The Heat of the City

Sometimes I think that I can stay up all night and outlast the heat. I check the 5-day forecast over and over, hoping that if I check it enough times, tomorrow's temperature is suddenly going to drop by 10 degrees or something. I'm looking for a mistake, human error on the part of the weatherman, that will make tomorrow more tolerable.

But staying up all night is the wrong approach. It only makes me hotter, lonelier, meaner. There's no escape; the heat's going to be here, relentless as a wolf on caribou, for the next month at least. The only way one can survive, it turns out, is by being a good citizen - trustworthy, dependable.