Page 70 of Save the Date
She nodded. “Every month.”
“Is the unit outside?” Jack asked, his hand on the doorknob.
“In the courtyard.”
“Got a screwdriver?”
***
The unit, a rust-speckled gray cube, sat on a wooden platform in a corner of the courtyard garden. Jack unscrewed the back panel of the unit and peered at the exposed machinery.
“What are you looking for?” Cara asked, looking over his shoulder.
“Just anything that looks obviously wrong. I was hoping maybe it was something simple, like a slipped or broken blower belt. Or maybe that the condenser was iced over, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.”
He fetched the garden hose from a large terra-cotta pot where it was coiled nearby. Turning on the spigot, he sprayed it over the box, in a deliberate back and forth pattern.
“What’s that for?” Cara asked, swatting at a mosquito on her neck.
“Rinsing off the coils,” he explained. “They can get blocked with all the pollen and dust and leaves and crud, and then you don’t get cooling.”
She nodded, acting as though she understood.
“I turned the controls off before we came out. Would you go inside and flip it on and see if we get lucky and it starts up?”
Cara crossed her fingers, flipped the thermostat on, and prayed for the dull thump that signaled the unit coming to life. Nothing. She ran her hand in front of the air register. More nothing.
“Sorry,” Jack said, meeting her at the back door. “I looked at the manufacturer’s plate on the back of it—it was installed in ’82. The average life span of a central-air unit is supposed to be ten or fifteen years. I think that thing is DOA.”
“Crap.” She leaned her forehead against the wall beside the thermostat. “I don’t think I can go on like this.”
“You shouldn’t have to. Tomorrow, first thing, send the landlord a registered letter, telling her you plan to have the unit repaired or replaced, and that you’ll deduct whatever costs you incur from your rent.”
“And what do I do in the meantime?” she asked. “I looked at the weather report this morning. This heat wave isn’t going to let up. We don’t even have any rain in the forecast. And anyway, I don’t have the money to buy a central-air-conditioning unit like that. It’s probably at least three or four thousand dollars.”
“Can you open some windows? At least get some air circulating? These old houses were built to catch cross currents.”
“I’ve tried, believe me. They’re all painted shut. I hacked at the window in my bedroom with a screwdriver and even a steak knife, but I couldn’t get it to budge. Every window in this house is like that.”
He glanced toward the stairs. “Want me to give it a try?”
“Be my guest.”
***
The staircase opened into a hallway that was the twin to the one on the first floor. The second floor, as she’d warned, was stifling. What had probably originally been a bedroom was now a combination living/dining room, visible through an arched entryway that Jack estimated had been installed sometime around the turn of the 1900s.
A large bay window looked out on the courtyard garden, and there were double banks of windows on the side walls, overlooking the sliver of side garden that separated this building from the ones next door.
A faded Oriental rug in muted blues, greens, and roses covered the wood floors, and a pair of overstuffed white slipcovered sofas faced each other, separated by an old painted trunk that was used as a coffee table. Bookcases flanked the windows. In the dining area, a round oak table was surrounded by a set of four mismatched high-backed chairs painted a soft fern green. A matte-green vase in the center of the table held a bouquet of wilted daisies. A small side table held another box fan, humming ineffectively in the corner.
He’d seen some of the finest, most elegant parlors in the historic district, spaces filled with valuable antiques, priceless art, silver, first-edition books, and designer trappings. But none of them looked as welcoming as Cara Kryzik’s living room.
This room looked to Jack like a room where you could sit and sip a glass of wine, read a book, or just be. There were paintings scattered about, on the walls and propped on the bookshelves, watercolors and oils, all of them either landscapes or still lifes with flowers. He was no art expert, but he thought these were probably the works of gifted amateurs—flea-market finds, most likely. There was also a laughably small flat-screen television nearly hidden on the bookshelves among the books.
He thought of the living room in his own cottage on Macon Street, cluttered with bins of his clothing, books, and detritus. At least when Zoey lived with him, the place was clean. There was a ratty leather sofa, now covered in dog hair, a lumpy brown leather recliner where he fell asleep more nights than he’d like to admit, this facing his prized sixty-four-inch high-definition surround-sound television propped on a pair of sawhorses. No pictures hung on his walls, no rugs softened his floors. It occurred to him that although he owned his own house, he had never taken the time to make it a home.
“Where’s the kitchen?” he asked, turning toward her. Cara stepped into the hallway and pushed aside a flowered green and white curtain that concealed what he’d assumed was probably a closet or bathroom.
