The Music of Bees

by Eileen Garvin

The days he rambled through the trees above the river he found himself shocked by the beauty of the simplest things: the electric-green moss growing on a tree trunk; an unexpected sunbreak lighting up the ghost of a tree snag.

This big, laughing man didn’t mind her silence. He didn’t read it, as many did, as unfriendliness. Bud understood her in a way most people didn’t. Alice felt like herself around him.

As long as she made it to the county planning department by 8:30 a.m. five days a week, no one had to know that Alice Holtzman was made of a million tiny broken pieces held together by cookies, solitary driving, and the sheer determination not to go crazy in public.

The Heights neighborhood where the locals lived and shopped. Downtown’s three square blocks of boutiques, bars, and restaurants, where tourists strolled along, coffees in hand, blocking traffic as they meandered through the crosswalks. The waterfront where locals and visitors converged.