Connor Thompson

Because of the heat, she decides to sleep downstairs. “This old townhouse funnels the stuff upwards like acid reflux,” she says. She slips from the sheets, props the standing fan under her arm.  It’s fine by him; he relishes in spreading out on the bed without her. (Starfishing, she calls it.) He listens to her footsteps recede on the stairs and unfurls his limbs to the four corners of the mattress. Above him the ceiling fan carves circles in the air, striving to please. Two days ago an ambulance came down their street at an un-ambulance-y pace and pulled its…