“Don’t worry, it won’t,” said Adam, who went room by room, downstairs and upstairs, to measure the square footage, look in closets and check out the attic. He also went outside to see where a condenser could be placed.

Because of the configuration of the house, a two-story Colonial, Adam said we could get central air upstairs but not downstairs, where expensive ductless units would have to be installed.

“Would we need ductless tape for the units?” I wondered.

“You’d need more than that,” said Adam, adding that the installers would have to go through floors and walls.

“I’m floored,” I remarked. “And off the wall.”

Adam, who politely didn’t disagree, said the downstairs would stay cool because we already have a large, powerful air conditioner in a wall sleeve in the family room.

“Upstairs is where you need central air,” he said, quoting us a reasonable price that we agreed to.

Unfortunately, the job couldn’t be done for a couple of weeks, when it would be getting warmer, so I decided to haul one of the two old air conditioners from the garage to our bedroom.

“I have a hunch I’ll end up like Quasimodo,” I told Sue as I breathlessly carried the unit — step by step, inch by inch — through the house and up the stairs.

I plopped it in an open bedroom window and asked Sue to hold it in place while I screwed the AC into the frame. Then I pulled out the worn and torn accordion side panels and screwed them into the frame, too. Sue stuffed the gaps with sticky strips of foam rubber so bugs the size of Chihuahuas couldn’t get in.

She plugged the unit in and turned it on.

“It still works!” Sue exclaimed.

That held us over until the day our central air conditioning system was finally installed.

“We should have done this a long time ago,” said Sue.

I agreed.

“I may not be so hot anymore,” I said. “But I’m still pretty cool.”

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