To drive up FDR Drive—on Manhattan’s east side, on a slick cold night—is to find solitude. You edge between island and water like a cell in a vein. To the left, streets reach like facades to a vanishing point. Buildings of stone and steel …

Last night, they scaled my walls as I slept. The silhouettes moved closer—paralyzing me—with each flash of yellow light from the street. Some of them danced forward on toe, some ran, others fiddled in place with their shovels, their ropes and lan…