I scoff at him. “You wish you were as much of a sucker as me.”
Lindy’s eyes shift. He’s been jovial since our second pitcher of beer, my classroom transgressions forgotten. His eyes twinkled as we coded together. Now his eyes empty to something flat and cold.
“Yeah, Max, I do,” he says. He gathers up his laptop and man bag. “Tab’s yours.”
I watch him walk out, shame running up my face like a fever.
“Lindy—”
He doesn’t look back.
When I go to the bar, I discover he’s paid half the bill.
With Lindy’s loneliness so fresh in my mind, I make the most of my time with Cynnie. She’s in a particularly good mood because she’s just turned in a big project. We sit out on my fire escape, trying to spot stars through the late summer smog and city light pollution. Since I’ve been drinking, we agree not to scene. Cynnie says she’ll be big and we share a bottle of wine as we watch the sky.
The traffic noises dim as the sky darkens. In the relative quiet, there’s a soft buzz from the planter screening us from the street.
“Emily found a pink ladybug in those flowers,” I tell Cynnie.
She shifts out from under the arm I have around her and peers into the planter. “It’s a bumblebee. Do you mind if I get it some sugar water? It might be exhausted if it hasn’t returned to its hive for the night.”
“Of course.”
Hand-in-hand, we return to my kitchen. She tells me how to mix up a solution of sugar water while she puts some bottled water in the smallest dish I can scrounge up. Then we take a spoon with a few drops of sugar water and the dish out to the planter and set them at the base of a clump of daisies for the bee to find.
I draw Cynnie back under my arm as we settle back onto the bench facing the planter. “Why bees, baby?”
She rests her cheek on my shoulder. “I like everything about them. I like how the worker bees are all girls. They all have a role to play in the health of the hive and they’re all important no matter what they do. I like that they have complex systems of communication we barely understand. Did you know that it tookresearchers years to decode the dances bees do to tell each other where to find food?”
“I didn’t,” I admit.
“And the best thing about bees is that bumblebees are round and fat and furry and everyone still thinks they’re cute.”
Her voice catches on the last word. Does anyone think she’s not cute? They’d have to be blind. Does anyone think she’s fat?
“Baby.” I shift her so I can cup her soft cheek. “Does anyone call you fat?”
She shrugs and looks away. “I’m the biggest in my family.”
“You’re healthy, baby. I love your curves. Please don’t ever let anyone make you feel anything other than beautiful.”
She smiles at me and cuddles back under my arm. “This is why I hate being big.”
“Why, baby?”
“Because all these thoughts and worries come back. When I’m little, when I’m playing with you, I don’t think of how Baachan says my ass jiggles when I walk or how the bees are dying or how everything’s fucked up and unfair.”
I rock back in my seat. “Baby? Where is this coming from?”
She looks up at me with tears in her eyes. I brush them away.
“I told you, I hate being big.”
“Tell me about all of that.”
“You don’t want to hear it.”
“I absolutely do, Cynnie.”
