The coffee at the bodega on the corner of 43rd Street and Skillman in Sunnyside is not particularly good, but it is a dollar fifty and Tomasz Wojcik had been drinking it on his lunch break for almost four years.

It was a clear Wednesday in late April, sometime around twelve forty-five. Tomasz, who is thirty-eight, was sitting on an overturned milk crate on the sidewalk in his work boots and a faded Polish soccer jersey under his vest. He had ten minutes left on his lunch. He was thinking about his son's birthday on Saturday.

The building across the street was a six-story prewar with a faded brick facade. A renovation crew had erected scaffolding along the southern wall, four stories tall and capped with a plywood platform.

Tomasz looked up because a pigeon flew past his face. That is how he tells it. He looked up at the building, and on the sixth floor, he saw an open window, and in the window he saw a woman sitting with her legs dangling over the sill.

She was not on the ledge yet. She was sitting in the frame, her feet swinging slowly, her hands gripping the bottom of the sash.

Tomasz set his coffee down on the milk crate. He has said since that the next part of his memory is patchy. He remembers crossing 43rd Street against the light. He remembers a delivery cyclist swearing at him. He remembers the metallic sound his boots made on the first rung of the scaffolding ladder.

He did not call 911. He has been gently criticized for this since. He says he assumed someone in one of the windows below had already called, and he was probably right, because by the time he reached the fourth-floor platform he could hear sirens coming from the direction of Queens Boulevard.

The scaffolding stopped at the fourth floor. Above it was bare brick.

Tomasz is a mason. He has worked on facades in five boroughs for fifteen years. He knew the building's brickwork because he had pointed up a section of the western wall the previous summer. He knew where the iron tie-backs were anchored, and he knew the rhythm of the windowsills.

He climbed. He used the iron of an old fire-escape bracket on the fifth floor and the lip of a windowsill above it. He pulled himself up onto the sixth-floor sill with his elbows.

He climbed. He used the iron of an old fire-escape bracket on the fifth floor and the lip of a windowsill above it. He pulled himself up onto the sixth-floor sill with his elbows.

The woman in the window was thirty-one years old. Her name, which her family later asked be shared with her permission, was Aisha Bello. She had moved into the apartment with her sister six months earlier, after a difficult year that she has described, in her own words and on her own timeline, in a piece she wrote for a local newsletter the following month.

She told Tomasz, when he appeared at her window in a soccer jersey, that he should go away.

He told her, in an accent she has since described as gentle and slightly out of breath, that he could not go away because his coffee was still on the sidewalk.

She laughed. She has said since that she laughed, and that the laugh surprised her, and that the surprise was the thing that pulled her back from where she had been going inside her own head.

Tomasz did not climb into the apartment. He stayed on the outside of the sill, his boots braced against the brick, his arms resting on the inside of the window frame. He talked to her for what the fire department later estimated was eleven minutes.

He told her about his son's birthday. He told her his son was turning seven and wanted a cake shaped like a backhoe. He told her his wife had said no to the backhoe and yes to a soccer ball. He told her about Poland, where he grew up, and about the kind of bricks they used in the village where his grandmother lived.

He did not tell her anything wise. He did not tell her that things would get better. He has said since, in the one short interview he agreed to, that he did not feel qualified to tell her that.

He just kept talking. He kept his eyes on her face.

By the time the FDNY rescue team reached the sixth-floor apartment through the hallway, Aisha had moved her legs back inside the window. She was sitting on the floor of her bedroom with her back against the wall. Tomasz was still on the sill, holding her hand through the frame.

The firefighters helped her up gently. A crisis counselor was at the apartment within twenty minutes. Aisha walked out under her own power, with a sister on each side and a paramedic behind her.

Tomasz climbed back down the scaffolding. He retrieved his coffee, which was cold. He went back to work. His foreman, who had watched parts of it from the street with his hands on top of his hard hat, told him to take the afternoon off. Tomasz said no. He said he needed to keep his hands busy.

The story made the local news that evening, mostly because someone in a fourth-floor apartment across the street had filmed parts of the climb on their phone. The footage is grainy and shows a small figure in a red jersey moving up the side of a brick building.

Tomasz did not want to be interviewed. He spoke to one reporter, briefly, in the parking lot of his job site the following Monday. He said he was not a hero. He said he was a man who had been close by, and who had known how to climb a wall.

He said the brave person in the story was the woman in the window. He said she was the one who had moved her legs back inside.

Aisha Bello and Tomasz have met twice since. The first time was a quiet lunch arranged by her sister at a Polish diner in Greenpoint, where Tomasz insisted on paying. The second time was at his son's birthday party, where Aisha brought a small wrapped box containing a toy backhoe.

Tomasz's son, Mateusz, is seven now. He keeps the backhoe on his nightstand. He has been told that the woman who brought it is a friend of his father's, and that she is doing well, which is both the simplest version of the story and the truest one.

Tomasz still buys coffee at the bodega on 43rd and Skillman. He still sits on the milk crate. He no longer looks up only when pigeons fly past.