Little Brother

throat closed and my eyes watered.
    "What the hell are you doing to that poor, defenseless burrito?"
    She gave me a wicked smile. "I'm a spicy food addict," she said. "This is capsaicin oil in a mister."
    "Capsaicin —"
    "Yeah, the stuff in pepper spray. This is like pepper spray but slightly more dilute. And way more delicious. Think of it as Spicy Cajun Visine if it helps."
    My eyes burned just thinking of it.
    "You're kidding," I said. "You are so not going to eat that."
    Her eyebrows shot up. "That sounds like a challenge, sonny. You just watch me."
    She rolled the burrito up as carefully as a stoner rolling up a joint, tucking the ends in, then re-wrapping it in tinfoil. She peeled off one end and brought it up to her mouth, poised with it just before her lips.
    Right up to the time she bit into it, I couldn't believe that she was going to do it. I mean, that was basically an anti-personnel weapon she'd just slathered on her dinner.
    She bit into it. Chewed. Swallowed. Gave every impression of having a delicious dinner.
    "Want a bite?" she said, innocently.
    "Yeah," I said. I like spicy food. I always order the curries with four chilies next to them on the menu at the Pakistani places.
    I peeled back more foil and took a big bite.
    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 2,500. Pepper spray is a healthy three million. This stuff is a puny 100,000, 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 half million or so, two hundred 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.
    We turned the corner on 20th Street and walked up toward Dolores. Before we'd taken a single step, we could feel the buzz. It was like the hum of a million bees. There were lots of people streaming toward the park, and when I looked toward it, I saw that it was about a hundred times more crowded than it had been when I went to meet Ange.
    That sight made my blood run hot. It was a beautiful cool night and we were about to party, really party, party like there was no tomorrow. "Eat drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die."
    Without saying anything we both broke into a trot. There were lots of cops, with tense faces, but what the hell were they going to do? There were a lot of people in the park. I'm not so good at counting crowds. The papers later quoted organizers as saying there were 20,000 people; the cops said 5,000. Maybe that means there were 12,500.
    Whatever. It was more people than I'd ever stood among, as part of an unscheduled, unsanctioned, illegal event.
    We were among them in an instant. I can't swear to it, but I don't think there was anyone over