New York City, August 9, 2015

★★★★ Clouds were missing at first, then arrived in flaring white on the clear air. The notebook page was blinding, the shadow of the moving hand edged with a flickering green laser, till a cloud intervened. The balloon the eight-year-old had gotten from the kids’ haircut place feinted toward the heads of the sidewalk lunch crowd on Amsterdam. A spot of yellow shone on the ground below it. It was just hot enough for the boys to complain about the 14-block walk, and not near hot enough to take the complaints seriously. By the 72nd Street subway, another gust of breeze sent the balloon on a fatal lurch into the burning end of a stranger’s cigarette. In the afternoon, the playground fountain was on, though no one really needed cooling off. Squishy footfalls sounded as children ran from the spray over onto the climber, leaving a soggiest-common-denominator trail of water across the padding and equipment. The splash from a smaller child’s shoes was strong enough to hit bystanding ankles. The sharp light disclosed irregularities in the three-year-old’s haircut, the fresh straight-line marks of each snipped fingerfull of hair making a little tonsorial Sydney Opera House. The clouds after sunset were dramatic and smoky.