New York City, June 11, 2017

★★★ The dryer added its heat and dampness to the thickness creeping in from outside. The late-morning breeze was still tolerable in the shade, and it was possible to carry a birthday present uptown by hand without sweating through the paper. A bare-chested man wrestled his way into a t-shirt in the middle of the sidewalk. Soon enough even the shade was disgusting. Sun came straight through the subway grate at 72nd Street and glanced sideways off the roof of a train, casting a blinding glare onto the uptown platform. Hosed-down sidewalks baked dry in no time. The hot, lurching wind, all its prior virtue lost, reached down behind a strolling couple and flipped the hem of the woman’s dress up past the waist. A man sat slumped on the edge of a tree-planting bed, his pale and tattooed torso exposed, unmoving. The sinking sun slipped behind a rooftop structure long enough to get the blinds facing it to open, then came blazing out the side again.