The thing I like about scientists is that they don’t judge you, or if they do, never to your face. I talked about my father’s meth hut, my mother’s love of meeting a new uncle every week, my own exuberant drug use, and they just made notes and asked me to continue.
Wait. I don’t want people to think I am entirely decadent. Believe it or not, I, Zack, was once actually in love with Rebecca Holland, whose daddy was a gene tracker for Cargill. At least, I’m guessing it was love. The thing with Rebecca was that she liked getting hammered, while I liked getting shit-faced. It was destiny—at least, it was destiny until one day when we were making it in the driver’s compartment of her family’s John Deere combine. We accidentally rolled it into a drainage culvert and we both had to get stitches all over our lower legs. Don’t ask. Rebecca’s brother, Leo, was the state’s bronze medal Tae Bo champion. He showed up at the hospital and went shogun all over me, and it degenerated into a massive, no-holds-barred, deeply vicious hobo fight that put me into intensive care. After that, the thrill was gone. Becky currently manages a Curves gym, “the gym for women.”
In any event, back home I’d begun viewing my waking hours as though I was no longer myself, that I was me but not me—hard to describe. But if someone asked me to pass something, instead of doing it, I’d think, Right—how would Zack pass the butter?
(BTW: I really missed Ronald Reagan’s voice.)
I also began reading about Sam, Julien, Diana and Harj—obsessively so—collecting whatever images and video clips I could find online. I was curious to see if we had anything in common the scientists had missed, things only I (or we) could determine. I discovered that Sam was a fox, Julien looked like a snotty arcade rat, Diana looked like a dental hygienist, and Harj looked like a mild-mannered 9-11 hijacker with a heart of gold. A childish part of me began to wish the five of us could band together and become a crime-fighting supergroup.
Six weeks after getting home, the need to connect with them had grown intense and undeniable, like being horny—and frustrating, too, because there still exists no White Pages or Yellow Pages for email addresses. And none of the other “stingees” had agents or personal assistants (I, on the other hand, had three personal assistants: Chelsea, Haley and Emily, although none of them could ship a FedEx box or run spreadsheet software).
And then, late one night—three in the morning?—I was making peanut butter sandwiches after several hours of stallion sex. I looked over when my laptop pinged, and it was Sam, emailing me.
Hi Zack. This is Sam(antha) in New Zealand.
I stood in the kitchen as though processing the effects of a new drug. My online commerce expert, Rachel, walked in, naked save for a pair of leather chaps. “Zack, are you high?”
Silence.
“Whatever. Tomorrow we have a big shipment, and I need a bucket more blood, so drink lots of distilled water and the jug of wheat-grass smoothie I put in the fridge.”
She turned to leave and her luscious ass had no effect on me. Samantha had contacted me and I was now a new man. I clicked the chat reply button, but Sam’s computer had an ISP scrambler. Fuck. That must be one awesome machine she’s using. So I phoned Uncle Jay, woke him up and asked him to use his law firm’s descrambler to locate Sam’s ISP. I was promptly rewarded with a string of cartoony swearing—@#$%&!—the way people swear in sanitized cartoons directed at religious markets. So I told him that if he wanted any future slice of any revenue I might make, he’d get off his lily-white butt and do this for me. It worked; in the end, my uncle is all about money.
I sat alone in the kitchen, the fridge passing through hum cycles, the window open, the sound of the few remaining insects generating white noise in the yard and the fields. It was strange keeping the window open with the light on in the middle of night and not having bugs fly in. I always thought it’d be bald eagles and manatees that vanished first. But cicadas? Crickets? Even blackflies: now gone or going, and so quickly.
Finally, Uncle Jay emailed that the site belonged to Finbar Manzies of Palmerston North, New Zealand. He was a dental researcher who specialized in using stem cells to regenerate new teeth in adults.
Huh?
