The Heat
by Tighe Flatley
The thermometer on the dash read 127 degrees Fahrenheit. The driver turned the air conditioning down to 68, and the fans up. They look like people who would want it to be cold, he thought.
In the shadowy backseat, James sat with his wife, Diane.
“It’s so hot that birds are falling from the sky,” James said, a headline glowing from his phone. Diane had seen the post earlier: the birds’ hearts were stopping, overheated in the Mumbai sun, their bodies crumbling to the scalding, caked earth.
“Just like I preached last week back home in Atlanta,” James said. “The signs are everywhere that God is angry with us.”
“You said it,” Diane responded.
And then she thought, But I wrote it.
The church was James’ idea 12 years ago. After three failed businesses, Diane was worried their relationship was over. But then James started talking about creating a purpose; he formed weekly meetings with men younger than he, men looking for an escape.
Soon, Diane was involved, and on the seventh month, James and Diane created Eternal Land Churches. She co-signed for property with a parking lot bigger than the mall’s.
Since then, Diane led operations, barreling the church to international growth. She planned the sermon. She hired the bands and fired them when they asked for money. She managed the Facebook account and wrote the posts, measuring likes, comments, donations, pitching the numbers to potential investors.
That’s how they arrived in Mumbai. A number of wealthy followers had reached out. It could be the next location to join the international group, if everything went according to plan – her plan.
“The traffic here is ungodly, isn’t it?” James said toward the driver.
“Sometimes, yes,” the driver said. “When it’s hot it partic-“
“Look at this place,” James said, looking out the window, oblivious to the stares from the driver in the rearview mirror.
Diane turned toward the window she had been avoiding. She focused on the hand mark on the glass – small, about the size of an apple. She had heard of the children, how they would tiptoe through traffic and ask for money or food. She felt prepared to see it. The children, all shirtless in the heat, came to their car on the first day. One girl, barely tall enough to see into the backseat, had pressed her hand against the tinted window and left a mark. It followed Diane like a ghost.
Suddenly, a smack from the front. There, at the base of the windshield, was a small bird, as red as fire, it’s neck a right angle from its body.
“Should we remove that?” Diane asked.
“We’re already 10 minutes late for the next meeting,” James said, his eyes locked on the dusk cast by his phone.
“Please,” Diane said, the small hand on the window pressing her further into the cold, pulling at her neck, grasping at her heart.
Hearing her plea, the driver pulled over without saying a word. Before he put the car in park, Diane opened the door. The heat pushed in so quickly that she choked. It was as if an enormous aquarium shattered, releasing an ocean that had long been held back by a wall of glass.
Sweat was already dripping down her back when she reached the front of the car. She saw the heat rising from the hood. The driver’s eyes went wide as he watched her pick up the bird between her thumb and forefinger and place it in her left palm.
She moved to the side of the road, golden clouds of dirt dancing around her white designer sneakers, and placed the bird onto the ground.
“Did you take a photo?” James asked, when she sat back in the frigid car.
Diane looked at him, still sensing the bird’s thin, deep feathers against her palm.
“What do you mean?” she asked. Sweat snaked down her forehead and neck; the cool, black leather of the seat seared through the wet of her blouse.
“We need to use this,” he said. “Make it a post. The investors will eat this up. Biblical heat, nature destroyed, a sign we should be here?”
The fans whirred.
“Let’s put it on Facebook,” James said. “Tell me: what should I say?”
Diane, the driver noticed, did not answer. He thought he heard her start to say something, but it was just a sigh, the kind he felt across the city when monsoon season arrived each year. It was a sound of exhaustion, a realization that your anguish is being answered even if it now risks a flood.
He waited to hear Diane’s response. The rains, he thought, better come soon.
Tighe Flatley spends his days directing marketing campaigns, his early mornings writing, and his late evenings editing. He lives in San Francisco where he is a founding member of the Page Street Writers. If you need him, he's usually by the snack table. Follow him on Instagram and Twitter @tigheflatley, or contact him at tighe.flatley@gmail.com.