THE TEMPERATURE WAS the same as it had been on the flawless day before, but the humidity had come back, and with it an incomplete layer of clouds. Churches stood clean and bright when the sun came through on them. The breeze blowing uphill from the Park, through the gully of sidewalk between garbage and buildings, was almost chilly, a breath of the next season. Rays of the sun reached down to the Loch to bounce up wavering on the stone arch there, and went down into the water to pick out the dark stripe along the side of a full-sized fish. A chipmunk, russet-rumped, ran up the bank toward a big grackle and it flew away. Jewelweed in bloom pressed in on the path through the fence. Rats wandered calmly in and out the thickets. A sweat bee landed on an arm and stung as it was swept away. Someone up outside the Park tossed a batch of firecrackers in over the wall. The clouds turned gray, bringing on an early dusk. An opened window let in an unexpectedly strong gust of cool air, and behind it came a splatting sound of rain. Rain kept falling into the night, from a sky bright with reflected city lights.
