New York City, November 27, 2017

★★★ The early blue of the sky was so clear and even that a glass-faced building looked like an empty framework, the reflected east indistinguishable from the surrounding west. Lines and flecks of cloud appeared, then translucent sheets. What to wear on an ordinary seasonable day had become a puzzle. The late yellow leaves had come hustling down out of the trees faster than they were being swept up. Cellar doors and grates caught the gleam of sunlit buildings high above the darkening afternoon streets.