New York City, June 23, 2016

★★ The pre-K students, now ceremonially post-pre-K, ditched their cardboard motorboards and went chasing a basketball across the hardtop schoolyard under a darkening sky. Inside the toe that might or might not, however long ago, have been broken, an ache was lurking. The air was velvety with humidity, and the clouds held in a shapeless ambient hum. The darkness modulated up and down through the day, even allowing some shadows to form before thickening again to a rainlike dimness. Walking out into it disclosed unexpected lightness in the sky uptown. Downtown was still gloomy, though, and Brooklyn was worse: the air fetid, cigarette smoke sticking to it. An itch on the arm, scratched against a pants leg, left a smear of gnat or mosquito across the light gray fabric. Some sun found its way back through the clouds and under the expressway.