sun played a tricky angle off a Broadway apartment tower to land its rays underfoot, westbound, beneath a scaffold on the cross street.