The heat that summer was a living thing that tangled around you, tripping you, slowing you to a crawl. New York City was draped in an impressionist haze. It was 1957. I was thirteen and had my first job, stapling tags onto winter clothes in the warehouse of a department store. Previous summers, my brother and I had roamed the streets, drenching ourselves in open fire hydrants, reveling in the water like puppies. We’d sneaked into the air-conditioned movie theater. We’d sucked ice cubes till our lips were blue and trembling. Our mother worked as a file clerk in Manhattan for fifty dollars a week. Our father had deserted us, and the summer days were ours to fill as we chose. But that summer I wanted an independent income. I was tired of doing without the things my mother couldn’t buy and I couldn’t steal.