FEVER BLISTERS
by
Joyce Carol Oates
‘Why am I here?’—on foot, in absurdly high-heeled sandals, in a tight-fitting red polka dot halter-top dress that showed the tops of her breasts, in Miami. In waves of blinding, brilliant, suffocating heat. Not Miami Beach, which, to a degree, though she had not visited it in years, she knew, but Miami, the city, the inner city, which she did not know at all. And she had no car, she must have parked her car somewhere and forgotten the location, or had someone stolen it?—there were so many scruffy-looking people on the street here, and the majority of them black, Hispanic, Asian; strangers who glanced at her with contemptuous curiosity, or looked through her as if she did not exist. She could not remember where she’d come from, or how she’d got here, dazed with the terrifying tropical heat which was like no heat she had ever experienced in North America. Carless, in Miami!—she, who had not been without a car at her disposal since girlhood, and, in the affluent residential suburb of the northerly city in which she lived, a young widow whose children were grown and gone, famous among her friends for driving distances no longer than a block, and often shorter.
It was a nightmare, yet so fiery was the air, so swollen the sun in the sky, like a red-flushed goitre, she understood that she was not asleep but hideously awake—‘For the first time in my life.’ On all sides people were passing her, pointedly making their way around her as she walked nearly staggering in the high-heeled sandals, forced frequently to stop and lean against a building, to catch her breath. The mere touch of the buildings burnt her fingers—the sidewalks, glittering with mica, must have been blisteringly hot. The wide avenue was clotted with slow-moving traffic and flashes of blinding light shot at her from glaring windshields and strips of chrome; she had to shield her eyes with her fingers. How was it possible she’d come to Miami without her dark glasses?
. . .
