by Thaddeus Rutkowski

At the psychiatrist's, I poured forth everything. I reverted to age four, when I had a friend called Little Bee.

He was about two inches long and looked like a bee, the kind you'd see in your back yard, or a bumble-bee fish, the kind you'd get for your aquarium. He was a trusted friend, someone I could confide in.

One day, I left him in the car while I visited the department office, and when I came out he was stealing my battery. He had the engine jacked up and a floodlight attached to the hood. I tried to lecture him on what he did wrong. I was very logical. But he kept trying to run away. I held him between my fingers to keep him from running, but I squeezed too hard, and he burst.

"So should I go to Puerto Rico or not?" I asked the doctor. That was my psychological problem, see, whether I should go to Puerto Rico and begin work on an architectural project or not.

"No," the doctor said. "No, you and Little Bee should go down to Tierra del Fuego and buy some cabbages."

But Little Bee was gone. Burst. Finished. I needed another friend. A little friend. One I could trust. Like an ant.

So I found one. A red ant named Formica. And we traveled, Formica and I, to the South, where the cabbage vendors were unusually abundant.

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