New York City, January 25, 2016

★★★ Sun lit up a newly furnished apartment so orderly behind its full-length windows that it must have been staged. Foil lettering glimmered on the dust jacket of the single thick book angled to touch two edges of the coffee table. The sky grew duller and duller gray-brown, but for a while the visible part of the water upriver shone argon blue. Ice had been embroidered into the scaffolding mesh by the icicles above. The generalized dripping was like a light rain. A snowball burst amid idling high schoolers, and the school-zone police barked, “Let’s go! Let’s go!” Two Bobcats were carving up the plowbank on the avenue and loading it into a dumpster. The light was starting to recover its strength. A metallic blue paisley necktie lay under dark slush in the street. Tires raised a sloshing sound from the avenue. The sun went down with a wash of clear red light through the gap between buildings.