“‘How can you not hear it?’ he might say to me in frustration. ‘Are you *deaf*?'”
“I say, ‘your work is an impenetrable sphere, reflections all around but not from itself.’ Here:”
“That’s a great story, baker b.,” Hucka said, looking at the mirror ball he pulled up on his monitor. “It really is. But I must buzz off elsewhere to use the old nomenclature.”
“Okay, alright. *Bye* I guess,” I say as I watch her — or him — fly away into the blue blue skies. Hucka D. the Bee showed up again after so long only to leave so quickly!
—–
“He thinks I’ve reverted to bee form, Marion. I, of course, haven’t.”
“No you *haven’t*,” expresses Marion Star Harding, taking all her womanhood in from top to bottom from his seat opposite her at the Welcome to Mimosa tavern, sign lost in the Great Wind Storm of ’02 (“The Great Blow”). No antennae even, now. “Why?” he had to ask.
“Oh, I don’t know. He’s trying so hard to understand the various creators lining up around him now, sees the parallels to them in himself; alternate paths.” I want to keep him productive, was the underlying meaning.
“You’re a fine woman,” Marion said to this. “Very fine. Now let’s walk over to the Rhino and see that comedy group again we so love.”
“You first,” she said with a sly smile.
“No, *you* this time, he he.”
“Alright.” And she got up, wondering if she had the hang of swinging her hips properly. Would this be the last vestige of her bee self and the awkward duck walk showing up? Turns out it wasn’t — she did fine. Very fine. Marion looked on in pleasure and happiness the whole 3 blocks over.
Sunklands 