“There’s no queen,” he said after a moment. “So, this isn’t a swarm.”
“Oh no?” Sabine said. “Why are they here?”
He looked over his shoulder. “They’re robbing the hive.”
Sabine snorted. “Of what? Gold?”
“Honey,” Gideon said, and smiled.
“Honey,” Greta repeated.
“What honey,” Sabine said.
“Well, the bottom part’s pretty dry. See? You soaked that part with Raid, I guess. Otherwise you got about eighty pounds of unharvested honey in here.”
“Get out,” Sabine said.
Gideon dropped the stick and stared up at the hive. “I recommend cutting it down. If you don’t, these bees will be in your kitchen for weeks, or at least until all the honey’s gone.”
Sabine looked stung, though not by bees.
“I can cut it down now,” Gideon said. “It’ll take me about an hour.”
Sabine nodded, oddly quiet. Greta was shocked to see tears in her eyes. Gideon went out to his truck and returned with a big knife and some other tools. He asked for a container of some kind. Sabine handed him a large metal bowl she used for salads. They watched him dismantle the hive, hacking at it with his big knife. It took two bowls to catch all the comb. Honey dripped everywhere—all over the concrete floor, all over Gideon’s head and shoulders.
By the time he was finished, there were bees stuck to his arms. He didn’t seem to notice. He carried the bowls outside and set them on the porch. Most of the bees followed, settling inside the bowls, devouring the honey. Gideon put a finger in his mouth. Then he reached into the grist of bees and pulled out a hunk of comb.
“Here,” he said to Sabine. “Don’t you want some for yourself?”
“Let the bees have it,” Sabine said.
* * *
AFTER GIDEON LEFT, they sunbathed and smoked cigarettes in the yard. Sabine still seemed upset about the bees. She was trembling, in fact. Greta assured her that the bees would come back and build a new hive.
“How’s therapy going?” Sabine asked.
“Sometimes I feel like we’re getting somewhere,” Greta said. “Other times I wonder if I’m just not that kind of person.”
“Which kind?”
“The kind who gets to the bottom of things.”
The donks grazed nearby. When they had to poop, they politely stepped into the bushes. They were visible from the road, Greta realized. Cars kept slowing as they passed. Since anyone with a van could kidnap them, Greta worried they’d be gone by the weekend, whisked away to Canada or someplace.
“Now I have a confession,” Sabine said. “You remember how I was gone most of last winter? Well, I didn’t travel. I stayed in one place. In a hospital up north.”
Finally, Greta thought.
“How bad is it?”
“Was,” Sabine said, correcting her. “It’s out of my system now.”
“You didn’t lose your hair?”
Sabine blinked. “Rehab, sweetie. Drugs, not cancer. I was in rehab for drugs.”
Now it was Greta’s turn to blink. It certainly explained a lot: her extreme weight loss, her lack of interest in food and sex, her increased interest in smoking and sleeping during the day. Her cloudy eyes! Her chronic constipation!
“Oxy?” Greta said.
“I wish,” Sabine said. “Oxy would’ve been more age-appropriate. Instead, I was putting good old-fashioned powder up my nose, the kind you buy on the street.”
“What street?”
“Never mind that,” Sabine said. “I checked myself into rehab, which, frankly, I didn’t think would work. I really suck at group therapy.”
“Because you talk too much?”
“I clam up, strangely. Listen, I’m seeing a therapist in town, sifting through the wreckage of my divorce, the death of my parents. I’m trying to figure shit out, but I could really use your help with something.”
Sabine reached into her pocket and pulled out a velvet pouch, which she tossed onto Greta’s lap. Greta’s first thought was that it contained gems, and she hoped they weren’t stolen. Was this Sabine’s amends? To make Greta rich? So that she might live without working ever again? Greta closed her eyes.
“Are you making a wish?” Sabine asked.
“Maybe,” Greta said.
“It’s not a gift, ding-dong,” Sabine said.
Greta peeked inside. No diamonds. No emeralds or rubies, either, or rocks of any kind, not even dice. Instead, a bundle of little plastic bags containing beige powder. The bags were blue and stamped with the handicap symbol.
“My stash,” Sabine explained. “I don’t want it anymore. In fact, I feel like puking whenever I think of it. But for whatever reason, I can’t bring myself to throw it away. I’ve tried, and I simply don’t have it in me. So I’m asking you to do it. Will you?”
Greta felt both jumpy and poised, the same way she’d felt the few times she’d held a gun.
“If it’s too much to ask, I’ll figure something out.”
Greta examined one of the bags. “How long were you… handicapped?”
“Every day for two years,” Sabine said. “I was too ashamed to tell you or anyone else. It made me feel less lonely at first, but I grew to really hate it, so I’m not sure why I can’t just throw it out.”
“Sometimes it’s hard to let go of a secret companion, even if they’re shitty company.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner,” Sabine said. “I regret keeping it from you.”
Greta said she was sorry, too.
Sabine stood and kissed Greta on the cheek. “Thank you for doing this. Next winter I’ll take you to Mexico with me, I promise.”
Sabine went inside. Greta stared at the bundle in her lap. Enough to end her life with, certainly, or at least save for a rainy day, and wasn’t it supposed to rain tomorrow? It would be easy to hide the stuff in the antechamber. On the other hand, why not take Om’s advice and do the opposite of her pattern?
She dragged herself to the garbage can at the side of the house, noting the old lethargy in her head and feet. The can was full, of course. Rather than lay the pouch on top, she pulled out all the trash bags—there were four—and dropped the pouch on the very bottom of the can. Then she opened a trash bag and poured it over, burying the pouch in coffee grinds, banana peels, eggshells, leftovers they’d never eaten, plus bathroom trash, which there was a lot of since they couldn’t flush toilet paper, because the septic tank was old and—never mind. She opened a second bag and dumped its contents, too, and was reminded of her failed attempt to bury her mother’s PS in this precise way, how she wasn’t able to do it back then, how she wished someone had taken care of it for her.
She closed the lid and made her way to the donkey pen. She passed the bowl of bees ravaging honey. She passed Walter the rooster, who was walking upright and doing high kicks, some kind of bizarre soldier march. She passed Pi?on, lying in the shade of a locust tree.
In the pen, the donks stood face-to-face, blowing into each other’s nostrils, their version of kissing. Greta opened the gate and whistled. They trotted toward her and then stopped, stared, and deliberated. They never did anything without considering its necessity, its potential for harm or danger, its goodwill. But they were also timid around Pi?on, now sitting at Greta’s feet.