CORY DOCTOROW · 154
Big mistake. You know that feeling you get when you take a big bite of horseradish or wasabi or whatever, and it feels like your sinuses are closing at the same time as your windpipe, filling your head with trapped, nuclear-hot air that tries to batter its way out through your watering eyes and nostrils? That feeling like steam is about to pour out of your ears like a cartoon character? This was a lot worse. This was like putting your hand on a hot stove, only it’s not your hand, it’s the entire inside of your head, and your esophagus all the way down to your stomach. My entire body sprang out in a sweat and I choked and choked. Wordlessly, she passed me my horchata and I managed to get the straw into my mouth and suck hard on it, gulping down half of it in one go. “So there’s a scale, the Scoville scale, that we chili-fanciers use to talk about how spicy a pepper is. Pure capsaicin is about 15 million Scovilles. Tabasco is about 50,000. Pepper spray is a healthy three million. This stuff is a puny 200,000, about as hot as a mild Scotch Bonnet Pepper. I worked up to it in about a year. Some of the real hardcore can get up to a million or so, twenty times hotter than Tabasco. That’s pretty freaking hot. At Scoville temperatures like that, your brain gets totally awash in endorphins. It’s a better body-stone than hash. And it’s good for you.” I was getting my sinuses back now, able to breathe without gasping. “Of course, you get a ferocious ring of fire when you go to the john,” she said, winking at me. Yowch. “You are insane,” I said. “Fine talk from a man whose hobby is building and smashing laptops,” she said. “Touche,” I said and touched my forehead. “Want some?” She held out her mister. “Pass,” I said, quickly enough that we both laughed. When we left the restaurant and headed for Dolores Park, she put her arm around my waist and I found that she was just the right height for me to put my arm around her shoulders. That was new. I’d never been a tall guy, and the girls I’d dated had all been my height — teenaged girls grow faster than guys, which is a cruel trick of nature. It was nice. It felt nice.