New York City, July 6, 2016
★★ A solitary little cloud, hanging in the sky a few degrees west of north, grew and loosened and tightened and shrank again till it had all but dissolved, in a span of no more than 20 minutes. The sky below it was stained grayish rose. The video screen in the elevator carried a heat warning, making the nine-year-old fret all the way to and from the trip to the coffee shop and the hot dog place. Ambitions of going anywhere else seemed not worth raising. A pair of pink sneakers, unmoving, stuck out from under a white gauze shroud on a stroller in the elevator back up. By midafternoon, boredom had overcome anxiety and discomfort, and the boys squabbled their way to an agreement to play wiffle ball on the schoolyard. Other activity on the playground was sparse, but not too sparse to allow first one stranger, then two more, to drift over and attach themselves to the batting order. The shade covered all of the painted infield but second base and its vicinity; by agreement or conspiracy against the unassisted grownup pitcher, the batters resolved to stretch or steal their way from first to third at every opportunity. Now and then, one or two of the newcomers would put in a shift in the outfield, so that not every line drive had to be chased into the far sunny reaches. After three one-sided and high-scoring innings, it fell to the pitcher—having earlier promised to protect the children from heatstroke or heat exhaustion, back when they cared about such things—to call a halt. Back at home, a freshly emptied seltzer glass spread its chill into the forehead when pressed there. The four-year-old, watching the process, wanted to try it himself. Then he put the glass on the air conditioner vent to make it colder.