New York City, August 31, 2017

★★★★ The morning looked and felt like autumn but it was heading somewhere warmer and thicker, and going there fast. Children were setting up a lemonade-and-cookie stand in the forecourt, for hurricane relief. Sweat rose as the skin tried to catch up to the rising temperature. The midday clouds were big enough to cut off the sun for interludes, so the heat could recede. On the radar, a tiny clump of heavy storms sped by just off the tip of Manhattan. The sun came back and the clouds were moving fast. Stubby oval clouds lay side by side, angled in a row, like dinner rolls on a baking sheet. To the west were silver coins and fish scales and the pebbly surfaces of broken metal ingots. From upstairs, it was all cut by brilliant orange streaks, crossing at oblique angles. The night air currents made a closed interior door creak and rattle till it was opened.