HOT!

Intellectually, I know that billions of people over millions of years have lived without air conditioning. But this knowledge is all in my head. My gut tells me it can’t be true. Or at least that they didn’t live in Houston in Summer. Maybe they all went to Martha’s Vineyard or Nantucket, as the saner (and richer) fraction of our fellow Houstonians still do.

“Compressor’s all froze up,” the air-conditioner repairman said, as he tapped another cigarette out of his pack. Half a dozen crushed filters already lay in a semicircle at his feet.

I looked at him, incredulous. Nothing, I thought, could be “all froze up” in Houston in August. Perhaps the heat had addled him. Or maybe it was a macabre air-conditioner repairman joke. Grim humor, I thought, looking at him with an equally grim face. The sweat of three un-air-conditioned days had dampened my appreciation for jokes considerably.

“Thought maybe we could knock ‘er loose,” he said. “But no luck.” An amorphous ghost of cigarette smoke flowed out of his mouth and drifted up around his head as he spoke. “Works sometimes. New contactor didn’t help either.” He coughed a couple of rattling coughs, and took another drag on his cigarette.

What could all this mean? I wondered, already suspecting that it meant money, from the way he wasn’t looking directly at me as he said it, just cutting his eyes my direction now and then like a convicting jury. And possibly another night without air conditioning.

“Well …,” and he started a not-so-brief history of the world in a/c repairman terms.

Let’s just get right to the point, I suggested, cutting him off in mid-obfuscation. How much? How long?

“ ‘Bout a thousand. Unless it’s worse than I think,” he said, cutting his eyes toward me again to gauge my level of shock. When I only blanched and gasped, didn’t actually pass out, he went on, “Maybe fifteen hundred if there’s overnight freight. And it she needs a new …” I saw $2000 looming ominously on the bottom line before all the if’s were iffed.

“We’ll get this old compressor pulled tonight, so we can warranty her out first thing tomorrow morning.” My worst fears were confirmed: another night without air conditioning. I struggled to hold back tears. I failed.

It must be one of those unwritten laws that air conditioners only go out when you need them. It makes sense, but it doesn’t make me happy. True, I resent the fact that I have become the slave of technology in this as in so many other ways. I still believe there is wisdom in Thoreau’s admonition: “Simplify, simplify.” Though in this context I think it’s fair to point out that Thoreau lived in Massachusetts and was known to summer, on occasion, on Cape Cod.

Yes, I resent the fact of my dependence, but, being a realist, and a resident of Houston to boot, I admit right off that it’s a fact. When it comes to air conditioning in summer, it’s probably even a double fact, if there is such a thing. I felt a tightening in my throat, as two meandering trickles trailed down my cheeks. I feared that such a pusillanimous show of weakness might send the price skyrocketing. But the prospect of another sweltering night made my course clear: throw myself on his mercy and agree to anything.

Right off, I agreed that any price quoted was simply a place holder. No backtalk from me on that point. In return, he agreed to return at 4 p.m. the next day. By 6 I’d be sitting in my living room muffled in sweaters and flicking icicles off the end of my nose. (Perhaps this was more a figment of my heat-deranged imagination than an actual statement he made, but I definitely remember the image coming to mind about this time.)

The next day was one of the longer, and more miserable, of my life. The minutes trudged by like molasses-slow wooly mammoths. I found myself looking up at odd moments, from whatever it was I happened to be sweating over at the time, just as Martha’s Vineyard came into view on the horizon. At 3 p.m., I took a couple of sweaters out of their moth-proof bags to be ready.

At last, 4 p.m., the appointed hour, arrived. The air-conditioner repairman, of course, did not. I wonder if they consciously think of it as lying, or if they see it as a humanitarian gesture – their way of giving hope to the hopeless. At any rate, as nearly as I can tell, “4 o’clock” in air-conditioner repairman speak, in summer, really means “maybe 6 or 7” – “some day this week” – “or maybe next.” To my repairman, it appeared to mean almost anything – or nothing.

But time is relative. Though I’d vowed that If he ever did arrive, I’d bludgeon him with a sweaty compressor and start swimming towards Nantucket, when he finally did call – about 6:30, some day or other – to say he was on his way, I forgave him. In fact, I think I may have offered to sign over my house to him, and possibly my husband, too, if he hurried. But again, this may only be heatstroke hallucination.

“No, thanks,” he said. “We only take cash, check or credit card. I think I better warn you, if it rains I can’t touch your conditioner.”

Odd, I thought, that he should mention rain. It hadn’t rained in weeks. But I looked outside anyway just to check. The sun blazed. Sure, there was a cloud or two drifting in the distance, but what possible difference could they make?

“OK, I’ll come on down,” he said. “But if it rains, we’ll just have to call it quits till tomorrow.”

Since he was calling from the west loop north and I was sweating in what’s called in Houston, The Museum District, and it was rush hour, it took quite a while for him to reach me. Long enough that I could probably have reached the Vineyard before he arrived if I’d started swimming right away.

As the minutes drug by, the clouds – you guessed it – rolled in. The downpour started as he pulled up. Through his rolled up window I could read his lips, as he started to drive away, “I’m real sorry.”

“YOU’RE sorry!?” I screamed as I ran after him.

The rain, pelting my cheeks, obscured the tears, but the neighbors, looking joyfully out at the deluge from their air-conditioned lairs, probably still saw when I threw myself in front of his truck and refused to move.

I survived another miserable night. I can now number myself among those billions mentioned in the first paragraph, the ones who lived without air conditioning. I even survived the humiliation of getting up out of the street, drenched and dripping, after the repairman backed up and drove around me. He returned the next day, somewhere around noon RST (Repairman Standard Time), and by 6 I was basking in front of the main vent in my living room wearing a sweater – I already had it out, so why not? – wondering just how low the thermostat would go.

Amazingly, this whole ordeal has helped clarify my feelings about politics. Forget budgets and public works. I’m voting for the candidate who promises to take us all to Nantucket for the summer. Or maybe the coast of Maine. I hear it’s even cooler there.

Where are you George H W, with your Kennebunkport getaway, when we need you most!?

Magazine of the Houston Post, June 15, 1986.