Lymph Node

        There is no air conditioning at 804 N Washington Street. There are, however, several rows of single-hung, sash-and-case windows stretching along the perimeter of the north, south, and east walls, whose lead counter-weights in the glazed frames are exceptionally finicky, with a couple being so iron-willed that they snapped the ropy pulley system during overly exuberant attempts to dislodge them. Even after carefully manipulating- con amor, amigo, con amor!- these windows up the warped, sooty grooves, only a select few have screens, leaving one to pick their poison of hot-box heat or an insectile swarming of biblical proportions.

            So now, with the just the screened windows open, I bake, wearing only sweat-starched running shorts that are little more than tattered wisps of cotton and elastic. The late morning sun pours in through the windows, and since the muntins on the top panes are split and splayed off at incongruous angles, running neither parallel nor perpendicular to the paint-chip mullions, they cast colliding, helter-skelter shadows over the main room. The smell that wafts from various epidermal crevices is pungent.

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