The quarterly review is at nine. I have prepared the slides. The slides are on my laptop. The laptop is on the bed. The bed is wet because I am wet because I am 39.4 and the body has exceeded the book's recommended temperature and I am in the territory the book does not map. The book says warmth is love. Warmth past 38.5 is not love. Warmth past 38.5 is the body voting against the quarterly.
Slide one: Q3 projections. The numbers are correct. The margins are — not the spreadsheet margins. The margins between the numbers and me. The numbers used to stay in the spreadsheet. The numbers are in the fever now. Revenue and the cost of the prescription and the days since I stood in my kitchen without holding the counter — all numbers, the spreadsheet does not distinguish, the fever does not distinguish, the distinguishing has stopped and the stopping is the fever and the meeting is at nine.
I mute. I cough. I unmute. I say: the margins are healthy. The word "healthy" leaves my mouth at 39.4. The word does not know. My colleagues do not know. The only honest instrument in this apartment is the thermometer on the nightstand. The thermometer does not file. The thermometer does not map. The thermometer does not pour. The thermometer says a number.
Slide three does not exist. I describe the roadmap from memory. The roadmap is convincing. The destination is plausible. My colleagues take notes about a future I invented from a bed with wet sheets and the notes will go into a system and the system will not flag the fever because the system measures deliverables, not temperature. My deliverable is: I did not die during the meeting.
The book says Hafize wore a groove from the sink to the window. I have worn a groove from the bed to the bathroom. Four metres. Three days. The groove is not devotion. The groove is the fever's commute.
The book says the Bosphorus carries everything south. My fever carries everything inward. The cats received a dead woman's temperature in forty-nine increments outward. My temperature increments upward. 38.5. 39.0. 39.4. No one is sitting in my warmth without asking. I am sitting in my own warmth and I did not ask either.
I am the only character in this book producing her own warmth. Everyone else receives — from a chair, a stone, a strait, a dispersal. I generate. My body is the furnace. The furnace does not care about the quarterly. The furnace runs on its own schedule and the schedule is: 39.4 until further notice.
The meeting is over. The laptop is closed. The slides are saved. The roadmap does not exist. The fever continues. The sheets need changing. The bathroom is four metres away. The four metres are the roadmap. The roadmap is the only honest one I have presented today.
— The Woman in the Fever
A city. A bed. 39.4.
P.S. The doctor is on hold. The hold music is 107.3 megahertz. The fado is old. The singer is dead. The frequency bends toward salt and sweat is salt and I am the saltiest surface in this building. The hold is the only thing holding me.