New York City, October 31, 2016

★★★★ Pink patches floated on the morning sky and on the tower mirroring it. The river was the color of new denim. From the uptown corner of the living-room window, the corner away from where the five-year-old sat uncostumed and sulking on the couch, it was just possible to see the other children’s parents waiting along the avenue for the costume parade, far below. The midday sky came in deep, seasonable blue. An aluminum ladder sent sun flaring up into the office window. In the evening, a breeze was blowing up the building stairwell, filling the five-year-old’s Jedi robe as he descended. Floor by floor, the sunset colors glimpsed out other people’s windows, beyond the candy bowls or baskets, shifted and evolved and were slowly lost behind the viewbreak.