Rafe Marquez, 53, has been keeping bees on his half-acre central Texas plot for 12 years, and he’s avoided every neighborhood block party for the last seven, ever since his ex-wife moved to Austin and the old HOA board tried to fine him out of his hives. He only showed up this year because the event coordinator, a retired 4th grade teacher who brings him peach jam every Christmas, begged him to donate a few jars of wildflower honey for the silent auction. He’s leaning against a wobbly folding table sticky with spilled sweet tea, faded Texas A&M cap pulled low over his sun-weathered face, when she walks over.
She’s Clara, the new HOA president, moved into the blue bungalow three blocks over three months prior, and he’s already been avoiding her calls about a “neighborhood sustainability initiative” he assumed was a backdoor attempt to rehash the hive ban. She’s holding one of his honey jars in both hands, thumb brushing the smudged handwritten label he’d scrawled on it that morning, and she leans in close when she says hello, shoulder pressing warm against his bicep to talk over the teen blasting Morgan Wallen from a portable speaker by the bounce house. She smells like coconut sunscreen and lime seltzer, and he catches a streak of silver in her honey-blonde hair when she tilts her head up to meet his eye.
He tenses first, ready to cut her off before she can mention ordinances or fines or neighbor complaints, but she laughs before he can get a word out, warm and rough, like she smokes a cigarette every now and then when no one’s looking. “Relax,” she says, nodding at the jar in her hands. “I scrapped that stupid hive ban my first week on the board. Those old coots had no clue what they were doing. My 12-year-old has seasonal allergies so bad he used to miss a week of school every spring, and your honey’s the only thing that’s made a dent since we moved here.”
He blinks, taken off guard, and reaches for a paper plate to grab a slice of the cobbler the 4th grade teacher brought, his hand brushing hers when she reaches for the same plate at the exact same time. They both yank back a little, grinning, and he spots the tiny black bee tattoo peeking out from under the cuff of her linen shirt, on the soft skin of her inner wrist. He points at it with a calloused finger, the tip still sticky from handling honey jars all morning. “You keep bees too?”
“Used to,” she says, twisting her wrist so he can see the tattoo better, her arm brushing his again, deliberate this time, not accidental. “Had three hives when I lived in San Antonio. Lost all of them to mites my third year, got too discouraged to start over. I’ve been bugging my kid to let me set up a hive in our backyard, but he’s convinced he’s gonna get stung every time he goes outside to play basketball.”
They talk for 40 minutes, leaning against that sticky table while the sun dips low below the live oaks, the air cooling just enough to take the edge off the 95-degree heat. She teases him about the dark smudge of propolis on his left wrist, says it’s the official beekeeper merit badge, and he laughs, says he’s scrubbed at it with dish soap three times and it still won’t come off. He tells her about his oldest hive, the one he named Mabel after his grandma, that’s survived three droughts and a hailstorm that knocked half the oak trees in the neighborhood down three years prior. She tells him about the sustainability grant she’s applying for to plant wildflowers and milkweed in all the common areas, so his bees have more to forage on, says she already got half the neighborhood to sign off on it.
He’s so caught up in the conversation he doesn’t notice most of the neighbors have left until the teen turns the speaker off and the only noise left is crickets chirping and the distant hum of cars on the highway two miles over. She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, and he finds himself leaning in a little closer, like he doesn’t want the conversation to end. “You wanna come by sometime, see the hives?” he asks, before he can talk himself out of it. He hasn’t invited anyone back to the hives since his ex left, hasn’t wanted to share that part of his life with anyone. “If you still miss working with them, I’ve got an extra veil. Come around 7 a.m. tomorrow, before the sun gets too hot. The bees are calmer when it’s cool.”
She grins, bright, and pulls a pen out of her jeans pocket, scribbling her phone number on a scrap of napkin before tucking it under the lid of the half-empty honey jar he’s got sitting on the table next to him. “I’ll bring empanadas,” she says, backing away toward her car, keys dangling from her finger. “My abuela’s recipe, pork and green chile. Don’t leave me standing at the gate, Marquez.”
He’s back home 20 minutes later, standing at his kitchen counter rinsing out the empty honey jars he brought back from the party, when he finds the napkin tucked under the jar lid, the blue ink already smudged a little from the condensation. The hum of his hives drifts through the open kitchen window, soft and steady, and he types her number into his phone, thumb hovering over the send button for a full minute before he types out the text: 7 a.m. tomorrow. Don’t skimp on the green chiles.
