Page 15
Lavender huffs. ‘I mean, not much. You’ve met the guy, he’s not exactly happy feet.’
‘How do you know him?’
‘I’m working on a project with him,’ she says, checking her non-existent nails.
‘Doing…?’
She looks down at me, entirely bored with the conversation. ‘I’m helping him…’ She waves in front of her as she searches for the words. ‘Find a way to retrieve something.’
‘What?’
‘It’s classified,’ she says, all too happy that I don’t have the clearance.
‘So, he’s a collector.’
‘A retriever,’ she corrects.
‘Will he leave once he’s retrieved this thing?’
Lavender frowns. ‘Unfortunately not.’
‘Shit, what am I going to do?’ I pull at the lengths of my hair and collapse down beside her. ‘He’s practically declared war.’
‘Has he?’ She leans forward.
‘You don’t need to look so excited,’ I snap.
Lavender bites her lip but looks no less intrigued to hear the answer.
‘He’s fucking with the power and the water, so I’ll go ahead and take a wild guess that he’s not interested in splitting accommodation.’ Waking up to a fridge full of off food today wasn’t exactly a segue into trading pleasantries.
‘Mm. Sounds like quite the pickle you’ve gotten yourself into.’ Lavender flicks her hair again.
A pickle I can expect no help with, obviously. Whatever moment we shared yesterday is dead and gone. So dead and so gone, it might as well have a headstone next to Barry the bee-shifter in our front yard.
I steal a glance at my watch, it’s high time for me to start making moves. I have a job to walk to and the sun is already beating down without remorse. I jump to my feet, and while Lavender stares at herself in the window reflection, I grab a low branching flower and yank it from her frondescent head.
‘Ouch! Miller!’
I round the front of the house and approach the broken picket fence / the bee-shifter’s grave site. His visitors have mostly dispersed, only one lone woman remains. A friend, or sister maybe. When I get closer, I notice her colours are slightly more muted, the only sign that she’s a bit older in age. She sniffles quietly into a tiny handkerchief. Grandmother might be a better guess.
I place the flower down beside the tiny headstone and the quiet sniffles pause to contemplate me through big, black eyes. I offer my condolences and quickly move along.
No matter how shit today might be, at least I’m not dead.
I look (and smell) a bit like a sponge that’s fallen into a bucket of turps.
Water drips from my hair and soaks the collar of my shirt, pooling in dark little circles, giving my shirt vitiligo.
Shit.
A sponge that hasn’t been wrung.
Despite my early morning dip, I can’t quite seem to wash the smell of last night’s alcohol intake - regardless of the fact I felt nary a buzz of intoxication. I woke up rather worse for wear this morning. Dousing myself in perfume seems to have done the trick. Still, my hair is a wet mess.
My hairdryer, along with everything else I’ve ever owned, still hasn’t arrived. I wish the removalists would get a bloody move on with my things (pun-intended). Call me naïve, but I honestly expected more from Ernest.
Hastening my step, I keep the resumes in my manila folder meticulously crinkle-less hurrying towards the broken picket fence bordering my dated abode. I offer my condolences to the hive congregated on my lawn as I pass. It would appear Benny was a very well-loved member of the bee-shifter community, attracting a procession of thousands to pay their respects. A little overboard, really – he’ll bee back in a year (see what I did there?).
