The Meltdown

The mobile phone vibrated on the polished kitchen table and danced to its own impulses.

Tina knew who was calling; she had expected this call, and yet it took six or seven rings for her to bring up the energy to slide her finger across the smooth display and start the conversation.

‘Hello?’ she asked into the smoothness of the interface, for no other reason than this was the way she always answered phone calls.

‘Hi darling’, Henry’s voice sounded clear and near, like a fresh summer wind, like white curtains billowing in a breeze by an open balcony door.

‘How are you? What took you so long? Have you been napping?’

Her husband called from the other side of the globe and yet there seemed to be not even a mini-second of a delay in the line. The marvels of technology!

‘No, I have been right here. But have you seen the news? This weekend is the hottest weekend in the UAE since they started recording temperatures. It is sooooo hot, I don’t want to move!’

Outside the circle of the AC high up on the kitchen wall, sweat started to form on Tina’s back. It pooled along her spine. She could feel the droplets forming at the back of her knees and in the crack of her butt. Uncomfortable, she wiped herself with a t-shirt from the pile of dirty clothes ready to be washed.

‘Is it that hot? Then I am glad I am missing this weekend. Here, it is nice and cool. Why don’t you up the AC?’

‘I have done that already. All the ACs are on, in all the rooms, on the highest setting. But they are either too old, or just not built to deal with these kind of temperatures! The moment I step away from their air stream, I start sweating and I end up looking like I just stepped out of the shower!’

Henry apologised for her situation, but in his tone she could hear that he was glad to be far away. They briefly told of how much they missed each other, before he reminded her of his return on Sunday morning.

‘Will you be there?’ He asked. ‘I think it will be around ten or 11 before I get in from Dubai.’

‘I have the day off, and don’t see why I should not be here. If I have to go to the office, I will leave a note for you.’

‘Okay, hon, I miss you. Take it easy, okay?’

‘I miss you, too.’

He disconnected first.

The phone had become hot and heavy in her hand. Where it touched her ear, her skin felt like it had burnt her.

Too hot, much too hot! To recover a little bit, she decided to lie on the bed, under the AC, and wait to see if the sweating would stop.

Out of the corner of her eyes she noticed some visual disturbance around the edges of her image as she passed the hall mirror.

‘I need to start wearing my glasses, even indoors’, she told herself as she slumped onto the shiny cotton sheets she had picked only a few days ago. The old ones were entirely too soft and warm.

Above her, the AC blew cold air on the highest setting, gently caressing her up and down her naked body, lulling her slowly into a nap from which she woke sometime later. The gentle caress had turned into a choleric cough. Unbelieving, she stared in horror as the AC vomited out some humid, condensated air at the bed on which she lay, before it hiccupped one last time and died.

Tina rubbed her eyes and decided to call the landlord to report the need for most urgent repairs. She only hoped that there would be people available immediately to come and do the work. Or maybe she should simply go to get a new unit and demand reimbursement. Hmh. What to do?

Unseeing, still a little perturbed, she stumbled into her master bathroom for urgent relief.

She hit the flush and turned.

In the mirror, she hardly recognised herself. The person looking back was her, most definitely, but she seemed to have lost the distinctness of her outline. The person looking back at her had lost all her sharpness. There were smudges around her shoulders she could not account for.

Tina wiped her eyes and looked again, convincing herself that all was as it should be.

When she called the landlord, he did not pick up.

It was almost 4pm, the temperature had climbed to just over 50C, and Tina decided to get dressed to go to the mall to buy a new air conditioning unit for her bedroom to replace the one that had just died.

With even this one old AC out of action, the temperature in the apartment had risen already. Yes, she could sleep on the settee in the lounge, but that would kink her back and shoulders and it would be exceedingly uncomfortable, so she dismissed the idea. No, better to go and buy a new one. One that had more power.

In the bedroom, Tina angled a pair of shorts from her wardrobe. She noticed that her legs somehow had lost shape. Where they had been solid and defined before, they seemed to have turned soft and wobbly.

‘I am losing my mind! This heat is getting to me!’

In the kitchen, she poured some tepid water from the weekly gallon bottle into a glass and thirstily drank it down, then a second. Before she could decide whether she had enough, her phone started vibrating on the kitchen table again.

