The Core of the Sun by Johanna Sinisalo

kitchen, almost jumping up and down, like a dog whose owner has a treat for her. I almost forget to turn on the radio to fill the room with noise.
    â€œHow much? Where’d you get it? Is it jar, bottle, chunk, flake?”
    â€œNone of those.”
    My shoulders slump. It’s some kind of cruel joke. Everything on the market is either chopped and in jars, mashed into a bottled sauce, powdered, or—the best kind—dried flakes.
    Jare pulls a bag out of his pocket. “Fresh.”
    My mouth hangs open.
    Fresh chilis. I’ve never seen fresh chilis.
    Habaneros, no less. Not anywhere near the strongest kind, but still, more than 200,000 scovilles. A fantastic score.
    A bag of little red- and orange-tinged, paprika-shaped fresh habaneros.
    Three thoughts come into my mind, in a very particular order.
    One. I am about to be buzzed.
    Two. There’s stuff on the market again.
    Three. Someone’s growing it. And that someone isn’t far from here.
    I make us something to eat. Now that I’m assured of my fixes, and that they’re really, really good fixes, I can wait half an hour and maximize my enjoyment. I have enough food on hand to make us a sort of thick ragout: tomatoes, onions, garlic, carrots, green beans, salt, pepper. I simmer the chopped vegetables for fifteen minutes and then dump half of them into another pan. That’s for Jare—the best dealers never touch the stuff themselves.
    I put on some latex cleaning gloves to chop the habaneros. Although I’ve never handled the fresh stuff, I assume that touching it with your bare hands—touching any fresh chili—could be a big risk. Even if you wash your hands carefully afterward, they can still have capsaicin on them. I know that from handling the flake. You accidentally rub your eyes or your nose and it can be really painful. Really strong stuff can even injure the skin on your hands. The way of the chili is not the way of the finger. They don’t say that for nothing.
    Although I want a really, really good fix, I also know what this score might be capable of doing. So I’ll pace myself. One whole chili should be enough. The aroma of the minced habanero is something new, intoxicatingly fruity and pungent. My mouth begins to water so much that I have to swallow. I pour the pieces into the pan meant for me. Just ten more minutes.
    I don’t ask Jare where he got it. Not now. That’s beside the point right now.

JARE REMEMBERS
    November 2016
    I’d been out looking at the bulletin boards one more time. Nothing new had turned up in quite a while, as you know. But I went to look anyway; it was better than just waiting around, antsy and uncertain.
    Then a couple of days ago I got a surprise. I saw a new bit of graffiti in among the old, on the side of a house that was scheduled for demolition. This new mark didn’t follow the rules. It didn’t have a date or a key word, just a picture of an elongated, slightly crooked heart with a little flame-like shape nestled on top between its two curves. It couldn’t be anything but a chili pepper. The picture seemed to be purposely vague so that if any random law-­abiding citizens looked at it they would think that it was in fact a heart, with a little flame on top, a scrawl put there to express some lovestruck person’s feelings. Of course my first thought was to wonder if there was a refreshments bar or another public place in Tampere that had a heart or a flame in its name, but I couldn’t think of one. Still, the drawing gave me hope—it was a reference to chilis, so somebody might have some.
    I went to look at all the bulletin boards again over the next few days. Then yesterday, in the pedestrian underpass at the railway station, the very same drawing appeared on top of the old scribbles, small and unobtrusive, but there it was, and it was quite fresh.
    My head was humming with the thought of it as I walked back to work. How could I follow