105.9°

Content warning: this story contains strong language and drug use.

The fever rested on Jimmy’s brow like a crown, heavy and cloying and bright. Chills wracked him and ache dawned on his muscles like gentle epiphany, as if surfacing from somewhere deeper within him. I am the Shivering King, he thought serenely. These blankets are my royal blankets.

“Gonna light you up real good,” Heavy Eddie had promised, ever the pitchman even from a hospital bed. “Nothing fuckin’ like it.”

He was correct.

Jimmy writhed back and forth beneath his sheets, unable to settle into a single position. The inside of his head felt viscous and red-gold. His thoughts moved in thrumming waves, his mind a boat anchored at sea.

But his throat was dry. Gradually he rose from his bed, shaking off his many layers of covers, and conducted himself almost stealthily toward the kitchen, stepping lightly so as not to make the floorboards creak. It was midday and he lived alone, but still he felt he should respect the apartment’s silence, refrain from making his presence too obvious. In sobriety’s foresight he’d left a glass of water out for himself, and as he drank he observed his kitchen with wide new eyes. It brought him back for some reason to that hospital room, the alien brightness of it. Eddie’s face shining, cherubic, suffused with feverish pink. Jimmy had overheard the doctors talking; they were worried he might die.

Obviously they had no idea who it was they had on their hands. Eddie was a practiced trafficker, with the immune system to prove it. He’d bounce back so fast their heads would spin, and the hospital would never know his real name or find his real address to collect on the bill. That was how they met, actually. Jimmy was fixing up IDs for quick cash, a couple years back. He was pretty good at it, good enough that Eddie had wanted to keep in touch. That was how he got his start. Weird, he thought, that he’d forgotten about it until just now.

Dizziness crept up on him and pounced, a nauseating rush. He clasped the edge of the kitchen counter with both hands, recognizing the precipice of a bad trip. Rather than attempt the journey back to bed he deposited himself on the couch, which he’d also stocked in advance with extra pillows and blankets. It was no less comfortable than his bed: the Shivering King now ruling in exile.

Music, music might be good.

He fished his phone from the pocket of his sweatpants and found the jazz album that girl Lizzie had told him to listen to. Since he was going to tell her he’d liked it he figured he might as well hear it too. It was moody and slow, and as the melodies wound their way around him they changed the flavor of his thoughts, of the way the light sat in the room. He took a calm slow breath and settled into the blankets, closing his eyes. Good to focus, to drink this in like he meant to, while he could. Once he got better he’d have immunity and then he would never be able to hit this same high, from this strain, ever again.

For some reason, the buzz of his phone sent dread washing through his gut even before he checked it – and sure enough, when he did check he found catastrophe delivered quietly in his notifications. It was one of his buyers, texting to back out. Some bullshit about a delayed paycheck, profuse apologies for the late notice, please reach out again next time he had a hookup, et cetera, et cetera. And with that about six hundred dollars evaporated.

Jimmy touched the top of his phone to his forehead. He blew air out from his cheeks.

He didn’t bother texting back, just started scrolling through his contacts to look for a replacement. It was now or never, since he couldn’t exactly stash his supply and hold onto it for later. He’d already made two sales and had another lined up for tomorrow, but of course he couldn’t charge Heavy Eddie’s prices. His customers knew potency decreased with each body the fever passed through. Eddie sat pretty because he knew someone who worked in a lab, but Jimmy needed to make at least one more deal out of his before he lost contagiousness or he’d be in the red. So who could he hit up?

There was Pete Skiller, the line cook at Adelaide’s. He’d definitely go for this, but probably couldn’t afford it on short notice. Maddie Maddox, who was never low on cash but was out of town all week at some tech conference. And Carter Hills – good old Smarter Carter. He was clean now, working an office job apparently, but back in his day…. Maybe he wasn’t too far out of last hurrah territory yet, maybe if he knew what Jimmy had right now – but no, he wasn’t going to be that asshole, at least not today. He also thought about texting Lizzie, the idea borne into his head by the music still playing from his phone, but he’d only seen her a couple of times so far and didn’t know if she used like that, and if not he didn’t want to be that asshole either. Maybe if he came up empty everywhere else first.

Resentment toward his flighty buyer bubbled idly as he scrolled through names. Today was supposed to be his day to just enjoy the ride, not to work. The novel and entrancing patterns of his thoughts resisted being turned toward this effort, like he was trying to drag his brain through thick muck. He felt moments slipping irretrievably away, wasting the limited time that he had with this.

He came to a name that made his thumb stop and hover, saved in his phone as Mike DON’T TEXT.

He would buy, though. He would definitely buy. Goddamn it.

Jimmy typed out a message before he could talk himself out of it. hey, got rosepetal fever secondhand right now if you’d want to get in on it. i could do 500. Line break line break line break. missed you last month at mom’s funeral by the way you piece of shit.

He took off the “piece of shit,” then after a moment’s begrudging consideration the whole last line, before he hit send. He still meant it, but – well, he was also still trying to make a sale.

He pulled the blankets over his head, sealing himself in muggy darkness, and the faint buzz of the text back came within moments. He told Mike to meet him here as soon as he could, the sooner to get it over with, and didn’t think he’d be waiting too long. Mike seemed eager.

