New York City, February 23, 2016

★ The parka seemed like too much till the damp and chilly breeze hit it. The sky was gray and shapeless. Soon enough it was raining and the tourists in the open-topped buses had their ponchos on. Venturing out in it for baked goods led instead a tray of hot stews and rice. A spray of soft brown chunks in the street may have been saturated cardboard, flayed by passing tires. The gusts had more and more bite to them. The price of a short and impossibly slow taxi ride across the bottom of the Park, steep as it was, was merely the price of not being rained on.