A Morning at 102.0

By 6:30 a.m. in St. Louis, July already felt like a furnace that had been left on all night. Lin Yuan stood at the apartment window with a cup of iced coffee that had already turned into lukewarm brown water. Across the street, the breakfast shop’s awning had sagged at one corner, the fabric trembling in the rising heat like skin about to peel. Someone downstairs was complaining about the noise from an air-conditioning compressor. Someone else had rolled every window in their car down and left them that way, as if the street wind might bring relief instead of a wet slap to the face. His phone lit up with a weather alert: the heat wave would continue, with apparent temperatures nearing 120 degrees Fahrenheit. Lin read it twice and said nothing.