When the night got too hot Florence or Seymour or their neighbors or friends or the whole neighborhood would escape to the roof or the fire escape or even the park and sleep. I know they dragged the mattresses onto the fire escape and sometimes the roof, but how did they sleep in the park? Or did the cool breeze mitigate the concrete ground?
These days, parks close before midnight, roofs are locked and alarmed and it's against the law to be on a fire escape unless of course you are escaping a fire. Quiet cool escape becomes creative. Like for instance the gym of the university Seymour went to because it was one of the few that would accept Jewish students. There, an hour before it closes, and empty of healthy young people who don't fume at a lack of stomach muscles, escape beckons on fancy machines that make heated worries of the day steam off.
