New York City, July 7, 2016

★ The effort of shaking the bedclothes flat in the air-conditioned bedroom was enough to raise a sweat. The hallway was hot and the elevator was hotter. The sky was a whitewashed blue, so full of glare that the eyes had to adjust before they could pick out the shapes of clouds against it. A strong but indifferent breeze came up Broadway. Gambling on a train change at Times Square was a mistake; standing on the N/Q/R platform was worse than walking two long crosstown blocks would have been. A man pumped the front of his tucked-in polo shirt as he escaped the platform into the chilled interior of the R. From inside the various pockets of climate control, it was difficult to grasp what was happening outside. The afternoon darkened for a while and one or two umbrellas came out but the heat never broke and nothing really fell. A column of marchers came up Fifth Avenue under a sky that was turning grim once more, their chants reverberating. Uptown, on the way out of the subway, a hard shower was almost over, a choking miasma rising before the rain had even stopped coming down.