It hit 91 degrees this week and my apartment turned into a tandoor.
So I did what every reasonable person does in June. I fled to a friend's rooftop in Astoria.
There is a specific quality to summer evenings in Astoria that I have not found anywhere else in the city. Manhattan rooftops are all view and no warmth. Brooklyn ones have gotten too pleased with themselves. But Astoria — Astoria still feels like people just live there.
We sat on Priya's roof off Ditmars with a bottle of rosé from the bodega downstairs that cost less than my morning coffee and tasted like it knew it. The N train rattled past every few minutes. Below us, someone's grandmother was watering tomatoes on a fire escape. The Greek restaurant on the corner was sending up the smell of lamb and oregano.
This is what nobody tells you about summer evenings in New York. The good ones aren't planned. Nobody bought tickets. We just ended up here because it was too hot to be inside and too alive to go to sleep.
Priya put on old Bollywood songs, the Kishore Kumar kind, and we didn't even talk much. We just watched the sky do that thing it does over Queens, where it turns the exact gold of a marigold garland before it goes pink.
I thought about how much of my year has been spent rushing. The L to the studio, the 6 to meetings, always calculating minutes. And here was an evening that asked nothing of me except to stay.
A kid two roofs over was setting off a single sparkler, illegally and beautifully.
Summer evenings in Astoria are how I forgive this city for the winters. For the rent. For the crowded trains and the loneliness that hides behind eight million people.
We stayed until the rosé was gone and the trains thinned out. I took the N home half-asleep, smelling like sunscreen and somebody else's barbecue.
The best nights in this city are the ones you didn't dress up for.
Love,