It hit ninety-eight degrees on Thursday and Harlem simply refused to be defeated.
I'd gone up to 125th Street to meet a friend who bailed, which is its own genre of New York heartbreak, so I was just wandering. The heat wave had turned the sidewalk into a griddle. My phone said "feels like 104," which is the phone's way of apologizing.
Somebody had cracked open a fire hydrant on Frederick Douglass Boulevard and kids were screaming through the spray in the most joyful way. An auntie in a folding chair supervised the whole operation like a lifeguard. This is the real air conditioning of the city.
I ducked into a bodega on Lenox for a cold Thums Up — yes, they carry it, yes, I nearly wept — and there he was. The bodega cat. Sprawled across the counter directly under the fan, one paw over his eyes, radiating a peace no human in this heat wave could access.
The cashier said his name is Biggie. Biggie does not work. Biggie does not sweat. Biggie has transcended.
I stood there drinking my Thums Up, watching this cat survive the heat wave better than any of us, and I thought about how New York in summer is basically an endurance sport disguised as a lifestyle. The subway platforms are ovens. The trains are freezers. You dress for both and win at neither.
But then there's the hydrant. The auntie. Biggie. The way the whole block just figures it out together.
I walked back to the 2 train slower than I needed to, letting the hydrant spray catch the edge of me. A kid laughed at me getting wet in my work clothes. I laughed too.
The heat wave will break by Sunday. It always does. And we'll miss complaining about it.
Stay cool, or at least stay near a cat who is.
Love,