But to his surprise Mike didn’t show up after an hour, or even after two, and eventually Jimmy drifted off to sleep. When he woke up he felt like he was floating inside his own body, drifting up against the ceiling of his skin like a balloon caught in a corner. It was not an entirely unpleasant feeling but it took him almost twenty minutes to come out of it. It was starting to get dark outside. He checked his phone to make sure Mike hadn’t canceled, though he still wasn’t worried much about that. He’d never known Mike to miss out on a score. Jimmy had far greater expectations for him to show up here today than he had for the funeral.

Realization hit him like a drowsy slow-motion punch. Could that be what was taking so long? Was Mike nervous to see him? Did he feel bad? Well… good, he deserved to feel bad. But it would be nice if he would show up and get this done so Jimmy didn’t have to spend any more time thinking about him and souring his trip more than he already had.

He was shuffling back from the bathroom, quivering with the bracing shock of being out from under the covers, when the knock at the door finally came. Mike stood with his hands in his coat pockets, rocking on his heels the way he always did when he had to stand still. But if there was any self-consciousness or nervousness in him now Jimmy couldn’t see it. He was older than Jimmy but didn’t look it, never had; his features were disarmingly youthful and there was a childlike looseness in the way he carried himself.

“Damn,” he said, eyes lighting up with interest, “you look like you got hit by a truck.”

“Telling you, this Rosepetal shit’s no joke.” Immediately Jimmy seethed at himself for slipping so obligingly into everything’s-normal rapport. He coughed for a moment and then cast about for a truer tone, hoping to achieve some sort of brisk firmness. “So, you coming in or can we just do it right here?”

“Whatever’s easier.”

“Let’s do it here. I’m tired, you know?”

“Sure, works for me.” Mike retrieved an assortment of folded bills from different pockets and amassed them one by one into his fist. Despite his headache Jimmy watched carefully so that he wouldn’t have to be seen counting them by hand.

“I was thinking actually,” Mike said, pausing when the bundle of bills was complete, “and I don’t know, you’re tired I guess, but I’d been thinking maybe I could maybe hang for a bit. If you’re not doing anything.”

Jimmy had seen this coming and was prepared to turn it aside – not cruelly, not warmly either, but perfectly dispassionately: “I think it actually hits a lot better when you’re alone.”

“Oh, yeah. Yeah, that makes sense.”

“You’ll see what I mean, trust me.”

Jimmy tucked the cash into his pocket and took a moment to glance both ways down the hall. Seeing no snooping neighbors, he brought a shivering hand up to his face and ran his tongue several times across his palm, as if licking a row of envelopes. He pursed his lips, working fresh saliva into his mouth, then repeated the process until his hand was thoroughly coated, a cooling sheet of moisture across his palm.

Mike was doing the standard routine buyers always did, looking tastefully down at his shoes while he waited. Then, without lifting his gaze, he mumbled, “Hey by the way, I just wanted to say, just that I – well, I know I should’ve, you know, I mean I uh….”

For just an instant Jimmy had the uncomfortable sensation that he was about to be confronted with a legitimate miracle to which he had no idea how to react, but what came next was nothing more than a throat-clear and then a short “Well.” And Mike nodded to himself, as if he’d accomplished what he set out to. Jimmy realized, almost dryly, that he found himself relieved and disappointed at the same time.

He reached out and pressed his spit-slick palm to his brother’s. “Enjoy.”

“Well, I appreciate it man,” Mike said over their clasped hands. “Thanks for thinking of me.” Though he must have known exactly what had transpired for Jimmy to set this up so last-minute.

Jimmy stood for a moment and watched as Mike walked away; he wasn’t sure why. Then he closed the door and journeyed back through his apartment to the warmth of his bed where, with just a bit of time and effort, he succeeded in restoring his thoughts to more pleasant trajectories.

Editor's Note:

Certainly an original premise to envision "fever" as a commercial object. But then also memory and the strange intimacies people make of their own damage. The story’s conceit is at once elegant and unsettling. Illness can be pursued as a high, passed hand to hand, valued by its potency, and diminished by every body it crosses. Yet the author, Martin, is less interested in the mechanics of this world than in the emotional economy it reveals.

Jimmy, alone in his apartment and suspended between delirium and calculation, treats his sickness as both private transport and perishable inventory. He wants to surrender to the sensation, to become the Shivering King of his own diminished room, but the fever keeps dragging him back to the practical indignities of money and buyers and loss and all else. His altered state is comic, even faintly pathetic, but it is also clarifying. Beneath the hustle lies a grief he has not quite admitted to himself, and a family wound he would rather convert into a transaction than acknowledge directly.

By the time Jimmy’s brother arrives, the story has quietly transformed its speculative premise into something more ordinary and more painful. A sale becomes a visitation. A handshake becomes an inheritance of resentment. Of need and the horrific "almost-apology." Martin’s achievement is to make the fever feel imagined and the ache beneath it unmistakably real.—Jon Negroni

Conner Martin is a writer, copy editor, and sometimes Dungeon Master based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. When not writing, he can often be found hiking, seeing live music, or gaming.

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