Their baggage arrived on the revolving belt without a hitch—the two men with a small suitcase apiece, Annie with two large cases. The shuttle brought them from the airport outside of the main city into the city proper, with little or no real suburbs to speak of. Derrick was saddened to see that the Eiffel Tower was not immediately visible, imagining that the giant steel monument towered over the city like a colossus. Even still, his neck craned to see all the architecture, people walking around their homes and going about their business and cars driving up and down the roads on the way to somewhere or another.

The only large city he’d ever seen was Denver, which now seemed to be a poor excuse for a city. Though Denver’s skyscrapers were imposing and gave the big-city appeal a run for its money, the quaint and almost archaic architecture of the ages-old city brought it a charm he couldn’t explain aside to say “hot damn, we’re in fucking France!” His friends couldn’t help but agree.

One thing he couldn’t help but notice, however, was that the city wasn’t the cleanest thing he’d ever observed. Denver, though filled with typical American disdain for trash receptacles, was still moderately clean and well-preserved. He noted that everything in Paris almost seemed to take on a brown tinge, as if one were looking at it through a thin haze of smog. Whether it was dirt or simply the effects of erosion and decades and centuries of bearing the elements was anyone’s guess.