New York City, January 28, 2018

★★ The broken toe was aching with the damp, like an old established wound. There was just enough rain to scatter individual rings over the surface of the puddles. Its departure time was pushed back in the forecast, from early to late afternoon. Cars rolled along balanced on the tires of their upside-down reflections. Things teetered back and forth between stuffiness and clamminess. It had seemed too much trouble to bring the children’s umbrellas out to Brooklyn, and now up on the surface it was raining harder than before, turning their puffy coats dark and shiny and making the phone screen balky as the map and compass sought the right direction to walk. The transit museum, once located, was chilly down on the platform between the old trains, and the white-tiled station restroom had muddy water tracked in on the floor. Back upstairs again, there was no rain left worth reckoning with, and no confusion as to the the way back. The older boy gave a warning and steered away from a deep, opaque puddle by the curb, but no traffic came to splash it.