He was also in the top zero-point-three percent of Kiwi income earners, flew regularly around the world and had recently spent NZ$3,450.00 for a series of visits to an area businessman named
[email protected] in a way that would show up on his credit card statements as a donation to UNESCO. I even had Toby’s unlisted mobile number. Uncle Jay, you’ve earned your ten percent.
I phoned. Finbar answered, obviously a bit drunk. I could hear people in the background.
I did a fake Australian accent: “Hi. This is Toby from Manssage.”
Finbar said nothing.
I said, “Finbar?”
“Who is this?”
“This is Zack calling for Samantha.”
I could hear Finbar’s brain swirl about. “Where are you calling from?”
“Outside the town of Oskaloosa, in the heart of Mahaska County, Iowa.”
He handed the phone over, saying, “It’s for you” in a way that must have seemed charged with mystery.
I heard Sam’s voice. It was heaven: “Mum? Dad? We’re just finishing dinner. Can you call back in an hour?”
I said, “This is Zack.”
I could hear the voices in the background recede as she carried the phone into a different room. I waited to hear the sound of a shutting door. I did. Sam said, “Hello.”
Awkward.
I said, “Hi.”
“Where are you calling from?”
“From outside the town of Oskaloosa, in the heart of Mahaska County, Iowa.”
“It’s dinnertime here.”
“What did you have?”
“Chicken Kiev. Fingerling potatoes. Dandelion salad.”
“Dessert?”
“Apple strudel.”
“Apple?”
“I know. It was fantastic.”
“I was going to go out and buy an apple tomorrow. I mean today. I miss them so much. The crunch.”
“You should have seen them—five tiny little things, malformed, pecked at by birds, the skins all daggy-looking.”
“What’s ‘daggy’ mean?”
“Dags are those little bits of shit that stick to a sheep’s arse.”
“Arse?”
“Excuse me, assssss.”
“That’s more like it. What are you wearing right now?”
“Zack!”
“Is it wrong to be curious? Turn on your phone’s camera.”
“No. Besides, I don’t know how Finbar’s works. What are you wearing right now, Zack?”
“Grey track pants and a wife-beater stained with pomegranate juice.”
“Oh. Did you know that the French word for pomegranate is grenade, and that’s where the word ‘grenadine’ comes from?”
“Grenadine, like they use in making Shirley Temples?”
“Same thing. And that’s where the word ‘grenade’ comes from, too. Do you know why hand grenades are covered in little squares the way they are, like chocolate bars?”
“Better grip?”
“No. It’s so that when they explode, the squares fly off and make great shrapnel.”
“I think I like you, Sam. And you still haven’t told me what you’re wearing.”
“Nothing really—some generic high-street jumper and dress. It’s a yuppie dinner.”
“Who’s Finbar?”
“A new friend. We met on the plane coming back from the States.”
“Did they put you in one of those rooms too?”
“Yup.”
“Not much fun, was it?”
“I almost went mad. When did you get home?”
“A few weeks ago. You?”
“Yesterday.”
“What was that like for you?”
“Well, they dismantled the building I was living in, and my parents’ place is crawling with photographers and religious nuts. But at least I don?
??t have to eat any more of that creepy jelly food.”
“You had that too?”
“It was awful. They were like beef smoothies.”
Finbar’s phone beeped.
“The battery’s dying, Zack.”
“Email me.”
Dial tone.
Whoa.
I looked around my kitchen, then I went into the living room and saw my assistants conked out everywhere—my ungodly amount of corn-fed poon—and the annoying sensation of being outside myself and looking down was gone. Instead, it was replaced by a sense of being profoundly incomplete.
SAMANTHA
Lazy as dirt.
But in the end, it was easier to phone Finbar than any of my so-called friends. I was at that point in a single woman’s life when the friends vanish. Finbar, on the other hand, had planned three dinners and selected a wide array of skin-care products for me before I’d finished my request for sanctuary.
