on Labor Day, summer convulsing in its muggy death throes, the city began to repopulate. Double-parked SUVs clogged the narrow streets while everyone who’d summered at the shore unloaded their duffels before heading off to battle for parking spots. Even the dust caking their luggage reeked of privilege—these were people whose children had gotten to munch all summer on good clean country dirt, not the glass-studded amuse-bouches of city park gravel. Now that they were back, there were more white-people picnics, distinguished as they were by pretty blankets, fancy cheeses, and guys with guitars, scattered in among the salsa-thumping pig roasts that had colonized the park every skin-scorching summer weekend until now. For the first time that whole stultifying summer, the air began to cool and sweeten. It felt miraculous. You could walk up the stairs without sweat trickling between your shoulder blades. At night I would open the windows, car alarms and sirens and summer concerts in the park be damned, and let a cool breeze sift through the apartment.
