My wife is so hot. I mean that literally -- with the exception of our bedroom, we don't have air conditioning in my apartment. This does not make her a happy lady.

In cooler months, when my wife is upset I have to first play that game that all husbands play with their wives before I am allowed to know what's wrong:

"What's wrong?" I will ask.

"Oh, nothing," she will say.

Of course, this is not true. She is simply following a practice that has existed since men first took an interest in women. There is something wrong, but she's going to make me pry it out of her. After repeating the above question no less than 15 times, I'll finally get this answer: "Oh, I don't know."

So, something is wrong, but she doesn't know what it is. This, too, is part of the ritual, and so I begin a married man's version of 20 Questions to determine the source of her displeasure: "Is the thing that's upsetting you a person, place, or thing? Is it bigger than a breadbox? Is it located in the kitchen?"

In the summer, however, my wife does not have the patience to carry on such time-honored marital ceremonies. When I return home from work, as soon as I set foot in our apartment, she will let me know what's on her mind.

"It's hot!" she will growl.

At first I get apprehensive. She states her complaint as if she has been sitting all day, staring at our apartment's doorknob, waiting for it to turn, so she can hit me with the undeniable truth that it's, you know, hot. But then, foolish man that I am, I let my guard down.

"I'm off the hook," I'll think. "Surely she can't blame me for the weather. That's got to do with the earth's rotation and ocean currents and the like -- can't blame me for that."

Married men are right now shouting at their computer screens: "YOU'RE A FOOL!"

"It is always your fault," a female co-worker told me recently.

Of course I'm to blame -- maybe not for setting the earth on its current axis, but for myriad other things. For one thing, my wife has not been sitting there in the heat all day simply waiting to inform me of it. She is in grad school and has progressed to the stage that academics call "Doing 700 Things At Once."

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Unfortunately, most of those things must be done sitting at the computer in our den, where your bare feet can feel warmth -- from apartments below -- radiating through the floorboards, while our air-conditioned bedroom taunts my wife from just a few feet away. And I just rub salt into the wound by failing to clean my tea mugs -- simply leaving them on the kitchen table. It's 182 degrees in our apartment, and I'm tormenting my wife by leaving filthy, stained porcelain strewn about the apartment like some demented plate-smashing Greek, and expecting her to clean up after me.

But she would seemingly not have it any other way. The other day, with our apartment suffering Amazonian heat, I came home to find my wife cooking. She was using all four burners on the stove, the oven, an electric frying pan, and our George Foreman Grill.

"Good grief, you insane woman! You've turned on every source of heat in the apartment! I'm surprised you didn't get the space heater out of storage," is what I thought, but did not say.

If I had said that, I would have surely had my leg ripped off and been beaten with it, and then have been yelled at for making my wife work up a sweat.

What I actually said was this: "PLEASE go sit in the bedroom and cool off. Just give me some direction and I'll finish dinner. I've been in an air-conditioned office all day. Please let me help."

She blocked me out of the kitchen like a defensive lineman and said: "I'm almost done. Just stay out of the way.

"Oh ... it's hot," she added.

Personally, I think she is working her way toward martyrdom. John the Baptist and Joan of Arc have got nothing on my wife: Saint Rachel of Hot Apartment. Blessed are those who die of hyperthermia whilst making dinner.

That night, in the cool of our bedroom, my wife confessed something to me: "I wouldn't think I'd say this, but, I'm looking forward to autumn."

"Me, too," I said -- but probably for different reasons.

Chris Cope is married, with no children. His column appears every other Tuesday.