Tender is the Night, my summer novel. Photo by author.

Spending my summer days with F. Scott Fitzgerald in hand

This August, I opted for a whole different experience, for free

On the last day of July, during a humiliatingly humid and suffocating stretch of summer, I side-stepped into my local library building on Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn.

Sliding through the revolving front door, a silky, arctic waft of air kissed my sweaty self. The putrid asphalt humidity was at once obliterated by the seductive intensity of the interior icy-breezy crispness of these temperature-controlled library halls.

For New Yorkers, summer days are dog days. The sweltering heat induces a slow, apathetic, low-grade fever, sensed as elevated body temperatures, rivulets of sweat dripping into creases of skin out of nowhere, a mind numbed to a tenth degree of utter dullness. Relief is found only inside escape rooms resembling cathedral-size igloos.

We crave ice, in any form, throbbing ACs, fan-induced gales of wind, energy conservation notwithstanding. Prayers are addressed multiple times to Con Ed throughout the days to please save us from a blackout.

My summer literary escape plan

Inside the library, I awoke from my mental inertia. The metal railing on the stairs felt cold to my touch. I sighed…