New York City, June 21, 2017

★★★ The wet air gave minor but steady resistance. A cooler pocket lurked outside the canopy of the Union Square subway but it wasn’t clear why. “Does my hear look less frizzy today?” a woman asked a man. “No,” he said. Fecal smells had carried improbable distances in the neighborhood uptown, and now downtown the soap smell from a sidewalk being hosed down was acrid and overwhelming. The shady cross-street sidewalks remained pleasant, but crossing the avenue in the open meant wading through stagnant heat. The lines of light coming sideways through the blinds toward evening were a little too amber to match the emoji beach ball being batted around through them. The sun wrapped up its long day by putting a pink rim on the top of the western clouds and sending a purple luminosity up from below.