Chuck Konzauer is sweating. Not just because at five feet eight he weighs eighteen stone, or because of the Piri Piri chicken he ordered from Pepe’s on the corner of Dyne Road. Gunther is telling him Eric’s bee joke. The thing is, Gunther has hyped up the joke so much that Chuck now feels obliged to laugh, no matter what, and he’s a bad actor. The walk from the apartment on Exeter Road was only half a mile but it nearly finished him. Back in Tucson, he drives everywhere; it’s too damned hot to walk. Konzauer listens so hard that it hurts. It doesn’t help that Gunther is German, not that it should affect anything, but Germans and jokes? How many German comedians does anyone know outside of Germany?

“Honestly,” Gunther assures him, “it’s the funniest joke. Everyone asks Eric to tell it to them, he tells it the best.”

Sweat runs down Konzauer’s temple. He wishes Eric were here, whoever he is. He met Gunther in Hamburg as a student, Konzauer on an exchange program from Indiana State and Gunther on the same corridor in his dorm just off the Wiesendamm. Eric works alongside Gunther at HSBC.

“A man is in a pub and the barman asks what he does for a living. ‘I keep bees,’ he says.”

A bead of sweat snaking down Konzauer’s back under his shirt.

“’You’re kidding me,’ the barman says. ‘Joe over there keeps bees.’”

Konzauer calls over to a girl who is clearing the next table.

“Can I get a water please?” Then to Gunther: “Sorry, keep going, I’m loving this.”

“So the barman brings Joe over and introduces them.”

It’s loud and a chair scrapes, and Konzauer strains to hear every word, so he doesn’t miss anything.

“’How many bees do you have?’ asks Joe. ‘Around a hundred and fifty thousand’ says the guy.”

Is this the punchline?

“A hundred and fifty thousand!” blurts Konzauer. He has no idea if this is a lot or a little, or if you need to know anything about beekeeping to get the joke. When they weren’t in class, he, Gunther and the others would buy cheap beers from Aldi and push each other home in shopping carts. They lived off Nudelsalat, Bratwurst, and Ritter Sport chocolate, slept off their hangovers then rented pedalos in the Stadtpark, lazing about on the sun-dappled waters of the Alster. A hundred and fifty thousand is not the punchline.

“’How many hives?’ Asks Joe.

“’About five,’ says the guy.”

Konzauer laughs again, even though ‘about five’ isn’t funny. He just wants the joke to end.

“’How many bees do you have?’ asks the guy. ‘About thirty million.’”

This has to be it, right? Thirty million is a huge number. Sweat is dripping into Konzauer’s food and it’s not even a hot day. His mouth hurts from grinning.

“Thirty million?” he checks with Gunther that he heard right, and looks into his eyes to see if there is any expectation there that he should be laughing. Gunther moved to London after he graduated twenty years ago, and now he’s a senior cost consulting specialist at the bank. Konzauer traded Columbus for Arizona where he is sales director for a delivery company that restocks its customers’ freezers with junk.

“’Thirty million?’ says the guy, amazed. How many hives do you have?’”

“‘Just one,’” he says.

“Just one!” Konzauer repeats and laughs in a way that he feels is appropriate. One does seem little for so many bees.

“’Yeah, bees. Fuck’ em.’”

“Yeah, fuck ’em,” says Konzauer, glad and relieved that the joke is over. But then he realises he missed it.

“Wait, ‘fuck ‘em’, was that the bee guy or you?”

“The bee guy, that was the punchline. ‘You have just one hive for thirty million bees?’ ‘Yeah, bees, fuck ‘em.’ You interrupted before the end.

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s better when Eric tells it.”

Gunther sips his milkshake and changes the subject to what Monica is doing. On the last Saturday of his life, the clown watches from across the road, two men, one fat, one skinny. He envies them. He has eaten and drunk with thousands, but avoided friendships like he did marriages. Only Godwyn was a friend to him, a kind spirit who nurtured his own, who caressed his hair and slept with her head on his chest, who journeyed with him for such a short time, like a star which fades to black almost the moment the eye settles on it.