My father and I snuck past a trio of photographers camped outside my parents’ place and arrived at Finbar’s house in Hokowitu unseen. Pulling into his carport, I saw that his Toyota had a chromed fish emblem on it. I felt like I was falling into a cyclical dream that wouldn’t end. This was fish number six—a cloisonné containing the words “sole amandine.”
Finbar opened the door wide. “Come in and make yourself at home. I just got word of some Granny Smiths for sale out by the Awapuni Racecourse. I haven’t had an apple pie in two years. You’re my good-luck charm.” With an air kiss he was gone, and I walked into a lush magazine spread of a house of the sort that made me shudder as I recalled my own shabby things currently dozing inside that posh Cloverlea storage facility. His fridge was full of good food, much of it hand-pollinated—some preserved pears impressed me greatly—and on the counter sat a bowl of smoked almonds. Finbar obviously had black market connections, unlike my parents, who live almost entirely on chicken and potatoes.
Two hours later he returned with five Granny Smiths, three of which were malformed, and all of which were distressed with bird pecks. “We’re going to have to downgrade from pie to strudel, but it will be very tasty,” he said. He removed a bottle of vodka from the freezer. “Martini time, and it’s also time for you to tell me everything while I cook up a storm. We’ve got four guests coming for dinner, and you’ll love them all. Pour yourself a drink and let’s get enbevulated!”
Righty-o.
So we got sloshed on martinis and made a brilliant strudel that smelled like a rare flower. After it was in the oven, Finbar led me upstairs to a beautiful guest room with an ensuite bathroom and a view of a bamboo grove in the house’s courtyard. Now that was a room I could have spent four weeks in.
I washed up and took a nap to sleep off my martinis, and was woken up by Finbar saying, “T minus one hour. And I imagine you probably want to talk to Zack, so I called in a few favours and found you his email address.”
“You what?”
“Guilty. And don’t worry about your hair. Sylvie can trim it before dinner.”
I looked at myself in the mirror and felt like a haggard and bloated Wookie. “Can she, now?”
He ignored my tone. “Yes, she can. I’ve got a guest Mac set up in the kitchen. Give Mr. Zack a shout.”
I went down to the kitchen, sat in front of the Mac and quickly opened a new KMail account. What should I say to Zack? I was still a tad drunk.
Hi Zack. This is Sam(antha) in New Zealand.
And with those few words I fell into a dream. I closed my eyes and squinted, and I saw geometric dazzle patterns before me, and then I opened my eyes and I remembered an image I once read about in a book, of two navy men who swore they saw a black sun setting on the horizon in Moorea in 1947. And I thought about sunsets, and how the amazing thing about sunsets is that no matter how many you see, it always feels as if that specific sunset was generated for you and you alone.
I saw pictures in my head of the massive crop failures of the past few years, of everybody’s collective fear about food and what would happen when the pollination crisis accelerated further.
And then I saw visions of Zack—his high school yearbook photo I’d seen online the day before I was stung. Some other online party photos told me that Zack was someone with a healthy dose of excess energy. And of course, the classic bee sting clip. How odd that I’d been thinking of him so much without realizing it.
The doorbell rang. I snapped out of whatever zone I was in. I hit the Enter key and sent Zack my eight words. I knew he’d read them and realize they were an authentic message from me. For the time being, I wanted to attend a real dinner party, with real adults, to be followed by a real dessert made with real apples.
When the phone battery died, I realized I was going to need Louise’s help if I was ever going to meet Zack, whether in the United States or New Zealand or Hawaii or in a box with Green Eggs and Ham. I walked down the hallway and into the dinner area, and all five people there stared at me with salacious smiles.
Finbar said, “Welllllll?”
“Well what?”
“I knew it!”
“Knew what?”
“You’re hot for him.”
“Am not.”
“This is so romantic. What are you going to do about it?”
“I’ve no clue.”
