New York City, October 22, 2015

★★★ The warmth and humidity insinuated themselves against the skin like a stranger’s unanticipated breath. The light on the avenue was the silver of an old dull mirror. Locust leaflets, rich yellow, filled in the straight line of a joint in the sidewalk. Further along, wet concrete was being made smooth outside the door of a fitness center. A worker hosed off the mixer truck and the spray carried tens of yards up the avenue on the breeze. High in the sky came a kettle of big dark birds — vultures, by size and first guess, but not circling and not vulture-gliding, but beating their wings purposefully, passing north to south down the river flyway. The colorless light grew saturated with gold, then bleached to plainness again.