Summer clings by the skin of its teeth, stretching its last handouts toward your parched lips. We set up birthday parties in the backyard, cook impromptu dinners and cavort down the FDR on a sunny Saturday morning. They closed off the highway to Battery Park and the air is full of low-flying helicopters. We cross the Brooklyn Bridge. Twenty years ago people walked with dusty briefcases and unbelieving eyes across this bridge, the city carries its scars like a merit badge, we never forget but we never give up either. One night later we sit on a lawn across the river, blankets spread across the warm twilight, watch a summer classic on the inflatable movie screen while the skyline of Manhattan glimmers behind it. I come for the view, not the movie. Come for the reminder that whatever else I do with my life I made this one right choice and it was worth everything.
By Monday, the heat breaks in a lightning storm of epic ambition. I lie in bed watching the spectacle, flashes dancing from one end of the firmament to the other, smacks of light mixed with sharp needlings through the darkness. They put so many windows in this apartment I feel like I have been given more jewels than I deserve.
But then, it isn't love if you're not always trying to earn it.
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