THE WEATHER

On and on the rain pattered, in the suspended animation of a day going nowhere.

Sunlight got into fire escapes and grates and vents and the girders of the Queensboro Bridge. Bay windows let the light through like vitrines.

After lunch the clouds were back and the radar showed something oozing sideways toward land from the Atlantic.

Rats wandered calmly in and out the thickets.

A robin splashed in the manmade waterfall at the top of the Loch, over and over, throwing lines of spray off its wingtips with each bout of wiggling.

Boiling instant ramen felt like toil in the kitchen.

Fumes of charcoal starter hung on Central Park West. The sky was deep blue in the gaps between the gray-shaded clouds.

The wine bar that had closed months and months ago and papered its windows was suddenly open for business and open to the street, with its front glass accordioned off to one end and a bare-shouldered woman in ruffles perched just in off the sidewalk, reading with a sweating glass of white wine on the bar in front of her.

Sun rode on the shoulders down the station stairs for the return trip.

The lawn of Carl Schurz Park and the river each gave off their own humid aromas. Ailanthus crowded in on the transverse at 96th Street on the cab ride back.

Outside, hard sun immediately triggered a sneeze that ruined a nearly new surgical mask.

A truly shabby robin, looking part drowned and part plucked, flew off with a worm or something wormlike in its beak.

It's the most wonderful time of the year: Nothing.