New York City, June 14, 2017

★★★ A night under the roar of the air conditioner ended in a morning splashed with heavy rain. By the walk to school, the downpour had ended; by midmorning a sunbather was dangling sandaled toes out under a balcony railing. The thermometer and the forecast agreed that the heat wave should have been over, but the humidity was so thick that the change barely registered. The heat still lingered inside the school, as the children crowded around the table for post-concert lemonade and played tag in the hallways outside their art show. Only in the last bright part toward evening did the promised coolness come. The doorman advised someone to stash the unwanted remains of an ice-cream cone up by the shrubbery, where the birds on their way to roost could get at it. Rich-toned light stuck to the bricks and glowed on the people out in Hells Kitchen. Traffic was light, the taxi window was half down, and the signals were green after green.