The Wedding Bees by Sarah-Kate Lynch Page A

city providing its own staggering backdrop, her rooftop garden was taking shape.
    In the days after she slugged back her half-pints of dark and light ales at McSorley’s, she had worked even harder. There was nothing like lugging twenty-pound bags of potting mix up four flights of stairs to keep a person’s mind off anything so vexing as having a perfect stranger . . . Well, she wasn’t sure what Theo had done, but it was wrong.
    Still, she dreamed of him. Some mornings she could almost taste him, a sensation that seemed exquisite in her half-sleepy state, excruciating when fully awake. He was salty, with intense caramel notes that echoed in her taste buds well past breakfast.
    â€œI need to get Theo Fitzgerald out of my head,” she told Elizabeth the Sixth one morning, patting mulch around the base of the mini-magnolia to keep the moisture in. “He has no place there. Or anywhere else in my life for that matter.”
    Her gardening was interrupted by a knock on the door: it was Ruby, pale and tired-looking, clutching her scrapbook.
    Sugar had been keeping an eye on her frail downstairs neighbor, dropping in on her every few days since the brunch, and while Ruby never slammed the door in her face the way Mr. McNally still liked to do, or threw her the stink eye the way Mrs. Keschl did, or pushed past her in the stairs like Lola, her reception was often closer to frosty than anything else. She generally thawed out soon enough but Sugar always felt like she was starting their friendship back at square one, so she was tickled that she’d taken it upon herself to drop by.
    â€œI’ve got some new ones,” Ruby said, holding up the scrapbook in her spindly arms. “Real creepy.”
    Weddings were the last thing on Sugar’s mind. “I was just about to check my queen,” she said, by way of a diversion. “Would you care to join me?”
    Ruby screwed up her face. “What?”
    â€œExcuse me?”
    â€œI said ‘What?’”
    Sugar decided she’d work her gentle magic on Ruby’s manners another day. “I was just about to look in on Elizabeth the Sixth,” she said. “If you come on over here I’ll introduce you.”
    Ruby moved closer and watched suspiciously as Sugar took the lid off the hive. “Aren’t you supposed to wear a suit and smoke them all out or something?”
    â€œI do have a suit inside if you’d like to wear it, but these bees are pretty tame,” Sugar explained. “The smoking is just to calm them down but they’re a pretty relaxed crowd to begin with so I don’t bother. It can’t be nice having your house all filled with smoke is what I think. If it happens to us we call the Fire Department. But you can stand inside and watch from there if you’d rather.”
    â€œI’m not scared of bees,” Ruby said as Sugar pulled out a frame crawling with the insects.
    â€œSee they’ve covered all these little cubbyholes with wax,” Sugar pointed out. “There’s a little baby bee in each one.”
    â€œWhere’s the honey?”
    â€œWell, they haven’t made a whole lot yet. They’re just getting up and running. When Elizabeth the Sixth, or Betty as I sometimes call her, has laid a few more eggs and they’ve all hatched and grown up, they’ll start to fill the cubbyholes on the next floor up with nectar. Then they dry it out by beating their wings and, next thing you know, you have honey!”
    But Ruby was not really interested in honey; she was checking out Nate’s window boxes. “So, do you know him: the gingerhaired guy who’s always red in the face?”
    â€œHe just blushes because he’s shy, is all.”
    Ruby shrugged. “What’s he got growing in these little garden things?”
    â€œHe’s got just about everything,” Sugar said. “And as soon as it’s ready, he picks it and