I left the twins’ apartment at close to four o’clock in the morning. I had fallen asleep on the couch a few hours earlier and it took me a few minutes to snap back into alertness. I groggily collected my bag and my money and headed for the early morning air.

My body protested against the cold, shivering as I stepped outside. I pulled my woolen hat onto my head, took a few weary steps and stopped dead in my tracks. Sitting on the riverbank, right across the street from the apartment building was an airplane. During the time I showed up to babysit and the time I left, they had pulled it out of the water.

A few people were still gathered around the police barricades, clicking away with cameras, their breath visible. After snapping a few pictures with my Blackberry, I tucked my hands into my pockets and stood, taking it all in. It was an eerie sight–the orange lights from the street lamps, the cop cars parked in a row, apathetic and bored. And then…a plane.

After a few minutes, it occurred to me that it was snowing, tiny white specks floating around the river, falling on the plane, falling on the cop cars, falling in the lamp light. I murmured a goodbye to my fellow onlookers and turned away from the water, off in search of my car. I had parked a few blocks away hours earlier, fourteen to be exact, unable to get closer due to the barricades and caution tape.

My car was cold and rattling as it lurched over the cobblestones of Tribeca. I watched the snow swirl around me, gently falling as I sped along with taxi cabs up the west side highway. The only thing we had in common was that we were still awake.

Manhattan is oddly quiet at four o’clock in the morning. People are still out, wandering hand in hand home from a diner, stumbling out of bars, crawling drunkenly into limos as they leave strip clubs. But the crowds are obviously significantly less and the throngs of people that keep the city moving are home in their apartments, off the sidewalks and into their beds.

My perspective was skewed not only by the late hour but by the fact that I was in a car instead of walking on the streets as I usually do. I cruised east along 57th Street, corporate buildings abandoned, flagship stores dark and lonely. Nothing was on the radio but heavy-on-the-bass dance beats and as I turned onto the bridge, I blasted a song at full volume.

Music poured out of my car as I cracked the window to let the snow inside. Caught somewhere between the end of one day and the beginning of another, I bopped my head and tapped my mittened hands on the steering wheel. The car sailed into Queens, thumping to a song I didn’t know and together we raced toward the morning, leaving Manhattan behind.