New York City, August 27, 2017

★★★★★ Someone unwilling to wait for the arriving day sent the scream of a motorcycle—revved far beyond normal city speeds—up from the empty avenue, through the open window, and breaking into sleep. Outside in the regular morning, the scattered sun made a wide stretch of sky impossible to look up at. The coffee shop’s doors, with their keep-closed-f0r-air-conditioning notice attached, were propped fully open. An actual jeep, olive drab and with the windshield folded down flat, rolled up Broadway with passengers sitting atop the back like cargo. Only the microclimate down by Penn Station, sun-smacked and foul and quickly passed through, missed out on the coolness and ease. The late west was softly streaked with clouds, and the sun behind them made a bright, tapering zigzag, like a lightning bolt logo on a superhero’s chest. Somewhere north of that, something had punctured the darker cloud-lines so that they flowed together in a trailing V, as if going down a drain. The dusk sky looked clear but the moon was blurry in it.