"Blood?" I said aloud, though I could barely hear my voice over the hum of the wings.

Blood. So this is how it feels. I'd never seen it so fresh. I once saw a young woman hit by a car. I was ten, on my way home from the ice-skating rink. Blood was everywhere-on her high heels and her ripped stockings and all over the road. It was so thick it seemed to form little mounds-just like this.

I shook the Manager and called his name.

"Wake up!" I screamed. There was blood on the blanket, on the toes of my slippers. "Wake up! Please!" I called again.

I shook him harder, but his body had become a dark lump on the bed. He was so light I could have picked him up, but I couldn't wake him no matter how much I shouted.

But it was my cousin I was worried about. I wanted to see him again, see that shy smile and the way he poked at his glasses. I knew I had to go look for him now.

Groping my way from the Manager's room, I ran up the stairs. The lights were out, and night had crept into every corner of the building. Ignoring the sticky film on my hands and feet, I ran down the hall, breathing hard, my heart pounding. The sound of the bees filled my ears.

My cousin's door was locked. I grabbed the knob with both hands and tried to force it open, but I only managed to make it sticky.

I ran on to the mathematician's room. This time the door opened immediately, and I found everything exactly as it had been when I visited with the Manager. The skis and the bus ticket, the discarded sweater and the math notebook-everything was waiting quietly for his return. I looked in the wardrobe and under the bed, but it was no use. My cousin wasn't there.

I knew at last that I had to go look above the spot on the ceiling, to find out where the drops were falling from. The thought came to me with sudden clarity, as if I'd come to the important line in a poem. I went back down the stairs and found a flashlight in the shoe cupboard in the lobby. Then I went outside.

My hair and clothes were wet by the time I had crossed the courtyard. The rain was fine, but it settled over me like the strands of a chilly spider's web.

I gathered some empty crates that were scattered around the courtyard and stacked them under the Manager's window. I was wet and alone and teetering on a pile of boxes, but I was oddly calm. I had the feeling that I had somehow been lured into this unlikely predicament, but I tried to remind myself that it would all be over soon and the world would return to normal.

Above the window was a rusted grate covering an opening to the crawl space between floors. I pulled it free, and it dropped to the ground with a dull thud. The boxes swayed, and I clung to the window for a moment. I looked up, and the rain fell on my eyelids, on my cheeks and throat. My fingers were slippery, but I managed to turn on the flashlight and shine it into the crawl space-illuminating an enormous beehive.

At first, I didn't realize what it was. I had never seen a beehive so close. It lay over on its side in the long, low space, and it was unbelievably large, like an oddly shaped fruit, swollen all out of proportion. The surface was crusted with tiny lumps, overlaid with a tracing of fine lines. It had grown so huge that it had begun to split open in places, and honey spilled from the cracks, dripping slowly and thickly, just like blood.

The sound of wings filled my ears as I stared at the hive. I reached out for it. The honey flowed on, somewhere beyond the tips of my fingers.