I would’ve stabbed the man’s hand               had he not jerked it away—this is what I usually saytoward the end of the story. The manhad pried back the right vinyl side panel               of my living-room window’s A.C. unit, rippedthe accordion-style flap from its mounting track,                                  and began palming the wall insidemy first-floor apartment. My exhad left at the beginning of summer and Natalia               wouldn’t move in until spring, so I lived alonethat June in Richmond, in the back bottom suite                                  of a shoebox-shaped fourplexset perpendicular to the street. In the storyI’ve told for almost twenty years,               I’m a junior in college toweling my wet hairas I walk from my bathroom through the hall,                                  headed to my bedroom, at two in the morning.I notice a flicker of motion from the living-room window: a human hand               flopping, like live tilapia, throughthe side panel’s bent vinyl, the limb shoved in                                  up to the elbow. I charge at the arm, yell,I see you, motherfucker, and the hand               jerks back. The man flees. When I call 911and reach, incredibly, a busy signal, I phone Ed instead,                                  who will drive over, remove his old A.C. unit, take itto his new place. Until Ed arrives, I hover               near the pried-back vinylgripping a butcher knife. I would’ve stabbed               the hand that tried to steal my A.C. This is howI tell it: I once thwarted a thief and he’s lucky                                  I let him keep all his fingers. Last night,on the phone with my best friend, I retold               the story and Alicia paused, then said,He wasn’t after your A.C. Twenty years ago,                                  she must’ve said the exact same thing to me,but I’d brushed it off, positiveI’d terrified a thief. It was June in Richmond               and I was young and held an unconditional beliefin a heat made utterly obscene                                  from humidity. It got so hot I could imaginesomeone getting high and thinking, Goddamn,               I need some A.C. My living-room window faceda small side lawn that abutted the back garden               of a rich person’s town house: a low wallof calico brick from the nineteenth century                                  with an overhanging fringe of dogwoods that hadby that point in summer expanded into a fatgreen canopy. At two in the morning               no one would’ve seen him climb in—quickflicker between the brick and my window.                                  I know years ago Alicia said the same thing,but I had to stop believing in my own               permanence to hear her. But I stillbelieve in—deep summer, Virginia—                                  that heat.