I am happy to report that the air in my apartment is once again conditioned. The landlord came by on Friday and fixed whatever needed fixing. Hallelujah.
Now that things have cooled off a bit, I was able to look up that passage from Philip Roth's "Goodbye, Columbus" that I mentioned last time (when I said I was too hot to do anything but complain). Here 'tis:
. . . It was, in fact, as though the hundred and eighty feet that the suburbs rose in altitude above Newark brought one closer to heaven, for the sun itself became bigger, lower, and rounder, and soon I was driving past long lawns which seemed to be twirling water on themselves, past houses where no one sat on stoops, where lights were on but no windows open, for those inside, refusing to share the very texture of life with those of us outside, regulated with a dial the amounts of moisture that were allowed access to their skin. . . . I thought of Aunt Gladys and Uncle Max sharing a Mounds bar in the cindery darkness of their alley, on beach chairs, each cool breeze sweet to them as the promise of afterlife, and after a while I rolled onto the gravel roads of the small park where Brenda was playing tennis.
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