Her face hovered above him for a moment, gentle and sweet, and then she drifted away and he closed his eyes, thinking No! No!
But when her mouth touched him, enveloping him in liquid and warmth, all his inner voices went silent and still and he lay in a quiet hush of anticipation, waiting for something he could not name, something unknown and yet familiar, which he had imagined but never felt….
It came as a hot rush of uncoiling flame, a tingling knot of fire from his groin, burning unexpectedly in a place where he had never felt anything but the merest hint of this sensation.
Recognizing it too late for what it was, uncontained and uncontrollable, he sat up gasping and embarrassed, shouting “Stop!”
May drew back from him, a wet hand at her mouth, thick whitish liquid dripping from her lips and chin. Her eyes were wide and stunned. She jumped up choking and spitting, gagging as he scrambled to his feet, trying to contain himself, his guts already in knots.
“May,” he said, “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean—”
She made a retching noise, stumbling back from the column, and vomited in the dirt. He stuffed himself back into his pants, rushed to put a hand on her shoulder.
“May, you—you’re still in a trance,” he said, forcing himself to be calm, wondering what he could do to make things okay, whether he could tell her to forget it, if he could make her remember nothing of this when she awoke. Or if instead he should wake her up instantly. “Deep, deep in a trance,” he insisted, as if he could salvage everything that way. She didn’t look like a person in a trance. Her face was red, her eyes full of tears, and she was still coughing and choking.
“May, I love you,” he said desperately. “Everything’s okay! You’re safe, May. May! I didn’t know that would happen. Are you okay? Please, May!”
She got to her feet unsteadily, her eyes sleepy and distant again, although now she was weeping. She pushed past him, coughing, still making gagging sounds. He followed her past the cement leg of the freeway, clutching at her hand but letting it drop when she didn’t squeeze his fingers in return. Was she in trance or awake now? He couldn’t tell. He didn’t know what he had done.
Passing from the shadow of the unfinished freeway, she lit up as if the sun had set her on fire. She became one with the burning landscape, too bright to look at. He shaded his eyes and stood waiting for the sobs he felt building in his chest, watching her hurry down the hill through brush and rocks and cactus. Would she tell on him? Could he stop her somehow? He covered his eyes completely and whisper-howled her name.
As if in reply, she started screaming.
He bared his eyes, saw her standing halfway down the hillside between the freeway and the trailer park, beating at the air. She stood rooted to one spot, her hands making thrashing motions as if she were trying to swim straight up. Then she began to leap and dance around, brushing at her dress, her hair, jerking and twitching. She took a few steps one way, then another, and then she toppled.
The air around her was blurred with bees; they closed on her face in a swarming ball.
Derek ran, jumping over rocks and cactus, plowing through bushes, straight for the spot. He had no particular fear of bees; he knew if you were calm they wouldn’t sting you, and in fact he’d never been stung. But he had never seen so many at once, rising in a pall over the spot where May had fallen. The swarm darted away, thinning out, and then he saw her blue dress down in the sagebrush between some cracked slabs of rock that had tumbled here during the freeway’s construction. He swatted at the air, still hung with bees like drops of solid fury, and jumped down beside her.
May lay curled in a ball, her hands covering her head, her head tucked in toward her chest. There were red welts on her arms and hands, on the back of her neck and her calves. She was sobbing, choking, as he put his arms around her middle and tried to pull her up. “May, May, it’s all right! I’ll help you!”
She started to rise, then crumpled again, landing on her side with her head twisted up to him. Her mouth was still smeared and wet, and now caked with dirt; he wiped it with a hand, careful around her swelling lips. She had been stung on her eyelids, on her cheeks and chin.
“May, please, let’s go—we’ve got to get help. Can you walk? I can’t leave you here.”
She didn’t answer except to sob, and then she started screaming again.
Desperate, he pulled her to her feet, bent and took her weight on his shoulder, then started off downhill toward the trailers, hardly able to keep his footing but knowing he must not falter. “You feel no pain,” he told her insistently as they went, as if he could somehow redeem the hypnotic state for her. Since he had sent her sleepwalking into the hive, the least he could do was relieve her pain. In fact her cries began to soften as they went.
May’s screams had already brought Derek’s neighbors into the open. These were mainly old men and women, retired, living alone in their trailers. Some of them started up the hill to meet Derek, but most stood around on the road at the edge of the park, waiting for him to come down. Someone must have called May’s mother, because he could see her hurrying up the road.
By the time Derek reached the trailers, a crowd had gathered; they’d come so quickly that they might have been waiting impatiently for something like this to happen. Dr. Grand, a lanky old man who made model ships, slipped May from Derek’s shoulder and laid her on a chaise longue in a bit of shade. When he saw her face, he gasped. “My God, someone call an ambulance!”
“She—she walked right into a hive,” Derek said.
Dr. Grand leaned over her. “May? May, dear, tell me how you’re feeling.”
May’s eyes were completely swollen shut. She opened her mouth as if to scream, but no sound came out except a ghastly rattle, a wretched moan that made Derek think for a horrible moment she was choking on what she had swallowed. May’s mother was calling out now, harsh birdlike cries as she came running.
“She’s going into shock,” the old man said. He turned around to look at the others. “Watch her! I’ll be right back.”
Dr. Grand rushed off to his trailer, leaving Derek to hold May’s hand. Her fingers suddenly clenched, crushing the bones of his hand together; her whole body arched and she began to writhe about, clutching at him with her other hand as if she were drowning and he might bear her up.
“May!” he cried. “May, don’t!”
Her eyes were rolling up so hard they pulled her poor swollen lids open. Her tongue crawled in her gaping mouth. She continued to choke and rasp; he grabbed her around the chest and shook her, as if he could dislodge whatever it was. At that moment, May’s mother tore him away. He stood back almost gratefully; she would know what to do, she would save her daughter. May’s mother got to her knees besides the chaise longue and put her hand on May’s blistered brow and took one of her hands and began, very softly, to pray.
Dr. Grand trotted back with his leather valise. He had already taken out a syringe and a small glass vial. He threw the case onto a patio table, working the hypodermic needle into the vial. As he drew back on the plunger, filling the syringe, he walked up behind May’s mother and said, “Give me room.”
May’s mother didn’t move; she seemed not to hear him.
“Out of the way, Beryl. Did you hear me?”
May’s mother saw the needle. It seemed to snap her from her calm. “What are you doing?”
“This is epinephrine.”
“Absolutely not.”
Dr. Grand began to bellow. “She’s having an allergic reaction—”
“Yes, she’s allergic to bee stings.”
“She’s been stung before? Goddamn it, move out of the way—she needs this now!”