New York City, July 29, 2015

★ “What am I smelling?” the three-year-old said, out in the noisome morning. “I think I’m smelling W — ‘s dirty feet.” The heat was not so bad, for a minute, on the walk toward the river, but on the way back, facing into a sun a few minutes higher, it was. Lane markings and crosswalks and crushed garbage had been added to the blank fresh new blacktop of Amsterdam Avenue. The day would stay as it had been: brutal but weak-willed. In the afternoon, a shady avenue seemed bearable; rounding the corner onto a cross street in full sun and grill-cart smoke was like stepping off an elevator into Hell. The evening was not too hot for trailing a scooter back and forth, but it was too humid for it. A stranger on the plaza held forth on how miserable his own day had been, bicycling around and stopping off to change.