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"  In March, we debuted Letter-Inspired Fiction: short stories based on intriguing lines from your letters. This month a new writer filled in the story behind another peculiar sentence. &amp;quot;I feel like I have hot-chocolate blood and golden skin,&amp;quot; she says.  Wind is rattling the walls. I&amp;#039;m thinking, It&amp;#039;s starting again. She squirms until the blanket&amp;#039;s twisted, hugs her knees until she shakes. It&amp;#039;s a single bed, a bare room, a cheap hostel. It&amp;#039;s a mountain town, a poor country, midwinter. It&amp;#039;s a long story. &amp;quot;You used to sing to me,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;You brought me back.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Sweetheart,&amp;quot; I say. That morning we&amp;#039;d stood at the mouth of the silver mine. Men filed in silently, as to a church. The air was sepia, so thin our ears rang. The people here chew coca leaves. They carry enormous burdens in colorful slings. The mine was dark and breathing. She hid her eyes. &amp;quot;You&amp;#039;re squeezing too tight,&amp;quot; she gasps. &amp;quot;I feel like a diamond.&amp;quot; She&amp;#039;s trying to get better, to feel like herself. I don&amp;#039;t know how to help her. It&amp;#039;s been years since I sang. &amp;quot;Don&amp;#039;t look,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;ll burn your eyes!&amp;quot;  Then I&amp;#039;m up, pulling on sweaters, wind thrashing paper around the room. I gather her in the blankets, lurch to a street of broken stone. A family huddles over a candle. A dog raises its snout. I&amp;#039;m light-headed, seeing stars.  Step by step in cellophane night. I can feel her shrinking beneath the lunar atmosphere. Where is the coca now? Where&amp;#039;s the heat of her blood? At the mine entrance I hesitate. She&amp;#039;s weeping in my arms. The air tastes of metal, sighing from underground. Andrew Foster Altschul&amp;#039;s short fiction has appeared in the anthologies Best New American Voices 2006 and O. Henry Prize Stories 2007. He is the author of the new novel Lady Lazarus (Harcourt, $25), his first. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/books/a4381/andrew-foster-altschul-0508/>