New York City, September 24, 2015

★★★★ The children took to their scooters, out in another school-holiday morning, breathing clean air amid abundant light. The blue of the sky was at its deepest yet. Only a portion of the flowers in the planters had withered. The mobile phone picked up the audio feed of a teleconference with ease as the scooters rolled back and forth on the bricks. In the children’s bedroom, the mint plant had thrust itself not just toward the window but toward the open gap at the side the window, so that it had to be pivoted to set about rebalancing. In the night, people had settled on the sidewalk on sheets of cardboard or with folding chairs. It was not chilly enough to duck back upstairs for a jacket. Shadows of leaves in the streetlights moved a little on the wall of the Apple Store.