★★★★ The stale and sluggish efforts of the air conditioner gave way to a new, cheerful breeze. The sky, too, had crossed over to autumnal blue. In the sun, it was still warm; summer dresses were holding on, and a two-seater Mercedes went by with its top down. A few bright yellow leaves had gotten an early start leaving the honeylocusts. The blinds rattled. Afternoon clouds lay across the sky like knives. A drift of petals and leaves, mostly green ones, had collected against the forecourt wall. By the time back-to-school night was over, a real chill was in place. Up at the zenith, Deneb was shining its millennium-old light. As the eyes tried to gather enough other stars to make constellations with, more yellow leaves, even yellower in the streetlights, flew in front of them. The half-moon was white and crisp-cut, its edge almost imperceptibly swelling past perfect straightness.

JARED is hiding in GARY COHN’s makeshift boiler room. He’s texting STAFF his newest initiative: eliminating all government forms. It’s a rash overreaction to the report that he registered to vote as a woman, but JARED is neither reasonable nor good at his job. HOPE HICKS is writing staff biographies for the White House website re-design. GENERAL KELLY is teaching KUSHNER DAUGHTER to ride a bicycle. It was on her bucket list and it broke the GENERAL’s heart when he realized JARED probably didn’t know how to teach her because he didn’t himself know how to ride a bike.

HOPE HICKS [notepad open]: I know your mother is our kickass ninja warrior princess. But how should I describe you?

KUSHNER DAUGHTER [pedaling with help]: Remember when you were telling me about that library of term papers your Tri Delt sisters kept? And you’d sign out a pre-written paper whenever you needed one. I’m the library.

HOPE HICKS [marveling at KUSHNER DAUGHTER’s metaphor]: I can’t say it like that though, can I?

GENERAL KELLY [steadying the bike as KUSHNER DAUGHTER tips]: Director of Research.

[IVANKA enters, directing STEPHEN MILLER and NEIL GORSUCH to place a Bodega in the corner of the office where the microwave was until JARED destroyed it making popcorn.]

Image: Jonathan Pincas

First of all, fuck almonds. Yes, I know they’re #3 on the list of Nuts, In Order, and yes, Balk knows peanuts are legumes and he does not give a fuck. But admit it, almonds are only good with a lot of IFs: IF they have some kind of flavoring, like tamari, smoke, chili, chocolate, pastel candy-coating if you’re at some kind of lame wedding or baby shower, or “like a rosemary maple situation,” if you’re fancy Billfold emerita, Megan Reynolds. Salt at the very least, otherwise you must hate yourself. Essentially, almonds are only good when you cover up or disguise everything that makes them an almond. Plain almonds are fine, not good, but only IF they are roasted, and otherwise they are like eating the shrivelled desiccated balls of a tiny dead dog that has somehow petrified into wood. They are the edible evil twin of the woody shell (endocarp) of stone fruit pits.

Don’t get me wrong, almonds are versatile and useful and extremely common nuts, and I treasure them. I eat them regularly, because they are the healthiest easiest snack. Almonds can be downright beautiful, but only when abstracted. Almond milk is useful for lactose reasons and fear of soy and also smoothies (but please don’t get me started on MALK, or that “milked walnuts” brand). Almond makes a very lovely, delicate smell for a soap. Almond oil is probably definitely healthy and makes a nice salad dressing. When I Google almonds, one of the first hits I get is “almonds before bed,” which is almost certainly a personalized search result based on other gross medical things I’ve Googled (apparently it helps you sleep, along with a glass of milk and a peaceful sense of calm).

There’s a teeming subgenre of the New York Novel propagated by would-be descendants of Tom Wolfe and Richard Price, white male writers blindingly enamored with our glittering hellscape, where people of all colors and incomes actually brush shoulders on public transit and in pizza shops. Unlike Wolfe and Price, these writers aren’t really concerned with the machinations churning under the surface of our groaning metropolis. Rather, their tapestries are panoramas of whimsy and wonder, bird’s-eye-views of the city-as-character which dictates the fates of dreamers who seek its shores. Ensemble casts’ personal stocks rise and fall like elevator cars until finally the dealmakers, artists, strivers, lowlifes, cops, and robbers find themselves improbably cordoned into the same narrative conveyance—usually somewhere in Brooklyn—so that the sparks may fly. After all, if history’s proven anything, it’s that New York City (New! York! City!) is unsustainable.

Brian Platzer’s debut Bed-Stuy Is Burning is the latest buzzy borough-based social parable—Christopher Herz’s hilariously slapdash The Last Block in Harlem comes immediately to mind—that posits white gentrifiers as compelling and sympathetic narrators. They’re not, of course, especially when placed before the backdrop of a police shooting of a 12-year-old black kid, the event which sets their titular neighborhood ablaze.

Platzer’s setup is inauspicious enough, introducing a rainbow coalition of seemingly at-random types who’ve gathered here today to get through this thing called gentrification. Aaron, an ex-rabbi working in finance, is the Man Who’s Done A Bad Thing, crippled by remorse and a gambling addiction. He and his girlfriend Amelia have just bought an old house in Bed-Stuy and settled in with their first child. Bed-Stuy, as you may have heard, is “the home of Chris Rock, the Notorious B.I.G., and Jay-Z,” and in this book it is a neighborhood whose only physical characteristic is “brownstones.” The couple rents out the basement apartment to an underemployed NRA member and his wife, who is “Asian and very skinny.”

I had no idea that we were anywhere close to getting a second installment of the greatest history of New York City ever, but it turns out we are, and it’s out next week! My only worry is that I won’t live long enough to finish it, but given that every day lasts a year now it might be easier than I think. Here’s an interview with author Mike Wallace, who “is poised to complete Volumes III and IV.” !!! I mean, I definitely won’t make it for those but it’s still nice to know that you guys will get them.

Shhh, it’s Friday. It’s okay. Shhh. It’s okay. Shhh.

★★ The blurry sunshine snapped into sharp focus in late morning. The air in the West 60s was damp and vegetal-smelling, like a wet forest in July. “We never get fall, we never get spring anymore,” a woman said on her way out of the coffee shop. The dull tan bricks of the forecourt were blinding white. Clouds were piled up with the opacity of shaving cream. A breeze managed to put the heavy air in motion.

Screengrab: DIE ZEIT

The German election is over, and I have some questions.

Why does Angela Merkel think it will be Christmas before Germany has a functioning government? And to accomplish this government, why does she have to make nice to a bunch of techno-libertarians and environmentalists? And why is everyone in Germany talking about “Jamaica”? Is Merkel a Beach Boy now?

And also: Why’s Merkel stressing? Didn’t Mutti just win a fourth term? (Literally, Germans call Merkel “Mom,” the nightmare of every female high-school chemistry teacher in the world, except I guess she kind of likes it?)

All right, let’s give this a try. “Jamaica” refers to the possible (maybe) coalition between Merkel’s Christian Democrats, the Free Democrats (led by Christian Lindner, whom I wish I didn’t find attractive but whom, alas, I definitely do), and the Greens. Every political party in Germany has an official color (of course it does), and these three together look like the Jamaican flag—which, by the way, offers some unfortunate fodder for the tackier members of the German press.