and has spent every moment in between on TV
or the radio giving New Yorkers stern but basic
reminders to stay hydrated and call 911 if they
feel the symptoms of heatstroke.
Soon he’s hopped into his black SUV head-
ing toward McCarren Park Pool in Williams-
burg, Brooklyn, one of the city’s 53 free,
outdoor, chlorinated slices of paradise that
cater to people who don’t have air condition-
ing or a place in the Hamptons. “Ooh, that’s the
mayor!” some kids shout as de Blasio walks
inside. The commotion turns the already cha-
otic pool, filled to its 1,500-person capacity,
into a madhouse, until it seems like every
person in it is rising up from the water in
unison to shake his hand or touch the hem.
They are among the working-class black
SEE DE BLASIO ON C3BY JADA YUANnew york — “How you doing? How you
doing? How you doing, brother?” Mayor Bill de
Blasio asks each person he meets, like a talking
Joey Tribbiani doll that got stuck on repeat,
handing out water and high-fives as he goes.
It’s 1 p.m. on the Saturday of the hottest heat
wave to hit the city since 2013 — 98 with a heat
index of 110 — and de Blasio is on a mission to
show the people who gave him his job that he is
here for them.
He’s dressed in “heat reality mode”: khakis,
a navy-blue polo and navy-blue leather sneak-
ers from Cole Haan. Already, he’s led a meeting
with his emergency management team (“I’m
here to give you the rousing speech that the
worst is yet to come,” he began with a chuckle)BY RON CHARLESRichard Russo’s new novel,
“Chances Are.. .,” opens with a
cascade of charm. Three old
friends, all 66 years old, arrive at
Martha’s Vineyard for a last hur-
rah. Russo introduces them one
at a time, set-
ting each man
in a nest of
youthful anec-
dotes that have
been polished
to a high luster.
But if this is a
story steeped
in nostalgia, it’s
also a story
about the inevi-
table disrup-
tion of nostal-
gia.
Russo, who
won a Pulitzer
Prize for his
2001 novel,
“Empire Falls,” has become our
senior correspondent on mascu-
linity. No one captures so well the
gruff affection of men or the
friction between guys from differ-
ent classes. By some accident of
fate, the three men at the center
of “Chances Are.. .” were class-
mates at a small Connecticut
college in the late ’60s and early
’70s. One way or another, they all
managed to stay out of the Viet-
nam War, but the resin of their
lives was set in that turbulent era,
hardening into the cherished am-
ber of friendship.
“Chances Are.. .” rotates gen-
tly through these characters —
each one so appealing that you
hate to let him go, though you’ll
quickly feel just as fond of the
next one:
SEE BOOK WORLD ON C4
BOOK WORLD
Weaving past
and present,
Russo lets
the edges fray
CHANCES ARE
...
By Richard
Russo
Knopf. 320 pp.
$26.95
KLMNO
Style
WEDNESDAY, JULY 31 , 2019. WASHINGTONPOST.COM/STYLE EZ SU C
THE RELIABLE SOURCE
Sanders supporter Cardi B
seeks “a movement of
young people to transform
this country.” C2
BOOK WORLD
A tailor’s daughter refuses
to be hemmed in by bias,
plus 10 releases to look
out for in August. C4HAPPILY EVER AFTER
The husband-and-wife
voice artists behind
Mickey and Minnie shared
a life of high notes. C9CAROLYN HAX
When a coffee friend says
something that hurts your
feelings, should you just
take your lumps? C10Behind gender-reveal party fouls, a parenting truth
Last April, along
a stretch of
fecund Australian
countryside, a
couple expecting
a baby performed
what thousands
of expectant
couples now
believe is the
proper ritual for such an
occasion. They gathered some
friends and a camera, drove to a
remote one-lane road, and
waited to discover whether they
were having a boy or a girl.
In the third second of the
three-minute video, released
earlier this month by the local
police department, the sedan’s
exhaust pipe emits bright blue
smoke. The couple celebrates —
it means they’re having a boy. At
this point, everything is going as
planned. In the fifth second, thecar’s driver pilots the vehicle in
jubilant zigzags while guests jog
alongside and cheer.
In the 54th second, the car
begins to shoot flames out of its
butt. The driver escapes. The car
blazes. Guests run out of the
frame and then back in,
realizing, with cartoonish
gestures, that the burning
vehicle contains their
belongings. One ducks inside for
a satchel before they all dash
away a final time. Left behind:
the Holden Commodore sedan,
stewing in a pit of its own
melted rubber, still emitting
acrid puffs of gender-revealing
smoke. Which are now black,
not blue.
Is it uncharitable to admit
I’ve watched this video four
times?
As best as anyone can tell, the
SEE HESSE ON C2Monica
HesseBY HANK STUEVERSpoiler alert: This story dis-
cusses the conclusion and other
key plot points in HBO’s minise-
ries “Years and Years.”As our planet cooks, so do our
TV shows about social upheaval,
modern ruin and other dystopian
nightmares. Zombies beget hand-
maids, making for some gripping
end-of-everything depictions of
doom, if you can stand the stress
of watching. None, however, hurts
as deeply as creator Russell T
Davies’s eerily plausible “Years
and Years,” a six-episode British
drama that concluded Monday on
HBO.
Sorely underwatched (between
250,000 and 300,000 cable view-
ers stuck with it each week, not
counting those who streamed it),
“Years and Years” is about the
Lyons family — a relatively happy
brood of adult siblings and their
stalwart nonagenarian grand-
mother, Muriel (Anne Reid), in
Manchester — who each endure a
range of emotional setbacks and
collateral damage as Britain suc-
cumbs to a populist wave.
By the time the Lyonses reckon
with the world around them, their
country has become a 21st-centu-
ry fascist regime. Technology is
merging with human bodies, en-
tire neighborhoods have been cor-
doned off and some banks have
collapsed. Undocumented immi-
grants and political dissenters are
quietly sent to concentration
camps to die of disease.
All of this doesn’t happen over-
night — the episodes begin in 2019
and end in 2032. The Lyonses,
who keep in touch via group calls
on their Alexa-like personal assis-
SEE NOTEBOOK ON C9CRITIC’S NOTEBOOK‘Years and
Years’ felt like
an eerie ‘This
Is (Really) Us’
MAXICAKE/ISTOCK
Like raising kids, Pinterest-worthy parties can turn unpredictable.DREW ANGERER/GETTY IMAGESSome residents don’t like the idea of
their mayor looking for a second jobThe man for New York
— and the country?