New York City, October 9, 2016

★ When the cold medicine wore off, the night wind was rattling the blinds so violently they had to be raised before new and undrugged sleep was possible. In the real morning, dark clouds flowed quickly south under a solid layer of medium-dark clouds. The smallest, nearest, and loosest ones overtook the larger and more distant ones as they went. One looked like a galloping carriage, the older boy thought. Rain came to even out the gray. Half-changed oak leaves were down in the puddles and trampled on the sidewalk. Clothes were drab and protective. Forgotten or misused things needed retrieving or repairing, errands on wet pavement under the grim sky. A blue gap appeared on the northern edge of the gray, and in the span of a brief nap, the whole sheet of clouds was yanked away, too suddenly to even catch the sunset.