New York City, June 12, 2016

★★★★ Heat seeped in by the bedroom window. Outside was hyperclarity; fragments of light bounced off the leaves of the street trees or plunged through to the sidewalk. By early afternoon the hottest part of the day was hurrying away on a breeze. A little girl in Supergirl clothes wept as her purple punch balloon fled up the block, bouncing into the Broadway crosswalk and pausing there for a moment of false hope before it bounded on, irretrievable, into traffic. Out on the bluff north of the George Washington Bridge the wind was booming in the ears. Greenery tossed and pinwheels spun wildly in the garden there. Spray from the children’s water-gun shootout was tossed toward adult bystanders. A paper plate flipped up and deposited a set of wing bones into a cup of wine. The wind was refreshing, then chilly, and finally it drove the waterlogged children indoors, cringing, to change into dry things.