There is no Tabasco sauce on our table. My usual order—the "Just Bacon" burger with no onions, pickles, or garlic aioli, please—will be unsatisfactory if it is not drenched in Tabasco sauce. The sauce needs to ooze out of my burger patty when I mush the buns together to take a bite. But the Tabasco sauce and I have some "beef" to settle. I do not know how many people the Tabasco sauce has been with today. My heart races as I stare, wide-eyed, at the woman sitting at the table next to us as she sucks her manicured fingers free from the remnants of her burning-hot, burnt-orange wings smothered in the creamy richness of ranch, and I picture her fingers drenched in saliva around the bottle of my precious Tabasco sauce. Tiny stings of fear accumulate in my left temple, behind my eyelid, making my vision blur from the pressure of my overactive thoughts. I grimace when our kind waitress finally places the Tabasco sauce in front of me; it is not her fault that my chest burns as I stare at the daunting streaks of dried sauce on the side of the bottle that I wish she had wiped away. My partner stares at me expectantly. He waits for me to douse my burger in the sauce so he can do the same; the trick originated with him during the early days of our relationship. He does not understand how it feels to be at war with reason; of seeing all objects from the outside world as dangerous and contaminated. But I do not like burgers without Tabasco sauce. The bottle waits in front of me. My hometown's Chili's is becoming more crowded and my breath quickens as I continue to stare at the bottle.