A Virus from the Nile

It probably happened in August. Beyond that, no one can say when the tiny brown wisp settled upon Enrico Gabrielli’s body. The sixty-year-old cherished summer evenings among the red geraniums and purple cosmos in his garden, in the Italian neighborhood of Whitestone in Queens, New York— and never more so than in the summer of 1999. In July the temperature broke ninety-five degrees for eleven straight days—the hottest month ever recorded in the city.