The next morning, severely hungover, I phoned around trying to locate Louise at the offices of the New Zealand Project Mellifera Response Team; their old listed number was out of service—unsurprising. In the middle of calling, I had a mild asthma attack. As I’d left my puffer on the flight from L.A., Finbar loaned me his. As with many people our age, our childhood experiences with swimming pool chemicals and antibiotics had wiped out our breathing systems. I made a mental note to visit the pharmacy later that day.
I wanted to email Zack again, but I wanted to be in a clearheaded state while doing so. As a stop-gap I sent him a quick hangover alert, saying there’d be more to come later. In return, he sent me a mini-movie about himself and his farm, not bothering to delete the voices of the young women operating the camera.
In the end, I sent a blanket email to the Mellifera Response Team and took up Finbar’s kind offer of a trip to Bee-52. It was a lovely day, perfect for a drive, and we didn’t see any fires or smoke anywhere along the way.
By way of conversation, I asked Finbar about the Solon I’d found in his kitchen.
“The box was unopened, I hope you noticed.”
“You don’t seem like the Solon type.”
“Describe the ‘Solon type’ to me.”
“Well, lonely—obviously—but freaked out and worried about bills and ecosystems and weather and . . .”
“I don’t seem worried or freaked out or lonely?”
“No. You don’t.”
“Good.”
“Then why the Solon?”
“Just in case. It’s a safety net. I worry about the world as much as anyone else. And by the way, you check your wig, young lady.”
Finbar had made me wear a Jackie-O wig left over from his student drag days. I felt ridiculous, but once we neared Bee-52, I could see that it wasn’t a bad idea at all. The precise sting location was surrounded by a square cyclone fence topped with razor wire—maybe a hundred metres by a hun dred metres. Stuck in the fence’s links were poems and letters and photos and drawings of bees. It reminded me of New York after 9-11, except nobody had died—instead, some form of hope had been reborn. I got choked up as it dawned on me that what was to me an annoyance was a ray of hope for a hope-starved world.
We parked the car and walked among a crowd of a hundred or so hard-cores. I was delighted to see, mounted on two poles within the sting enclosure, a beautiful photo of Madrid, Spain—the other half of my Earth sandwich—the corner of Calle Gutenberg and Calle Poeta Esteban de Villegas, where a group of people in bumblebee costumes were waving at the photographer.
JULIEN
Switzerland was like the worst drug on earth. I might as well have stayed in
the neutral chamber, which at least had the benefit of narcotizing mist to help time pass more quickly. The Genevans have these plump, we-still-eat-like-we-did-before-the-pollination-crisis faces. Dark secrets? They must all surely be keeping near-dead sex slaves locked in their basements, with those rubber balls in their mouths, or something else shameful and diseased. My grandmother is completely gaga and doesn’t even realize bees are gone, hence her inability to deal with my problem on any level except noticing that there’s not much strawberry jam around these days, and that all the juices taste artificial because they are artificial. What else? This is where I learned that my father spent his five working weeknights in the Meyrin neighbourhood, getting hosed on schnapps while YouTubing his past (NASA; Velvet Underground; Leona Lewis performing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” on The X Factor). He had also been taking Solon.
To get even a little bit of star recognition for being the Only Guy in Europe Stung by a Bee, I had to walk around downtown and really linger in front of the Mövenpick window, pretending to read the menu. Even then, the squeals came from the non-Swiss.
Worst of all, World of Warcraft continued to completely unacknowledge me, even when I tried different aliases and used my grandmother’s credit data. It’s like it had a Julien detector bot and the moment it got a whiff of me, it shut me down. Perhaps it detected my typing style or my syntax. Who masterminded my obliteration? I, the once-proud Xxanthroxxusxx!
My father is not as dumb or as detached as I make him out to be, though I think he expected more (and better) incarceration stories than he got. “You sat in a room with the voice of Johnny Hallyday asking you questions? That’s it?”
“They knocked me out during the flight to Sweden.”
“How long will you stay in Geneva?”
“I want to go back to Paris tomorrow. Dad, it’s so boring here, it’s like a stroke that never ends.”