The Music of Bees by Eileen Garvin (free ereaders txt) 📗

No. He swiveled on his stool to look at Moira, who stood rolling out a pile of dough.

“Hey, Moira. Can I put you down as a personal reference?”

She laughed and pushed her hair out of her face. “So forward, Harry! I mean, I just met you.”

His face flushed. “Oh, right. Sorry. I just—”

“Kidding, dude! Sure, you can put me down. You’re not an ax murderer or anything, right?”

No, just a small-time criminal, he thought. Not even a good one.

She gave him her last name and her email address. She also invited him to a party at her house. She told him to come back to the café at 5:00 p.m. and he could ride with her.

“My friends are cool. You’ll like them.”

Harry’s heart thrummed. She was so pretty, and she smelled like cinnamon and melted butter. Things were looking up. He waved and left the café, pretending he had somewhere to go. Killing time until 5:00 p.m., he walked through Hood River’s small downtown to the waterfront.

The wind picked up as he neared the river and whistled in his ears. He could see whitecaps out in the green water and a flash of activity in the middle of the channel. He’d seen windsurfers at the Jersey shore, and there were a couple of those out there, zipping around like furious plastic sharks. But there were these other things—large paraglider-like things flying high over the water. Harry walked closer and saw a sign that read, “Kiteboarding launch. Spectators use caution.”

People in wet suits were pumping air into the big kites. Harry watched as one guy holding a bar signaled to a woman clutching a kite at the other end of the lawn. She released it, and the man steered it overhead. Harry watched the guy walk down to the river with the kite flying above him. Then he hopped on a wakeboard and sped off across the water. It was mesmerizing. People zoomed across the river and back. They launched high in the air, suspended for long, impossible seconds. They did flips and complicated tricks. Out on the large sandbar that spilled into the river, he saw dozens of wet-suited figures launching and landing the great colorful kites.

Harry bit into one of the cinnamon rolls Moira had given him, still warm from the oven. Drizzled with honey, it made his teeth ache. A big guy crossed his field of vision with a bright pink kite under one arm and a board under the other. He put his gear down next to Harry.

“Damn! Well, that was a day for paying dues,” he said with a laugh, and flipped his long, wet hair out of his face. “I prolly shoulda stayed home and organized my sock drawer.”

The guy seemed to be talking to Harry. So he asked, “Bad day?”

The big man cracked his neck. “Nah. Not too bad. The wind’s dying. Been fluky,” he said, swimming his hand through the air. “Up and down. But hey—any day out here is better than a day at the office, right?”

The guy flipped his kite over and pulled a valve open. Air rushed out, and the kite deflated into a limp pink sheet.

Harry watched as he began to fold it up. “Is that hard to learn?” he asked.

The other man laughed and jerked his thumb at a collection of trailers near the water.

“The kite schools will tell you it’s easy. But I’m a reasonable man, so I tell people the truth. It’s a challenge. You have to get out there and stay out there and figure it out on your own. Schools have Jet Ski support and walkie-talkies and all that, but the bottom line is you gotta learn what the wind wants to do, and then hold on when shit goes sideways!”

He eyed the cinnamon rolls. “River Daze? Oh, man, I love their honey buns.”

“Have one,” Harry said, pushing the box toward him. “I can’t eat both.”

Harry insisted when the big guy protested, and he picked up the pastry, dwarfing it in his big paw.

“I bet it’s expensive,” Harry ventured.

The kiter unpeeled the cinnamon roll and shoved a piece in his mouth and nodded as he chewed. “Well, brand-new gear, a full set of kites, lines, harness, and board—you can spend four or five grand.”

Harry looked closely at him. The kiter didn’t look like he had four or five grand lying around.

“But you can get used gear for a fraction of that. Around here at the end of the summer, sometimes people just give shit away.”

Harry looked skeptical, and the guy grinned.

“Serious, man. Some of these people don’t know what to do with all their money. That’s why we need a revolution!”

He pumped a fist in the air. Harry thought of Marty and blanched, but the big guy laughed.

“Just kidding! I’m way too lazy for that shit. Besides, all’s I need is wind.”

He shook his wet hair out of his face. “And beer,” he said. “Now I really need a beer.”

He wiped his hands on the grass, stood, and reached down for the folded kite with one hand. He held out the other for a fist bump.

“Thanks, brother. Name’s Yogi,” the guy said.

“Harry,” Harry said.

“See ya around, Harry.”

Harry looked out at the water again, at the sandbar, where two dozen kites had landed and people were wrapping their lines around the control bars. Maybe Moira would think it was cool if he became a kiter, Harry thought, and he stroked his upper lip.

What Moira thought was cool became clear later in the evening at her party. Harry was one of a dozen guests—all guys except for one sour-faced girl, who stared at her phone and didn’t talk to anyone. When Moira said he would like her friends, she must have thought he’d be into kayakers—hulking guys with loud voices and big beards that made Harry feel scrawny and lamer than ever.

She’d been so nice to him, but now he understood she was nice to lots of guys. She buzzed around the party, flirting with everyone