111°

That’s what my car’s outdoor temperature gauge claims, and it’s dark, 8 in the evening. It feels like a Palm Springs night here in L.A. It’s stiflingly hot and windy and there is a strange menace in the air, a threatening heaviness. Earthquake weather, maybe. Fire weather. Four or five years ago at this time, the Santa Ana winds blew Southern California wildfires out of control for weeks. Damn, just when I thought the summer heat was finally behind us. We’ve had a few of the cool, foggy mornings that bring joy to my soul (me an East Coast/England transplant who loves rain and wearing layers). I’ve been sitting here in front of the AC, but when I got up to get the nectarine sorbet out of the freezer, the heat in the kitchen surrounded me like a blanket. We need a thunderstorm, a real gully-washer, to dissipate this tension, but there are no clouds in the sky.