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Tonight there’s a mirror on the sidewalk, leaning on the steps of the cathedral. I want to think it’s a work of art, or at least an intentional gesture: anyone passing can see, reversed here, the rooftop Virgin’s golden face ringed by lightbulbs, looking up toward us. A few blocks down the searchlights revolve atop some office tower’s steely sheen. Where would they lead us, these beacons that sweep the dark and cut the steam billowing from the stacks, so the sudden sections of cloud tremble in stunning and troubled currents? I have a friend who sometimes sells everything, scrapes together enough money to get into the city, and lives on the streets there, in the parks. She says she likes waking knowing she can be anyone she wants, keep any name as long as it wears well. She stayed with one man a few days; calling themselves whatever they liked or nothing, they slept in the park beneath a silver cloth, a “space blanket” that mirrored the city lights, and the heat of his dog coiled between them would warm them. I knew, she says, I was in heaven. Isn’t that where those beams washing and disguising the stars have always us: the anonymous paradise, where there isn’t any telling how many of these futures will be ours? It was enough to be warmed by steam blurring the café windows, to study how grocers stacked the wet jewels