of her eyes and fell, from there, to hang suspended from her jawbone. She turned around in terrible heat and her white satin soaking through at her chest and looked at me. My father’s work was HVAC installation and repair; he took me along with him, very often, and so I know my way around simple units and common problems. Am I handy? Am I useful? Outside, the pastor stood over me, but not on the side that would have given me shelter and shade from the sun. He had in his hands a dry brown paper towel, the kind found in grade school bathrooms. He twisted and pulled it between his hands. I had to lie on my belly to get low enough; my dress, damp with my own sweat, was thick enough to protect my skin from the small pointy rocks that edged the periphery of the church building. I used my Swiss Army to take off the screen. I couldn’t see any problems. Everything was clean, straight, and together. I groped upon the ground to see if there was any sort of wet, a leak. The pastor wiped his face with the paper towel. My own sweat dripped onto the white rocks. It was quiet enough to hear the water sizzle there, and turn happily into steam. “What do you see?” the pastor asked. “Not too much.” “From Texas?” he asked after a moment. I had no tools. I had forgotten to check the fuse box. “No, sir. Outside Albany originally.” I always claimed to be from “outside Albany,” instead of the name of our town. It was a small and insignificant town. “And you work in, uh, air conditioning repair?” One of the groomsmen had wandered outside and stood behind me, watching. I froze, for a moment, seeing myself as he must have seen me, belly down and legs spread, ass in the air so that I could work on my forearms. I felt the stones press into my stomach. Then he left; I heard him leave. “I’m a librarian,” I said. There wasn’t any problem with the unit. The blower was clean and the compressor was strong. There were no cracks in any valves. I used my arms to push myself up and back onto my heels; I squatted, there, in a three hundred dollar powder blue backless bridesmaid dress hiked to my thighs and I rubbed my forehead with the back of my hand.
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