New York City, August 3, 2015

★★ The heat was slow in starting. A street-sweeping truck tossed aside a dry leaf as it pulled out and around a gleaming BMW 635i coupe displaying a Waterfront Commission Police Department placard on the dash and an NYPD parking ticket on the windshield. The sidewalk twinkled on the sunward part of the commute. None of the morning’s mildness was to be found in the subway, where the countdown sign’s promise of a two-minute wait had to be weighed against the present train with people’s shoulders bulging out the doors. Down on 18th Street, there was still a cooling breeze. The plastic sheeting on the office window was loose around the edges, permitting an outthrust arm to escape the air conditioning. Outside the artificial envelope of climate control, the heat had begun spearing down. White people were flushing red under tan, like fast food baking too long under heat lamps. The three-year-old quit his scooter at the very beginning of the long uphill from West End to Amsterdam. Half an hour later, for the trip to the museum to fetch his brother, a taxi didn’t even seem like an indulgence given the threat of weary short legs. Now and then, and more frequently as the day declined, a cloud or clouds cut off the worst of it. Much later — how much? — the depths of the night were broken by lightning and thunder, by rain if not hail clattering on the building, and by the three-year-old, arms full of blanket and stuffed animal, demanding refuge from the storm.