New York City, November 7, 2017

★ The back walls of apartments, sun-struck, floated in the otherwise mirrored side of their tower. The bright morning was welcome and fleeting. The newspaper and the weather app had completely different messages: no rain, or a brief spike of it later on. By afternoon, color seemed to have drained from everything; leaves were still on the trees but it took effort to notice the reds and greens and golds against the omnipresent sidewalk gray. A drizzle fell and then there was, in fact rain, and more of it than even the worse forecast had said. It splashed prettily in the lights of the early night, each impact flaring up from the ground. A penny lay underwater at the foot of the subway steps. The wet streets mirrored the electric brightness and tossed it back up, as lovely and uncomfortable as the earlier hours had been ugly and comfortable.