New York City to Newark to New York City, August 21, 2013

★ The descending gibbous moon, in the ever-so-slightly paling sky, cast a jaundiced gaze on the previous night’s decision-making. When the sun came, it brought disgusting heat, under a white-blue sky. The air conditioning on the 1 train was not able to stop the sweat from having rushed for the train. Out the windows of the upper deck of a New Jersey Transit car, in the 1:05 out of Penn Station, a highway ramp shone brown in the distance. The train decelerated so smoothly into the airport station that the stop was only noticeable, to the distracted mind, when it started moving again, too late. At Elizabeth, passengers waited in the cool of the ticket office for the trains they intended to take. It was OK on the platform if you didn’t move much; all of visible Elizabeth seemed to be trying to lay low. The 1:47 was on time, the interior dangerously soothing after the heat. But there was the airport stop, and the AirTrain with its windows less grimly tinted than the regular train’s, and the airplanes parked almost precisely atop their own shadows. On the ride home, in the livery car, the toddler kept saying Tunnel! in the deep shade of the overpasses.