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The melted skeleton of the Eiffel Tower outside my living room window is a painful reminder that I should have left Paris in the spring of 2038, before it became too hot to go outside.

 

Our apartment is alabaster white. The color seemed charming when we moved in thirteen years ago, but now the white walls reflecting the blinding sun give me migraines.

 

My husband Ravi sits on the couch, busy texting. and a red light flickers behind him. I open the living room window and put my hand outside into the 62C day. My skin turns pink, then red, then magenta, then sizzles. The pain is tolerable. I do it to remind myself I’m still alive. It’s December 2048 and I haven’t been outside our apartment in over a decade. 

 

Today, sweat droplets slide down my spine like serpents. Even with air conditioning, the thermostat reads 40C. Days with rolling blackouts are excruciating. Ravi called me “crazy” when I first started wearing a scarlet bikini at home to keep cool, but I stopped caring what he thinks a long time ago. And that swimsuit reminds me of our honeymoon in Corsica.

 

We bought our 7th arrondissement flat in 2035, for its Eiffel Tower views. Our friends called us gauche for living amidst tourists, but we just laughed. We were newlyweds in love with Paris and each other, and nothing else mattered. Nina Simone played in our apartment each night and the Eiffel Tower twinkled in the backdrop. A sharp contrast to the horrid shriek of twisting metal heard across the city in 2043, when the Tower melted, sending it crashing to the ground.

 

My sunburnt hand stings, so I soothe it with a pouch of frozen food rations in the kitchen. There are seven burn marks on my left hand, different shades of muted brown, some so old they’re faded. Ravi never asks me about them. That red light is still flashing over in the living room, but I ignore it.

 

A garbage truck roars outside as it pulls up to our building. The garbage collectors look like astronauts in their white climate-controlled suits and helmets. I turn my gaze away from the kitchen window. Even with the ultraviolet coating on the glass, the vivid sun stings my retinas.

 

I hate seeing the city so devoid of life. 

 

Our favorite street café, Le Rouge, played jazz day and night. Now it’s boarded up, the sidewalks lain bare. The ghosts of the former café-goers sipping their fruity Burgundy are all that remains. 

 

The rose garden across the street is ash. I used to keep houseplants—aromatic lavender, vanilla orchids, polka dot plants—but they’re gone now. I’m desperate for green, but not fool enough to waste our drinking water pods on insatiable florae during a drought. Certainly, not while teenage gendarmerie risk their lives protecting France’s evaporating water fields.

 

The government tells us if we go outside, we’ll die of heat stroke within hours. I’m willing to risk it, to breathe real air. Crisp, clean O2. It’s been a decade since I’ve tasted fresh air.

 

A decade since Ravi stole my life.

 

“We have to leave France,” I’d begged him in April ‘38, when Paris hit a record 52C. Canada and Mongolia were still accepting climate refugees at the time.

 

“But our mortgage, our jobs, our friends,” Ravi had protested. When I pushed back, he’d conceded, “Ayla, just go without me.” Like that was an actual choice. Many of our conversations used to end like this. I was just too in love to notice I was a pushover.

 

So I did what I’ve always done, I followed a man. I followed a man off a cliff like a goddamn lemming because now all the world’s borders are closed, and we have nowhere left to go.

 

Scientists say they’re working on a solution, but it’s a lie. There’s no way out. This is our life now. Indoors. Work, eat, sleep, repeat, I don’t know how much longer I can take it. 

 

I should call my friends, my family,… a therapist, but I don’t feel like it. The heat makes you lethargic, uninterested. I take four naps a day. I can’t remember the last time Ravi and I said more than two words to each other. He messages women on Blendr on his phone. Emotional cheating became de rigueur after everyone got stuck indoors. He thinks I don’t notice. What’s worse is I don’t care.

 

Yesterday, a herd of camels strolled down the boulevard in front of our building. Ravi tells me I “have a wild imagination,” but those camels were real. Mirages only take place in the desert.

 

There’s a red warning light flickering on the air conditioner behind Ravi’s head. The fuel cell must be defective. Like our marriage, the cell was supposed to last a lifetime. If we don’t replace the fuel cell, the AC dies, and we’ll eventually slip into unconsciousness.

 

We should go stand in the emergency fuel cell distribution lines at the Louvre. If we leave now, we can make it back in time. There’s a bit of gas left in the car for dire emergencies.

 

Ravi hasn’t noticed the blinking crimson light. He’s on the couch, busy texting. 

 

I turn off the warning light with my burnt and swollen hand, still raw from a decade’s hurt.

 

I don’t tell Ravi about the fuel cell. Maybe I’ll tell him. Maybe I won’t. I haven’t decided. It’s not like he ever really gave me a choice. Why should he get one?

Copyright 2023 - SFS Publishing LLC

The Day the Eiffel Tower Fell

You could fry an egg on the sidewalk

Sabina Malik

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