New York City, July 9, 2017

★★★★ Indoors was crabby and crowded and everyone was in such a mood it was stunning to finally get out into the bright and cool and dry day. Everywhere but the outdoors was terrible: the drugstore frigid, the subway platform choking, the subway car even more frigid. Up above, flecks of cloud floated on the clean blue. The tennis courts, or rather the correct tennis courts, were not where they had been assumed to be, but apparently somewhere far down back down Riverside Park. Lamps shone orange in the dark shade, clear as night. A fledgling robin with horns of fluff above its eyes stared at people going past. The five-year-old veered back and forth to make sure he tramped on the crunchy curls of fallen sycamore bark along the path. The long walk south turned up passages of sun, glimpses of river, an empanada cart, a youth baseball player on the field far down below smashing a solid line drive for an opposing youth baseball player to make a nice catch on in center field—anything but the tennis courts. On the walk back uphill, the timbers of the houses on Pomander Walk were cheery and improbable behind their gate.