New York City, February 19, 2015

★ The smartphone on the floor by the outside wall was so cold that its glass fogged over when picked up by bare hands. The wind moaned inside the building and rattled on the outside. A tattered plume rose from the top of the glass apartment tower and lurched this way and that as it was ceaselessly torn apart. There was sun out there, at least — enough sun for the three-year-old to complain about getting a faceful of it. Then the sun was gone, down behind two walls of gray like mountain ridges, with an orange valley glowing between them. Outside, in the evening, the air hurt. The doorman and desk man were watching out the lobby window as a tow truck out on the cross street started lifting an SUV, hauling it backward up and over the ice banks that had walled it in. The vacated parking space was strewn with cardboard, the remains of a failed attempt at getting traction.