She can’t live without a fan. Heat rises and she’s in the attic, and although there’s a window, without the fan there’s no cross-ventilation. She corners Evan, Miss O’Rourke’s nephew, who says he will go out and get her a new fan. It would be his pleasure.

That afternoon, there’s a knock on Kirby’s bedroom door. She’s lying in bed listening to Aretha Franklin’s Lady Soul, which is the album she brought for her rainy day/Sunday mood. If it’s Michaela complaining about the volume, Kirby decides, she’ll apologize profusely and then, once Michaela is back downstairs, put on her angry-mood album, Jimi Hendrix, Electric Ladyland, at top volume.

It might be Patty at the door. Luke picked Patty up earlier for a lobster-roll date in Menemsha, and Patty asked Kirby to go, but Kirby declined. Patty, not Kirby, is Luke’s girlfriend, and Kirby’s beginning to find it strange that Patty wants her to join them every time they’re together. Kirby wondered briefly if Patty was afraid of Luke. She had asked Patty about the red mark on her thigh.

“Did he hit you while you two were in the bedroom?” she asked. “Did he…I don’t know…spank you?”

Patty laughed uncomfortably. “It’s a game,” she said. “Role-playing.”

“Role-playing?” Kirby said.

“I’m an actress,” Patty said.

When Kirby opens the door, she finds Barb standing before her. Kirby is surprised; she would have thought the hot, mouse-infested attic was the last place Barb would ever show her face.

“You have a visitor,” Barb says.

“I do?” Kirby says. She assumes that Evan has arrived with the fan, and not a moment too soon. She throws on a polka-dot minidress and ties a bandanna around her hair. As she hurries down the stairs, she wonders what Evan might expect as a thank you.

Barb waits at the top of the second-floor stairs along with Miranda and Maureen—Michaela is blessedly absent—and Kirby figures they must be really bored if they’re that interested in seeing Evan in his brown polyester pants and Sunday-best shoes.

But when Kirby gets to the front door, she understands. It’s not Evan. It’s Darren Frazier. Kirby knows that for these girls, having a gentleman caller is a big deal. Having a Negro gentleman caller is, she suspects, brand-new territory for them.

Kirby’s heart fills like a hot-air balloon. “Hey, you!” she says.

“Day off,” he says. “I thought you might want to ride the carousel.”

“I’d love it,” Kirby says. She turns to wave at the girls who are loitering at the top of the stairs like they’re watching Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. “See ya, ladies!”

As rotten, terrible luck would have it, they bump into Evan outside on the sidewalk; he’s holding a huge rectangular box that Kirby can see is an air-conditioning unit.

“Is that for my room?” she asks hopefully.

“It’s supposed to be.” Evan grunts and drops the box onto the top step with a thud.

Air-conditioning is more than Kirby could have hoped for. “Evan, I can’t thank you enough. You have no idea what it’s like up there. I’ve been stewing in my own juices.” She chastises herself for using that gross phrase in front of two gentlemen. Her mother would be appalled. “I’m very grateful.”

Evan pulls a handkerchief out of his pants pocket and mops his brow. “I don’t know how I’m going to get it all the way up to the attic.”

“I’ve got it, man,” Darren says, stepping up.

“Darren?” Evan says, blinking behind his square glasses. “Darren Frazier? Where did you come from?”

Darren has, of course, been standing there all along. How did Evan not notice him? Was Ralph Ellison right—were Negro men invisible to white people? It had seemed like hyperbole when Kirby read the book for her English class, but now that she’s watching a real-life social interaction, she’s not so sure.

Darren lifts the box with ease. “Fresh arms,” he says, and Kirby thinks of how other guys might have flaunted their superior strength and stamina but Darren tries to downplay it. “We’re going to the attic?”

“The attic,” Kirby confirms.

Evan follows close on Darren’s heels up the two flights of stairs and, realizing he’s been shown up, offers to take the box back twice.

“I’ve got it,” Darren says. He’s not huffing or sweating and his biceps pop in a way that is undeniably attractive. Kirby brings up the rear, which means Evan can’t look up her dress. Darren is proving to be a hero for so many reasons.

Kirby opens the door to the attic, and the hot, stale air nearly knocks her over. It’s like having a damp mohair blanket thrown over her head. It’s suffocating.

“Right on,” Darren says. “I now understand the importance of this mission. You’ve been living up here?”

“I had a fan, but it broke,” Kirby says. She scans the room for any embarrassing personal items; if she’d known she would be having guests, and if she’d known one of those guests would be Darren, she might have staged the room a little better—hidden the box of Kotex, for example, and maybe draped a bikini top over the back of her chair. Maybe set her paperback copy of Invisible Man on her nightstand. Earlier, she’d pulled a copy of Emily Post off the bookshelves at the hotel, thinking it would help her with her job, and she hopes Darren doesn’t notice it splayed open on her bed; it seems hopelessly square.

Darren sets down the box, removes the air conditioner from the Styrofoam packing, then surveys the sole window. “Should fit?” he says. He looks to Evan, who shrugs, and Kirby’s hopes sink because she’s certain Evan didn’t bother to measure the window, so her dream of air-conditioning is short-lived. Darren sets the unit in the window; there are a couple of inches on each side.

Darren turns to Kirby. “Do you have a couple of books?”

This is Kirby’s chance! She rummages through an old attaché case of her father’s that she uses for her schoolwork. She brought six books for recreational reading but hasn’t yet cracked one. She picks two that she thinks will make her seem erudite and well-read—The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, by Muriel Spark, and The Ginger Man, by J. P. Donleavy.

Darren accepts them and holds up The Ginger Man. “Loved this one,” he says. “I loved it so much it seems a shame to use it for this purpose, but this is just temporary. I have a couple of two-by-fours in my garage that I can cut down to fit in the gaps.”