47: Heat Wave

“My word, is there no end to this?” Evelyn moaned to Lily, rapidly waving her folded paper fan at the back of her neck. The two of them made their way along the congested sidewalk on their last leg toward the Trust. Already her camisole was soaked through and even the cotton tap pants she wore clung to her body miserably.

“Almost there,” Lily panted back, keeping pace with the rest of the teeming masses. She shuddered beside Evelyn at the sudden chill as they drifted into the revolving door, though even the air conditioning only lowered the building’s temperature to tolerable.

Twice during the last month—once shortly after Evelyn had been discharged from the hospital, and again towards the end of the miserable July—Trust employees had been sent home without pay when blackouts shut down the cooling fans. Without the moving air, the building’s internal temperatures skyrocketed into the stratosphere. Even the potted plant Evelyn kept on the conference table in Andrew’s office had wilted,