New York City, July 13, 2016

★★ The outside air hit the skin and clung there, impermeable. Down on the subway platform the stuffiness went from inert to active, squeezing out perspiration. Once again, though, the heat of the middle of the day was less than cruel. Clouds convered the majority but not the entirety of the afternoon; little ripples shimmered on the top of a long, murky gutter puddle. Saxophone and urine sent their notes floating on the cross-street atmosphere, but around the corner it was fine and tolerable. It was in the subway, coming apart from a power failure, that the worst still festered. The only 1 train, fully stuffed, had no air conditioning in the car, and by Times Square it had acquired the reek of vomit. Sweat had soaked fully through a big man’s shirt as he stood numbly in the press of the crowd, till there was nothing for it to do but begin soaking its way through the back of the adjoining stranger’s shirt, from the outside in.