New York City, November 6, 2014

★ A furtive whiff of marijuana lurked on the damp morning air under the scaffolding where the teens loitered before high school. “I’m wiping the rain off you,” the three-year-old announced, seated on shoulder top, swiping his hands ungently back and forth through the hair in front of him. The rain was light and annoying. A man did pullups on a bar of more scaffolding behind the Trump buildings, where the trapped lower branches of honeylocusts assumed various degrees of drooping. Somewhere in the gray, as the day went on, a pink tint appeared. The rain thinned to a drizzle, then a heavy mist. The after-school teens were few and far between. The mist gnawed at the tops of buildings and consumed New Jersey, fading out the view before the early night could get to it.