‘Hello?’

‘I had a missed call from you?’

The landlord.

‘Yes, indeed. I just wanted to let you know that the AC in my bedroom has given up. I was about to leave and buy a new unit …’

‘No need, no need’, the man interrupted. ‘I will bring a new unit. Just wait.’

‘When will you come?’ He had made empty promises before, so Tina was loathe to put her trust in him.

‘I will be there in one hour. One hour, just wait!’

It was 4:30 now. One hour would make it 5:30. Even if he was late, there still would be enough time to install a new unit in her bedroom so she could sleep there that night. She agreed to wait.

In the meantime, Tina busied herself with small chores – housekeeping items that did not require too much movement.

When she passed the hall mirror again and thought that she was getting fuzzy round the edges, she went in search for her glasses. Resolutely, she pushed them onto her nose. But Tina’s skin was so slippery from all the sweat that they kept falling down and in disgust with the entire situation, she flung them onto the polished kitchen table, where they came to rest next to her phone.

The afternoon turned into late afternoon turned into evening and still, the landlord did not show.

Around 8pm, she tried to call him again but received no reply.

Around 9pm, covered in sweat, Tina decided to sleep in the lounge where the AC at least was ineffectively blowing cool air and she did not feel too bad.

Around midnight, Tina rolled off the couch and wobbled on unsteady legs into her bedroom. The sofa was so uncomfortable that she might as well not sleep from heat but at least have her body supported by a sturdy mattress.

She lay in the darkness, wondering how she would be able to cope once Henry was back and the heat off his body would make both of them suffer. She lifted her arm to receive some cooling. Her skin shimmered moist. She raised first one leg, then the other, but there was no relief. In the end, Tina gave up and rolled from one sweaty patch on the bed to the next, hoping for the night to end.

On Saturday, the landlord stopped by to bring the promised new AC unit but when he rang their doorbell, nobody opened. He waited, he knocked just in case, and then simply went home: it was too hot to hang about and wait. One of them would call, no doubt, to remind him and then they would set up a time that suited all parties. He did not mind that they lost that AC in the bedroom: the AC units back at his house all worked splendidly.

When Henry called during a stopover in London, Tina did not answer the phone. She must be out, probably doing the shopping for his return. And he knew his wife: she never answered her phone when she was out and about.

It was shortly after 10 on Sunday morning when Henry unlocked the door to his apartment.

‘Tina, honey, I am home!’

He pushed his case into the hallway, waiting to hear Tina answer.

In the stillness of the dim, unlit hallway, he paused. Then he walked into the kitchen. Her phone and glasses lay on the kitchen table. He opened the fridge. The usual food stuffs were there, so Tina was not still out shopping. She was only gone a moment.

In the lounge, there was no note for him, but maybe she had to pop out to the office after all and simply forgot … no, Tina would not forget!

‘Tina?’

He kept calling her name, nonplussed. The AC units were on in all the rooms, as she had told him, they were all toiling away on the highest setting with little or no noticeable effect. The heat was stifling, but Henry was glad to be back nonetheless. But where was Tina? He shrugged and unpacked his suitcase in the kitchen where he dumped the dirty laundry in front of the washing machine.

Musing over Tina’s absence, he wandered into the bedroom.

This was the only AC unit that was out of service. He remembered that in the past, this one had given them bother and he was not surprised.

There were new bedsheets, bright pink ones. They looked nice and cool. However, there were sweaty, greasy smudges all over. Clumps of hair lay curled in places. What had she done? Poor thing must have sweated so badly! Even now, the moisture had not dried. And her hair … she always moulted in the summer, like a puppy dog …

‘I know what I will do!’ He smiled to himself as he tore off the new sheets, rolled them up in his arms and carried them to the kitchen. Her essence had soaked so deeply into the material that he could smell her as if she was right there. He took a deep sniff and closed his eyes.

He pushed the soiled sheets into the washing machine, added some of his dirty shirts, powder and selected the super clean option. Tina would be pleased that he showed initiative.

He watched for a moment as water filled the round sight glass and the laundry started to tumble around and around inside the machine.