By the time we returned to New York, the air had sharpened. It was not the weather. It was not the time of year. The skies were still overcast, the traffic still moved in the same determined rhythms, and the buildings still stood with their usual cold certainty. But something in the atmosphere had changed. There was an edge beneath the ordinary—a current of something shifting. The city was no longer just moving fast. It was watching.

Julian and I landed just after midnight. The flight from ...