Fiction

M.R. Lehman Wiens

Burning for you

The kitchen is hot and stale, like a rage bathed in languor. I cannot bear to look at her, and so I focus on my hand, the fingers curving around the cut glass of the tumbler, the dregs of a mojito, all ice and mint leaves, passing their cold into the pads of my fingers. I will the cold to travel up my elbow, to fill my body with relief, but the heat remains eternal.

“Well?” she says. The ice in my glass shifts, and the sound glitters in the silence.

I think of glaciers, icebergs, men and women and children freezing to death in the cold Atlantic, anything to distract myself from the heat. Sweat trickles down my nose, tickles my
mustache, and drops onto my lips. I taste the bitter salt. I cannot look at her, but I feel her stare, and any burgeoning ice within me melts to steam and is gone.

“I need another drink.” It’s the only true thing I can think to say, and it’s the only true thing I think she’ll allow herself to hear. The fresh ice from the fridge cracks and pops as I pour
whiskey on top of it, and this time the sound is lost as she yells, the words crushing the back of my skull, breaking my spine, setting my blood on fire. I swallow the whiskey in one gulp, chew the mint leaves I was too lazy to toss out, and pray that our fever breaks soon.