New York City, January 18, 2016

★★ The snow, though scant, had been able to last in places. A spray of it stenciled the outline of a freshly swept and removed car on the otherwise black parking lot across the avenue. There was white still covering the planting bed at the near end of the glass tower’s garden, with round tufts of green poking through it in rows. Smooth and shapely cumulus stood in ranks to the west, and the wind hissed against the apartment. Cold crept into the bedroom where the younger boy was napping. In the other bedroom, the buffeting of the wind rose above the roar of the heater. The clouds lost their smoothness and plainness, becoming ruffled and tinted in lilac and gold. A knuckle had scraped open and was bleeding a little. Outside the withered leaves on the oaks were hissing. The waxing moon was finely detailed in a sky only slightly less than day-blue. An unwary step into the gutter slid on a patch of ice. Either a finger or the phone’s touchscreen grew so cold and dry as to no longer recognize contact. The clouds in the southwest, from the warmth of the apartment, were tiny and receding, outlined in bright white. Then they were rimmed instead in scarlet and pink, so gorgeous as to be almost certainly unphotographable. It was not possible to try, because the cold had driven the phone’s battery to failure.